The Cold-Hearted Swot
or... What if Edward VI had lived twice as long
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Foreword
Hi, to some people this TL might already be known, and for them my only declaration is that I've finally decided to make a thread for this thing instead of holding it on the Infoboxes, Alternate Monarchs/Lineages and Maps threads, and that they'll notice that I have done some updating and revisioning of some aspects of the TL itself (which I am grateful to @Kellan Sullivan for, we may have started in a rather rocky situation but I'm truly floored and immensely grateful for your help in not only revising the genealogy of the earlier generations but in a major way reviving the TL for me).
And for those curious about the name, it comes from a line on the threat "List of Monarchs III" that I started with the same premise as this TL back in July 2020, with credit going to (I think) @Premier Taylerov for adding the name to it (which got lodged into my brain as a perfect one for this TL)
Finally, for those who have no idea what's this, "The Cold-Hearted Swot" is a TL that I sort-of-started in the middle of July, 2020, with a bundle of infoboxes without any writing on them, and that I posted about through the later half of that year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Premise
Although a compelling argument can be most certainly made that the POD was a while before that, the specific premise of this TL is that Edward VI (the eponymous "Cold-Hearted Swot"), instead of dying at age 15 in 1553 from what was probably tuberculosis*, lived until the ripe old age of 31 as a sickly man, marrying Jane Grey and having children who continued, through a way or another, the Tudor Dynasty, resulting on a completely changed world by the timeline's present.
For those wondering, the date that is used as the "present" for this timeline is January 1st, 2031, (or a full decade later than the date used in the original)
*For the context of the TL, Edward VI contracted tuberculosis (often called "consumption" even in modern times ITTL) in 1553 after fighting a bout of both measles and smallpox the year before which weakened him to the point of being incapable of fighting the disease (other theories I have seen say he died of acute bronchopneumonia, which that led to lung abscess, septicemia and kidney failure, or that he was poisoned), with the idea here being that, through sheer dumb luck (and possibly a lack of poisoning in an attempt to hasten death), his immune system, instead of giving in, shouldered on for the good part of two decades.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and now, The Cold Hearted Swot himself, Edward the Sixth
Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 16 July 1569) was King of England and Ireland[1] from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1569, being crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII by his third wife, Jane Seymour, being his only surviving legitimate son, and England and Ireland's first monarch to be raised as a Protestant. He is held by most Brittanic Churches as one of the "Royal Saints of the Isles", being traditionally commemorated on 30 January.
Born to his father after decades of Henry VIII hungering for a male heir, although his mother only lived for a week following her son's christening, Edward VI was at birth and on his early years a remarkably healthy and strong child, although with a generally poor eyesight and surviving a bout of malaria at age four. Although remembered in modern times as sickly all his life, Edward only came to be so in 1553 when, after having contracted measles and smallpox the year before, he became ill with consumption and nearly died during a year-long war against the disease, and, although recovering, Edward VI was permanently affected by the illness, being often bedridden during the second half of his life.
A child when he ascended to the throne, a regency council was supposed to govern the realm from 1547 until Edward's majority in 1553, being first led by the king's maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (1547-1549), and then by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick (later made Duke of Northumberland in 1551), but Edward VI's drawn-out fight with consumption through what was supposed to be the regency's last year meant that it was de facto extended until the beginnings of 1555.
Although the regency years are often remembered for their economic problems and social and religious unrest, which erupted into riot and rebellion in 1549, as well as by an expensive war with Scotland (which saw the loss of Boulogne-Sur-Mer for England and a total withdrawal from Scotland), and are characterized by scheming and power-grabbing by regents and councilmembers, modern historians now prefer to take a more moderate approach to those years, seeing them as instead being divided by the disastrous "Somerset Protectorate" while Northumberland's tenure is often seen as being, while not prosperous, a general return to normalcy and peace.
