2D - The Protestant Party and the King: the aims, beliefs and role of Somerset and the overturning of Henry’s will
Edward VI's accession gave Protestant reformers opportunities that Henry VIII had denied them. Explain how Somerset acquired power, how Northumberland later governed, and why the young King's beliefs mattered alongside the interests and authority of his adult advisers.
From Henry's will to the Protectorate
Henry's will envisaged sixteen executors acting collectively as a council during Edward's minority. It did not appoint Edward Seymour to govern independently as Protector. Seymour's relationship as the King's maternal uncle, his military reputation and alliances with influential councillors nevertheless made him a powerful candidate for leadership after Henry's death.
The executors accepted his elevation early in 1547. Created Duke of Somerset, he became Lord Protector. Letters patent in March gave him wide powers, moving government further from Henry's arrangement of collective decision-making. This was an overturning of the intended balance of power, but it was not simply an outsider seizing the Crown: Somerset acted through support from men named in the will and continued to govern in Edward's name.
Protectorate
Government during a monarch's minority under a person appointed to protect the ruler and exercise substantial governing authority. Somerset held the formal office of Lord Protector from 1547 to 1549.
Political and religious consequences were connected but distinct. Henry's will also provided for traditional prayers and masses. Somerset's political ascendancy enabled reformers to move beyond Henry's religious limits, but the will itself did not supply a mandate for the 1552 Protestant liturgy. Changes required new injunctions, statutes and Church teaching.
The term Protestant party describes an alliance of people who supported reform, not a modern party with one programme. Cranmer supplied theological and ecclesiastical leadership; Somerset supplied political authority; other councillors brought patronage, administrative experience or opportunities for advancement. Shared opposition to conservative restrictions did not make their motives identical.
Somerset's beliefs and reform
Somerset supported Protestant reform, while initially allowing a pace that could bring the Church with the government. The 1547 royal visitation and injunctions encouraged preaching, access to scripture and attacks on practices treated as superstitious. The Book of Homilies, issued that year, supplied authorised sermons where clergy lacked the learning or willingness to preach the desired teaching. Government could therefore promote doctrine through practical provision, not only through prohibitions.
Parliament repealed the Six Articles in 1547, removing a major conservative constraint, and the new Chantries Act enabled suppression of institutions associated with intercession for the dead. The 1549 Prayer Book replaced varied Latin services with an authorised English liturgy. Its wording retained some traditional features, but the uniform service and changes to communion were substantial. Somerset's relative caution did not amount to preserving Henry's settlement unchanged.
Somerset also pursued aims that were dynastic and political. Victory at Pinkie in September 1547 served the effort to secure the marriage of Edward and Mary, Queen of Scots. Continued occupation and garrisons proved costly and did not secure that marriage; Mary went to France in 1548. French hostility compounded England's financial and strategic difficulties. A Protestant government could therefore lose resources and support through policies that were not primarily doctrinal.
His response to enclosure grievances suggested concern about social disorder and the conduct of landowners. Commissions investigating enclosure helped create expectations that the Protector would redress complaints. When rebellions broke out in 1549, some rebels appealed to the King's justice while ministers and landowners blamed Somerset for weakening authority. Western resistance to religious changes and Kett's rebellion in East Anglia placed different pressures on the same regime.
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