Page 90 of 131

But the first act of the executors and counsellors was to depart from the destination of the late king in a material article. No sooner were they met, than it was suggested that the government would lose its dignity for want of some head who might represent the royal majesty, who might receive addresses from foreign ambassadors, to whom despatches from English ministers abroad might be carried, and whose name might be employed in all orders and proclamations: and as the king’s will seemed to labor under a defect in this particular, it was deemed necessary to supply it by choosing a protector; who, though he should possess all the exterior symbols of royal dignity, should yet be bound, in every act of power, to follow the opinion of the executors.[**]

* Strype’s Memor. vol. ii. p. 457.

** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 5.

This proposal was very disagreeable to Chancellor Wriothesely. That magistrate, a man of an active spirit and high ambition, found himself by his office entitled to the first rank in the regency after the primate; and as he knew that this prelate had no talent or inclination for state affairs, he hoped that the direction of public business would, of course, devolve in a great measure upon himself. He opposed, therefore, the proposal of choosing a protector; and represented that innovation as an infringement of the late king’s will, which, being corroborated by act of parliament, ought in every thing to be a law to them, and could not be altered but by the same authority which had established it. But he seems to have stood alone in the opposition. The executors and counsellors were mostly courtiers who had been raised by Henry’s favor, not men of high birth or great hereditary influence; and as they had been sufficiently accustomed to submission during the reign of the late monarch, and had no pretensions to govern the nation by their own authority, they acquiesced the more willingly in a proposal which seemed calculated for preserving public peace and tranquillity. It being therefore agreed to name a protector, the choice fell, of course, on the earl of Hertford, who, as he was the king’s maternal uncle, was strongly interested in his safety; and possessing no claims to inherit the crown, could never have any separate interest which might lead him to endanger Edward’s person or his authority.[*] The public was informed by proclamation of this change in the administration; and despatches were sent to all foreign courts to give them intimation of it. All those who were possessed of any office resigned their former commissions, and accepted new ones in the name of the young king. The bishops themselves were constrained to make a like submission. Care was taken to insert in their new commissions, that they held their office during pleasure:[**] and it is there expressly affirmed, that all manner of authority and jurisdiction, as well ecclesiastical as civil, is originally derived from the crown.[***]

The executors, in their next measure, showed a more submissive deference to Henry’s will, because many of them found their account in it. The late king had intended, before his death, to make a new creation of nobility, in order to supply the place of those peerages which had fallen by former attainders, or the failure of issue; and that he might enable the new peers to support their dignity, he had resolved either to bestow estates on them, or advance them to higher offices. He had even gone so far as to inform them of this resolution; and in his will he charged his executors to make good all his promises.[****] That they might ascertain his intentions in the most authentic manner Sir William Paget, Sir Anthony Denny, and Sir William Herbert, with whom Henry had always conversed in a familiar manner, were called before the board of regency; and having given evidence of what they knew concerning the king’s promises, their testimony was relied on, and the executors proceeded to the fulfilling of these engagements. Hertford was created duke of Somerset, mareschal, and lord treasurer; Wriothesely, earl of Southampton; the earl of Essex, marquis of Northampton; Viscount Lisle, earl of Warwick; Sir Thomas Seymour, Lord Seymour of Sudley, and admiral; Sir Richard Rich, Sir William Willoughby, Sir Edward Sheffield accepted the title of baron.[v]

* Heylin, Hist. Ref. Edward VI.

** Collier, vol. ii. p. 218. Burnet, vol. ii. p. 6. Strype’s
Mem. of Cranm. p. 141.

*** Strype’s Mem. of Cranm. p. 141.

**** Fuller, Heylin, and Rymer.

v Stowe’s Annals, p. 594

Several, to whom the same dignity was offered, refused it; because the other part of the king’s promise, the bestowing of estates on these new noblemen, was deferred till a more convenient opportunity. Some of them, however, as also Somerset, the protector, were, in the mean time, endowed with spiritual preferments, deaneries, and prebends. For, among many other invasions of ecclesiastical privileges and property, this irregular practice of bestowing spiritual benefices on laymen began now to prevail.

The earl of Southampton had always been engaged in an opposite party to Somerset; and it was not likely that factions which had secretly prevailed even during the arbitrary reign of Henry, should be suppressed in the weak administration that usually attends a minority. The former nobleman, that he might have the greater leisure for attending to public business, had, of himself and from his own authority, put the great seal in commission, and had empowered four lawyers Southwell, Tregonel, Oliver, and Bellasis, to execute in his absence the office of chancellor. This measure seemed very exceptionable; and the more so, as, two of the commissioners being canonists, the lawyers suspected that, by this nomination, the chancellor had intended to discredit the common law. Complaints were made to the council, who, influenced by the protector, gladly laid hold of the opportunity to depress Southampton. They consulted the judges with regard to so unusual a case; and received for answer, that the commission was illegal, and that the chancellor, by his presumption in granting it, had justly forfeited the great seal, and was even liable to punishment. The council summoned him to appear before them. He maintained that he held his office by the late king’s will, founded on an act of parliament, and could not lose it without a trial in parliament; that if the commission which he had granted were found illegal, it might be cancelled, and all the ill consequences of it be easily remedied; and that the depriving him of his office for an error of this nature, was a precedent by which any other innovation might be authorized. But the council, notwithstanding these topics of defence, declared that he had forfeited the great seal; that a fine should be imposed upon him; and that he should be confined to his own house during pleasure.[*]

* Holingshed, p. 979

The removal of Southampton increased the protectors’ authority, as well as tended to suppress faction in the regency yet was not Somerset contented with this advantage; his ambition carried him to seek still further acquisitions. On pretence that the vote of the executors choosing his protector, was not a sufficient foundation for his authority, he procured a patent from the young king, by which he entirely overturned the will of Henry VIII., produced a total revolution in the government, and may seem even to have subverted all the laws of the kingdom. He named himself protector with full regal power, and appointed a council, consisting of all the former counsellors, and all the executors, except Southampton; he reserved a power of naming any other counsellors at pleasure; and he was bound to consult with such only as he thought proper. The protector and his council were likewise empowered to act at discretion, and to execute whatever they deemed for the public service, without incurring any penalty or forfeiture from any law, statute, proclamation, or ordinance whatsoever.[*] Even had this patent been more moderate in its concessions, and had it been drawn by directions from the executors appointed by Henry, its legality might justly be questioned; since it seems essential to a trust of this nature to be exercised by the persons intrusted, and not to admit of a delegation to others: but as the patent, by its very tenor, where the executors are not so much as mentioned, appears to have been surreptitiously obtained from a minor king, the protectorship of Somerset was a plain usurpation, which it is impossible by any arguments to justify. The connivance, however, of the executors, and their present acquiescence in the new establishment, made it be universally submitted to; and as the young king discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was also, in the main, a man of moderation and probity, no objections were made to his power and title. All men of sense, likewise, who saw the nation divided by the religious zeal of the opposite sects, deemed it the more necessary to intrust the government to one person, who might check the exorbitancies of faction, and insure the public tranquillity. And though some clauses of the patent seemed to imply a formal subversion of all limited government, so little jealousy was then usually entertained on that head, that no exception was ever taken at bare claims or pretensions of this nature, advanced by any person possessed of sovereign power. The actual exercise alone of arbitrary administration, and that in many, and great, and flagrant, and unpopular instances, was able sometimes to give some umbrage to the nation.