Edward VI’s life is often remembered as the brief, tragic reign of a sickly boy king, the son who gave Henry VIII the heir he had spent three decades and six wives chasing. But the real story of Edward Tudor is considerably darker. He was not a frail child; he was a spoiled, violent, and deeply religious fanatic who modeled himself on his monstrous father. And when he finally passed at the age of fifteen, England may well have dodged a bullet.
Edward’s birth was the greatest triumph of Henry VIII’s life. The aging king had waited twenty-eight years, endured two daughters and three failed wives, and finally got his son. One chronicler called the infant “the most beautiful boy that ever was seen. ” But the joy was short-lived.
Queen Jane Seymour’s labor had been brutal, and within days she was dying. The doctors faced a terrible choice: save the baby or save the queen. When asked which he preferred, Henry reportedly replied with chilling indifference: “If you cannot save both, at least let the child live. ” Jane died less than two weeks after giving birth.
Edward never met his mother. Nor did he really know his father. Though Henry treasured the boy as “this whole realm’s most precious jewel,” he sent Edward away almost immediately after his birth. For the first several years of his life, the prince was raised by attendants, seeing his father only once.
Henry was absent even when his son battled a deadly quartan fever at age four, an illness that swept through England’s royal nurseries with terrifying frequency. Edward survived, and the man who emerged from those early years was already showing disturbing signs. When Edward turned six, Henry decided the boy had reached adulthood. He ordered Edward’s rooms remodeled to mirror his own, replaced the prince’s wardrobe with miniature versions of his own clothes, and then moved the boy into his household.
The king hoped his son would turn out just like him. He got exactly what he wanted. Edward studied from books covered in gold and set with sapphires, rubies, and diamonds. He ate with jewel-encrusted cutlery and napkins threaded with pure silver and gold.
He took fencing and horseback riding like any noble young man, but his hobbies were far more troubling. Edward and his sister Elizabeth shared a strange obsession with magic and astrology and kept a sinister red box filled with sorcery tools. Edward would even tear living falcons apart with his bare hands during his rages. Edward adored his eldest sister Mary, who was more than two decades older and the closest thing to a mother he had ever known.
At nine years old, he wrote to her, “I love you the most. ” But like his father, Edward’s moods could turn swiftly. The affection would not last. In 1543, Henry VIII did something remarkable: he invited all three of his children to spend Christmas together.
It was a rare moment of familial peace. At that same time, Henry brokered a treaty with Scotland, arranging for Edward to marry the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. The deal was meant to finally bring Scotland under English control after centuries of border conflict. But soon after that pleasant Christmas dinner, the Scots backed out.
Henry flew into a rage and sent his brother-in-law, Edward Seymour, north with horrifying orders: put all to fire and sword, burn Edinburgh, and leave “a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God lightened upon them for their falsehood and disloyalty. ” Seymour obeyed with savage enthusiasm. Henry also worked to shape his son’s soul. By the age of twelve, Edward had become a complete religious fanatic, writing a treatise declaring the pope to be the Antichrist and “an abominable tyrant.
” Henry had created a new church simply to get a divorce, and he made sure his son was brainwashed in the new faith. When Henry VIII died in 1547, the nine-year-old Edward became king. England, exhausted by Henry’s chaos, hoped for a breather. There was none to be had.
Edward Seymour, the man Henry had sent to ravage Scotland, moved quickly to seize power. Within days of Henry’s death, he had bribed enough courtiers to be named Lord Protector of England. His only obstacle was his own brother, Thomas Seymour. Instead of bribing the court, Thomas went straight for the king.
He began secretly slipping money to Edward and whispering that his brother meant to make a beggar out of him. But poisoning the boy’s mind was only the first step. Thomas Seymour hatched a plot to marry Princess Elizabeth, kidnap Edward, and force him to abdicate to his sister, effectively making himself king of England. It was, honestly, a solid plan—until the night he tried to break into Edward’s chambers.
A dog noticed him and began barking. In a move both cruel and idiotic, Thomas shot the dog. The gunfire alerted the guards. He was seized and sent to the Tower, where his brother, the Lord Protector, had him executed for treason without hesitation.
Edward Seymour’s heart, it turns out, was made of ice. For the next several years, Edward Seymour ruled England into the ground while keeping the boy king distracted. His arrogance and carelessness mounted until 1549, when his one-time ally John Dudley convinced Edward that Seymour planned to usurp his power. That was all it took.
Seymour was executed, and Dudley took over as Lord Protector. Dudley was no better; he was still a brutal tyrant wielding absolute power behind the young king’s back. But at least he was more competent. He made peace with France by signing one of the most humiliating treaties in English history, withdrawing English forces from both French territory and Scotland, finally ending the war that had begun when the Scots broke the marriage alliance.
To seal the deal, Dudley agreed to marry Edward off to Princess Elizabeth of Valois. The marriage never came to be. By 1552, England was in chaos. The advisers were too busy tearing each other apart to govern, and the country begged for a strong king to restore order.
Edward could not be that king. In April 1552, he caught the measles. The disease ravaged his body, but after weeks of agony, he recovered. The measles, however, had destroyed his immune system.
In January 1553, Edward began to cough. A fever followed, and what seemed like a passing flu grew steadily worse. By April, he appeared to recover; in May, his doctors believed he was well. Then the cough returned with a vengeance.
His body swelled, painful ulcers broke out across his skin, and the vigorous boy king wasted away before his courtiers’ eyes. His mind, however, remained sharp, and he had one final obsession: making sure his sisters never sat on the throne. Why Edward turned so violently against Elizabeth, his fellow Protestant and former partner in sorcery, remains unclear. Mary’s Catholicism offered an obvious motive.
Regardless, in his final agonizing days, Edward shocked England by signing a proclamation against his father’s expressed wishes, disinheriting both sisters and naming his distant cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor. The scheming John Dudley stood behind the move; Jane Grey happened to be his own daughter-in-law. On July 1, 1553, Edward made his final public appearance. Crowds gathered outside his window to glimpse their ailing king, and when they saw him, they were horrified.
The boy was completely wasted away. One day in early July, a feeble Edward pulled an attendant close and whispered a confession: “I am glad to die. ” Six months after his illness began, Edward VI was dead at fifteen. Suspicion of poison followed immediately.
Some blamed Dudley, some blamed Catholics, some even blamed Mary. In all likelihood, Edward died of tuberculosis or a similar affliction. The exact cause remains uncertain. With Edward gone, Lady Jane Grey was technically queen.
But she was Henry VIII’s sister’s granddaughter; Mary was Henry’s own daughter. Mary’s claim was undeniably stronger, and she rallied thousands of supporters. Mary convinced the Privy Council to depose Jane, who became history’s Nine Days’ Queen. Jane and her husband were thrown into the Tower and later beheaded in February 1554.
John Dudley did not even make it to the chopping block; guards could barely hold back a furious crowd desperate for the blood of the man who had tried to steal the throne. Edward VI was not the tragic, innocent boy of legend. He was his father’s son through and through—a spoiled, vicious, fanatical child king who had already shown what kind of ruler he would become.
When he died at fifteen, barely into his teens, England likely escaped a future far worse than the one it actually got.