The Northumberland Regency was, though, in a way marred by not only Edward VI's near death but by two scandals involving the personal lives of both the Royal Family and Northumberland's. The first was when the king's middle sister, then simply "The Lady Elizabeth", gave birth in middle 1552 to a son – named Edward in his uncle's honor – and, when asked who had fathered her "bastard", revealed that the child was, in fact, born in wedlock, and that she had eloped[2] with Lord Robert Dudley, Northumberland's fifth son.
Although the scandal resulted on the couple's temporary banishment to Ireland, Northumberland himself survived it relatively unscathed (Edward recognized the duke's lack of involvement, and would soon-enough himself forgive his sister and brother-in-law for the entire affair), and after that the next one came only in 1554, when, still bedridden but relatively safe from death, Edward VI married his paternal first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, heiress suo jure of the Dukedom of Suffolk.[3]
Now, if the marriage was simply that, a scandal would most certainly not have happened, and, instead, the scandal came from the fact that not only Edward VI himself was betrothed to a French princess[4], which would result on a minor "staring contested" between them and England, but Jane herself was also betrothed, in this case to Northumberland's second-youngest son, Guilford, who, as a companion and friend of the king, was actually one of the witnesses of the marriage, performed by Thomas Cranmer.
Many historians believe that Edward himself had long been in love with his cousin, with whom he had been in some level of friendship since childhood, and that those feelings had been equally requited by Jane, but that until his near-death experience the king had resigned himself to never act upon them due to their obligations as king and heiress, with his brush with death causing Edward to decide on following on his father's footsteps and marry the woman he desired to be with.
When compared to Henry VIII and his own marital life, though, Edward VI had a much happier and successful one, with him and Jane remaining together until his death and having six children, five of whom survived to adulthood. His only known extramarital affair, had with Lady Lettice Knollys[5] from late 1560 to early 1564, was in a major part sprouted from the fact that the birth of the future Henry IX in 1560 nearly killed the queen and caused Edward to refrain from bedding her for the following few years, with Lettice herself being only chosen as a mistress due to her being one of the queen's closest ladies-in-waiting, one of her friends, and almost uncomfortably outspoken of her fervent loyalty to her.
Although of a fascination over the military arts, in that area Edward VI focused inward, and invested in the development of England’s defenses instead of in entering foreign endeavors or satiating foreign ambitions, believing them to have too great of a chance of being either disastrous or pyrrhic to even try, and while his father founded the Royal Navy and his wife and children made it a true strength, he is credited with fortifying the shores of England from outside invasions.
Edward VI also has as part of his legacy the defenses of the Pale of Calais, who, ironically, he was not quiet about considering an economic burden so great that it often outshined any kind of economic advantage it granted England, with many believing that the main reason behind his investment in the pale’s defense was the fact that Edward VI hoped to make it less of a nuisance to protect by making it a greater nuisance to even attack. Although much of the Pale’s fortifications were destroyed by the Conquest in 1884, their ruins and the memories of the Last Siege of Calais serve as a permanent reminder of Edward VI’s work there.
In Ireland Edward VI’s reign is mainly remembered for the actions of his sister, Elizabeth, who, even before her “pardon” in September of 1553, decided to make herself into a diplomat and middle-man between her brother and the various de facto independent lords and princes of Ireland, using her unique sort of Tudor charisma to ingrain herself among the local aristocracy, establishing a foundation to the true entrance of the remaining uncontrolled parts of the island into the Kingdom of Ireland later in the 16th century. Although it was only many years after his death, Elizabeth became Edward’s de facto deputy in Dublin by the end of the 1550s, and would work with him also in expanding Protestantism through Ireland, which was still firmly of a Catholic majority.
And it is on the area of religion that Edward VI is most remembered for, as he not only was the first of England and Ireland’s monarchs to be raised a true Protestant, but it was he who reigned over the real turn of England to Protestantism. Under Henry VIII, the Church of England, while severed from Rome, had never renounced Catholic doctrine or ceremony, with it being under Edward VI that it transformed into a recognizably protestant body.
