oppression. People were sick of hearing
of the king and his wives--how he had beheaded one, and put away
another, and ill-treated another, for no reason at all but his own
selfish caprice. And men trembled for their lives when they remembered
how Wolsey, and More, and Cromwell, and others had been sacrificed to
the whimsical temper of this tyrannical sovereign. England, in fact,
was tired out when Henry the Eighth died.

It was, at any rate, a change for them to find that their new king was
in every respect the opposite of his father. Instead of the burly, hot-
headed, self-willed, cruel Henry, they were now to be ruled by a frail,
delicate, mild boy of nine, inheriting neither his father's vices nor
his faults, and resembling him as little in mind as in body. But the
chief difference of all was this--that this boy-king was _good_.

A _good_ King of England. It was indeed and, alas! a novelty. How
many, counting back to the day when the country first knew a ruler,
could be so described? Had not the sceptre of England passed, almost
without exception, down a line of usurpers, murderers, robbers, and
butchers, and was it not a fact that the few kings who had not been
knaves had been merely fools?

But now England had a good king and a clever king, what might not be
expected of him?

On the day of his coronation all sorts of rumours were afloat respecting
young Edward. Boy though he was, he was a scholar, and wrote letters in
Latin. Young in years, he was mature in thought, he was a staunch
Protestant, an earnest Christian. Tudor though he was, he loved peace,
and had no pleasure in the sufferings of others. Was ever such a king?

"Alas," said some one, "that he is but a boy!"

The sight which presented itself within the walls of that gloomy
fortress, the Tower of London, on the day of Edward the Sixth's
proclamation, was an impressive one. Amidst a crowd of bishops and
nobles, who bowed low as he advanced, the pale boy-king came forward to
receive the homage of his new subjects.

Surely, thought some, as they looked, that little head is not fitted to
the wearing of an irksome crown. But, for the most part, the crowd
cheered, and shouted, "God save the king!" and not one was there who
found it in his heart to wish young Edward Tudor ill.

The papist ceremony which had always before accompanied the coronation
of English kings was now for the first time dispensed with. With joy
the people heard good o