EDOARDO VI, king of ENGLAND. - Born 12 Oct. 1537, died 6 July 1553. Son of Enrico VIII and Jane Seymour, he ascended the throne at the age of nine in 1547. During the first two years of his reign power was in the hands of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, whom the council of regency appointed Lord Protector. With the approval of the very young king, a sickly but precocious boy, endowed with the Tudor family’s particular inclination for study, he promoted the further penetration of Protestantism into the country, even in its most fanatical form of struggle against “idolatry,” that is, the veneration of sacred images and the Mass, advocated above all by the supporters of Calvinism and particularly by Tommaso Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury.
After the deposition of Somerset, who in another field had been unable successfully to pursue his policy of predominance over Scotland, victoriously opposed by the French, the council signed peace with France (1550); his religious policy, however, was continued with greater harshness by John Dudley, earl of Warwick, later duke of Northumberland. During the reign of E. there appeared the two editions of the Common prayer book (1549 and 1552), as well as the preparation of the new ordinal of purely Calvinist stamp.
BEL.: C. H. Smyth, Thomas Cranmer and the Reform under Edward VI. Cambridge 1926; G. Constant, La réforme en Angleterre. V. L'introduction de la réforme en Angleterre. Le règne de Edward VI. Parigi 1930. Ottavio Baciè