moroseness
he exhibited in his latter days was partly the effect of physical
disease, brought about, indeed, by intemperance and gluttony. He was
faithful to his wives, so long as he lived with them; and, while he
doted on them, listened to their advice. But few of his advisers dared
tell him the truth; and Cranmer himself can never be exculpated from
flattering his perverted conscience. No one had the courage to tell
him he was dying but one of the nobles of the court. He died, in great
agony, June, 1547, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and the
fifty-sixth of his age, and was buried, with great pomp, in St. George
Chapel, Windsor Castle.

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--The best English histories of the reign of
Henry VIII. are the standard ones of Hume and Lingard. The
Pictorial History, in spite of its pictures, is also
excellent. Burnet should be consulted in reference to
ecclesiastical matters, and Hallam, in reference to the
constitution. See also the lives of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More,
and Cranmer. The lives of Henry's queens have been best
narrated by Agnes Strickland.

CHAPTER V.

EDWARD VI. AND MARY.

[Sidenote: War with Scotland.]

Henry VIII. was succeeded by his son, Edward VI., a boy of nine years
of age, learned, pious, and precocious. Still he was a boy; and, as
such, was a king but in name. The history of his reign is the history
of the acts of his ministers.

The late king left a will, appointing sixteen persons, mostly members
of his council, to be guardians of his son, and rulers of the nation
during his minority. The Earl of Hertford, being uncle of the king,
was unanimously named protector.

The first thing the council did was to look after themselves, that is,
to give themselves titles and revenues. Hertford became Duke of
Somerset; Essex, Marquis of Northampton; Lisle, Earl of Warwick; the
Chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. At the head of these
nobles was Somerset. He was a Protestant, and therefore prosecuted
those reforms which Cranmer had before projected. Cranmer, as member
of the council, archbishop of Canterbury, and friend of Somerset, had
ample scope to prosecute his measures.

The history of this reign is not important in a political point of
view, and relates chiefly to the completion of the reformation, and to
the squabbles and jealousies of the great lords who formed the council
of re