Hey friends, welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast.

This is the weekly highlight reel of videos that I have put out on YouTube.

So in case you don't know, you can go over to YouTube and watch all my videos.

The channel is History and Coffee, And you can just search for my name as well, Heather Tesco, History and Coffee.

And you will get it. And you can subscribe there. Thank you to the many people who already subscribe.

And then what I've started doing is weekly highlight reels of some of the videos that have

gone out on YouTube that would be of interest to the podcast listeners as well. So thanks for

listening. And you can also, like I said, go over and join me on YouTube history and coffee

and search for Heather. And there I am. So let's get right into it. So a couple of weeks ago, I did a

podcast episode on William Cecil. And I wanted to dig into a little bit more of his life,

specifically the period after Edward died under Mary the First in between between Edward and Elizabeth. Because, of course,

Cecil was a Protestant. So somehow he managed to survive the reign of Mary the First. How did he

do that? Let us talk about it. All right, William Cecil, later known as Lord Burley, is, of course, a pivotal figure in English history,

especially known for his service under Queen Elizabeth I. However, his survival and maneuvering

during the reign of Mary the First, particularly around the 1553 succession crisis, demonstrates his remarkable political acumen.

This period was marked by crazy amounts of intrigue of shifting allegiances and alliances

and the desperate struggle for power, which Cecil managed to navigate with cautious precision. Edward the 6th died in 1553, and that started a

major crisis in the English succession. Edward was, of course, a very staunch Protestant, and he wanted

to prevent his Catholic half-sister Mary from ascending to the throne. That was what was in Henry the 8th's original will was that it

would go from Edward, Edward's children, and if Edward didn't have any children, it would go to Mary

and then to Elizabeth. And that was what Henry the 8th had wanted in his will. So then Edward

created a document known as his device for the succession, where he bypassed both Mary and his other half-sister Elizabeth in favor of his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Gray.

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