Henry VIII Dies: Edward VI Becomes Protestant King
Henry VIII died at Whitehall Palace on January 28, 1547, after thirty-eight years on the English throne. His nine-year-old son Edward VI inherited a kingdom that Henry had wrenched from papal authority, dissolved the monasteries, and remade in his own image. Edward's regency council, dominated by Protestant reformers led by his uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, immediately accelerated the English Reformation far beyond what Henry had intended. Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer replaced Latin services with English. Religious images were stripped from churches. Catholic practices were outlawed. Edward himself was a devout Protestant who took genuine interest in theology despite his youth. His reign lasted only six years before tuberculosis killed him at fifteen, but those six years embedded Protestantism so deeply into English institutional life that even Mary I's subsequent Catholic restoration could not permanently reverse it.
January 28, 1547
479 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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