Edward VI of England church property that had begun under Henry VIII resumed under Edward—notably with the dissolution of the chantries—to the great monetary advantage of the crown and the new owners of the seized property. Church reform was therefore as much a political as a religious policy under Edward VI. By the end of his reign, the church had been financially ruined, with much of the property of the bishops transferred into lay hands. The religious convictions of both Somerset and Northumberland have proved elusive for historians, who are divided on the sincerity of their Protestantism. There is less doubt, however, about the
Coronation of the British monarch when the fourth recension was first used, having been compiled over several preceding decades. Although influenced by its French counterpart, the new "ordo" focussed on the balance between the monarch and his nobles and on the oath, neither of which concerned the absolutist French kings. One manuscript of this recension is the "Liber Regalis" at Westminster Abbey which has come to be regarded as the definitive version. Following the start of the reformation in England, the boy king Edward VI had been crowned in the first Protestant coronation in 1547, during which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer preached a sermon against idolatry