and he did nothing to molest Norfolk after Henry's death.
That event took place at 2 A.M. on Friday, 28 Jan. 1546–7; Hertford and Paget had spent the previous day in conversation with the king, they were present at his death, received his last commands, and had possession of his will. But Hertford must have already determined to set aside its provisions, and in an interview with Paget in the gallery immediately before Henry's death, and another an hour afterwards, he persuaded him to abet his bold coup d'état, promising to be guided by Paget's advice. They decided to keep the king's death a secret for the present, and to publish only so much of his will as seemed convenient; and then the earl hurried down to Hertford to get possession of the young king. On the way back, at Enfield on the 30th, Sir Anthony Browne (d. 1548) [q. v.], though ‘inclined to the old religion, gave his frank consent to Hertford being Protector, thinking it to be the surest kind of government’ (Lit. Remains of Edward VI, p. ccxlvii). On the same day, in a letter to the council, Hertford adopted the style ‘we,’ and on Monday the 31st he arrived with Edward at the Tower. Henry's death was then made known, and on the same day Paget proposed in the council that Hertford should have the protectorate. The council was divided: the reformers were represented by Cranmer, Hertford, and Lisle; the conservatives by Tunstall, Wriothesley, and Browne. Gardiner was excluded according to the terms of Henry's suspicious will; Browne had already given in his adherence to Hertford, but the chancellor Wriothesley strongly opposed the scheme. Paget's influence, however, prevailed, and the council gave Hertford ‘the chief place among them,’ with ‘the name and title of Protector of all the realms and domains of the king's majesty, and governor of his most royal person,’ adding the express condition that he was to act only ‘with the advice and consent of the rest of the executors’ (Acts of the Privy Council, ii. 4–7). On 2 Feb. he was appointed high steward of England for the coronation of Edward; on the 10th he was granted the office of treasurer of the exchequer, and that of earl marshal, which had been forfeited by Norfolk. Five days later he was created Baron Seymour of Hache, and on the 16th Duke of Somerset. On 6 March Wriothesley was removed from the chancellorship on the ground that he had used the great seal without a warrant (ib. ii. 48–59). Six days later Somerset rendered his position independent of the council by obtaining a patent as governor and protector, in which he was empowered to act with or without their advice, and ‘to do anything which a governor of the king's person or protector of the realm ought to do’ (ib. ii. 63–4, 67–74). He had now attained to almost royal authority; in a form of prayer which he used, he spoke of himself as ‘caused by Providence to rule,’ and he went so far as to address the king of France as ‘brother.’
As the first protestant ruler of England, Somerset at once set about introducing radical religious reforms. His numerous letters, preserved in the British Museum, throw little light on what convictions he had reached during Henry's reign, or how he had been induced to adopt them, but by Henry's death he had become a ‘rank Calvinist’ (Nicholas Pocock in Engl. Hist. Rev. July 1895, p. 418), and he soon entered into correspondence with the Genevan reformer. ‘From the moment of Henry's death there was a systematic attempt made by the men of the new learning, headed at first by Somerset … gradually to get rid of catholic doctrine’ (ib. p. 438). ‘There is really no other account to be given of the gradual changes that culminated in the second prayer-book of 1552 … than that Somerset was supreme, and exercised for a few years the same arbitrary sway that the late king had brought to bear upon the parliament when the Act of Six Articles was passed’ (Church Quarterly Rev. October 1892, p. 38). Cranmer, whose leanings were then Lutheran, was a ‘mere tool in his hands’ (ib. pp. 41, 42, 56). The Protector secretly encouraged books of extreme protestant views (cf. The V Abominable Blasphemies conteined in the Masse, 1548, anon. printed by H. Powell); and in the preface to the new communion office (March 1547–8), which Somerset almost certainly wrote himself, he hinted plainly at further sweeping reforms. But in his public procedure he was compelled to observe more caution. The first of his ecclesiastical acts was to compel all bishops to exercise their office durante beneplacito (6 Feb. 1546–7), and their position as mere state officials was emphasised by an act in the following November, ordering that their appointment should be made by letters patent. An ecclesiastical visitation followed for the removal of images, assertion of the royal supremacy, and the enforcement of the use of English in the church services; for their opposition to this measure Gardiner and Bonner were imprisoned in June. In July appeared the book of homilies, and in November parliament authorised the administration of the communion in both kinds, and granted all colleges, chantries, and free chapels to the king. Early in
