Peter Marshall on Edward VI: how a nine-year-old made England Protestant

This episode is about what happened when Henry VIII died in 1547 and left the crown to his nine-year-old son, Edward VI. Everyone knows Henry broke with Rome so he could swap Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn. Fewer people know what he thought he was doing to the religion of England. Mostly, he thought he wasn't doing much at all. Catholicism without the Pope, business as usual. If you ignore the land grab that was the dissolution of the monasteries. Henry had set up a nicely balanced council to run things for his son. The balance barely survived the funeral, after which the king's uncle Edward Seymour made himself Lord Protector. Then the Protector's brother Thomas decided the best way to advance himself was by bribing the boy king with pocket money, marrying Henry's widow and groping (quite literally) his way towards treason via the Princess Elizabeth's bedroom. Once he turned his hand to minting his own coins he was executed. Meanwhile the religion of England was being turned upside down. Edward, far from being a passive child, was a precocious little zealot (the 'godly imp', as one admirer put it). Out went purgatory, the statues, the holy water and, biggest of all, the Latin Mass, replaced by a prayer book in good plain English. Not everyone was on board. A Devon parish sat through the new service and then told the priest to go back and do it again properly, in Latin this time. Within weeks the south west was in open rebellion while Norfolk had risen over enclosures. So the government brought in German and Italian mercenaries to, er, smooth things over. The Protector got the blame, largely for having tried to address the complaints rather than just killing everyone. He was understandably overthrown in a coup and went to the block in 1552. Peter Marshall is a terrific guest. His history of the English Reformation, Heretics and Believers, won the Wolfson Prize and I can't recommend it highly enough. By the end of this episode Protestant England looks unstoppable. Only one small problem. Edward has developed a cough. But this is only part one. Part two is Mary, and she thinks it is entirely stoppable.