Eamon Duy

Bloody Mary?
A
radio producer asked me
a couple of years ago if
I would take part in a
programme called The most evil
people in history: she wanted to
know if I thought M ary Tudor
qualified, and if not, whether I
would be willing to come on the
programme and make the case for
the defence. I never did appear
on the programme, but the call
brought home to me just how
deeply embedded the loathing of
Queen Mary Tudor is in English
popular culture. The legend of the
sad sterile queen whose younger
husband abandoned her, who
deluded herself that she was
pregnant but died childless, who
entangled England in a disastrous
Spanish war and in the process
lost Calais to the French all that
has persuaded generations of
historians and their readers that
the five years of Marys reign was
the low point of an otherwise
glorious Tudor Age. But above
all, it is Marys persecution of
Protestants which has coloured
later perceptions of her reign. 284
people burned alive on account of
their religious beliefs takes some
explaining.
TopFoto

These Marian martyrdoms

loom large in English national
mythology. The Black legend
Queen Mary Tudor
of Catholicism as intrinsically
foreign, cruel, and reactionary,
and the association of popery court fanatical, gloom ridden The facts of religious
and tyranny, shaped English and apparently populated by evil persecution in her reign, however,
Protestant identity through the dwarves and crafty bishops in are grim enough. In the four-year
seventeenth, eighteenth and enormous black mitres. No-one campaign to suppress heresy by
nineteenth centuries. That legend watching that film would ever force which began in February
has been a long time a-dying: the guess that the real life Queen Mary 1555, 284 Protestants, fifty-six of
lurid portrayal of Marys reign was in fact a kindly and cheerful them women, were burned alive
in Shekhar Kapurs enormously soul, who loved gossip, music, and for their beliefs, and approximately
successful biopic Elizabeth is a dancing, and took a magpie delight thirty more died in prison. The
case in point: you may remember in brightly coloured clothes and enormity of these statistics and
the films evocation of Marys expensive jewellery. the terrible human reality they

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represent hang like a pall of smoke Europe well into the seventeenth of the programme actually
over the history of Mary Tudors century, not least in England. adopted, stipulating that the
England. No-one can read through Elizabeth I burned no Catholics, punishment of heretics should be
the major source, John Foxes great but in the wake of the religiously done without rashness, directed
martyrological polemic, Actes and motivated northern rebellion of first at such as by learning would
Monuments, without mounting 1569 she and her ministers insisted seem to deceive the simple, and
pity for the victims, and revulsion on hanging more than six hundred the rest so to be used that the
at the process in which they were of the defeated Catholic rebels, people might well perceive them
caught up. thereby killing in a matter of a few not to be condemned without just
This side of the weeks in January 1570 more than occasion, whereby they shall both
Enlightenment, we all of course twice as many religious dissidents understand the truth and beware
agree about the horror of burning as Mary had burned in four years. to do the like. In London in
men and women alive for their Elizabeths vengeful and implacable particular because of the presence
fidelity to deeply-held beliefs. behaviour in 1570 contrasts starkly of a strong and vocal Protestant
But we need to be clear that with Marys granting a full pardon minority, she declared, I would
that shared horror is a matter of to most of those who had risen wish none to be burnt without
moral hindsight: it was felt by against her in Wyatts rebellion some of the Councils presence,
very few people in the sixteenth in 1554, just as she pardoned and there should be good sermons
century. Mary pursued and burned Lady Jane Grey and her husband, at the same to explain and justify
Protestants because in sixteenth despite the fact that Lady Jane the burnings and correct heretical
century Europe, heresy was viewed had accepted her proclamation as error. ii
much as we now view the drugs Queen, and was therefore guilty In all of this Mary certainly
trade. Heretical preachers were of high treason. Contemporaries had the backing of her Archbishop
seen as we see drug-pushers they commented on Marys gentleness of Canterbury, her cousin Cardinal
were corrupting others, ruining and clemency to her enemies, and Reginald Pole. Marys reverence
souls, degrading lives. So, as a thought her foolish to be so soft. for Pole, his constant presence
Christian ruler, Mary was bound No-one ever accused her half-sister at court, her anxiety to keep
to enforce orthodoxy, punish and Elizabeth of softness towards her him by her even at the risk of
seek to eliminate the error which enemies: and quite apart from the neglect of his other pastoral
would damn and ruin her people. her savage reprisals against the responsibilities, were all notorious.
And then there was the political Northern rebels, Elizabeth went Observers of the court commented
reality. Marys accession had been on to strangle, disembowel and on his influence over her, and
achieved despite a Protestant dismember more than two hundred noted that the Queen would not
plot to disinherit her and put a Catholic priests and laypeople allow that [the Cardinal] should
Protestant puppet-Queen, Lady during the rest of the reign: yet be the slightest distance from her,
Jane Grey, on the throne: the plot no-one calls Elizabeth Bloody and Marys instructions about
nearly succeeded, and it confirmed Elizabeth. the burnings required all those
what almost everyone agreed So the first point to emphasise charged with the restoration of
about anyway, that conflicting is that most sixteenth-century Catholicism to have recourse to
religions were fatal to a countrys English people thought it perfectly Pole to understand of him which
stability and social cohesion. As the appropriate that the Queen should way might be best to bring to good
Marian Bishop of Chichester, John punish those who rejected the effect those matters that have
Christopherson, wrote, nothing official faith of the nation. Most begun concerning religion. In all
there is, that bredeth so deadly Protestant leaders agreed with matters of religion, Mary took her
hatred, as diversitie of myndes their Catholic enemies that false lead from Pole, with the possible
touching religion. i faith was worse than no faith at single exception of the fate of
Nevertheless, the Marian all, and that stubborn adherence to Thomas Cranmer. iii
campaign, 284 victims in four religious error was rightly punished Pole was exonerated by John
years, was one of the fiercest and with death. In Edwards reign, Foxe from complicity in the
most concentrated in sixteenth Archbishop Cranmer himself had campaign of burnings, and did
century Europe, dwarfing Spains urged on the Duke of Somerset to indeed have a horror of killing
toll of a hundred dissidents burn the Kentish Anabaptist Joan heretics. This was not because of
executed in approximately the Butcher. The issue was therefore any squeamishness about the death
same period, and exceeded only not whether heretics should be penalty, but because he believed
by the Spanish Netherlands, burned, but who qualified as a that an unrepentant heretic not
where 385 died in seven years. heretic. only died in torment, but went
But the Marian campaigns Who then was responsible straight to hell for all eternity.
ferocity was a matter of degree, for the Marian persecution? So Pole placed huge emphasis on
not of kind. Religious persecution The Queen, her counsellors, the efforts to convert rather than to
was employed by Catholic and bishops, Cardinal Pole? The Queen punish heretics. The most famous
Protestant governments all over herself had outlined the essentials outcome of this policy came in the

