In July 1549 William Paget asked Edward Seymour duke of Somerset to remember that ‘saving for the name of a kinge, and that youe must do all thinge in the name of an other, your grace ys durynge the kings majestes young age of imperfection to do his owne things, as yt were a kinge, and have his Majestes absolute power’. Paget was a frustrated and dispirited man. He had tried to counsel the protector, but had failed. Policies in Scotland and continental Europe, on religion and the economic wellbeing of the realm, appeared to be going disastrously wrong. Still, Paget's considered and brutal critique exposed a real, but often simplified, truth about the first two-and-a-half years of Edward's reign: Edward Seymour, governor of the king's person and protector of the king's realms, dominions, and subjects, exercised massive power. The aim of this chapter is to explore the nature and the dynamics of that power.

Edward Seymour's protectorate has presented a number of problems for historians. In the sixteenth century, his reputation for evangelical godliness was unmatched. For later Victorian writers like James Anthony Froude and A.F. Pollard he was a liberal hero. To some extent the debate still goes on (see above, chapter 1, pp. 20–1). But in spite of this presentation of Protector Somerset as a force for moral good in the reign, historians have often had the uncomfortable feeling that he actually subverted the proper working of the Tudor constitution.