Somerset continued Henry's military campaign against the Scots and achieved a sound victory at the Battle of Pinkie, but ultimately he was unable to maintain his position in Scotland.

Until the 1970s historians had a highly positive view of Somerset, seeing him as a champion of political liberty and the common people, but since then he has also often been portrayed as an arrogant and inept ruler of the Tudor state.

[3] When Seymour's sister, Jane, married King Henry VIII in 1536, Edward was created Viscount Beauchamp on 5 June 1536, and Earl of Hertford on 15 October 1537.

In September 1542 he was appointed Warden of the Scottish Marches, and a few months later Lord High Admiral, a post which he almost immediately relinquished in favour of John Dudley, the future duke of Northumberland.

In the autumn he was one of the commissioners sent to Flanders to keep Emperor Charles V to the terms of his treaty with England, and in January 1545 he was placed in command at Boulogne, where on the 26th he repelled an attempt of Marshal de Biez to recapture the town.

He reported that on 16 September 1545 he had "sent forth a good band to the number of 1500 light horsemen in the leading of me [and] Sir Robert Bowes, which from 5 a.m. till 3 p.m., forayed along the waters of Tyvyote and Rowle, 6 or 7 miles beyond Jedburgh, and burnt 14 or 15 towns and a great quantity of all kinds of corn".

[6] In March 1546 he was sent back to Boulogne to supersede the Earl of Surrey, whose command had not been a success; and in June he was engaged in negotiations for peace with France and for the delimitation of the English conquests.

Personal, political and religious rivalry separated him and Baron Lisle from the Howards, and Surrey's hasty temper precipitated his own ruin and that of his father, the duke of Norfolk.

They could not acquiesce in the Imperial ambassador's verdict that Hertford and Lisle were the only noblemen of fit age and capacity to carry on the government; and Surrey's attempt to secure the predominance of his family led to his own execution and to his father's imprisonment in the Tower of London.

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, found himself accused of treason; on 24–25 December, he offered his vast estates to the Crown making them available for redistribution, and he spent the whole of Edward's reign in the Tower of London.

[12] The will contained an "unfulfilled gifts" clause, added at the last minute, which allowed Henry's executors to freely distribute lands and honours to themselves and the court,[13] particularly to Seymour (then known as Earl of Hertford), who became the Lord Protector of the Realm and Governor of the King's Person, and who created himself Duke of Somerset.

[16] Seymour may have done a deal with some of the executors, who almost all received hand-outs;[17] he is known to have done so with William Paget, private secretary to Henry VIII,[18] and to have secured the support of Sir Anthony Browne of the Privy Chamber.

The imperial ambassador Francis van der Delft reported that he "governs everything absolutely", with Paget operating as his secretary, although he predicted trouble from John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who had recently been raised to Earl of Warwick in the share-out of honours.

[24] In fact, in the early weeks of his Protectorate, Seymour met opposition only from the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, whom the Earldom of Southampton had evidently failed to buy off, and from his own brother.

He trusted the garrisons he established throughout the Lowlands to wear down Scottish opposition, but their pressure was soon weakened by troubles in England and abroad; and Mary, Queen of Scots, having been betrothed to Francis, heir to the French throne, was transported to France in 1548, where the two married ten years later.

[3] To deal with the widespread social problems in England, Seymour introduced the Vagabonds Act 1547, which dictated that able-bodied men who were unemployed for three days or more should be sold into slavery for two years.

[32] In April 1547, using King Edward's support to circumvent his brother's opposition, Thomas Seymour secretly married Henry VIII's widow Catherine Parr, whose Protestant household included the 11-year-old Lady Jane Grey and the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth.

The origin of the popular view of Edward Seymour as sympathetic to the rebel cause lies partly in his series of sometimes liberal, often contradictory, proclamations.

[46] and partly in the uncoordinated activities of the commissions he sent out in 1548 and 1549 to investigate grievances about loss of tillage, encroachment of large sheep flocks on common land, and similar issues.

[50] Whatever the popular view of the Duke of Somerset, the disastrous events of 1549 were taken as evidence of a colossal failure of government, and the Council laid the responsibility at the Protector's door.

[51] In July 1549, Paget wrote to Seymour: "Every man of the council have misliked your proceedings ... would to God, that, at the first stir you had followed the matter hotly, and caused justice to be ministered in solemn fashion to the terror of others ...".

He issued a proclamation calling for assistance, took possession of the king's person, and withdrew for safety to the fortified Windsor Castle, where Edward said, "Methinks I am in prison".

[53] By 7 October he was writing desperately to Sir Rowland Hill, Lord Mayor of London, and a fellow member of the Privy Council requesting 1000 troops to defend him and the King.

[51] Edward summarised the charges against Somerset in his Chronicle: "ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars in mine youth, negligent looking on Newhaven, enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority, etc.

Until recent decades, Seymour's reputation with historians was high, in view of his many proclamations that appeared to back the common people against a rapacious landowning class.