AN enormous weight was taken off the whole country when the late lump of obesity was removed from the throne; but shameful to relate, the first use the nation made of the power of breathing freely was to give a few puffs to the departed tyrant. The chancellor Wriothesley announced the king's death to the House of Lords in tears, and there is said to have been much weeping; but there are tears of joy as well as of sorrow, and the former must have been the quality of the brine in which the memory of Henry was preserved for a few days by his people. The lamentations, whether sincere or hypocritical, were very soon exchanged for joy at the accession of Edward the Sixth, who was only in his tenth year when he woke one morning and found the crown of England over his ordinary nightcap. To rub his eyes and ask "What's this?" were the work of an instant, when, taking off the bauble, drawing aside his curtains, and holding the article up to the light, he at once recognised the royal diadem.

Young Edward was what we should call a little forward chit had he been a common lad, but being a king we must at once accept him as an infant prodigy. He had learnt several tongues from Mr. Cheke, and had been a pupil of Sir Anthony Cook; but many of such cooks would have spoiled the best "broth of a boy," for Sir Anthony was a pedant, "with five learned daughters"—being equivalent to a couple of pair of blue stockings, and an odd one over.

Henry, in his reluctance to leave to his son what he could no longer hold himself, had fettered the monarchy as much as he could by his will, which was, however, soon treated with the contempt it merited. He had appointed sixteen executors and twelve councillors, but all to no purpose; for all power was placed in the hands of the young king's uncle, Hertford, who was created Duke of Somerset. The vaulting ambition of this man, who turned Somersets over every obstacle that fell in his way, rendered his new title very appropriate. He was invested with the office of Protector, and he very soon set to work, but, still true to the name of Somerset, he went head over heels into a war with Scotland. The object of this proceeding was to demand the hand of Mary, Queen of Scots, for the child Edward; but the idea of a person coming to make love with a fleet of sixty sail and an army of eighteen thousand men, was a little trop fort to suit the taste of the Caledonians. They placed a ban upon the marriage, which was equivalent to forbidding the banns, and suggested, that if the young gentleman wanted to come courting, he had better come by himself to pay his addresses. After a little negotiation, which ended in nothing, a battle ensued, which is famous as the battle of Pinkey, where the combatants pinked each other off most cruelly with the points of their swords; and it is added by the inveterate Strype—who deserves two thousand stripes, at least, for this offence—that "on this field, which was within half a mile of Musselburgh, the soldiers on both sides strained every muscle." The English archers sent their arrows from their bows with destructive effect; and looking, as they did, like so many Cupids in a valentine, it must be confessed that that mode of warfare was, at least, appropriate to a war undertaken in the cause of Hymen.

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The Scotch were sadly defeated, but they still refused to give up their little queen to the young fellow who sought her hand through his subjects' arms, and she was accordingly sent to finish her education in France; where, though only six years of age, she was betrothed to the Dauphin.

Somerset, instead of following up his successes, made the best of his way home; for he heard that his own brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, who had been created also Baron Seymour of Sedley, was making himself a great deal too agreeable to the royal ladies in England. Old Kitty Parr, Henry's widow, was so much taken with Tom Seymour's attentions, that she fell at once in his arms, and became his wife; but poor Parr soon fell to a discount in the eyes of her husband, who had become enamoured of the young Princess Elizabeth. The unhappy old Parr swallowed many a bitter pill at this time, until death put an end to her annoyances. Admiral Seymour was now free to pay his addresses to Elizabeth, but it would seem that he was not more free than welcome, for even during the life of her mother-in-law, that young lady had afforded him every encouragement.

In order to stop his flirtations, which were now becoming serious, he was clapped in the Tower, but his enemies were considerate enough to send a bishop to him to preach patience, and as Ely was selected, who prosed exceedingly, the preaching was accompanied by a practical lesson in patience, with which it is to be hoped that Seymour was sufficiently edified. He was accused of treason, and at a council the boy Edward, who had no doubt been crammed for the occasion, delivered an elaborate judgment, which his parasites puffed as extemporaneous. He regretted being obliged to sacrifice his uncle Seymour to the common weal—a weal that has brought woe to many, and to which the wheel of fortune bears, except in its orthography, a wondrous similarity. Seymour was executed on Wednesday, the 20th of March, 1549, and the last use he made of his head before it was struck off was to shake it, and observe that "'pon his honour, if he had been guilty of any treason against the king it was quite unintentional."

