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The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation

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Diarmaid MacCulloch should have a well merited following by now. His extremely readable books finally made Church History a fascinating subject. His mastery of theology, ecclesiology, iconography, architecture, ceremony, and other dimensions of Tudor England are unrivalled, and he weaves them into a comprehensive whole. The depth and quality of his research are exemplary, and his prose is very good literature.

In this book he shows how most events which make the pace of Edward VI's reign seem frantic, were prepared but had to be postponed during Henry VIII's last years. Even during his first year, Edward's establishment under the Duke of Somerset's protectorate was reluctantly forced to appease the Emperor Charles V, the majority of lay politicians, and conservative bishops as powerful as Stephen Gardiner of Winchester. After Somerset's disgrace, John Dudley, first Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland maintained a more consensual relationship with the Lords. He made peace with France and Scotland, and inaugurated a phase of political reconstruction at home, thus permitting the evangelical revolution to recover its pace.

Dr. MacCulloch lets us see that in England as in the Continent, the cost of being too specific on the Lord's Supper was soon perceived, since the matter was admittedly of more importance to traditionalists and evangelicals alike than justification by faith, and also produced more martyrs. This determines a very gradual, even stealthy accumulation of arguments and liturgical reforms up to 1550, although at least Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer had much earlier become convinced that the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist was as blasphemous as the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation. Nevertheless, MacCulloch argues convincingly that Cranmer's convictions on the Lord's Supper are more in agreement with Heinrich Bullinger's than with either Zwingli's or Calvin's theology. Whether, as John Knox believed, had he reigned longer Edward would have evolved into a doctrinaire Calvinist, is now a moot point.

One of this book's main attractions is that it conveys a sense of indebtedness to a very young and serious boy, a great promise that flickered and died. Edward is portrayed as a real believer, not just an immature tool of vested interests. Since he appears to have been gifted with a more thoughtful and less egotistical character than his father, it's very possible that he would have grown up to be a great leader of the Reformation, and Cranmer could have finally convened the General Council of Reformed Churches of which he dreamt.

Regardless of how much anglo-catholicism and theological liberalism alike have done to demolish the Edwardian heritage, it's possible that in a critical juncture such as the one Anglicans worldwide find themselves in today, MacCulloch's closing lines might awaken their concern:

"Perhaps the Anglican Communion, most enigmatic member of the Christian family of Churches, might show more gratitude for Edwardian mischief -or at the very least, some remembrance and understanding".

The book carries ninety-two well-chosen illustrations, with very helpful captions. The bibliography includes primary sources in manuscript and in print, secondary sources, and unpublished dissertations. Though softbound, the book is very sturdy, and should survive casual handling. It's quality work from the University of California Press.

In the years since publication of his award-winning biography of Thomas Cranmer, one cannot stop marveling at the scholarship of Prof MacCulloch, at his indubitable talent of an author, and at how deftly and effortlessly he adapts it to the restrictions of an academic narrative. `The Boy-King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation', published in 2001 in hardback and in 2002 in paperback, has been a definitive treat for many Tudor students, providing them with an engaging story of the English Reformation in the years between 1547 and 1553, as well as containing references to a mesmerising range of archives, from the good old British Library to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Thanks to Prof MacCulloch's being one of the leading British church historians, this book has rather successfully done what other monographs did not quite manage to achieve. Its main achievement is in the fact that one can no longer think of Edward VI as a juvenile parrot in terms of his political involvement. Although this does not immediately imply that his raison d'etat was promising to be terrific, his participation in the matters of state must not be underestimated, let alone overlooked. MacCulloch illustrates this, for example, with his brilliant analysis of Edward's proposal for the reform of the Order of the Garter in the light of its deriving from Edward's tutorship and contemporary political discourse.

The reason why this change in the view of Edward seems so important is because scholars until this day continue to debate the political potential and intellectual faculties of a young king, being mostly critical about both. The most blatant example is Stephen Alford's biography of Edward VI and the review of it by George Bernard. Those, however, who read MacCulloch's book attentively will - hopefully - realise by the end of the last chapter that it is futile to either extol Edward or to dismiss him. Indeed, the boy did not reach his 16th birthday, and no matter what promises had been there, these were buried with him in June 1553. He nevertheless contributed to the affairs of state, by writing proposals, notes, discourses, etc. Certainly, one must still see the forest for the trees, but these documents, written by the young king himself, cannot ever be ignored. One must remember that in all times children were engaged in political discourse, however superficial, especially if they had been destined to the throne. Consequently, these documents, even if they had little or no impact, must be read with all due seriousness to catch the glimpses of an emerging character. For this reason, there cannot be too much praise for MacCulloch, who with a simple phrase `the boy-king' captured the whole ambiguity of Edward's reign and his contribution to the mid-Tudor politics.

