The little boy was very gentle and fond of learning. He was serious and clever too: he wrote down in a book every day what he had been about, and seemed to wish to do what was right; so the people thought they might have a really good king. I told you, when I mentioned the alteration in religion in Henry the Eighth’s reign, that though nearly all the nobles continued Papists, yet many of the gentlemen and the people were Protestants. Now King Edward’s uncles and teachers were Protestants, and they taught the young king to be one also, and laws were made by which all the people in England were ordered to be Protestants too. The Bible was allowed to be read by everybody who chose it, in English, and the clergymen were ordered to say the prayers in English instead of Latin, which very few could understand. The king was declared to be the head of the Church; clergymen were allowed to marry; and those persons whom Henry the Eighth had put in prison were set free. These things were not only good for the people then, but they have been of use ever since. As the English clergymen, and schools, and colleges, have had no foreign Pope to interfere with them, they have been able to teach such things as are good and useful to England. Clergymen who are married, and have families living in the country among the farmers and cottagers, may set good examples and teach useful things, by the help of their wives and children, which the clergy who were not married could never do. And as for reading the Bible, and saying prayers in English, it must be better for us all to learn our duties, and speak of our wants to God, in the language we understand best. For these reasons the reign of Edward the Sixth is always reckoned a very good one for England. There were, however, some very wrong things done in it, and some unhappy ones, owing to the king’s being so very young. I told you he was only nine years old when he came to be king. Those in whose care his father had placed him and the kingdom, allowed one of the king’s uncles, the Duke of Somerset, to become his chief guardian and adviser, and he is always called the Lord Protector Somerset. A quarrel which Henry the Eighth had begun with Scotland was carried on by Somerset, who went himself to Scotland with an army, and beat the Scots at the battle of Pinkie; but the war did no good, and was not even honourable to England. Somerset offered to make peace if the Scottish lords would allow their young Queen Mary to marry our young King Edward, when the children were old enough, and then England and Scotland might have been one kingdom from that time.