Edward VI Among the Women

like his sweet mother. The boy is so thin from illness that you would have to squint for him to look anything like his famously large, hearty father. Still, the boy has enough energy to call his counsel to him, telling them that there's something that he has to do. After all, he's not dead yet. The counselors exchange glances. What the sick boy is asking them to do might be treasonous, But then again, maybe that's not possible, because this is not just any mortally ill boy. The boy

is the King of England. The judges and council must obey his commands and sign the order of succession. This boy demands that cuts out the boy's two sisters, upending the explicit desires of his father, Henry the Eighth, who looms large in the room. Despite his death six years prior, Henry the Eighth had been able to declare his plan for the line of succession back when he was alive.

He wanted his son and then his daughter his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and then his daughter by Anne Boleyn. But if Henry the Eighth had been allowed to make the line of succession back when he was king, well, now that Edward the sixth was king, he could decide the line of succession for himself. He could amend his late father's plans. The councilman nod grimacing slightly. If this plan should go awry, well, this ill boy would soon be dead, and they, the signers, would be the ones

considered treasonous and left to face the consequences. Still, at this moment, he is their king. The boy holds his handkerchief to his mouth and takes it away, revealing blood. If this was a movie, the meaning in that imagery would be very clear. It's June fifteen fifty three in Greenwich, England, on the banks of the Thames River. In one month,

King Edward the sixth will be dead. He will be remembered only as the short lived, barely reigning boy King of England, the much desired male heir that Henry the Eighth killed and divorced all those wives. For the story of Edward's father, King Henry the Eighth is well known

in the popular imagination. This podcast did a series on his six wives, according to the British nursery rhyme, now set to music in the Broadway musical six Divorced, Beheaded, died, divorced, Beheaded, survived the story of his sisters who came to the throne after him. Mary and Elizabeth are also famous. Mary would be known sometimes in history as Bloody Mary, champion of Catholicism. Elizabeth would, of course ring in the long

Golden Elizabethan age as the Virgin Queen. They Mary and Elizabeth were the first accepted women to rule England as Queen's But comparatively forgotten as he might be, there was actually one man in the middle of those famous figures, while not even a man really a boy, a son born to the beautiful Jane Seymour, wife of Henry the Eighth, and the one that he loved best, the only wife who died a natural death while still married to him. That little boy, their son, never got to grow up.

He is England's lost king, dead before his sixteenth birthday, barely a blip in English histories between the enormous stories of his father and his two sisters. But he had a story too. It was a story that ended fast and short, but a story that echoed and inverted his father's because Edward too was a man surrounded by women in a time when every dynasty needed a man. He loved his sisters, and yet he tried with everything he had to leave a legacy that did not include them.

I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. The story of Edward the sixth started on October twelfth, fifteen thirty seven, with England's King Henry the Eighth, a nervous wreck. Henry was a man of action who lived to jump onto his horses and ride out into a hunt. But for now all he could do was pace and wait. His third wife, Jane Seymour, was in her thirtieth hour of labor in Hampton Court Palace. King Henry had already divorced

one wife who had failed him, and beheaded another. Both had Lain in labor two and both had given him only daughters. He had whispered to this third wife's growing belly, Edward Edward. He had ensured no women or midwives would be present at the birth, only the best doctors, men, and sweet Jane Seymour, formerly Lady in waiting to his earlier queen, gave birth to a son, at last, the only thing Henry had wanted. She Jane would be the

best of all of his wives. Immediately, church bells clanged throughout London, two thousand rounds of ammunition shot from the tower guards, free wine and beer poured into the streets. A circular went out announcing the birth of a quote prince conceived in most lawful matrimony. Supposedly, the announcement was sent by Queen Jane, but the labor had been difficult and it's unlikely she'd have delivered the address. Still, the language in the announcement was notable. The king had deemed

his daughters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate. They were both born while he had been married to their mothers, Yes Mary from Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth from the Traitoress and Bolin. But in the end Henry had to deem each marriage illegitimate in order to continue on to the next marriage. With this child his son, there would be no question Edward was the most lawful. He was the heir. After baby Edward's birth, two royal gatherings took place in quick succession.

