304 pages, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN-13:
978-0312238308
A full
redressing of Edward VI and his reformation has been long overdue, which makes
Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Boy King:
Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation all the more notable in its
arrival. Precocious, opinionated, and infused with the spirit of a new Josiah,
Edward VI was nevertheless a cipher-king, important not so much for his own
contributions, but more for the energies and ambitions he unleashed in those around
him. Standing at the enigmatic center of a theological revolution (and dead at
the age of fifteen), Edward embodied promise both fulfilled and unfulfilled,
and anyone who wishes to come to terms with the English reformation(s) must
pass through him – or rather, the characters who claimed to represent him.
Based on a series of lectures delivered in 1998 at the University of Cambridge,
The Boy King incorporates not only
MacCulloch’s own work, but also a rich body of recent scholarship in the field;
as such, it is also sure to provoke further debate among historians on the
nature of the reformation as it was disseminated, received or experienced by
men and women across the realm.
MacCulloch
goes to great lengths to show how most events which make the pace of the reign
of Edward VI seem frantic were, in fact, prepared during the last years of
Henry VIII but had to be postponed upon his death. Even during his first year,
Edward’s establishment under the Duke of Somerset’s protectorate was
reluctantly forced to appease the Emperor Charles V, the majority of lay
politicians, and conservative bishops as powerful as Stephen Gardiner of
Winchester. After Somerset’s disgrace, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later
Duke of Northumberland, maintained a more consensual relationship with the
Lords, made peace with France and Scotland, and inaugurated a phase of
political reconstruction at home, thus permitting the evangelical revolution to
recover its pace. MacCulloch shows us that in England (as on the Continent) the
cost of being too specific on the Lord’s Supper was contrary to one’s
well-being, since the matter was admittedly of more importance to
traditionalists and evangelicals alike than justification by faith alone – and
also produced more martyrs. This helped to determine a very gradual, even
stealthy, accumulation of arguments and liturgical reforms up to 1550, although
at least Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer had much earlier
become convinced that the Lutheran doctrine of Christ’s real presence in the
Eucharist was as blasphemous as the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation (if
any of this sounds Greek to you, you’re not alone; MacCulloch does a pretty
good job in explaining what-is-what so as you don’t go to hell).
I found
that one of this book’s main attractions was that it conveyed a sense of
indebtedness to a very young and serious boy, a great promise that flickered brightly
for a while before dying before his time. Edward is portrayed as a real
believer, not just an immature tool of vested interests. Since he appears to
have been gifted with a more thoughtful and less egotistical character than his
father, it’s very possible that he would have grown up to be a great leader of
the Reformation and Cranmer could have finally convened the General Council of
Reformed Churches of which he dreamt. Regardless of how much Anglo-Catholicism
and theological liberalism alike have done to demolish the Edwardian heritage,
it’s possible that in a critical juncture – such as the one Anglicans worldwide
find themselves in today – MacCulloch’s closing lines might awaken their
concern: “Perhaps the Anglican Communion, most enigmatic member of the
Christian family of Churches, might show more gratitude for Edwardian mischief –
or at the very least, some remembrance and understanding”.
While he
may at times place too high an assessment on the positive qualities of Edward’s
reformation and their long-term influence, MacCulloch has written an engrossing
and vivid account of the Edwardian period, and one which must be read by all
who are interested in early modern England and the subsequent development of
its church. His is a correction of sorts – and a necessary one, too – to the
subsequent historiography which viewed the revolution unleashed over the course
of six years as negative, destructive and cynical. Much of this assessment, as
mentioned, has come from Anglicans, whose sacramentalist and
clericalist/episcopalist elements would in turn have been deplored by Cranmer,
Latimer and Ridley. But Anglicans nevertheless owe those six years of
revolution a debt, MacCulloch writes, for the “genuine idealism, the righteous
anger, and the excitement” which infused a movement and pointed the way,
however chaotically, to a different world.
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