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This article explores the ways in which parliament was used to shape the accelerating protestant reformation undertaken by successive governments under Edward VI. It underlines the significance for constitutional history of Thomas Cromwell's extraordinary promotion of England's parliament to enact the break with Rome and evangelical religious change, and the corresponding use of parliament after Cromwell's fall by conservatives to combat evangelical gains, which at first constituted an obstacle to Protector Somerset's plans. There was a steady deliberate erosion of conservative episcopal votes in the Lords through political manœuvres from 1547; nevertheless, up to late 1549, the weight of conservative opposition in the Lords (without much obvious corresponding traditionalist support in the Commons) dictated crabwise progress in legislation. The convocations of Canterbury and York played a more marginal role in religious change. Somerset's unsuccessful attempt at populist innovation in parliament was, arguably, an important element fuelling the coup against him in autumn 1549. Thereafter, events moved much more rapidly, aided by further compulsory retirements of bishops. Attention is drawn to the frustration felt by some enthusiastic evangelicals at the pace of change dictated by parliament, leading the prominent refugee, Jan Łaski, sarcastically to characterise the Edwardian Reformation in retrospect as 'parliamentary theology'. From late 1552, divisions between clergy and nobility in the evangelical leadership over plundering of church wealth led to confusion, ill will and the disruption of further progress, even before it was obvious that King Edward was rapidly dying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the seven years of Edward VI's reign, a variety of ideas about how best to reform the religious, economic, political, and social structures of the English commonwealth were devised, debated, and enacted. London's citizens and governors were increasingly occupied with developing legislative and institutional solutions for pressing social ills such as poverty and vagrancy: the question of how best to govern the commonwealth was not just a philosophical dilemma, but a practical concern. It was within this context that the first English translation of Thomas More's Utopia appeared in London. Published in 1551 by a group of citizens with a keen interest in social reform, the English Utopia may best be described as constituting an engagement with ideas of ‘good government’. This article draws on surviving evidence for the activities and concerns of Utopia's producers, and in particular the sponsor and instigator of the translation, George Tadlowe, in order to demonstrate that this publication represented a timely combination of humanist theory and political practice typical of the civic culture of the Edwardian reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses Kett's Rebellion of 1549 in Norfolk, England, using archival court records from both the manorial courts and county quarter sessions to explore the social pressures between lord and tenant that led to the uprising. Some of the subjects considered include the political and religious features of the reign of England's King Edward VI, the changing commercial and agrarian society of Norfolk in the sixteenth century, and the rise in prices for both land and produce set against static wages of the laboring classes.

In July 1549 the Oxfordshire commons rose in large number, and without gentry support. Somewhere in the region of several hundred armed participants marched from the south-east to the north-west of the county, pillaging parks as they went, until eventually retreating into the town of Chipping Norton. The principal catalyst for the 1549 rising seems, given the rebels’ targets and timing, to have been the common perception that the goods of the county's churches were about to be seized by the commissioners for church goods. Consequently, Oxfordshire's rebels did not head for London – they were not opposing religious reforms per se, but were contesting the Edwardian reforms as they had been imposed within their parishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the political and social ideas of Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of England in 1549. Charges brought against him by John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, in connection with a coup d'etat; Historian W.K. Jordan's description of Somerset; Views of other historians about Somerset's political ideas.