First Edward's christening, a most happy occasion. On October fifteenth, fifteen thirty seven, the King and Queen received guests in their bedchamber. Jane, dressed in velvet and fur, sitting on a pallette beside her husband. Edward's sister, Mary, aged twenty one at this point, was godmother. Edward's sister Elizabeth, only four years old, came in carrying the baptismal chrism the anointments for her brother. She was carried by Jane's brother,

Edward Seymour, remember that name. It was a joyous family scene for both little Edward and all of England. But nine days later, Jane Seymour died, and so began the second gathering in Edward's short life, the funeral ceremonies for his mother. His sister Mary was chief mourner. Edward and his mother had only shared the earth for twelve short days, but despite this early tragedy. Edward's childhood was mostly happy.

He seemed to love his sister's man and Elizabeth, who seemed to love him too, particularly the much older Mary. Both sisters were more welcomed into the fold by their father now that the male line of succession was assured. In Edward's diary, he wrote that he was brought up quote among the women until the age of six. He knew his wet nurse, dry nurse under nurse cradle Rockers, and his father was extremely protective. As a baby, Edward's room was scrubbed daily, dirty utensils and food were not

allowed near him, and his clothes tested for poison. You can understand why Henry was so careful, given all that he had to go through to get his precious son. Still little, Edward's childhood was far from sterile. Acrobats and tumblers performed for his entertainment. He watched bear's fight in his menagerie. His Mary would watch the minstrels with him, and she gave them rewards for delighting her younger brother. Edward didn't see his father often, but Henry doated on

him when they did see each other. In fifteen forty three, Henry married his sixth and final wife. I mean he wasn't so happy with a single male heir that he didn't divorce and behead two other wives during young Edward's childhood, and Edward had a good relationship with his final stepmother, Catherine Parr, whom he called his most dear mother. Edward also had an excellent and robust education in what was

then deemed the humanist tradition. He was very intelligent. He knew Latin and French, memorized and recited Aesop's fables, and Cato strengthened his skill at rhetorical argumentation by arguing both for and against war. He learned cartography, geography, and astronomy, and directed and acted in masks. Some claim that he had a photographic or at least idetic memory. This humanist education also meant he grew up Protestant, unlike his very

Catholic older sister Mary. Nevertheless, he wrote affectionate letters to both of his sisters. He and his sister Elizabeth, only four years older than him, had a playful rivalry that would be familiar to those of us who have siblings today. Academically, Edward promised quote to my utmost power, if not to

surpass at least to equal you in zeal And. As with much older siblings today whose texts we might not respond to quickly enough, Edward was warmer in his letters to his sister Mary, writing quote, although I do not frequently write to you, my dearest sister, I love you quite as well as if I had sent letters to you more frequently. I write to you rarely, yet I

love you most. Most of this good relationship with his sisters came about as a result of their father, Henry's Third Succession Act, passed in fifteen forty three, when Edward was five years old. The first Succession Act had removed Mary from the line of succession. The second had removed Elizabeth, but that had been before the male heir had existed. This third Act restored the girls to the line of succession,

behind Edward and any other children Henry might have. The order was Edward and his line of dissent any other children Henry might have, then Mary, then Elizabeth, and all that came to really matter. On January twenty eighth, in fifteen forty seven, nine year old Edward and thirteen year old Elizabeth were together in Hertfordshire when a messenger arrived with grim news their father was dead. Brother and sister might have wept together, but the time for grief was short.

They both knew what this meant. Edward, not yet ten years old, was going to be crowned king, and he needed to be ready to rule. Of course, Edward was still too young to rule on his own. His stepmother, Henry's final wife, Catherine Parr, had already started signing her letters as Queen Regent when she found out that she would not actually be regent at all, despite her wishes, and despite Henry's dying wishes, it would be Edward's uncle, Jane Seymour's brother also named Edward, who would be in

charge until the young Edward's eighteenth birthday. He had wanted a sixteen man regency council to rule equally until his son turned eighteen. Instead, Edward Seymour was named Lord Protector of the realm Duke of Somerset. For a while, this suited the young King. Edward just find his humanist schooling and his Protestant beliefs deepened apace. His sister Mary loved to give her little brother presents, and at new year's he could count on receiving a shirt that his sister

Elizabeth had made for him herself. He was content enjoying his family's doting and being king in name only, But as Edward grew older and closer to ruling fully on his own, tensions and threats were growing from three sources around him, from the natural world, from his own family, and from the Lord protector for the natural world, plague abounded. Two of his closest friends his own age died of

the sweating sickness. But it was the second problem his family where the rifts were really starting to show, specifically with Edward's older sister Mary, who'd showered him with gifts and whom he declared he loved most. The problem was she was incorrigibly Catholic. Edward, educated as a Protestant, was becoming more and more anti Catholic. At eleven years old, he spent eight months writing a treatise about Papal's supremacy, which makes him sound like he was a really fun kid.

