My review of Edward VI: The Lost King of England, by Chris Skidmore

Edward VI: The Lost King of England

by Chris Skidmore

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Chris Skidmore makes courageous choices addressing topics challenging due to limited popular appeal (his later book, Death and The Virgin, I thoroughly enjoyed). Edward VI's reign we see more through the prism of important religious development than being drawn to the boy king's persona. That's understandable, this being a short reign.

The obvious question is why this short reign is so eclipsed by 'Bloody' Mary I's even shorter one immediately following it? Answer: Mary was the first queen regnant, a mature and tormented woman with a dramatic personal history, a Catholic zealot who burnt heretics - for better or worse, a more colourful character to grasp.

Edward might have become a fascinating figure, but his meagre measure of life allowed little opportunity for noteworthy character building. Formidably well educated, he was also the first English monarch raised a Protestant. Intensely conscious of his status as God's anointed, he was pompous for his years, even castigating his much older intransigent half-sister Mary for flaunting her staunch Catholicism. 

He conversely favoured his other half-sister Elizabeth, Mary's junior, who soundly rejected Catholicism.

He was similarly fond of his widowed stepmother Queen Catherine Parr, herself a keener reformist than her husband Henry VIII had been and who, in her early widowhood, married Edward's uncle Thomas Seymour, scheming brother of Lord Protector Somerset. This would have perplexed the boy, leaving him split around personal and official approval, family loyalty and royal favour.

Family rumour and scandal were persistently laid at Edward's feet, often intended to agitate the boy and tug at him to side with these incestuous court factions.

Touches of his tyrannical father glinted hopelessly through Edward's pasty adolescent veneer. He then became famously frail and sickly, confined and bedbound, more than ever under the spell of his scheming counsellors.

He expressed frustration by his powerlessness as a minor whose governing was done by a Regency Council while he, whose personal seal was required, felt personally responsible for so much. This primarily involved overseeing contentious religiopolitical completions his devout father had shied away from: despite his severance from Rome and Dissolution of Monasteries, Henry VIII had balked at extending his Church of England into one signifying a fully-fledged Protestant state. Responsibility fell into Edwards hands to add imperative final touches like abolition of the Mass and clerical celibacy, imposing compulsory services in English, etc.

These factors explain why Edward's reign is characterised and remembered through his advisors who steered such legislation, especially his Seymour uncle Edward, Duke of Somerset and then John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Orbiting him like vultures was a fractious cast of royals and nobles far more memorable than Edward himself because of their longer and more complex and sensational lives.

In his frailty, conscious of his own mortality, he became increasingly malleable and vulnerable to diplomatic pressure. From his deathbed he was easily persuaded to sign over his kingdom to his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey, daughter-in-law of Edward's de facto regent, the dynastically ambitious Protestant John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland whose persuasion centred on Edward keeping his 'bastard' half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth from ruling, the eldest especially, being herself Catholic. Regardless how easily persuaded, Edward would again have felt torn by family loyalty, religion and kingly duty in this final act, preparing to meet his maker. 

It's a pity to then have him eclipsed in history by the 'nine days queen' episode of Jane Grey who usurped Mary only to be overthrown herself. Edward becomes almost forgotten due to Mary's 'bloody' reign and religious reversion to Roman Catholicism, her marriage to Philip of Spain, her persecution of her half-sister Elizabeth who was sent to the Tower and almost never lived let alone ruled. Mary's humiliating phantom pregnancy adds to her infamy, as does her begrudging bequeath of the crown to Protestant half-sister Elizabeth in the absence of offspring. The latter's subsequent eponymous golden age again hold's poor Edward's place back in the Tudor shadows, forever outshone by his mighty father and legendary siblings.

Not everyone's favourite reign to read on, this is important history to understand, contextually. Chris Skidmore has my greatest respect for taking on projects his more popular contemporaries veer away from to stay safely within the established bounds of popular reading.

This, like Skidmore's other above-mentioned book, is well researched, written and documented. I'd like to see more of his clever biographical ideas materialise.