Interestingly, though, while many of those reforms were established early into Edward’s reign, in special during the Duke of Somerset’s protectorate, it was during the course of the following two decades that those reforms settled in with the population, gained new companions, or were changed in part due to the King’s own changing views on religion.
Edward VI himself was a rather unrelenting individual in relation to religion, and, while he did take some interestingly compensatory turns, in relation to desecrated or destroyed religious buildings and institution, Edward VI is still remembered for his dedication to stamping out Catholicism in England, which saw the Brother’s Revolt and Burning of East Anglia in the 1560s.
In Cornwall and Wales Edward also used of propaganda and indoctrination in his attempts to sway the local populations to Protestantism, although many also credit his wife with the idea, and as part of that endeavor he commissioned official translations of the Bible, and later the Book of Common Prayer, to Cornish and Welsh.
In Ireland, as mentioned before, Edward VI, is remembered for his work with his sister in spreading the reformation, often serving as the monetary backer for her efforts in doing so, taking from the royal coffers and estates to fund the translation, printing and spreading of the bible in Irish Gaelic.
Outside of his conjugal life and religion, Edward VI’s personal life and relationships is a matter that is often misrepresented and debated. Unlike what is often believed, Edward VI was a relatively gregarious individual most of the time, being known in special for being, even after 1553, a surprisingly charming and endearing individual, being marked by having an almost incredibly ease to make friends, even if he was known for having only a few with whom he was truly close.
Among his friendships, though, Edward VI’s most famous and remembered one is that which he had with Barnaby Fitzpatrick, 2nd Baron Upper Ossory. Childhood companions, the two shared a deep attachment for their entire lives, with Edward freely admitting as an adult that the bond he had with Barnaby was only comparable to the one he had with his wife.
Especially in Edward’s later years, Barnaby was one of the few people who made him actually seem pleased with or enjoy things, and as he became frailer and bedridden the two would often spend entire days and night in the king’s quarters playing cards, joking around, doing governmental work, or even simply spending time together.
Within his family, Edward was known for having a deep admiration for his father, whom he lost early in life, and an complicated relationship with his sisters, whom he grew-up close to and was openly caring but whom he often bashed heads and personalities with.
As a child it is often said that Edward VI had a species of rivalry with his sister Elizabeth, with whom he often felt the need to “match” in the matter of his own education and learning, and as adults the two often involved themselves in matches of wit and planning as a way to stack-up on eachother. During Edward VI’s early reign, the two are also remembered for having a period of a great estrangement between them, caused in great part by the events surrounding Lord Thomas Seymour, and it was only following her scandal and his convalescence that their relationship recovered.
With his sister Mary, Edward’s relationship was even more complex and tumultuous at times, as he grew up seeing her, in a way, as a surrogate mother, and while often times priggish in his opinions about her religion, going as far as (mainly during the early 1550s) threatening Mary with retaliatory actions on the matter, as he grew older Edward strangely came to resign himself to never truly acting, and with time not even really commenting, on his sister’s religious position, while Mary herself chose to over time not think about the gigantic elephant in the room between them.
To many the point that showed (or possibly motivated) that development was in 1555, when Lady Mary, then 39, became pregnant out of wedlock[6]. Although silent when he heard the news, the king answered them a few weeks later (some weeks of tense uncertainty among both his court and whatever parts of Europe had already heard of the situation) by personally riding to visiting his sister. No-one really knows what the two were thinking or what they spoke, but the meeting between them at Hunsdon House ended with Mary moving back to court, and a few months later Edward gave her a dukedom[7].
While Mary returned to living away from court later on, and would only periodically return to visit, the two siblings remained relatively close until her death in 1561.
Sickly from 1553 until the end of his life, Edward VI died at the age of 31 in July 16th, 1569, from what was probably him finally giving in to consumption after their many years together. Outlived by all but one of his children, Edward VI was succeeded by his only surviving son, the nine-years-old Henry IX.