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summer of 1556, when Edward that Pole thought that heretics than acquiesce. The messenger
VIs tutor and one of the key who would not repent, and carrying word of this decision to
figures in the Protestant diaspora who persisted in their deviant Cranmer, and then responsible
in Europe, Sir John Cheke, was behaviour, were quite properly for justifying it from the pulpit
kidnapped and brought to England, executed. Reporting the burning of at Cranmers execution, was Dr
where hand-picked theologians Ridley and Latimer to King Philip Henry Cole, Provost of Eton, and
under Poles direction argued in October 1555, he described a former member of Poles Italian
him into submission. In October, the Spanish friar Peter de Sotos household. Notoriously, Coles
Pole choreographed and probably efforts to get them to recant. It did sermon at Cranmers burning
drafted the text of a minutely no good, Pole commented, since justified his death on three
detailed formal recantation by no one can save those whom God grounds. Here are Coles words as
Cheke at court, in which Cheke has rejected. And so they were Foxe summarised them:
threw himself at the Queens burned, the people looking on not
feet, and received a pardon. He unwillingly, since it was known
First that being a traytor,
then made a speech praising the that nothing had been neglected
he had dissolued the lawfull
clemency which had forgiven with regard to their salvation, an
matrimonie betweene the
him his treasons and which echo of the Queens own directions
Kinge her father and mother:
would win other heretics back to in such matters. With a canny eye
besides the driuing oute of the
the Church drawn by Mercy, on the propaganda possibilities as
Popes authoritye, while he was
and not plucked by extremity, well as Cranmers chances in the
Metropolitane.
because it showed that their next world, he told Philip that the
Life and Mendment is sought, Archbishop seemed less obstinate,
Secondly, that he had ben
not their Death and shame. iv and if he could indeed be brought
an heretike, from whom as
Chekes conversion, real or feigned, to recant, the Church will derive
from an author and onely
was a devastating blow to the no little profit from the salvation
fountaine, all heretical doctrine
Protestant cause, duly exploited of a single soul. Had Poles views
& schismaticall opinions that
in the campaign against heresy in prevailed with the Queen on
so many yeres haue preuailed
London, and, whether by design this occasion as on most others,
in Englande, did first rise
or coincidence, providing some the outcome of Cranmers case
and spring: not without
compensation for the bungled would no doubt have been very
great ruine and decay of the
handling of Cranmers recantations different. v But it was Cranmer
catholicke church.
and death earlier the same year. who had divorced her parents,
From October 1556 Cheke was and led the kingdom into heresy,
And further, it seemed meete,
required to accompany Bonner so her hostility to him is hardly
according to the lawe of
when the bishop sat in consistory surprising. In addition, Cranmer
equalitie, that as the death of
in heresy trials, and according had taken part in the Privy Council
the Duke of Northumb. of late,
to the Venetian ambassador, his plot to make Jane Grey Queen:
made euen wyth Thomas More
recantation was instrumental in he was guilty of treason, and had
Chauncellour that dyed for the
persuading thirty other imprisoned he been hanged for that crime
Churche, so there shoulde be
evangelicals to return to the unity no-one would have complained.
one that shoulde make euen
of the church. Cranmer punished as a traitor
wt Fisher of Rochester: and
Everyone involved of course would have been a moral lesson to
because that Ridley, Hooper,
knew perfectly well that Cheke churchmen not to get involved in
Ferrar, were not able to make
had been and probably still was a politics. Cranmer alive as a convert
eun wyth that man, it seemed
convinced Protestant, but what the to Catholicism would have been
meete, that Cranmer shoulde
regime was after was unequivocal a major propaganda victory for
be ioyned to them to fill vp
outward conformity: Mary, no Marys government. His burning
this part of equalitie. [1583 p
more than Elizabeth, did not seek as a heretic, despite his repeated
1885]
to make windows into mens souls. recantations was both unjust and
Former Protestants who came a political blunder. It is also the
to Mass and kept their opinions one atrocity of the reign which
to themselves were left to their has been laid, by myself as well Each of these three core
own devices. It was a sensible as others, directly at the Queens elements of Coles sermon chime
policy for, given time the children own door, for the truly horrific with prominent themes in Poles
of such conformists, if not they decision to burn Cranmer despite relations with Cranmer his
themselves, would become good his recantations, must surely have special culpability in the Divorce,
Catholics. Only those who publicly been the Queens. All the same, the schism, and the spread of
attacked or repudiated Catholicism Pole must at least have acquiesced heresy were issues explored at
were interfered with or pursued. in it, and since the publication of length in the harsh and urgent
But for all his care for their my book I have come to think that letters Pole wrote to Cranmer in
souls, there can be no doubt he may have done rather more prison. Even more strikingly, the

