Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 258, Lord Protector, Somerset.

Now I promised you all that we would move on to the Protectorate in this episode and

so we shall, gentle listeners, so we shall. In the course of the next couple of episodes,

I would dearly love you all to have a good idea of what you think about Edward Seymour,

the Duke of Somerset, uncor to the Boykin. But before I go on, I have a mate. This might

be something of a surprise to some of you and yet I do. This mate, whose name, by the way,

is Pot, named after a tortoise as it happens, says to me, he says he also has a friend.

She's actually a little more surprising as it happens. Anyway, his friend is posh and apparently

Seymour should not be pronounced Seymour at all. That is one of those things like Ralph and

Ray Fjewne squished, if that's the technical term, so it should really be Seymour. Any thoughts?

Is this correct? Answers on a postcard. Anyway, sadly, despite my own personal poshness,

I'm going to stick with Seymour as in biscuit. The good Duke then. Well, was he, in fact,

good? I mean, his ancient tradition would have it, or was he, in fact, as the more modern

commentators would have it, the bad Duke? Or maybe he was just the Duke. Not a good and

a bad, strong, a weak. As we mentioned a couple of episodes ago, he's in some ways an

old sort of chap for a 16th century gent and magnet. I mean, in many ways, he's jolly

traditional. Building his empire, spending money-like water to build himself a palace and

big himself up, indulging in foreign wars, ruling the council with his an imperial autocratic

hand. But in other ways, he is most odd. He shows, as we will see, next week I have to

tell you, a marked sympathy with a bunch of revolting peasants and yeoman, and a most

unfashionable reluctance to cut them into small pieces. So anyway, we will see. On the

way, we will have a few themes, religion, war and revolt. Where have we heard of that

...