with the spoils of the Church, dealt with the dispossessed people—the people who as every contemporary Protestant writer and preacher confesses were made beggars by their new landlords.
One remarkable and ominous change there was when Edward VI. was crowned. For the first time at the coronation of a king of England—not excepting the coronation of the great Conqueror himself, the people were not asked if they would have him to be their king. They were only asked to give their assent and goodwill to his coronation, as they were bound by their duty of allegiance.[1]
The reign of Edward VI. was the reign of a child. The Lords of the Council, the sixteen persons to whom Henry had committed his kingdom and his son, ruled the country, and at first the young King's uncles, the Seymours, had the predominance. They had risen on Anne Boleyn's fall, and many believed they had compassed that fall. The whole conduct of the Duke of Somerset during the life of Henry is worse than dubious, but it cannot be denied that when, for a short time, he was supreme in England as Protector, he espoused the cause of the people. That he did so was one great cause of his ruin, for he offended the new possessors of abbey lands. Somerset had abbey lands himself, and his wanton robbery of Church property scandalises even Strype, the apologist of the Reformation.[2] Somerset even contemplated pulling down Westminster Abbey to build Somerset House, But he was less utterly vile than Warwick (afterwards Northumberland), who overthrew him, and I think we must believe that he really pitied the people. More especially he set himself against the clearing of the people off lands they had held from time immemorial.
The last instalment of these lands—the chantry and gild lands—had been sold at a vast price. But a curse seemed to rest on these gains. In 1549 the debts of the Crown amounted to £1,356,687, reckoning in the cost of the war with Scotland, the fortifications, and King Harry's debts.
