WI: Edward VI has recovered?

Henry VIII had a son, Prince Edward, who became Kind Edward VI at the age of nine, and died of some sickness or other at the age of fifteen. But what might have happened if Edward had recovered from his illness, and lived long enough to have a meaningful reign in and of himself, rather than via a regency council? Let's suppose he lives to the age of at least 30. What would seem to be probable results?
 
A much more "Protestant" England with a much more thorough Reformation. Unlike Henry VIII who was a Catholic who didn't like the Pope and who kept the Anglican Church Catholic in doctrine if not in obedience to Rome Edward VI was a very pious Protestant.
 
Henry VIII had a son, Prince Edward, who became Kind Edward VI at the age of nine, and died of some sickness or other at the age of fifteen. But what might have happened if Edward had recovered from his illness, and lived long enough to have a meaningful reign in and of himself, rather than via a regency council? Let's suppose he lives to the age of at least 30. What would seem to be probable results?

There is a discussion of what would have happened if Edward VI had lived longer in Richard Rex, *The Tudors,* pp. 129-130. (Rex, Director of Studies in History at Queens' College, Oxford, offers several interesting counterfactuals in this book.)

"Had Edward VI survived, the history of England and of Europe would have been vastly different. Although Mary Tudor, like many others as Catholic as she, persuaded herself that the Protestant Reformation was little more than a self-seeking conspiracy by a Court cabal, and that Edward would repudiate it upon attaining his majority, she was quite wrong. That is not to deny that the Protestant Reformation in England was a self-seeking conspiracy by a Court cabal--even dedicated Protestants like Hugh Latimer and Thomas Lever said as much, in sermons preached to the Court!--but it was much, much more. For a start, it was an evangelical religious movement offering a new heaven and a new earth, capable of inspiring its followers to virtuous lives and heroic deaths. As Mary was to find, the removal of the cabal and the withdrawal of royal support did not mean that Protestantism would simply melt away like a morning frost. Even more important, Protestantism was in a real sense Edward's religion. There was no way that he would have repudiated it had he grown up. And once the young zealot had taken personal control of his government, there is every reason to believe that the Protestant politics of Somerset and Northumberland would have been the keynote of his reign. He had been groomed by Cranmer, Somerset, and Northumberland to be the champion of European Protestantism, a sort of evangelical crusader. Even allowing him the modest life expectancy of his father and grandfather, around fifty years, he might have ruled England until the 1580s.

"A solidly Protestant England, united under a vigorous Tudor king, would have been well placed to take advantage of the religious and political chaos which spread through France and the Netherlands in the later sixteenth century. Of course, not even under a vigorous and mature king could England have threatened the hegemony of Spain under Philip II. But it would certainly have shifted the balance of power, it would probably have driven Spanish power back to the Pyrenees, and it might possibly have established the total dominance of Protestantism in Northern Europe. With England's political leadership and full royal support for the international vision of Thomas Cranmer, who under these circumstances would have become the veritable patriarch of European Protestantism, the history of Protestantism itself might have been very different, a solid ecclesiastical block in the north ranged against the Catholicism of the south and the Orthodoxy of the east. As for England itself, thirty years under a king as zealous as Edward would have resulted in a Protestantism as dour and grey as anything ever seen in Scotland or Switzerland. 'Merry England' would have come to an even more complete and sudden end. There would have been no more cakes and ale, no Shakespeare, no Anglican choral tradition... The future of England, to use some words at this time still to be coined, would have been not 'Anglican' but 'Puritan". Yet it was not to be. For Mary Tudor would in fact inherit the throne, and would thus save not only English Catholicism, but even much that would later be part of Anglicanism, much that we find it difficult to conceive the history of England without..."

For a slightly skeptical view of some of Rex's counterfactuals, see the review in *Times Higher Education*
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=173512

"Rex poses some plausible counter-factuals: had Henry VIII died six months earlier, England would have remained a Catholic country; had Edward VI lived, England would not only have become thoroughly Protestant ('as dour and grey as anything ever seen in Scotland or Switzerland'), but it might have led a Protestant northern Europe against the Catholic south.

"This sense of contingency, depending on the particular views and experiences of monarchs and on the kaleidoscopic shifts of faction, is certainly the emergent orthodoxy of England's long 'Reformations'. But the argument may undermine itself. Would a Catholic Privy Council really have managed to sideline Edward VI's Protestantism, inculcated by evangelical
education? Equally, if Catholicism was so popular at ground level (an essential building block in the now-orthodox revisionist argument), then surely implementing a thorough Protestantisation would not have been so easy even for a long-lived Edward VI?

"Indeed, Rex does not push his luck where Mary is concerned, given that she was unlikely to bear children and so would have eventually been succeeded by Elizabeth anyway. He resists the temptation to offer a vision of a Catholic England to match his peroration on Edward, contenting himself instead with the conclusion that, while 'she did not save England for Roman Catholicism', she 'saved Roman Catholicism in England' because she 'stopped the rot'.

