Jennifer Loach

Jennifer Loach (1935–1995) was a British historian specialising in Tudor England, with particular expertise in the reign of Edward VI and the political and religious upheavals of the mid-sixteenth century. She was a Fellow in History at Somerville College, Oxford, where her research contributed to a reassessment of a reign often overshadowed by those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Loach was especially interested in the relationship between monarchy, government and religious reform, and her scholarship helped move Edward VI away from the traditional image of a passive child king controlled entirely by powerful councillors.

Her principal work, Edward VI, was published posthumously and edited by G. W. Bernard and Penry Williams. The biography portrays Edward as an intelligent, politically aware and increasingly assertive monarch who developed firm views about the Protestant direction of the English Church. Loach also examines the governments of the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, the rebellions of 1549, court politics and the succession crisis surrounding Lady Jane Grey. She challenged the conventional picture of Edward as chronically sickly, arguing that he remained an active and vigorous adolescent until the illness that caused his death in 1553. The book remains an important modern study of Edward VI and of the turbulent phase of the English Reformation that unfolded during his short reign.