Somerset's Protectorate 1547 First Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1549 Fall of Somerset 1549 Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552 Death of Edward VI. and accession of Mary 1553 Mary's marriage with Philip 1554 Submission to Rome and re-enactment of the heresy laws 1554 Beginning of the persecution 1555 War with France 1557 Loss of Calais and death of Mary 1558 1. =Somerset becomes Protector. 1547.=--The new king, Edward VI., was but a boy, and Henry had directed that England should be governed during his son's minority by a body composed of the executors of his will and other councillors, in which neither the partisans of change nor the partisans of the existing order should be strong enough to have their own way. The leading innovators, pretending to be anxious to carry out his wishes, asserted that he had been heard to express a desire that they should be made peers or advanced in the peerage, and should receive large estates out of the abbey lands. After gaining their object, they set aside Henry's real plan for the government of the realm, and declared Hertford (who now became Duke of Somerset) to be Protector. A council was formed, from which Gardiner and the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley were excluded as likely to take part against them.