Historians’ verdicts.

“Somerset was vacillating but self-willed, highminded yet prone to idées fixes [‘fixed ideas’].  Seeking to appear virtuous and to be held in wide esteem, he courted mass popularity while sugar-coating his natural severity with talk of clemency and justice…  Yet altruism was absent:  Somerset equated his ambition with the public good…  his true opinions were always those of his time: aristocratic, acquisitive, authoritarian.  If Somerset was slow to respond to revolt, this stemmed not from charity but from irresolution and his urge not to be distracted from his consuming obsession:  the conquest of Scotland.”

John Guy

“In the past he has been regarded as a genuine humanitarian, sympathetic to the plight of the poor.  More recently, doubts have been expressed about whether he had any interest in social reform and it has been claimed that he was an arrogant self-seeker who refused to accept advice, and who enriched himself with confiscated church property.  Using the same evidence, historians currently see him as a typical Tudor soldier and statesman, whose main interest was the war against Scotland and France.  As such he is regarded as being no more greedy, and no more sympathetic to the poor than his fellow aristocrats.  Certainly, in February 1547 the other members of the Council were just as quick to accept lands and titles as Somerset himself.”

Nigel Heard