Jane Grey would outlive her husband by 35 years, dying in the early years of the 17th century, and would serve as Queen Regent to their son and then sit on the Regency Council for their grandson, and live to see their daughter, and eldest child, become England (and Ireland)’s first Queen Regnant.
[1] the matter of the titles of the monarch of Ireland was a contentious one during Edward VI's adult reign (as well as at least parts of those of his children), as although officially “King of Ireland”, the nature of the title as a very recent one resulted on various vassals (both nominal or not) referring to the monarch as “Lord of Ireland” during their dealings and diplomacy with his deputies, although by the end of the 16th century the title “King/Queen of Ireland” had become the sole one being used
[2] Elizabeth (and, when ordered by her, Robert) never revealed the exact date of the elopement, and only said that it was after her 18th birthday and early enough that her son was conceived in holy matrimony
[3] Jane was the first woman in the Peerage of England to inherit a dukedom on her own right, the story of how that happened begging with Lady Frances Brandon, Jane's mother and the eldest daughter and surviving child of Princess Mary, younger sister of Henry VIII, and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk (of the second creation), who, when her half-brothers, the 2nd and 3rd dukes, died in 1551 (only hours form each-other), became the seniormost descendant of the 1st duke even if his title became extinct.
Now, as Lady Frances was of royal descent and her husband, Lord Henry Grey, a high-ranking peer, having inherited the Marquessate of Dorset from his father in 1530 as its 3rd Marquess, and a member of Edward VI’s regency council, it was decided to make said husband the first Duke of Suffolk of a third creation through Frances’ personal right to the title, with Henry Grey being granted the title on October 11th, 1551, at the same ceremony where John Dudley was made the “1st Duke of Northumberland”.
Although the couple was relatively young (both Henry and Frances being in their mid-30s), they lacked any surviving sons and had seen a relatively long between the births of their three daughters, resulting on the decision for Henry’s letters patent to establish that, should he died without male heirs, the title would be inherited by his eldest daughter, Jane, although the title of “Marquess of Dorset” would not be included in her “theoretical” inheritance as it had no , having instead Henry’s younger brother, John, as its presumptive heir.
Interestingly, this single stipulation, creating a semi-salic succession to the dukedom, resulted on, in the following years and decades, the gradual normalization of new peerages being created already semi-salic, which culminated on a royal act retroactively making all hereditary titles semi-salic in inheritance
Although Jane’s parents weren’t old and continued trying to have children, she in the end inherited her father’s dukedom only a few months after becoming Queen, when her father died in an accident while hunting with the royal couple (causing Jane to forswear any kind of hunting and even most outdoors physical activities).
Frances, now a widow, remarried a few years later to her Master of the Horse, Adrian Stokes, and had with him some happy and rather fruitful 20 years together
[4] the future Queen consort Isabella of Spain
[5] by her first marriage the Countess of Essex, by birth Lady Lettice had the strange status of both being and not-being King Edward VI's cousin, as her mother, Catherine Carey, was the niece of Queen Anne Boleyn through her sister, Mary Boleyn, and as such Lettice was by blood the first cousin once removed of his sister Elizabeth. A relatively-considerable number of modern historians believe that Catherine Carey was actually a biological child of Henry VIII, as she was born around the time her mother was Henry's mistress, if those historians are correct, then Lettice was Edward’s biological half-niece
[6] At some point in late 1555 or early 1556, Lady Mary had some species of emotional breakdown, which she later told was due to a mix of an epiphany over her own life and anguish/jealousy over her own wishes for a family in light of the at the time recent birth of her brother’s eldest daughter, and ended-up getting, as some would say, “plastered” before bedding one of her servants
[7] the Dukedom of Buckingham is often considered probably the English peerage with the most unusual laws in regards to its inheritance, as, due to the boy’s birth out of wedlock, Edward VI established the dukedom’s remainder as being “to the heirs of the 1st Duke’s body by any means begotten”, meaning that, unlike any other English peerage, the dukedom is passable through both legitimate and illegitimate lines
or... What if Edward VI had lived twice as long
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Foreword
Hi, to some people this TL might already be known, and for them my only declaration is that I've finally decided to make a thread for this thing instead of holding it on the Infoboxes, Alternate Monarchs/Lineages and Maps threads, and that they'll notice that I have done some updating and revisioning of some aspects of the TL itself (which I am grateful to @Kellan Sullivan for, we may have started in a rather rocky situation but I'm truly floored and immensely grateful for your help in not only revising the genealogy of the earlier generations but in a major way reviving the TL for me).
