Re-Trying the Case for the 'Good Duke'

Since the mid-1970s when the scholarly onslaught on his virtuous reputation first gathered pace, the Duke of Somerset's 'goodness' has been largely bereft of defenders. Where the Lord Protector was once lauded by A. F. Pollard as a man 'pursuing aims that were essentially noble' and later eulogised by W. K. Jordan as a 'very great man whose magnanimity was never to be forgotten', today he is persistently dismissed and derided as a materialistic and cynical egotist with no special concerns beyond the pursuit of personal gain and madcap military enterprises in Scotland. The late Jennifer Loach, for example, whose book Edward VI represents a major synthesis of current thinking, noted that the Duke of Somerset could be 'both cold and ruthless' in pursuit of material advantage and added that he was, amongst other shortcomings, 'autocratic by temperament'. To Penry Williams, he was 'not a liberal friend of the poor, but a man prepared to use stern measures against vagrants' and for M. L.