grammar-schools--too scantily carried out, but yet in such a measure as to mark the tendencies of an age which was beginning to replace the mainly ecclesiastic education of the monasteries by the more secular education of modern times. [Illustration: King Edward VI.: from a picture belonging to H. Hucks Gibbs, Esq.] 13. =The Forty-two Articles. 1553.=--Edward was now a precocious youth, taught by much adulation to be confident in his own powers. He had learnt to regard all defection from Protestant orthodoxy as a crime. The statute which repealed the heresy laws did not altogether stop the burning of heretics, as the lawyers discovered that heresy was punishable by the common law. In =1550= Joan Bocher was burnt for denying the Incarnation, and in =1551= Van Parris, a Fleming, was burnt on the same charge. The persecution, however, was much more restricted than in the preceding reign. Few persons were punished, and that only for opinions of an abnormal character. In =1553= forty-two articles of faith, afterwards, in the reign of Elizabeth, converted into thirty-nine, were set forth as a standard of the Church's belief by the authority of the king. So completely did the reforming clergy recognise their entire dependence on the king, that by a slip of the pen Hooper once wrote of 'the king's majesty's diocese of Worcester and Gloucester.' 14. =Northumberland's Conspiracy. 1553.=--A religious system built up solely on the will of the king, was hardly likely to survive him. By this time it was known that Edward was smitten with consumption, and could not live. Northumberland cared little for religion, but he cared much for himself. He knew that Mary was, by Henry's will sanctioned by Act of Parliament, the heiress of the throne, and that if Mary became queen he was hardly likely to escape the scaffold. He was daring as well as unscrupulous, and he persuaded Edward to leave the crown by will to Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, the younger sister of Henry VIII. He secured (as he hoped) Lady Jane's devotion by marrying her to his own son, Lord Guilford Dudley. As Lady Jane was a convinced Protestant, Edward at once consented. His father, he thought, had left the crown by will in the case of the failure of his own heirs (see p. 411), and why should not he? He had been taught to think so highly of the kingship that he did not remember that his father had been authorised by Act of Parliament to will away the crown in the case of his children's death without heirs, whereas no such authority had been given by Parliament to himself. He forced--by commands and entreaties--the councillors and the judges to sign the will. Cranmer was the last to sign, and was only moved to do so by the sad aspect of his suffering pupil. Then Edward died, assured that he had provided best for the Church and nation.