And for those curious about the name, it comes from a line on the threat "List of Monarchs III" that I started with the same premise as this TL back in July 2020, with credit going to (I think) @Premier Taylerov for adding the name to it (which got lodged into my brain as a perfect one for this TL)
Finally, for those who have no idea what's this, "The Cold-Hearted Swot" is a TL that I sort-of-started in the middle of July, 2020, with a bundle of infoboxes without any writing on them, and that I posted about through the later half of that year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Premise
Although a compelling argument can be most certainly made that the POD was a while before that, the specific premise of this TL is that Edward VI (the eponymous "Cold-Hearted Swot"), instead of dying at age 15 in 1553 from what was probably tuberculosis*, lived until the ripe old age of 31 as a sickly man, marrying Jane Grey and having children who continued, through a way or another, the Tudor Dynasty, resulting on a completely changed world by the timeline's present.
For those wondering, the date that is used as the "present" for this timeline is January 1st, 2031, (or a full decade later than the date used in the original)
*For the context of the TL, Edward VI contracted tuberculosis (often called "consumption" even in modern times ITTL) in 1553 after fighting a bout of both measles and smallpox the year before which weakened him to the point of being incapable of fighting the disease (other theories I have seen say he died of acute bronchopneumonia, which that led to lung abscess, septicemia and kidney failure, or that he was poisoned), with the idea here being that, through sheer dumb luck (and possibly a lack of poisoning in an attempt to hasten death), his immune system, instead of giving in, shouldered on for the good part of two decades.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and now, The Cold Hearted Swot himself, Edward the Sixth
Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 16 July 1569) was King of England and Ireland[1] from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1569, being crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII by his third wife, Jane Seymour, being his only surviving legitimate son, and England and Ireland's first monarch to be raised as a Protestant. He is held by most Brittanic Churches as one of the "Royal Saints of the Isles", being traditionally commemorated on 30 January.
Born to his father after decades of Henry VIII hungering for a male heir, although his mother only lived for a week following her son's christening, Edward VI was at birth and on his early years a remarkably healthy and strong child, although with a generally poor eyesight and surviving a bout of malaria at age four. Although remembered in modern times as sickly all his life, Edward only came to be so in 1553 when, after having contracted measles and smallpox the year before, he became ill with consumption and nearly died during a year-long war against the disease, and, although recovering, Edward VI was permanently affected by the illness, being often bedridden during the second half of his life.
A child when he ascended to the throne, a regency council was supposed to govern the realm from 1547 until Edward's majority in 1553, being first led by the king's maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (1547-1549), and then by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick (later made Duke of Northumberland in 1551), but Edward VI's drawn-out fight with consumption through what was supposed to be the regency's last year meant that it was de facto extended until the beginnings of 1555.
Although the regency years are often remembered for their economic problems and social and religious unrest, which erupted into riot and rebellion in 1549, as well as by an expensive war with Scotland (which saw the loss of Boulogne-Sur-Mer for England and a total withdrawal from Scotland), and are characterized by scheming and power-grabbing by regents and councilmembers, modern historians now prefer to take a more moderate approach to those years, seeing them as instead being divided by the disastrous "Somerset Protectorate" while Northumberland's tenure is often seen as being, while not prosperous, a general return to normalcy and peace.