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emphasis on the martyrdoms of

More and Fisher is something
especially characteristic of Pole
and his circle: till March 1556,
the regime, apart from Pole
himself, had been strangely
silent about More, Fisher and the
other Henrician martyrs. Their
prominence in Coles funeral
sermon for Cranmer suggest
some direct input from Pole: if
the Cardinal did not instigate
Cranmers execution, it seems
likely he had some part in deciding
the terms of Coles attempt to
justify it.
Nevertheless, throughout
the reign it seems to have been
Marys Council which took the
lead in urging on bishops and local
officials to decisive action against

The Print Collector/HIP/TopFoto

lewde and seditious preaching
and all forms of nonconformity.vi
A royal letter to the Justices of
the Peace in Norfolk on March
25th 1555 spelled out the role
of the magistrates. The county
was to be divided up into eight
or twelve smaller units, allocated
between the members of the The burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury 1556. He was one of the many
Protestant martyrs burned for heresy in the reign of Mary Tudor.
bench as appropriate. They were to
assist and support the preachers
who were to be sent down into
the country to preach Catholic Catholic opponents, however, were June to September. Many of these
doctrine to the people, they were not primarily out for blood. It was executions are poorly documented,
to search out absentees from hoped that the evangelical leaders but most of those for whom we
church and religious dissidents, might recant their fantasticall & have details were tough-minded
paying special attention to deuilish opinions, and so winne evangelicals whose sustained
preachers and teachers of heresy, many, and do much good. viii Their defiance had perhaps surprised the
and procurers of secret meetings condemnations and deaths were authorities, and at any rate ensured
for that purpose. They were to therefore postponed, while they that they became early targets. By
recruit in every parish some one were endlessly reasoned with to the time the burnings began, some
or more honest men, secretly bring them to conformity in of the victims, having resisted
instructed, to act as informers, Cranmers case for more than all attempts to persuade them
and they were to charge constables a year. Meanwhile, the first to conformity or even quietness,
of the most honest and catholick four victims of the revived laws had already been in gaol for a year
of every parish to vigilance against executed in February 1555 were or more. By the end of the reign,
vagabonds, wanderers, and such also notable clerical leaders many of those being executed were
as may be probably suspected. vii John Rogers, Rowland Taylor, recidivists with one or more arrests
Unsurprisingly, the most Laurence Saunders, John Hooper. and releases already behind them.
prominent Protestant leaders, All had been prominent in the Were Marys servants bloody?
Bishops Cranmer, Ridley and establishment of the Edwardine The black legend propagated by
Latimer, were earmarked for reformation, and all were men Foxe insisted on the cruelty and
show trials. This involved a whose high-profile resistance made bloodthirstiness of the Bishops,
turbulent public disputation with a showdown with them inevitableix and especially bishop Bonner of
the combined theology faculties But the campaign widened in London. In fact, however, Bonner
of Oxford and Cambridge, to March to include lay people. By the in particular was prepared to
demonstrate that Protestantism end of the year seventy-five would go to extraordinary lengths to
had lost the argument as well have gone to the flames, the bulk avoid condemning those accused
as the political initiative. Their of them in the summer months of before him. He offered to set the