"Perhaps, indeed, some sort of compromise such as the Anglicanism that emerged under Elizabeth was the only possible solution. Elizabeth recognised what neither her father nor her siblings could accept - that securing uniform inner conversion to a single religious outlook was impossible and was a recipe for endless division. Insisting only on outward conformity offered the sole hope of some stability after three decades of traumas. Perhaps Rex implicitly acknowledges this necessity, in that his account of the Elizabethan settlement takes on a greater air of inevitability than some historians would accept..."
 
"Perhaps, indeed, some sort of compromise such as the Anglicanism that emerged under Elizabeth was the only possible solution. Elizabeth recognised what neither her father nor her siblings could accept - that securing uniform inner conversion to a single religious outlook was impossible and was a recipe for endless division. Insisting only on outward conformity offered the sole hope of some stability after three decades of traumas. Perhaps Rex implicitly acknowledges this necessity, in that his account of the Elizabethan settlement takes on a greater air of inevitability than some historians would accept..."

I really disagree with this element. I think if you look at Scandinavia you see that where a country went solidly Protestant and stayed that wayed without having a the succession of religious changes England endured sooner or later you get near uniformity.
 
Um...the Scandinavian kingdoms were far more absolutist than England ever was. Another thing, Sweden had a flirtation with Catholicism post-Reformation, it's called Sigismund III Vasa, who tried to impose the "True Faith" on the Swedes. So, they revolted and sent him packing (this is in brief summary), and the Vasas of Poland spent until the Deluge trying to get Sweden back.

And secondly, IIRC, both Sweden and Norway objected to crowning Desirée Clary and Josephine de Beauharnais of Leuchtenberg, due to the fact that they were Catholic (and that was in the 19th century).
 
You've got the cart before the horse. In 1500 the idea that England under Henry VII was less absolutist than pretty much anywhere in Western Europe was risible. The reason England developed a Parliamentary tradition and a relatively weak monarchy was because of the its religious and royal turmoil that kept successive monarchs vulnerable and dependent on Parliament. A Edward VI who inherits Hervy VIII's (probably the most absolute King England ever had) powers would be as absolute as any Vasa if not more.
 
You've got the cart before the horse. In 1500 the idea that England under Henry VII was less absolutist than pretty much anywhere in Western Europe was risible. The reason England developed a Parliamentary tradition and a relatively weak monarchy was because of the its religious and royal turmoil that kept successive monarchs vulnerable and dependent on Parliament. A Edward VI who inherits Hervy VIII's (probably the most absolute King England ever had) powers would be as absolute as any Vasa if not more.

Meetings of Parliament in the 16th Century: 1504, 1510, 1512-1514, 1515, 1523, 1529-1536 (accomplishing most of the work of the initial Reformation in England), 1539-1540, 1542-1544, 1545-1547, 1547-1552, 1553 (March), 1553 (October-December), 1554, 1554-1555, 1558, 1559, 1563-1567, 1571, 1572-1583, 1584-1585, 1586-1587, 1589, 1593, 1597-1598

Meetings of the French Estates-General in the 16th Century: 1560, 1561, 1576, 1588, 1593 (this last called by the Catholic League in opposition to the King)

At a time when, in many places, the medieval representative institutions were falling into decrepitude, they remained fairly strong in England.
 
One word, taxes, the king could not raise large sums of money without parliment and Henny viii was up to his eyballs in debt. That (as charles found out to.his cost) let parliment rain in the king by refusing money. Even Charles attempt to rule alone fell apart fairly quickly as he could not raise enough revenue once exceptional circumstances (war ) came along.
 
The Tudor monarchs (especially Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I) generally made a policy of using Parliament (as well as the Privy Council) as the venue through which they governed. I get the impression it started out through Henry VII being sensitive to his position of having obtained the throne through the use of force and needing to build an air of legitimacy for his policies any way he could, and afterwards Henry VIII and Elizabeth both needed to put as much legitimacy as they could behind their respective religious and foreign policies.

Parliament was a rubber stamp for much of this period, but the reliance on that rubber stamp to legitimize controversial policies and administrations fed the perceived importance of Parliament as an institution and opened the door for Parliament to actually exercise power by placing conditions on its grants of approval.
 
Hhmm, so you avoid Mary I altogether and put Elizabeth I's reign back a decade if you have him live to be thirty. Of course Elizabeth possibly goes completely out the window if Edward VI manages to marry and have any sons in the intervening fifteen years. Not liking the idea of an early puritan monarch though.
 
At a time when, in many places, the medieval representative institutions were falling into decrepitude, they remained fairly strong in England.

They remained frequent, that's not the same as powerful. The Tudor Parliaments under Henry VII, VIII and Edward VI were rubber stamps, useful rubber stamps but none the less rubber stamps. And while the English Parliament was called more frequently than the Estate General I'd personally say that on balance it was more compliant than the Estates General.
 
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