The Northumberland Regency was, though, in a way marred by not only Edward VI's near death but by two scandals involving the personal lives of both the Royal Family and Northumberland's. The first was when the king's middle sister, then simply "The Lady Elizabeth", gave birth in middle 1552 to a son – named Edward in his uncle's honor – and, when asked who had fathered her "bastard", revealed that the child was, in fact, born in wedlock, and that she had eloped[2] with Lord Robert Dudley, Northumberland's fifth son.
Although the scandal resulted on the couple's temporary banishment to Ireland, Northumberland himself survived it relatively unscathed (Edward recognized the duke's lack of involvement, and would soon-enough himself forgive his sister and brother-in-law for the entire affair), and after that the next one came only in 1554, when, still bedridden but relatively safe from death, Edward VI married his paternal first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, heiress suo jure of the Dukedom of Suffolk.[3]
Now, if the marriage was simply that, a scandal would most certainly not have happened, and, instead, the scandal came from the fact that not only Edward VI himself was betrothed to a French princess[4], which would result on a minor "staring contested" between them and England, but Jane herself was also betrothed, in this case to Northumberland's second-youngest son, Guilford, who, as a companion and friend of the king, was actually one of the witnesses of the marriage, performed by Thomas Cranmer.
Many historians believe that Edward himself had long been in love with his cousin, with whom he had been in some level of friendship since childhood, and that those feelings had been equally requited by Jane, but that until his near-death experience the king had resigned himself to never act upon them due to their obligations as king and heiress, with his brush with death causing Edward to decide on following on his father's footsteps and marry the woman he desired to be with.
When compared to Henry VIII and his own marital life, though, Edward VI had a much happier and successful one, with him and Jane remaining together until his death and having six children, five of whom survived to adulthood. His only known extramarital affair, had with Lady Lettice Knollys[5] from late 1560 to early 1564, was in a major part sprouted from the fact that the birth of the future Henry IX in 1560 nearly killed the queen and caused Edward to refrain from bedding her for the following few years, with Lettice herself being only chosen as a mistress due to her being one of the queen's closest ladies-in-waiting, one of her friends, and almost uncomfortably outspoken of her fervent loyalty to her.
Although of a fascination over the military arts, in that area Edward VI focused inward, and invested in the development of England’s defenses instead of in entering foreign endeavors or satiating foreign ambitions, believing them to have too great of a chance of being either disastrous or pyrrhic to even try, and while his father founded the Royal Navy and his wife and children made it a true strength, he is credited with fortifying the shores of England from outside invasions.
Edward VI also has as part of his legacy the defenses of the Pale of Calais, who, ironically, he was not quiet about considering an economic burden so great that it often outshined any kind of economic advantage it granted England, with many believing that the main reason behind his investment in the pale’s defense was the fact that Edward VI hoped to make it less of a nuisance to protect by making it a greater nuisance to even attack. Although much of the Pale’s fortifications were destroyed by the Conquest in 1884, their ruins and the memories of the Last Siege of Calais serve as a permanent reminder of Edward VI’s work there.
In Ireland Edward VI’s reign is mainly remembered for the actions of his sister, Elizabeth, who, even before her “pardon” in September of 1553, decided to make herself into a diplomat and middle-man between her brother and the various de facto independent lords and princes of Ireland, using her unique sort of Tudor charisma to ingrain herself among the local aristocracy, establishing a foundation to the true entrance of the remaining uncontrolled parts of the island into the Kingdom of Ireland later in the 16th century. Although it was only many years after his death, Elizabeth became Edward’s de facto deputy in Dublin by the end of the 1550s, and would work with him also in expanding Protestantism through Ireland, which was still firmly of a Catholic majority.
And it is on the area of religion that Edward VI is most remembered for, as he not only was the first of England and Ireland’s monarchs to be raised a true Protestant, but it was he who reigned over the real turn of England to Protestantism. Under Henry VIII, the Church of England, while severed from Rome, had never renounced Catholic doctrine or ceremony, with it being under Edward VI that it transformed into a recognizably protestant body.
