The words are spare and factual: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.” Blunt, uncompromising, these are not the words of masterful Henry VIII but were written by Henry’s 14-year-old son and heir, Edward VI, in 1552.


Somerset was Edward’s uncle. The boy had known him all his life; for a time the duke was the boy king’s protector, governor and mentor. There was a connection of blood between them – yet there is not one speck of emotion in Edward’s words. He might have been recording the execution of a perfect stranger.

Edward’s reign was short. He was nine years old when he became king, on the death of his father in 1547; he died in 1553, a few months short of his 16th birthday, leaving England with a tangled and contested royal succession and a controversial Protestant church.

Though one of the most elusive kings in the history of England, Edward has been saddled with all kinds of reputations. Probably the most familiar (for which there is no evidence) is that he was weak and sickly, never likely to survive to manhood. Another is that he was a puppet, manipulated by powerful men. A third is that he was a precocious and brilliant intellectual. Less common today is the view that he was Protestant England’s hero in its fight against the pope and the Catholic church.

Here we have half-truths and fantasies. So who was the real Edward? Can we get close to understanding his life and world without falling for an over-simplified stereotype or a piece of religious propaganda? What evidence do we have? And what is the point of bothering? Overshadowed by his predecessor and successors – the magnificent bulk of Henry VIII, apparently brutal ‘Bloody Mary’ and extraordinary Elizabeth – England’s last boy king perhaps looks, on first inspection, pretty insubstantial.

But Edward was England’s great unfinished king. He was an experiment in Protestant monarchy, the model against which his sister Elizabeth was later judged – and found wanting. He died a work still in progress. What evidence we have points to a king whose ability, vision and ambition would, with time, have matched those of his father.


Born to rule

All but one of the Tudors were accidental monarchs. Henry VII, Edward’s grandfather, was a usurper, while three inherited the throne only because a sibling died. Edward was the single exception. He was born to rule: that his status was unimpeachable explains a lot about the young king and those who served him. Perhaps Henry VIII remembered how, as a boy, he’d been carefully protected after the death of his elder brother, Arthur, in 1502. He knew what it was like to have a heavy weight of expectation resting upon young shoulders.