The book's attention to the representation of power in Edward's reign only further stresses this ambiguity. The careful analysis of many `personas' attributed to Edward VI at different stages of his life in politics shows that today's historians are preoccupied with the same paradox, as perplexed Edward's contemporaries. As A. Pollard said, for the first time a ten-year-old became the head of the Church, and MacCulloch studies two main religious `images' attached to Edward - Josiah and Solomon. He carefully investigates the rationale for choosing these exact kings and the incongruities of the lives of these biblical characters, to see how those were adapted to the mid-Tudor realities.

This is all the more significant, as prior to MacCulloch's book there was no in-depth study of this peculiarity of the English Reformation in Edward VI's reign, which stemmed from the fact that the Church reform was now heralded by a child. Some scholars, most successfully, perhaps, the late Jennifer Loach, paid much attention to Edward's secular activities and representation of him as the head of the State, which, although giving out new information, hardly made historians any more serious about the boy-king. Normally, before and even after her post-mortem book, scholars have preferred to focus on political moves of Somerset, Northumberland, Cranmer, et al., overlooking, for example, the necessity those had to represent the king's age and his legitimacy in both domestic and external affairs. MacCulloch's study of representation of Edward as the head of the Church puts the reader in the position of making a choice: to look at the years 1547-1553 as a series of farcical attempts of mid-Tudor officials to pretend that England was high and mighty; or to admit that political farce has always been there, and hence Edward VI's reign is not an exclusion and must then be treated appropriately. Books by both Loach and MacCulloch are the examples of this kind of treatment: they both showed the full awareness of the fact that their study of either mid-Tudor monarchy or Church would not break free from any conventions, unless they constantly kept the boy-king in the focus.

In addition to a variety of sources used, MacCulloch's book is rich in illustrations, supporting his arguments that derive from the reading of the written documents, and thus providing his reader with much food for thought. In that, his book dwells both on Loach's monograph, as well as on a brilliant, although not always definitive study by Margaret Aston, `The King's Bedpost'. The trend was continued by Stephen Alford in his biography of Edward VI, and will certainly carry on.

Together with the books by Loach, Aston and, most recently, Alford, `The Boy-King' by Diarmaid MacCulloch underlines the importance of the ever-wide scholarship and the use of different sources, if one wants, in Ranke's words, to penetrate history. And this is exactly what MacCulloch's book allows to do to its reader. To a professional historian, like myself, it gave insight into new sources and the way to employ them, as well as highlighted the questions that require an answer. To those who are simply interested in Tudors, the book tells the story of one of the most ambiguous yet fascinating periods in English history, after reading which one may be compelled to understand why it is better if the monarch is mature, even if he is not very popular.

As an Episcopal priest, I'm constantly explaining to people that it wasn't really Henry VIII that started the Church of England so that he could get a divorce. He broke from the authority of Rome, yes, but he remained more or less a committed Catholic in spirituality and theology until his dying day.

People who know a bit more about Anglicanism's history consider that it is Elizabeth I who really got Anglicanism going, but McCulloch turns our attention gently towards Elizabeth's younger half-brother, Edward VI. It was during his reign that the first Books of Common Prayer were published, which firmly launched the church of the realm into Protestant directions. But Edward was just a boy, wasn't he? Wasn't he basically a puppet of his Protestant-minded minders? Well, yes and no. And the exploration of this point is, for me, the finest part of McCulloch's scholarship (which is top-notch, as usual).

This book is recommended for those who are very interested in the Reformation in England, but perhaps should only be read after books that treat of the entire era, such as English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors or The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580.

Much scholarly attention concerning the English Reformation has been directed at Henry VIII's dramatic "break" with Rome in 1534 or at the more enduring religious "settlement" of Elizabeth I in 1559. Largely lost to the historian's gaze is the brief reign of Edward VI (1547-1553), which is often treated as "a rather confused entre'acte for the two set-piece spectaculars of Henrician and Elizabethan England." In The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, noted Tudor historian Diarmaid MacCulloch rectifies this scholarly neglect of the reign of the long-desired son of Henry VIII. In fact, MacCulloch argues, the Edwardian Reformation laid the foundations for much of what later came to be regarded as "normative" both in the Elizabethan Settlement and in modern Anglicanism. These include the Book of Common Prayer, the principal liturgical and doctrinal guide of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion; the Anglican ecclesiastical polity based on the three-fold ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon; and the 42 Articles of Religion (later modified to 39 under Queen Elizabeth I), the only official doctrinal statement the English church has issued in its approximately 500 years of existence. Accordingly, as MacCulloch rightly points out, "the Church of England is the Church of Edward VI more than it likes to admit."