Interestingly, though, while many of those reforms were established early into Edward’s reign, in special during the Duke of Somerset’s protectorate, it was during the course of the following two decades that those reforms settled in with the population, gained new companions, or were changed in part due to the King’s own changing views on religion.
Edward VI himself was a rather unrelenting individual in relation to religion, and, while he did take some interestingly compensatory turns, in relation to desecrated or destroyed religious buildings and institution, Edward VI is still remembered for his dedication to stamping out Catholicism in England, which saw the Brother’s Revolt and Burning of East Anglia in the 1560s.
In Cornwall and Wales Edward also used of propaganda and indoctrination in his attempts to sway the local populations to Protestantism, although many also credit his wife with the idea, and as part of that endeavor he commissioned official translations of the Bible, and later the Book of Common Prayer, to Cornish and Welsh.
In Ireland, as mentioned before, Edward VI, is remembered for his work with his sister in spreading the reformation, often serving as the monetary backer for her efforts in doing so, taking from the royal coffers and estates to fund the translation, printing and spreading of the bible in Irish Gaelic.
Outside of his conjugal life and religion, Edward VI’s personal life and relationships is a matter that is often misrepresented and debated. Unlike what is often believed, Edward VI was a relatively gregarious individual most of the time, being known in special for being, even after 1553, a surprisingly charming and endearing individual, being marked by having an almost incredibly ease to make friends, even if he was known for having only a few with whom he was truly close.
Among his friendships, though, Edward VI’s most famous and remembered one is that which he had with Barnaby Fitzpatrick, 2nd Baron Upper Ossory. Childhood companions, the two shared a deep attachment for their entire lives, with Edward freely admitting as an adult that the bond he had with Barnaby was only comparable to the one he had with his wife.
Especially in Edward’s later years, Barnaby was one of the few people who made him actually seem pleased with or enjoy things, and as he became frailer and bedridden the two would often spend entire days and night in the king’s quarters playing cards, joking around, doing governmental work, or even simply spending time together.
Within his family, Edward was known for having a deep admiration for his father, whom he lost early in life, and an complicated relationship with his sisters, whom he grew-up close to and was openly caring but whom he often bashed heads and personalities with.
As a child it is often said that Edward VI had a species of rivalry with his sister Elizabeth, with whom he often felt the need to “match” in the matter of his own education and learning, and as adults the two often involved themselves in matches of wit and planning as a way to stack-up on eachother. During Edward VI’s early reign, the two are also remembered for having a period of a great estrangement between them, caused in great part by the events surrounding Lord Thomas Seymour, and it was only following her scandal and his convalescence that their relationship recovered.
With his sister Mary, Edward’s relationship was even more complex and tumultuous at times, as he grew up seeing her, in a way, as a surrogate mother, and while often times priggish in his opinions about her religion, going as far as (mainly during the early 1550s) threatening Mary with retaliatory actions on the matter, as he grew older Edward strangely came to resign himself to never truly acting, and with time not even really commenting, on his sister’s religious position, while Mary herself chose to over time not think about the gigantic elephant in the room between them.
To many the point that showed (or possibly motivated) that development was in 1555, when Lady Mary, then 39, became pregnant out of wedlock[6]. Although silent when he heard the news, the king answered them a few weeks later (some weeks of tense uncertainty among both his court and whatever parts of Europe had already heard of the situation) by personally riding to visiting his sister. No-one really knows what the two were thinking or what they spoke, but the meeting between them at Hunsdon House ended with Mary moving back to court, and a few months later Edward gave her a dukedom[7].
While Mary returned to living away from court later on, and would only periodically return to visit, the two siblings remained relatively close until her death in 1561.
Sickly from 1553 until the end of his life, Edward VI died at the age of 31 in July 16th, 1569, from what was probably him finally giving in to consumption after their many years together. Outlived by all but one of his children, Edward VI was succeeded by his only surviving son, the nine-years-old Henry IX.
