tion of which he torate; scheme was at once set aside through the ambitious designs of usurpaEdward Seymour, earl of Hertford, uncle of the infant king, Seymour; who, in defiance of the terms of the will, and without the authority of parliament, converted the carefully balanced regency into a protectorate, with himself as its head. The process process by through which Hertford accomplished this usurpation was at established once bold and ingenious. Assuming at the outset the validity his protecof the will,1 the executors were assembled in the Tower on the Monday following the king's death, where they swore to maintain it "in every part and article of the same." Then upon the ground that business could not be conveniently dispatched unless some one "should be preferred in name and place before other, to whom, as to the head of the rest, all strangers and others might have access," it was resolved, at the instance of Paget, that Hertford should be given the first place "as protector of all the realms and dominions of the king's majesty, and governor of his most royal person, with the special and express condition, that he shall not do any act but with the advice and consent of the rest of the executors." 2 The modification of plan convenient revelations of Paget soon followed as to the king's of governintention to enrich and ennoble the faithful few to whom he ment provided by had committed the execution of his will, and out of the shower the will; of titles that ensued Hertford emerged as the duke of Somerset, his brother Thomas as Lord Seymour, Lisle and Wriothesley as the earls of Warwick and Southampton, while estates carved from the possessions of the monasteries passed to many more, including Cranmer. The next step involved the re- removal of moval of the hostile chancellor, the new earl of Southampton, chancellor; who had the official custody of Henry's will, and who had manifested a purpose to thwart the protector's plans by maintaining the status contemplated by that instrument. Through an illegal act upon the part of Southampton in appointing, shortly after the king's death, the master of the rolls and three civilians as vice-chancellors, with power to hear equity causes and to make decrees therein subject to his approval, it was 1 As to the grave difficulties upon hand and subscription only of the Lord that subject, see above, p. 108. Protector." 2 Records of the Privy Council, Edward VI., MS. Council Office. The letters to foreign sovereigns announcing Henry's death went out "under the 3 Strype, Eccl. Mem., II. i. 123, ed. 1822; Records of the Privy Council, Edward VI., MS. the lord patent issued in Edward's name mak ing Somer set protector with unlimited powers. Protectorate of Somerset : held by the judges that by affixing the great seal to the commission without the authority of a royal warrant, the chancellor had not only forfeited his office, but had also incurred the danger of fine and imprisonment at the king's pleasure.1 The result was the removal of Southampton from office and the transfer of the great seal to the more pliable hands of Lord St. John as keeper, who on the 12th of March affixed it to a new patent for the protectorate issued in Edward's name, wherein, after ratifying all that the protector had done, it was provided that until the king should become of age, he might "do anything which a governor of the king's person, or protector of the realm, ought to do." In this instrument the sixteen executors as such were ignored by being blended with ten others into a new body of twenty-six as the nominees of Edward, a body to which the protector could add at will, and from which he was authorized to "choose, name, appoint, use, and swear of privy council, such and so many as he from time to time shall think convenient." Thus within six weeks after the king's death the elaborate regency which he had constructed was completely set aside, and in its place substituted the protectorate, by virtue of the document under which Somerset became practically as absolute as Henry himself had been. The one shadow which rested upon the new commission resulted from the fact that it was countersigned by only seven of the executors, and in the list of those who held back was the ominous name of Dudley, earl of Warwick, better known in history as the duke of Northumberland. 2. From March 12, 1547, until October 14, 1549, Somerset was in full possession of the royal authority as protector, an authority which he wielded from the king's death in January until the following November without the aid of parliament or convocation. During that interval it was that the English Reformation was fairly inaugurated through the joint efforts gurated by of Somerset and Cranmer, the former supplying the political English tion inau Somerset and Cranmer ; authority, the latter the intellectual guidance which directed the English Church along the conservative path through which it approached without reaching the goal already at 1 For a full statement, see Burnet, Hist. Reform., vol. i. p. 300. 2 This conclusion was reached on the 6th of March. Privy Council Records, Edward VI., MS. 8 The letters patent are printed in Burnet's Collectanea. as a mere new pat ents for as defined mer's tained by the continental Reformation. The first act of the policy of regarding privy council after Henry's death was intended to indicate to the church the clergy in no uncertain terms that his policy of regarding department the church as a mere department of state was to be continued. of state continued; On February 1, after the lord chancellor had given up the seals and received them back from Edward's hands, he was directed to make out new patents for the judges, a proceeding which was soon followed by the making out of new patents bishops as for the bishops as well, under the theory announced by the well as judges; council that the king's death had determined the authority of their spiritual jurisdiction, which they had derived during the preceding reign "by force of instruments under the seal appointed ad res ecclesiasticas."1 The character and scope of source and the jurisdiction which the patents to the bishops undertook extent of episcopal to confer was clearly defined in that granted to Archbishop jurisdiction Cranmer, in which the fact was asserted that all kinds of in Cranjurisdiction were derived from the king as supreme head of patent; the church, as well the right of the archbishop to ordain in his diocese as his right to hear causes in his ecclesiastical court.2 The new doctrine thus emphatically asserted, that the crown and not the pope was the source of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, soon received a fresh application through the order