I want welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm actually on a boat in the middle of the

wetlands sea in the Antarctic at the moment. It is not the easiest place I've ever been

to create new podcasts. However, that's not a problem because we've got our sibling

podcasts. So this is an episode of not just the tutors with Professor Susanna Lipskin

if you'd get into. Enjoy.

The year of our Lord, 1537, was the Prince born to King Harry VIII by Joan Seymour

then Queen. On the 28th of January, 475 years ago this year, Edward, son of Henry VIII

and Jane Seymour, became King of England. Though he only found out a few days later, he

was a boy of nine years old. His youth was something of a problem for the governance

structure of a small monarchy which relied on having a strong adult male at its heart.

It created something of a limbo state as the country waited for the monarch to reach

18. The age of majority specified in Henry VIII will. There were two ways of seeing

rule by a minor either as an inflection, was a royal minority a curse on England. They

wondered. Or as an opportunity, those around the King could use the occasion to feather

their own nests and establish their own power. Now English history had examples of both.

The long minority of Henry VI had seemed like an occasion of divine punishment after the

glorious rule of his father Henry V, while Richard III had taken arguably usurped the

throne during the minority of his nephew Edward VIII. Henry VIII had been desperate in the

circumstances to pass his throne to a fully grown adult male heir, but it was not to be.

So a month before his death he had reaffirmed his plan that during Edward's minority

England should be governed by a Regency Council of 16 councillors working in concert. But

that was not to be either. The new boy king who would rule for only six years is something

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