Ever practicing his rhetoric, he argued both for and against the Pope until reaching his conclusion the Pope was quote the true son of the devil a bad man, an antichrist, not exactly the king inclusion a deeply Catholic sister would want her little brother to have. He told Mary several times over the years to knock it off with the Catholic Mass, sometimes criticizing her in front of his council, an occasion that would sometimes end with both of them crying.

But Mary wouldn't stop. In a diary entry marked March eighteenth, fifteen fifty one, Edward described a confrontation at Westminster when he that thirteen year old king called his thirty five year old sister to a meeting in front of his council. There, he declared that he'd suffered her mass for long enough and simply could not bear it anymore. This entry, by the way, makes a plus use of the passive voice. Edward writes, quote, it was said that I asked her

to obey she was called into a meeting. The little king wrote actively about himself plenty, but he didn't need a twenty first century English teacher to tell him that the passive voice is perfect when you don't quite want to take responsibility for the way you're humiliating your adult sister. Edward's growing frustrations with Mary did get superseded for a time by that pesky little third problem, his uncle, the

Duke of Somerset. His uncle was planning a coup. A lot went on here, but long story short, his uncle failed, and Edward's entire diary entry for January twenty second, fifteen fifty two is a kind of darkly hilarious one liner. The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon the Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning. That's it with the problem of his former lord protector

take care of. Edward may have thought his main concern would be Catholic Mary, but nature tends to rear its cruel head, and it was problem number one that ultimately showed up in another one line diary entry, which isn't funny at all. On April second, fifteen fifty two, Edward wrote, I fell sick with the measles and the smallpox. It was a relatively minor about of sickness at the start, but history hindsight is twenty twenty and so we looking

back know that's where Edward's real problems would begin. Where his father had been surrounded by wives and daughters, Edward had no wife and would never have one, nor would he have children. Edward was instead surrounded by his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and his cousins. Yes, even his cousins were all women, and they were all through the female line.

His cousin, Jane Gray, was his father's sister's granddaughter. Edward had grown up among the women in his infancy and early years, and he was among them again at the end of his life, at least as far as succession was concerned. Edward was well educated and knew his history. He knew that the crown of England had never successfully passed to a woman, and the closest it came was the incredibly disputed claim by the Empress Matilda four hundred

years before. Edward looked at his options. His sister Mary first, as his father had commanded in his third succession act. As a little brother. He had loved his big sister, but as king of England he had to contend with her Catholicism. Despite all of his warnings to her, she had stayed Catholic. And Edward was the boy who had called the Pope the Antichrist. He could not in good conscience leave England in her Catholic hands. Elizabeth was second

in his father's line of succession. There was nothing wrong with his second sister, per se. But Edward was also the boy who'd grown up learning rhetoric, arguing both sides of every issue. He was logical. How could he exclude Mary on the ground that she was illegitimate without claiming that Elizabeth was illegitimate too. After all, their father had only divorced Mary's mother, he had outright killed Elizabeth's mother and boln for treason. Edward couldn't logically allow Elizabeth to

reign either. So, ailing and aching, the little brother set about writing the final literary task of his short life. He called the docor he meant his device for the succession. Edward wrote about the lack of issue of his body. He wrote the term heirs male twelve times, as obsessed with the idea as his father had been before him. But no matter how many times he wrote what he desired, he had no heirs at all, male or not. So he named his cousin, Lady Jane Gray, his heir to

the throne. The judges of the King's Bench warned him it could be treason. He was directly contradicting his father's will, potentially directly contradicting a future queen. Edward, sick as he was, drew himself up to as imposing a height as he could manage, and reminded them who was currently King Mary, he said, could not be queen, she would destroy the