The "reluctance" on the part of some Anglicans to accept the legacy of the Edwardian Reformation is due to the often "destructive" nature of the boy king's reform measures. In MacCulloch's estimation, the latter constitute "a revolutionary act, a dramatic assault on the past." Indeed, the evangelical leaders of the Edwardian regime "set out to destroy one Church and build another." The only way to recover Christ's "good news," these zealous Protestant reformers believed, was to forcefully strip away the centuries-old layer of Catholic medieval "accretions," which "concealed" the Gospel from the faithful. Thus, the evangelical establishment launched a wholesale and far-reaching attack on traditional practices they regarded as "superstitious" or "idolatrous." They smashed the stained glass windows of English churches and cathedrals; tore down the wooden crucifixes (or "roods") which adorned their sanctuaries (later to be used as fire wood); banned and destroyed all Latin service books; melted down silver and gold altar utensils (later to be used as currency); and sold the elegant Eucharistic vestments worn by the priests for scrap!

However, there were more "positive" aspects to the Edwardian Reformation, according to MacCulloch. The Edwardian Church, for example, displayed a "fervent Protestant internationalism," unlike the more insular and nationalistic Church of England of later centuries. Indeed, he notes, "there was little sense of any distinctive English ecclesiastic identity" at this time. The evangelical establishment longed, in fact, "for England to stand at the center of a renewed universal Church at a time of particular military and political crisis for the reformed movement." Nevertheless, this budding internationalism floundered in the face of internal Protestant bickering as well as the harassment of continental reformers by the resurgent forces of the Catholic Counter-reformation. The crowning achievement of the Edwardian Reformation for MacCulloch, however, was the publication of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, which was later revised in 1552. This masterful liturgical creation by the martyred Archbishop Thomas Cranmer continues to be used (in various forms) by the 90 million members of the world-wide Anglican Communion.

MacCulloch concludes The Boy King with a fascinating chapter concerning the reception of the Edwardian Reformation over the ages by the English church. For example, the Protestant regime of Queen Elizabeth I, somewhat embarrassed by the histrionic and destructive tendencies of her half-brother's reign, "rewrote" much of the narrative of this period to "make sense of its unlikely sequels." The "high" Anglicans of the seventeenth century even characterized Edward's evangelical experiment as the Protestant "Deformation." Anglican evangelicals, on the other hand, have responded with high praise and accolades for the boy king and his religious "adventure." In 1843 they erected an imposing stone Martyrs Memorial in Oxford on the site where the principal Edwardian reformers -- bishops Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer -- were burned at the stake by Edward's successor, the infamous Catholic Queen "Bloody" Mary in 1556.

MacCulloch himself sums up the legacy of the boy king's six-year religious experiment in more nuanced yet balance terms. Certainly there was much to "deplore" about the Edwardian "adventure," particularly its destruction of the centuries-old heritage of England's traditional Catholic religion. Nevertheless, he points out, historians should "listen out for the genuine idealism, the righteous anger and the excitement which were essential components of the [religious] play of King Edward." Indeed, nearly every observer of the day, both traditional Catholic and reforming Evangelical, understood that the "old" religion was in dire need of some type of reform! Through the lasting contributions of the boy king's religious experiment -- the Book of Common Prayer, the three-fold hierarchical ministry, and the 42 Articles of Religion, "the ghost of the Edwardian Reformation has continued to haunt Anglicanism." Accordingly, in MacCulloch's view, the least modern Anglicans can do is "show more gratitude" for the boy king's religious reforms, "or at the very least, some remembrance and understanding."

(This refers to the Softcover Edition, which I bought at a bookstore but notice is not currently offered on Amazon. Much more affordable---)

There is no doubt that author Maccullogh is a first class scholar when it comes to religion in the Tudor Age; however, I faced the same woeful problem with this book that I encountered on his masterful and massive work on my own ancestor, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer--and that is that the attention to infintesimal detail is constructed in such density that it makes for unfortunately slow reading. It's almost like reading a text book...and spending an entire semester on a course in Edwardian Reformation. A historian he is. A storyteller, no.

However, those who would dismiss Edward as merely a "boy king" with a short reign would be well advised to take some time with this work and discover how much of a serious and lasting impact he did manage to have on politics and religion.

This book is a good story for researchers as well as the general audience.