For the first three years of the reign, Edward's uncle, Hertford, now created Duke of Somerset, managed to get the lead. In this short time he ruined the of attempts made by Edward's father and grandfather to bring Scotland closer to England, and he went to war with France. In 1549 there was in the West a great rising against the imposition of the new religion; this rising was put down with the utmost barbarity.

After Somerset's fall, Warwick, Duke of Northumberland, took his place, and intrigued to get his own daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, recognised as the young king's successor. She was Edward's cousin, and being Lady Jane very fond of Lady Jane, he was persuaded to give his consent to settle the crown on her. Somerset was at least a sincere Protestant, and he had real sympathy with the poor, though he was a weak but not a cowardly man. Of Northumberland it is difficult to say anything that is good. Under both men the real power was in the hands of a set of grasping, selfish, hard-hearted nobles, who "embezzled, plotted, and misgoverned" while pretending to reform the Church and to found a purer religion.

As soon as the late king's strong hand was removed, a crowd of foreign Protestant teachers burst into the country. The robber nobles, who formed the Government, took advantage of the turmoil, and proceeded to rob the Church still further. Another reign of terror began. The, young king was fond of learning and of study, and his teachers had made him a strong and sincere Protestant. But he was not able to restrain his wicked nobles, who spoiled the churches while pretending to reform religion.

A royal visitation of all churches was ordered in 1547, with the object of eradicating all Catholic usages. Processions were forbidden; new communion tables of wood were set up instead of the old stone altars. Images and pictures and precious manuscripts were destroyed; the plate and valuables of the churches were looted. Beautiful old painted windows, which could never be replaced, were smashed. The people naturally hated all this destruction of what they regarded as sacred and precious relics, which their forefathers had loved. Many of the treasures in the parish churches had been made by their ancestors' own hands, for they had loved to work for and adorn the churches in which they worshipped. Almost every church, large or small, lost some treasure in the great pillage of Edward VI's reign.

But that was not all. The property of hospitals was taken away from them, and even the guilds were robbed. These guilds were clubs for self-help, to which artisans and other workers paid their savings, so that they and their families might not be left without help when sickness or death or other troubles overtook them. Henry VIII had destroyed the monks, the friends of the poor and needy, and now Edward VI's robber nobles took away the funds of the people's mutual help societies.

The Protestant religious teachers of the time were sincere and well-meaning men, but the actual men who carried out whop these violent changes were nothing but greedy rogues. "Thousands became gospellers for the sake of the Church lands," said Latimer, the greatest of the Protestant Reformers, who did not hesitate to denounce the Government. In one of his sermons Latimer told the Court that "we of the clergy had too much, but now we have too little. Schools are not maintained, the preaching office decays. The gentry take the profits of the Church, and benefices (church livings) are given to servants for keeping of hawks, hounds, and horses. The clergy are forced to put themselves into gentlemen's houses and serve as clerks of kitchens, surveyors, or receivers of rents."

The whole country was in a wretched state. The violent changes, not only in religion but also in village farming, were upsetting home-life everywhere. Enclosures of village lands and of commons had been going on at a rapid rate, and many tenants had been turned out, and many of the new landlords were harsher than the old easy-going abbots. "Sheep," as More had written, "which are naturally mild and easily kept in order, may be said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns." For sheep-farming needed fewer labourers to see after the sheep on the pasture-land than did the ploughing, the sowing, and the harvesting when it was arable or plough land. Labourers lost their work, because there was more competition for work now when there was less of it, and wages fell. Yet the price of food and necessaries kept on rising.

No wonder the country was full of sturdy beggars or vagabonds. These went on increasing in numbers in spite of the terrible penalties which were now imposed upon them. Any person found loitering for three days was to be branded with a "V" (for vagabond) on his breast. The man who found him loitering might have him for a slave and keep him on bread and water and broken meat. If the slave attempted to run away, then he was to be branded with an "S" on his cheek and forehead, to show that he was a slave for ever.

Bishop Latimer, in another of his outspoken sermons, told the landlords and rent-raisers that poor men, who lived on their labour, could not with the sweat of their brows get a living. All kinds of victuals were very dear—pigs, geese, capons, chickens, and eggs. Not only were the clergy poor, not only did the agricultural labourers suffer, but the yeomen farmers, the sturdiest class in the country, found themselves equally badly off.

"My father was a yeoman," said Latimer, "and had no lands of his own. He had only a farm rented at three or four pounds a year at the utmost, and of his farm he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had a walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able to find the king harness for himself and his horses, and I can remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath Field. He kept me at school, or else I should not have been able to preach before the king's majesty now. He kept hospitality for his poorer neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor. All this he did on the said farm. Whereas, he that now has it pays sixteen pounds or more each year for rent. He is not able to do anything for his king, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." Such was Latimer's account of his own father's farm and of the poor condition of the farmer who came after his father.

An important measure carried out by the Protestants under Edward VI was the introduction of a new Church service-book in the English language for national use. Edward VI's first Prayer Book  was issued in 1549. An Act of Uniformity  to enforce its use was also passed by Parliament, which suppressed the Latin Mass book of old and ordered that there should be a uniform Church service in English throughout the land.

But all these rapid changes only served to upset the people, who had for many years been also suffering from poverty and misery; and there were rebellions during this reign both in the South-West and in the East of England. The rising in Norfolk was by far the most serious. Gentlemen were even hanged under the "Oak of Reformation," on Mousehold Hill at Norwich, for the wrongs they had done to the people, that is, for enclosing villages and commons. The revolt was headed by Robert Ket, a farmer and banker of Wymondham, who called himself King of Norfolk and Suffolk. Ket and his followers seized Norwich, but it was not long before the Earl of Warwick suppressed the rising, and Ket might be seen hanging in chains from Norwich Castle.

The Earl of Warwick, soon to be the Duke of Northumberland, after this took the first place in the King's Council". The boy king had been ailing for some time he had been brought up in the new Protestant' doctrines and remained in that belief till his death in his sixteenth year.

The rule of the Protestant nobles had ended in disgrace. The sweeping changes imposed upon the people in regard to their religion, the dissolution of the monasteries and confiscation of the religious endowments of the craft-gilds, aggravated the violent social upheaval already in progress, due to changes in village farming through enclosure and the conversion of arable land into pasture.

After the death of the young king, the selfish Duke of Northumberland tried to make Lady Jane Grey queen—she was the granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary and she had married the duke's son. She was a charming, gentle, and clever woman, fond of books and study, and she did not desire the crown thus forced upon her by relatives who were greedy for power. For her own part, she had no wish to live any other life but that of a peaceful English gentlewoman. The people, too, refused to acknowledge her, and rallied round the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII. "The Lady Mary hath a better title," said the Londoners, and the duke's scheme failed.