Protestant religion in England. He had to quote disown and disinherit her together with her sister Elizabeth, as though she were a bastard and had sprung from an illegitimate bed end. The judges relented, Edward was appeased. In portraits of Edward from babyhood to young adulthood, he is painted in the same red orange tunic as his father. His father was known to be a huge man, married six times in his fifty five years. Edward would die small and weakened,

never married forever a boy. Yet in the end, maybe there was a bit of his father in him. After all, Edward exerted his iron will over the women that he'd loved, women who'd loved him. He'd used his power to get rid of them at will. He'd spent his dying days ensuring that his sisters, at least in his mind, would never see the throne of England. Well spoiler alert, he failed. Edward's cousin, Lady Jane Gray, manipulated by the men around her, claimed the crown for a disputed nine days in July

of fifteen fifty three, and then lost her head. It was Edward's oldest sister, Mary who became the first accepted female queen of England, who reigned for five years, re establishing Catholicism with a violence that earned her the historical nickname but not altogether entirely accurate, Bloody Mary. After she died childless in fifteen fifty eight, Edward's other sister, Elizabeth, reigned for nearly fifty years, bringing England into the seventeenth

century as a Protestant nation. But in the early morning of July sixth, fifteen fifty three, all of that was so far ahead. Edward was born into the hands of male doctors, and he died in their hands too. Just as they couldn't help his mother, they couldn't help him. Edward's final days were painful. His fingers and toenails came loose, his skin turned purplish. He looked so bad that in his final appearance to the public in a window. Some onlookers thought that he was already dead by the time

he drew his last breath. Those around him could barely stand the stench of what came out of his lungs. An autopsy revealed that his lungs had two enormous ulcers. Many historians suspect he may have died of what we now know as tuberculosis, and that his measles of April fifteen fifty two, that had been jotted as just a note in his diary, was probably the cause. Measles can't

suppress immunity to tuberculosis. Mary had already fled by the time her little brother died, knowing full well that as soon as he died, she would be vulnerable to being captured. For the tumultuous month that followed Edward's death, when the line of succession was confused because of Edward's own machinations, his body laid unburied, waiting for the question of the

crown to be settled among the women who outlived him. Finally, on August eighth, fifteen fifty three, he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey in a vault that was two and a half feet wide by seven and a half feet long in unusually small vault by Kingley standards to this day in Westminster Abbey. He has only a small plaque on the ground marking his resting place. His sisters both loom much larger. They are buried in a tomb

together with each other. Edward's father, Henry the eighth, has company in death, sharing a vault with Edward's mother, Jane Seymour, the King's favorite. Also in the vault is King Charles the First and an infant child of Queen Anne. But the lost often forgotten boy, King Edward the sixth, the boy who never grew up, is not buried among the women. He is buried alone. That's the story of the lost boy King of England who gave way to Bloody Mary.

But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the diary that we quoted in this episode. I mentioned Edward's diary a few times in this story. That's because it's actually a really special historical document, the first private diary of a king in all of English and European history. But if you're expecting some really good, juicy details, you'll be disappointed. When I was nine years old, My diary chronicled my interactions with

my fourth grade crush Todd. But Edward's diary has almost no hint of an inner life at all. He started keeping it in fifteen forty seven, the year he became a king at age nine or ten years old, and it's clear he was aware he was chronicling history. He even called it his chronicle, meticulously writing sixty eight pages of text on eighty four leaves of paper in his neat italic handwriting. The diary is generally consider uttered boring,

like the driest daily calendar you've ever read. Lots of one line entries describing Flemish ships, the trade of tallow candles, detail less dinners with ambassadors, an entire entry that kind of hilariously reads the aforementioned proclamation was proclaimed. He even records his own mother's death in a tone that is

flat and refers to himself in the third person. The first sentence of his diary reads, in the year of our Lord fifteen thirty seven, a prince was born to King Henry the Eighth by Jane Seymour, then Queen, who within a few days after the birth of her son,

died and was buried at Windsor Castle. The words have no emotion, and so there's something kind of sad about this little boy, nine or ten and newly orphaned at the point his father recently dead, aware that he is the King of England, beginning a diary and starting with

those words, he's recording the death of the mother. He never knew with an awareness that history would be reading his words, that you or I would be reading or listening to those words someday, and that he, as King of England, should strip all emotion from his careful, doomed little boy hand. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio

and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

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