The country was about this time agitated by one of those fits of general discontent which prevail every now and then among the lower orders of society. As usual there was a good deal of reason mixed with a large amount of unreasonableness in their complaints, and the customary feeling of "not knowing exactly what they really wanted," became alarmingly general. Some cried for this, another for that, and another for t'other, while an almost universal shout for the privilege of ruling themselves was accompanied by a clear manifestation of an utter want of self-control on the part of the people. Their self-styled friends were of course busy in goading them on to acts of violence, and the Protector himself, instead of repressing tumult first, and pardoning it afterwards, pursued the opposite course, which only had the effect of clearing off old scores, that new might be ran up with fresh alacrity.

One of the most prominent ringleaders in the revolt was a tanner of Norfolk, named Robert Ket, of whom it was vulgarly said that such a bob was as good as two tanners; "and hence, perhaps," says my Lord Herbert, or someone else, "two tanners, or sixpences, came to be called in the vernacular equivalent to one bob, or a shilling." Ket had been cruelly provoked in having the mob set upon one of his inclosures by a gentleman who had suffered from the destruction of one of his own hedges; but the tanner retaliated by administering such a leathering to his assailants as they would have remembered to this hour had any one of them been left alive to indulge in such reminiscences. It was found necessary to send over to Scotland for Warwick to go and settle Ket, which was very speedily done, for, finding himself unable to keep upon his legs, he laid down his arms, after having run for his life, and crept into a barn among some corn to avoid an immediate thrashing. He was taken to Norwich and lodged in the castle, whence he wrote to a friend, saying, "I shall be hanging out for the present at the above address;" and his words were soon verified, for he was hanged out on the top of the building a few days afterwards.

Poor Somerset was now about to take the most formidable somerset in the whole of his career—namely, a fall from the extreme of power to the depths of disgrace, chiefly by the rivalry of Warwick. The Protector found it high time to think about protecting himself, and tried to muster his friends, to many of whom he wrote; but verbal answers of "Not at home," "Mr. So-and-So will send," and similar evasive replies convinced poor Somerset that there was very little hope for him. In the meantime, Warwick and party were meeting daily at Ely Place, Holbom, where they were settling, in that very legal neighbourhood, the draft of a set of charges against the Protector, who was accused among other things of having pulled down a church in the Strand to build Somerset House, and having spent in bricks and mortar the money intrusted him to keep up the wooden walls of old England, by paying the sailors and soldiers their respective salaries. A bill of pains and penalties was issued from Ely Place, which is to this day famous for its art in making out bills, and twenty-eight charges were brought against Somerset, who thought it better to confess every one of them, on a promise that he should be leniently dealt with. This leniency consisted in taking away almost everything he possessed, which caused him to remonstrate on the heaviness of the fine; but, on being told snappishly he might consider himself lucky in having got off with his life, he shrunk back in an attitude of the utmost humility. He was set at liberty and pardoned, but we shall have him at mischief and in trouble again before the end of this chapter.

Though a mere child was on the throne, the atrocities committed at Smithfield, in the burning of what were called heretics, went on as briskly as ever, the fires being stirred by Cranmer and Ridley in the most savage manner. Mary, the king's eldest sister, gave considerable trouble by insisting on the celebration of mass in her own household; and, though told by the council she mustn't, the truly feminine reply that "she should see if she shouldn't," and that "she would, though; they'd see if she wouldn't," was all that she condescended to say in answer to the requisition.

Somerset, since his liberation, had been still hanging about the Court, and had apparently become reconciled to Warwick, whose eldest son, Lord Lisle, had been married to Lady Ann, one of the daughters of the ex-Protector. Nevertheless, on Friday, the 16th of October, 1551, Somerset found himself once more in the "lock-up," on a charge of treason. He was accused of an intention to run about London crying out "Liberty! Liberty!" and, if that had not succeeded, he was to have gone to the Isle of Wight to try on the same game in that direction. If that had not succeeded there is no knowing what he would have done; but at all events, orders were sent to the Tower to set a watch upon the Great Seal, because Somerset wanted to run away with it. If he had made off with the seal, he might, perhaps, have taken the watch also; but this did not occur to the council. His trial took place at Westminster, on the 1st of December, 1551, at the sittings after Michaelmas term, when he denied everything, and was found guilty of just enough to get a judgment—with speedy execution—against him. His politeness was quite marvellous, for he thanked the Lords who had tried him, ana he threw as much grace as he could into the bow he was compelled to make on submitting his head to the axe of the executioner. "This," says Fox, on the authority of a nobleman who was present, "came off on Friday, the 22nd of January, 1552," and it is a curious fact, that of every execution that occurred in his reign the boy king had preserved the heads in his private journal.

