Edward VI: England's Boy King: Reformation, Rebellion and the Struggle for Tudor Power

Edward VI inherited the English throne at just nine years old. Before his death at fifteen, his brief reign would transform England's religion, witness rebellion and war, destroy two of the most powerful men around him, and end in one of the most extraordinary succession crises in English history.The long-awaited legitimate son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward grew up surrounded by tutors, courtiers and ambitious relatives who understood that access to the boy prince meant access to the future of the Tudor monarchy. When Henry died in 1547, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, became Lord Protector and attempted to govern in his nephew's name.War with Scotland, radical religious reform, economic upheaval and the great rebellions of 1549 tested the new regime. Somerset fell. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, rose in his place. Meanwhile Edward was no passive figurehead. As he grew older, his education, Protestant convictions and appetite for government increasingly shaped the direction of the Crown.Then, in 1553, the king became dangerously ill.Determined to prevent his Catholic half-sister Mary from succeeding him, Edward devised a new settlement that placed Lady Jane Grey in the line of succession. His death turned constitutional theory into political crisis and produced Jane's famous nine-day reign before Mary's supporters swept the settlement aside.Edward VI: England's Boy King examines the child behind the crown, the adults who governed around him, the transformation of the English Reformation and the unfinished emergence of a king who died before anyone could discover what kind of monarch he would ultimately become.