made by the council on May 4 for a general "visitation," right of a prerogative which, as we have heretofore pointed out, was first transfirst transferred from the pope to the crown by the act of 25 ferred from Hen. VIII. c. 21, § 20, which was soon followed by the Act of the crown Supremacy (26 Hen. VIII. c. 1), under whose comprehensive VIII. c. 21, terms the right to visit and reform received a still wider appli- extended; cation. The commission now issued for the general visitation, Cranmer's projected but never carried out during Henry's reign, was reform outattended by a mandate from the privy council, which not only lined in the suspended the ordinary jurisdiction of the two archbishops now issued and their suffragans during the visitation, but also prohibited visitation; the clergy from preaching outside of their own churches with 1 Privy Council Register. In the reign of Henry VIII. that seal was employed only for letters patent, the bish ops still using their own seals for documents issued under their authority. See Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. p. 35, and note 3. 2 Cranmer's commission is entitled Commissio regia archiæpiscopo Cantuar. ad exercendam suam jurisdictionem. 3 See above, pp. 72, 75. The act of visitation the pope to scheme of instructions for a new out a royal license.1 A Book of Homilies 2 was at the same time put forth as a guide to doctrine, and the commissioners were armed with seventy-four " Articles of Enquiry," and with thirty-seven general injunctions,3 from whose terms may be gathered a very definite idea of the plan of reform devised by Cranmer as the basis of the new system. Foremost among the churchmen of the old school who ventured to resist the resisted by fresh tide of innovation were Bonner, bishop of London, and Bonner and Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, both of whom were imprisoned. While Cranmer was thus advancing the new ecclesiastical movement within the realm, Somerset had crossed the border and had won his great victory at Pinkie Cleugh, from which he returned to London in triumph in September. With the political influence of the protector thus at its height, the parliament met, on the 4th of November, in which the religious revolution inaugurated by the privy council was to receive the sanction of legislation. Gardiner, who were imprisoned; necessary legislation enacted in the parlia ment which necessity for the repeal of the Six Articles defining heresy ; statutory definitions of heresy prior to that act; In order that the subject of ecclesiastical reform might be discussed without danger, it was first necessary to repeal the bloody Act of the Six Articles, in which Henry had attempted to put forth for the first time a positive statutory definition of the crime of heresy. An account has heretofore been given of the civil and ecclesiastical law upon that subject prior to the enactment in 1382 of the statute of 5 Richard II. st. 2, c. 5, which was followed in 1400 by 2 Hen. IV. c. 15 (De hæretico comburendo), and in 1414 by 2 Hen. V. c. 7, which dealt mainly with the question of procedure. The statutory system as thus established continued in full force down to 1533, when Henry VIII. undertook to improve it by the enactment of 25 Hen. VIII. c. 14, which, after repealing 2 Hen. IV. c. 15, because it failed to "decline any certain cases of heresy," and because it gave the bishops an unlimited power to put men on trial for heresy on bare suspicion, confirmed and reenacted the statute of 5 Rich. II. c. 5, and 2 Hen. V. c. 7. The negative definitions of heresy contained 1 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. pp. 10-14; Burnet, Hist. Reform., vol. i. p. 308. 2 These had been prepared some years before by Cranmer and others for the use of convocation, but never published. 8 See Strype's Eccl. Mem., II. i. 7583; Burnet, Hist. Reform., vol. i. p. 309; Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 43–59. 4 Vol. i. pp. 537-540. statutes in Henry's act of 1533 were supplemented in 1539 by the positive and emphatic declarations contained in the Act of the Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII. c. 14), whose terms were extended four years later by 34 & 35 Hen. VIII. c. 1. In order to wipe out this whole statutory system for the punish- all prior ment of heresy was passed the statute of 1 Edw. VI. c. 12, upon the in which not only the Act of the Six Articles, but all "acts of subject repealed by parliament and statutes touching, mentioning, or in any wise i Edw. VI. concerning religion and opinions" were repealed.1 Thus was restored "the common law as to heresy," but the law so common restored was understood to be the law as settled in Sawtre's case at the beginning of the reign of Henry IV., which author- settled in ized the burning of a heretic by the writ De hæretico combu- case rendo 2 after a conviction by a provincial council." C. 12; law as to heresy as Sawtre's revived. by the com act of 26 pealed, and Edw. III. The mass which the Act of the Six Articles had so resolutely The mass retained was superseded in 1547 by the communion under the superseded authority of an act which, after providing punishment for munion; such as should revile the sacrament, enjoined the receiving of it under both kinds on the laity as well as the clergy, an act which after repeal and revival is still in force. While the treasons Act of Supremacy remained unrepealed until the next reign, Hen. VIII. the famous treasons act (26 Hen. VIII. c. 13) by which it c. 13, rewas supplemented was now wiped out by 1 Edw. VI. c. 12, act of 25 providing that nothing should be held to be treason except c. 3, with a offences against the old treasons act of 25 Edw. III. c. 3, ments, and such as were created by its own terms. In 1552, after restored; the fall of Somerset, some of the abolished treasons were in 1552 reënacted and some new ones created, subject, however, to made for the all-important constitutional limitation which provided that two witno person should henceforth be indicted or attainted for any cases of kind of treason except on his voluntary confession, or upon the testimony of two lawful witnesses with whom the accused should be confronted on the trial. The traditional form of 1 A masterful exposition of the whole subject may be found in Sir J. F. Stephen's Hist. of the Crim. Law of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 438-475. 2 As to Sawtre's case, see vol. i. P. 537, note 6. For Sir J. F. Stephen's review of that case, see vol. ii. pp. 445459. 31 Edw. VI. c. I. That act confirmed a canon passed by convocation in December, 1547, providing for com- The act of 5 & 6 Edw. VI. c. 2 few amend provision nesses in treason; |