ABSTRACT
Perhaps the reason why the English nation has not seen its way to accept either of the two types into which Western Christianity was divided at the Reformation in an extreme form is that during the next two reigns it had an opportunity of seeing them both in the sharpest contrast and of knowing them for what they were. When Edward VI came to the throne as a boy of nine, it was certain that reform would be pressed farther than it had yet gone. There had not been wanting signs towards the close of the last reign that a change from the position of the Six Articles was impending, and the old king had left his son to the care of men who were not likely to be content with things as they were. There arose at once in the country a babel of many voices demanding instant doctrinal changes. But the Protector Somerset left these matters very much to Cranmer, and the instinct of both was to proceed slowly. Cranmer, indeed, was the gentlest, his enemies might say the most timid, of men. ‘Do my Lord of Canterbury an ill turn’, it was once avowed, ‘and you make him your friend for life.’ He was on this as on other grounds more nearly comparable to Melanchthon than to any other of the Continental reformers. On one point he was quite clear, and that was the necessity for maintaining the Royal Supremacy. To this principle he showed his adherence on the death of Henry by making all the bishops take out a fresh licence. Somerset, too, was a pious and moderate man with some regard for the poor and a dislike of religious persecution, although after his clever victory at Pinkie against the Scots he preferred military violence to more conciliatory methods, and so lost the hand of Mary Stuart, to which he aspired. But on the whole he was a conservative influence in reform. Consequently the first efforts of the reign were to prevent a stampede, and its first Act was one passed against reviling the sacrament of the altar.
