729 



EDWARD VI. 



EDWARDES, MAJOR HERBERT BENJAMIN. 



730 



of the latter, who had, they contended, encouraged the insurrection 

 by the hesitation and reluctance which he manifested, on the firs 

 threatenings of it, to take the necessary measures for putting it down 

 The protector had at this time incurred considerable odium by hi 

 lavish expenditure (out of the spoils, as it was said, of the church) on 

 his new palace of Somerset House, and certain violations both o 

 public and of private rights, of which he was accused of having been 

 guilty in procuring the space and the materials for that magnificen 

 structure. A cry was also raised against him on account of a propo 

 sitiou he had made in the council for a peace with France on the 

 condition of resigning Boulogne for a sum of money. In tlie beginning 

 of October he learned that measures were about to be immediate!; 

 taken against him. In fact Warwick and his associates in the counci 

 had collected their armed retainers, and were now ready to employ 

 force if other means should fail. They had retired from Hampton 

 Court, where the king resided, and fixed themselves in London, where 

 they had contrived to obtain possession of the Tower. Somerset, on 

 the first notice of their proceedings, carried off the king to Windsor 

 Castle, and shut himself up there as if with the intention of holding 

 out ; but he soon found himself nearly deserted by all ; and after a 

 few days the king himself was obliged to sanction the vote for his 

 deposition passed by the majority of the council. On the 14th he was 

 brought to London in custody, and sent to the Tower. From this 

 moment Warwick, though without his title of protector, enjoyed his 

 power. Somerset, reduced to insignificance by this usage, but espe 

 cially by an abject submission which he made in the first momenta o 

 danger, was some time after this released from confinement, and was 

 even allowed again to take his seat at the council-table; but he 

 either engaged in designs to regain his lost place, or Warwick, now 

 Duke of Northumberland, and possessed almost of undivided power 

 in the state, felt that he should not be quite secure so long as his ok 

 rival lived. An apparent reconciliation had been effected between 

 the two, and ratified by the marriage of Warwick's eldest son to 

 Somerset's daughter; but this connection was no shelter to the over- 

 thrown protector : on the 1st of December 1551, he was brought to 

 trial before the high steward and a committee of the House of Lords, 

 on charges both of high treason and of felony ; he was convicted oi 

 the latter crime, and was executed on Tower Hill, the 22nd of 

 January 1552. He met his death with great manliness, and the 

 popular sympathy was deeply excited in his favour, both by the 

 feeling that, with some faults, he had fallen the victim of a much 

 worse man than himself, and by the apprehension that in his 

 destruction the great stay which had hitherto supported the Reforma- 

 tion in England was thrown down. 



Warwick however (although at his death, a few years after this, he 

 declared that he had always been a Catholic) did not feel himself 

 strong enough to take any measures openly in favour of the ancient 

 faith, opposed as he knew he would be in that course by the great 

 mass of the nation. It is probable that he cared little which religion 

 prevailed so that he remained at the head of affairs. The government 

 accordingly continued to be conducted in all respects nearly as it had 

 heretofore been. In March 1550 a peace had been concluded with 

 France, one of the articles stipulating for the surrender of Boulogne, 

 the support of which very proposition had been made the principal 

 charge against Somerset a few months before. In the following July 

 another treaty between the two countries wns signed at Angers, by 

 which it was agreed that the King of England should receive in 

 marriage Elizabeth, the daughter of the King of France. Meanwhile 

 at home the matter of religion continued to be treated by the new 

 government much as it had been by the old. No Roman Catholics 

 were put to death during this reign, though many were fined, 

 imprisoned, and others not capitally punished; but on the 2nd of 

 May 1 550, an unfortunate fanatic, Joan Becher, commonly called Joan 

 of Kent, was burnt for certain opinions considered to be neither 

 Roman Catholic nor Protestant, in conformity with a warrant extorted 

 by Cranmer from the king about a year before ; and on the 2nd of 

 May 1551, an eminent surgeon, named Von Panis, of Dutch extraction, 

 but resident iu London, paid the same penalty for his adherence to a 

 similar heresy. Bishop Bonner was deprived of his see in September 

 1549; Gardiner in January 1551; and Day of Chichester, and Heath 

 of Worcester, in October of the same year. The forty-two articles of 

 belief, afterwards reduced to thirty-three, were promulgated in the 

 early part of this year. 



In April 1552, Edward was attacked by small-pox; and, although 

 he recovered from that disease, the debility in which it left him pro- 

 duced other complaints, which ere long began to assume an alarming 

 appearance. By the beginning of the following year he was very ill. 

 Northumberland now lost no time in arranging his plans for bringing 

 the crown into his own family. In May his son Lord Ouildford Dudley 

 married the Lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duchess of 

 Suffolk, who was herself the eldest daughter, by her second marriage 

 with Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, of Mary Tudor, ex-queen of 

 France, and the daughter of Henry VII., upon whose descendants 

 Henry VIII. had by liig will fettled the crown on failure of the 

 lines of his son Edward and of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth. 

 This settlement, it is to be remembered, had been made by Henry 

 u ml' r the express authority of an act of parliament, which empowered 

 him to dispose of the kingdom to whomsoever he chose, on failure of 

 MOO. DIV. VOL. n. 



his three children. Northumberland now applied himself to induce 

 Edward to make a new settlement excluding Mary and Elizabeth, who 

 had both been declared illegitimate by parliament, and to nominate 

 Lady Jane Grey (in whose favour her mother the Duchess of Suffolk, 

 still alive, agreed to renounce her claim) as his immediate successor. 

