of the regencies sized; continent cast the protectorate upon Gloucester, who, when in the sixth year of the reign he called upon the lords to define his powers as protector and defender of the realm, was told in a written answer from them that he had no right to his office either by reason of his kinship, or by reason of the late king's will; that "the king that dead is, in his life nor might by his last will nor otherwise alter, change, nor abrogate, without the sole power assent of the three estates, nor commut nor grant to any per- estates to son governance or rule of this land longer than he lived." He create was then told why the title of protector and defender had empha been given him, "granting you therewith certain power, the which is specified and contained in an act of the said parliament, it to endure as long as it liked the king."1 As the infancy and imbecility of Henry VI. really rendered his reign a continual minority, its history is made up of a series of struggles between the leading statesmen of the time for control as protector. In the course of the long struggle the duke of York was in 1454 elected by the lords protector and defender of the realm during the king's pleasure; and after the abrupt termination of his first protectorate by the king's recovery, he growing was again elected protector in 1455 by the lords, but at the of the earnest solicitation of the commons, who seem to cised a controlling influence upon the proceeding. was chosen the second time to hold the protectorate, not as at first “during the king's pleasure," but "until he should be discharged of it by the lords in parliament.” 3 have exer The duke influence commons. the acces V.; ples of con The brief and tragic reign of the infant king Edward V. Regency at opens with a struggle for the regency between the queen in of mother and the duke of Gloucester, who, in May, 1483, was Edward declared "protector of king and kingdom" by an irregular assembly of magnates and citizens. By this time the following four principrinciples of constitutional law seem to have been distinctly stitutional recognized: (1) That to parliament as a whole belonged the law now exclusive right to constitute a regency, wherever the king from recognized; infancy or mental incapacity was personally incapable of performing his functions; (2) that the king did not possess the power to constitute, "by his last will nor otherwise," a regency during the minority of his successor, "without the assent of 1 Rot. Parl., iv. 326. 8 Rot. Parl., v. 284-290. • Vol. i. p. 583. distinctly provisions made by Henry regency during minority of Edward VI.; of the act the three estates;" (3) that neither the heir presumptive nor any other member of the royal house had the right as such to claim the regency, although they were often chosen by reason of their nearness in blood; (4) that when a regency was to be constituted, it was usual for parliament to vest the royal power either in some magnate individually, as guardian or protector, acting with the advice of a council; or in a council of regency without a dominant head. Such were the principles that stood forth as guides and as warnings to Henry VIII., when the time came for him to proVIII. for a vide for a regency during the stormy period occupied by the minority of Edward VI. Clearly understanding that no such attempt could be made with any hope of success without the aid of parliament, it was provided in his second succession provisions act 1 (28 Hen. VIII. c. 7), passed just after his marriage with of 28 Hen. Jane Seymour, that the heir to the throne if a male and under VIII. c. 7; eighteen, or if a female and under sixteen, should be, if the king approved, until such ages respectively, under the government of his or her mother, and of such other councillors as the king might appoint by letters patent or by his last will. Under council of the authority of that act it was that Henry provided in his will for a council of regency consisting of the sixteen executors, to whom were committed the government of the realm and the control of Edward's person during the minority, subject to of the act; the further provision that the sixteen should consult and advise with another council of twelve, who were also named. It was further provided by statute (28 Hen. VIII. c. 17) that inHen. VIII. fant coming to the throne should have the power, upon attaining his or her majority, to repeal by letters patent all measures enacted in his or her name during minority. From the terms of that act, coupled with the fact that Henry attempted to select the executors as equally as possible from the ranks of conservatives and reformers, so that neither faction should predominate, it is plain that his purpose was to preserve the results of his work intact, at least until Edward should attain his majority. And yet despite such precautions the whole regency appointed by will under authority act of 28 C. 17; 1 See above, p. 84. 3 2 More than two centuries then elapsed before the act of Henry VIII., passed in 1536, was followed by the any Regency Act of 24 Geo. II. c. 24, passed in 1751. 8 As to the persons named, see Froude, Hist. Eng., vol. iv. pp. 234, 235. tion of which he his protec 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 torate; of the will, 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 modificaconvenient revelations of Paget soon followed as to the king's of governintention to enrich and ennoble the faithful few to whom he ment prohad 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. The 2 Records of the Privy Council, Edward VI., MS. Council Office. letters to foreign sovereigns announcing Henry's death went out "under the Protector." 3 Strype, Eccl. Mem., II. i. 123, ed. 1822; Records of the Privy Council, Edward VI., MS. tion of plan vided by the lord patent issued in ing Somer set protector with unlimited powers. 2 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 name mak- 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. Protectorate of Somerset : 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 Reformation 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. 3 The letters patent are printed in Burnet's Collectanea. 1 continued; ents for judges; episcopal 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 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 new patwhich 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 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." The character and scope of source and the jurisdiction which the patents to the bishops undertook extent of 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 bishops 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 archiepiscopo Cantuar. ad exercendam suam jurisdictionem. 3 See above, pp. 72, 75. The act of visitation the pope to by 25 Hen. scheme of instructions for a new |