Stephen Alford. Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 233 pp. + 6 b/w pls. index, tbls. bibl. $55. ISBN: 0-521-66055-6.

The reign of Edward VI can no longer claim to be a neglected period of Tudor historiography. W.K. Jordan's two-volume biography, which amplified the traditional "good duke, bad duke" dichotomy, prompted a revisionist reversal of the two stereotypes led by Barrett Beer, Michael Bush, and Dale Hoak, but none of their works focused on the King himself. That changed in 1999 with Jennifer Loach's posthumous biography in the Yale English Monarchs series and Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. Now the recent publication of Stephen Alford's Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI leads the reviewer to ask whether we really need another study of this short reign. Alford amply demonstrates that we do, because where earlier scholars examined bureaucratic structures and saw years of instability and factional strife, he studied how politics actually worked and discovered a surprising degree of continuity and stability.

Alford begins by examining the nature of kingship as it was taught to the young king in his classroom and sermons at court. These taught him to take counsel from the godly, but that he was answerable only to God. His task was to continue his father's reform by bringing God's word to his subjects. Although Stephen Gardiner would object that the church bequeathed by Henry VIII required the supremacy of king-in-parliament, Edward was taught to see himself as much an emperor and supreme head as his father had been.

Acknowledging that there would always be tension between theory and practice when the emperor was a child, Alford next examines the dynamics of the years of Somerset's protectorate, asking what did the protector's fellow councillors expect him to do. He concludes that it was neither Somerset's assumption of authority nor his governing through his personal household that they objected to, but his high-handed exercise of that authority. He refused to take advice, openly taunting other members of the Privy Council, and when he failed to maintain justice, the council withdrew its support, and he was doomed. Alford concludes, "The protectorate had not failed, but Edward Seymour had" (99).

For Alford, the next four years were the formative years of Edward's kingship, and he sees in them stability and the gradual emergence of a maturing king. Cecil was central to that stability. Previously Somerset's personal servant, he engineered the fall of Bishop Gardiner, and thereby made the transition to royal service as principal secretary. One of Alford's particular strengths is his detailed explorations of the network of family ties and "Cambridge connections" which Cecil was able to call upon.

This approach leads A/ford to observe a maturing king beginning to assert himself. For this reason he places heavy emphasis on a proposed council of the estate, which would bring together elements of the Privy Council and Privy Chamber as well as members of the royal household to examine the problems facing the realm and advise the king weekly. Alford's emphasis on this body allows him to solve the Somerset-Northumberland dichotomy which has haunted the historiography of the reign for years. Dudley emerges less the ambitions manipulator striving to assume the protector's mantle, but rather as a faithful servant grooming the young king to take command. Alford's Somerset had a flaw which led him to try to reassert his control, and this attempt was incompatible with Edward's emerging power. Finally, he affirms that it was Edward's sense of his own responsibility which led him to the desperate scheme to divert the succession to Lady Jane, not the scheming Dudley. Ironically, Alford suggests, had Northumberland acted as the "bad duke" as legend had it, the scheme might have worked. By 1553 the system did not work without the king.

Alford concludes his study by looking to the early years of Elizabeth's reign when many of the same men who had guided the young king reemerged into political life. Not surprisingly they proceeded to refashion their old networks of trust based upon kinship, friendship, and a common outlook on the problems facing the new queen.

ROBERT C. BRADDOCK

Saginaw Valley State University