Edward VI. A.D. 1547, Crowned February 20. Peculiari and reasons paper, it affected powerfully and fatally the policy of the new dynasty. Edward VI. was proclaimed on the Monday proclaimed, following his father's death, and was crowned on January 31. the 20th of February next. At his coronation he was acknowledged as king before he took his oaths as king, and the customary oath was much modified, ties of his Instead of swearing to maintain the Church, as in coronation. the days of his namesake the Confessor, he only swore "To the Church and the people to keep Excuses peace and concord." There was an excuse for the for them. inversion of the order of the king's oath and bis recognition in the fact that the Succession Act might be held to be equivalent to the popular recognition. But the real reason for the innovation appears, from Cranmer's discourse at the coronation, to have been the apprehension that the profession of the Protestant religion, in which the young king was to be trained, might be treated as a violation. of his coronation oath and as an excuse for his deposition. In the first year of Edward VI.'s reign, the succession established by Parliament and Henry Treason Act was recognised by an Act, which, while it swept away, amongst many other treasons, those constituted by Henry's Succession Acts, guarded by the penalties of high treason the parliamentary limitation of the crown. "And be it enacted by of 1 Edward VI. "the authority aforesaid, that if any of the heirs 66 66 "of the king, our said sovereign lord that now 66 66 Regard being had to previous clauses, making Its aim. it high treason to assert the Pope's deposing power, it is probable that this clause was levelled against Mary; it was, however, destined to smite Its result. another victim. The events of Edward VI.'s reign which relate to the succession are few in number, but the last Other events touching the succes sion in Edward VI.'s reign. Death of Eleanor, A.D. 1547, Scots re moved to France, A.D. act of all was of capital importance. In the November of 1547 Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Clifford, died, leaving only one child, the Lady Margaret Clifford. In July 1548 Edward's hopes of making the Queen of Scots his wife were disappointed by her removal to France. On WhitCountess of Sunday, the 25th of May 1553, the Lady Jane Clifford, Grey was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, November, fourth son of the ambitious and unprincipled Mary John Dudley, then Duke of Northumberland. Queen of The marriage was celebrated with a splendour which gave offence to the nation, which was 1548, July. watching the last illness of its young king. In Marriage of Lady Jane his last days Edward, alarmed at the prospect Grey, A.D. which opened out for the reformed Church if 1553, May Mary should succeed him on the throne, was unhappily prevailed upon to tamper with the last attempt to of Henry VIII.'s Acts of Succession, and to enchange the parlia- deavour to supersede it by his own letters patent, mentary appointing Lady Jane Grey in the place of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. No doubt the young king, who was a true Tudor, was fully convinced that he possessed the prerogative to do this, and he had probably also persuaded himself that the reasons for the alteration, which are assigned in the letters patent, were sound. These were alternative, first, that his sisters Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate, and consequently incapable of succeeding to the crown, notwithstanding the 25. Edward VI.'s destination of the Crown. Pretences for the change. recent Act of Succession, and secondly, that if they had not been illegitimate, yet, being the king's half-sisters, they could not be his heirs. Of course, in fact, their position in the line of succession depended neither on legitimacy nor on heirship to either their father or brother, but was given to them expressly by an Act of Parliament, and could only be taken away by another Act. Such an Act, if Edward's life had been spared, would probably have been attempted to be passed. The reasons assigned by Edward compelled him in consistency to pass over his sister Elizabeth as well as Mary, though it was from the latter only that he apprehended danger to the Protestant religion. It does not appear by what arguments Edward justified to himself the exclusion of his aunt Margaret's descendants, which could be warranted only by the Succession Acts and Henry VIII.'s will, or else by the alien birth of the Queen of Scots, and the doubts as to the legitimacy of the Countess of Lennox. It is Edward's evident from the letters patent, and still more leaning from an earlier draft of a plan for the succession, succession. written and subsequently altered in the king's hand, the original form of which excluded the king's own daughters, that he shared John Knox's objection to "the monstrous regiment of Edward women." In the letters patent the first limita- VI.'s tion was to the eldest son of Lady Frances Brandon, patent. to male letters Limitation the Duchess of Suffolk, "and so from son to son to Lady Frances's "as he should be of ancienty of birth of the body descen dants. The limit ation to The limit "of the said Lady Frances." It had of course been pointed out to the dying king that, as Lady Frances had then no son, there was great risk that such a disposition standing alone might leave the throne vacant upon Edward's death, and that in such case Mary would certainly seize it; and to provide against this the letters restrict the limitation to sons of Lady Frances born in the king's lifetime, and in default of any such son, and of heirs male of the body of any such son, pass on to the fatal limitation to the Lady Jane Grey. In Lady Jane default of issue male of Lady Jane, there follow Grey. limitations to Lady Catharine Grey and her ation to her issue male, to Lady Mary Grey and her issue male, to the eldest son of the fourth daughter (not yet born) of Lady Frances and his issue male, and so on to other sons of such daughter, and of every other daughter of Lady Frances and their issue male, to the eldest and every other son to Lady of Lady Margaret Clifford and their issue male, Margaret to the eldest and every other son of the eldest daughter of Lady Lane Grey and their issue ants. male. Similar limitations to the sons of the other limitations, daughters of Lady Frances, and to the sons of Singulari- the daughters of Lady Margaret close the list. defects of It is singular that in these elaborate limitations limitations, no place is given to sons of Lady Frances to sisters. Limitations Clifford's descend Further ties and those |