Jane Grey would outlive her husband by 35 years, dying in the early years of the 17th century, and would serve as Queen Regent to their son and then sit on the Regency Council for their grandson, and live to see their daughter, and eldest child, become England (and Ireland)’s first Queen Regnant.
[1] the matter of the titles of the monarch of Ireland was a contentious one during Edward VI's adult reign (as well as at least parts of those of his children), as although officially “King of Ireland”, the nature of the title as a very recent one resulted on various vassals (both nominal or not) referring to the monarch as “Lord of Ireland” during their dealings and diplomacy with his deputies, although by the end of the 16th century the title “King/Queen of Ireland” had become the sole one being used
[2] Elizabeth (and, when ordered by her, Robert) never revealed the exact date of the elopement, and only said that it was after her 18th birthday and early enough that her son was conceived in holy matrimony
[3] Jane was the first woman in the Peerage of England to inherit a dukedom on her own right, the story of how that happened begging with Lady Frances Brandon, Jane's mother and the eldest daughter and surviving child of Princess Mary, younger sister of Henry VIII, and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk (of the second creation), who, when her half-brothers, the 2nd and 3rd dukes, died in 1551 (only hours form each-other), became the seniormost descendant of the 1st duke even if his title became extinct.
Now, as Lady Frances was of royal descent and her husband, Lord Henry Grey, a high-ranking peer, having inherited the Marquessate of Dorset from his father in 1530 as its 3rd Marquess, and a member of Edward VI’s regency council, it was decided to make said husband the first Duke of Suffolk of a third creation through Frances’ personal right to the title, with Henry Grey being granted the title on October 11th, 1551, at the same ceremony where John Dudley was made the “1st Duke of Northumberland”.
Although the couple was relatively young (both Henry and Frances being in their mid-30s), they lacked any surviving sons and had seen a relatively long between the births of their three daughters, resulting on the decision for Henry’s letters patent to establish that, should he died without male heirs, the title would be inherited by his eldest daughter, Jane, although the title of “Marquess of Dorset” would not be included in her “theoretical” inheritance as it had no , having instead Henry’s younger brother, John, as its presumptive heir.
Interestingly, this single stipulation, creating a semi-salic succession to the dukedom, resulted on, in the following years and decades, the gradual normalization of new peerages being created already semi-salic, which culminated on a royal act retroactively making all hereditary titles semi-salic in inheritance
Although Jane’s parents weren’t old and continued trying to have children, she in the end inherited her father’s dukedom only a few months after becoming Queen, when her father died in an accident while hunting with the royal couple (causing Jane to forswear any kind of hunting and even most outdoors physical activities).
Frances, now a widow, remarried a few years later to her Master of the Horse, Adrian Stokes, and had with him some happy and rather fruitful 20 years together
[4] the future Queen consort Isabella of Spain
[5] by her first marriage the Countess of Essex, by birth Lady Lettice had the strange status of both being and not-being King Edward VI's cousin, as her mother, Catherine Carey, was the niece of Queen Anne Boleyn through her sister, Mary Boleyn, and as such Lettice was by blood the first cousin once removed of his sister Elizabeth. A relatively-considerable number of modern historians believe that Catherine Carey was actually a biological child of Henry VIII, as she was born around the time her mother was Henry's mistress, if those historians are correct, then Lettice was Edward’s biological half-niece
[6] At some point in late 1555 or early 1556, Lady Mary had some species of emotional breakdown, which she later told was due to a mix of an epiphany over her own life and anguish/jealousy over her own wishes for a family in light of the at the time recent birth of her brother’s eldest daughter, and ended-up getting, as some would say, “plastered” before bedding one of her servants
[7] the Dukedom of Buckingham is often considered probably the English peerage with the most unusual laws in regards to its inheritance, as, due to the boy’s birth out of wedlock, Edward VI established the dukedom’s remainder as being “to the heirs of the 1st Duke’s body by any means begotten”, meaning that, unlike any other English peerage, the dukedom is passable through both legitimate and illegitimate lines