 The interest of the Protestant religion, which it was argued would be 

 more secure with a sovereign on the throne whose attachment to the 

 principles of the Reformation was undoubted, and on whose birth 

 there was no stain, than if the succession were left to be disputed 

 between the king's two sisters, one of whom was a bigoted Roman 

 Catholic, and the legitimacy of either of whom almost implied the 

 illegitimacy of the other, is believed to have been the chief considera- 

 tion that was urged upon the dying prince. Edward at all events was 

 brought over to his minister's views. On the llth of June, Montague, 

 the chief justice of the Common Pleas, and two of his brethren, were 

 sent for to Greenwich, and desired to draw up a settlement of the 

 crown upon the Lady Jane. After some hesitation they agreed, on 

 the 14th, to comply with the king's commands, on his assurance that 

 a parliament should be immediately called to ratify what was done. 

 When the settlement was drawn up, an engagement to sustain it was 

 subscribed by fifteen lords of the council and nine of the judges. 

 Edward sunk rapidly after this, and lived only till the evening of the 

 Cth^of July, when he expired at Greenwich. His death however was 

 concealed for two days, and it was not till the 9th that Lady Jane 

 Grey was proclaimed. 



Edward VI. is stated by the famou? Jeromo Cardan, who was 

 brought to see him in his last illness, to have spoken both French and 

 Latin with perfect readiness and propriety, and to have been also 

 master of Greek, Italian, and Spanish. In his conversation with 

 Cardan, which the latter has preserved, he showed an intelligence and 

 dexterity which appear to have rather puzzled the philosopher. 

 Walpole has set him down among his royal authors on the strength of 

 his ' Diary,' printed by Burnet in his ' History of the Reformation,' 

 and the original of which is still preserved among the Cottoniau 

 manuscripts ; a lost comedy which is attributed to him, called ' The 

 Whore of Babylon;' some Latin epistles and orations, of which speci- 

 mens are given by Strype ; a translation into French of several 

 passages of Scripture, preserved in the library of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge; a tract in French against popery, entitled 'L'Encontre 

 des abus du monde;' and a few other productions of a similar kind 

 which have not been printed. 



The act of the 1st Edward VI. gave to the kiug all the colleges, 

 free chapels, chauntries, hospitals, &c., which were not in the possession 

 of his father by the act passed in the 37th year of Henry's reign. 

 This act was much abused ; for though one professed object of it was 

 the encouragement of learning, many places of learning were actually 

 suppressed under it. The king however afterwards founded a con- 

 siderable number of grammar-schools, which still exist, and are 

 popularly known as King Edward's Schools. 



In 1556, in the reigu of Queen Mary, a boy of the name of William 

 Fetherstone, or Constable, a miller's son, was hanged at Tyburn for 

 giving himself out to be Edward VI. 



EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE. [EDWARD III.] 



* EDWARDES, HERBERT BENJAMIN, Major in the East India 

 Company's service, was born in January 1820, at Frodesloy in Shrop- 

 shire. His father, the Rev. B. Edwardes, was rector of Frodesley. 

 He completed his education at King's College, London. His uncle, 

 Sir Henry Edwardes, of Ryton Grove, Shrewsbury, having procured 

 him a nomination to a cadetship, he was examined and passed on the 

 26th of August 1840. He landed at Calcutta in January 1841, anil 

 was soon afterwards attached to the 1st European regiment. In 

 November 1845 Lieutenant Edwardos was appointed aide-de-camp to 

 Sir Hugh Gough (now Viscount Gough), then commauder-iii-chief of 

 ;he British army in Hindustan, and was present at the battle of 

 Uoodkee, December 18, 1845, when he was wounded. Haviug 

 recovered from his wound, and resumed his duties as aide-de-camp, 

 .le was actively engaged at the battle of Sobraou, February 10, 1846. 

 Lieutenant Edwardes, having studied the native languages, was 

 declared qualified to act as interpreter, and iu April 1846 was 

 appointed third assistant to the Commissioners of the Traus-Sutlej 

 Territory, and in January 1847 first assistant to Sir Henry Lawrence, 

 the Resident at Lahore. 



Lieutenant Edwardes was employed to collect the revenue in the 

 north-west of the Punjab, and here he commenced that series ot 

 skilful and energetic operations which, though limited to the short 

 >eriod of one year, have obtained for him a place among the most 

 distinguished of the military officers of the present day. He has 

 limself given a narrative of the operations in which he was engaged 

 n a work which he published in 1851, 'A Year on the Punj ib Frontier 

 n 1848-49, by Major Herbert B. Edwardes, C.B.,' 2 vols. 8vo. The 

 ervices performed by Lieutenant Edwardes during the first three 

 months of that eventful year are unknown in this country except by 

 hose who have read his own account of them. What those services 

 were may be best stated in his own words, merely premising, that thn 

 alley of Bunnoo is in the north-west of the Punjab, and is estimated 

 o yield a revenue of about 15,0001. He observes, that his object iu 

 vriting the first part of his book "is to put on record a victory which 

 myself remember with more satisfaction than any I helped to gain 



3 B 



