:: It was a form of regency, whereby the Lord Protector exercised the powers of the Crown on behalf of an under-age king, but it seems to have always caused problems for all concerned. Edward III's mother and her lover exercised power until Edward was old enough to overthrow them; Richard II's obvious Lord Protector would have been John of Gaunt but fears of him usurping the throne mean that he was not given the title. Henry VI's uncles shared the powers - Bedford as Regent and Gloucester as Protector - until Bedford's death but that resulted in rivalries. The Plantagenet monarchy was so much based round the power of the king that it never really worked out a satisfactory way of dealing with an under-age king - and indeed the struggle between Seymour and Dudley in the reign of Edward VI suggests the Tudors were also unable to solve the problem.