Warwick, who had got himself promoted to the dukedom of Northumberland, seemed desirous of making government a business for the benefit of himself and family. He took the motto of "anything for peace and quiet," though he had blamed his predecessor, Somerset, for having done the same thing, and he bought off the hostility of France and Scotland by selling Boulogne regularly up, placing a carpet on the lighthouse, dividing the upper and lower town into lots, declaring that he wanted money down on the nail, and to hit the right one on the head he must resort to the hammer. He made excellent marriages for his children, and allied his son, Guildford Dudley, with the royal family of France by wedding him to Lady Jane Grey, a daughter of a son of the old original Mary Tudor of France, to whose descendants the English crown would fall in the event of a failure of a more direct succession.

The young King Edward, who had not yet passed through the ordinary routine of infantile complaints, now took the measles—or, rather, the measles took him—and he had scarcely recovered from this complaint when the small-pox placed him under indentures which seemed much too strong to be cancelled within any reasonable period. He was serving his time to this malady, when another latent illness that had hitherto been playing at hide-and-seek, set up a cry of "whoop," and his youthful majesty was in for the whooping-cough. Northumberland, taking advantage of the king's weak state, advised him not to leave the crown to his big and bigoted sister Mary. "True," said Edward, "but how about poor little Bet?"

"Why, she," replied the Protector, "is very little better." With such weak sophistry as this, he persuaded the poor invalid king to draw up a settlement of the crown on Lady Jane Grey, and the judges, with all the law officers, were summoned to approve the document. Sir Edward Montague, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with Sir Thomas Bromley, one of his puisnes, came accompanied by the attorney and solicitor-generals, to say that the deed was illegal, and that they, one and all, would have nothing to do with it. Upon this, Northumberland rushed into the room, called Montague a traitor, * banged the door, threatened to bang the judges, and offered to fight in his shirt-sleeves any one of them.

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He declared that if they could not see the deed in its proper light, he would pretty soon beat it into them, and he was squaring up to the poor puisne with an evident intention for mischief, when the judges offered to take the papers home and reconsider them.

The next day, they were again sent for, when, finding Northumberland as pugilistic as ever, and hand in glove with the king, the chief justice consented to the deed; and the puisne, on being approached by Northumberland in an attitude of menace, was glad to stammer out, "I am of the same opinion," as rapidly as he could give the words their utterance. The judges were promised that the deeds should be ratified by Parliament, and that they should be pardoned if they had done wrong; for otherwise, from the fists of Northumberland to the hands of the legislature, might have been analogous to getting out of the frying-pan into the fire.

All this row in the palace of an invalid produced the effect that might have been expected, for the poor boy died a day or two afterwards. A pugilistic encounter between a duke and a judge, was somewhat too much of a stimulant for a child in Edward's weak state, and his physicians having given him up, he was turned over to the treatment of a female quack, who finished him. She did the business on the 6th of July, 1533, when he sunk under a complication of evils, among which his medical attendant was undoubtedly the greatest. He had lived fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-two days, having been upon the throne six years and a half; affording a curious instance of a reign in which the part of the sovereign was so insignificant that it might just as well have been omitted.

This little fellow had been greatly eulogised for his talents, as shown in his journal; but on looking at this juvenile production we regret to say that we could not go the length of our old friend the evening paper, in stating that it is "a very remarkable production." He mentioned certain dinners and suppers with evident gusto, and alludes to the return of the sweating sickness, but misses the obvious point, that he hopes that it will not prove so perverse as to begin sweating sovereigns. Some of the historians of his reign allege that if we are to judge young Edward by the laws passed in his reign, there is no great deal to be said for him. Beggars were declared to be the slaves of those who apprehended them, and iron collars were permitted to be put about the throats of the latter; but this was too much for the pride of the stiff-necked people of England, and the law was repealed, within two or three years of its having been enacted.

There is no doubt that he was a most amiable little fellow, as docile as a lamb, if indeed his gentleness did not amount to absolute sheepishness. His flatterers say that he could speak five languages, and had a taste for music and physic, in the latter of which predilections we are quite unable to sympathise. We should have said he was a nice child but for the peculiarity to which we have just made allusion. As a quiet young gentleman at a preparatory school kept by ladies, Master Edward Tudor would have done credit no doubt to the establishment in which he might have been placed; but we would as soon select a sovereign from a seminary at once, and take him from the bread-and-butter to the throne, as see the spirt of the monarchy diluted in milk-and-water, and the sceptre dwindling down into a king's pattern spoon.