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 Bloody Mary?

Protestant apprentice William attempts to persuade the victims the condemned man alarmed
Hunter up in a shop, or to employ and so save their lives, there is onlookers like the Imperial
him as his steward, and told him something revolting in an offer ambassador, who told King Philip
of mercy to the hapless men that Some of the onlookers wept,
I thinke thou art ashamed and women accused, only at others prayed to God to give him
to beare a fagot and recant the price of their renunciation strength and not to recant,
openly, but if thou wilt or concealment of deeply held others gathered the ashes and
recante thy sayinges, I will beliefs. Revulsion intensifies when bones and wrapped them up in
promise thee, that thou shalt one considers that many of the paper to preserve them, yet others
not be putte to open shame: accusers and judges had not long threatening the bishops.
but speake the worde here before promoted the very beliefs In the wake of the
nowe betwene me and thee, for which the accused were now demonstrations at Rogers
and I wil promise thee, it shal to be condemned. Interrogating burning, extreme care was taken
go no further, and thou shalt Thomas Drowry, the blind boy of about the movement of the other
goe home againe without any Gloucester, the chancellor, John clergy burned that month outside
hurt. Williams, demanded to know who London. The sheriff charged with
had taught the boy his heresies. taking Rowland Taylor to Hadleigh
To his confusion the boy replied for execution panicked when a
Bonners attempts to win that he had learned them from former parishioner encountered
over this Protestant apprentice Williams himself, citing in detail at Brentwood recognised Taylor,
certainly sprang in part from a cathedral sermon in Edwards shook his hand and spoke to him:
ordinary human compassion, the reign in which Williams had taught Taylor was hooded the rest of the
sense of the tragic waste of a young that the sacrament was to be journey. xii When Bishop Hooper
life and an immortal soul for received by faith, and not carnally was taken under arrest through
persistence in what Bonner and and really, as the papistes haue the city of London to Newgate by
his colleagues inevitably regarded heretofore taught. The abashed night, sergeants were sent ahead to
as perverse and pernicious error. Williams responded Then do as I douse the costermongers candles
Even officials dedicated to rooting haue done, and thou shalt lyue as in the city streets, and he too
out heresy, might feel the horror of I do, and escape burning. When was hooded for his final journey
the fate awaiting the condemned Drowry refused, Williams gave from London to Gloucester. But
when faced not with an abstraction sentence against him, though the although there were some gestures
but men and women of flesh diocesan registrar, also present, of support from gospellers at both
and blood. Dr Michael Dunning, later claimed that he had protested, places of execution, there was no
tough-minded chancellor of the Fie for shame man, will you read disorder. xiii As the burnings of lay
Norwich diocese, was involved the sentence against hym, and Protestants began in March, the
in more than two dozen of the condemne your selfe? xi Privy Council took steps to ensure
thirty-three capital cases in the But whatever considerations that grandees like the earl of
diocese. May 1556, however, was of compassion or personal Oxford and Richard Lord Rich were
the first occasion on which he compunction might give pause to present at the burnyng of suche
rather than Bishop Hopton had to those charged with the pursuit and obstinate personnes as presently
pass sentence of condemnation. punishment of heresy, to begin are sent doune to be bourned in
He found himself sentencing three with, worry about the likelihood diverse partes of the countie and
defendants, one of whom was a of a public backlash against the to be adying to the shirief of the
farm labourer only nineteen years campaign was an even more said shire therein. xiv Processions
old. Unable to budge them from pressing concern. This might seem of the local gentry flanking the
their fatal beliefs, the seasoned to give support to the notion that sheriff and his officers became
Chancellor burst out in teares, Marys subjects did indeed think routine at executions, a gesture of
intreatyng them to remember her bloody, and were revolted by solidarity with the regime which
themselues, and to turne agayne the burnings. To begin with the in especially sensitive cases the
to the holy mother church, for that regime seems to have feared as Privy Council both demanded and
they were deceiued and out of the much. In the spring of 1555 in the rewarded. xv
truth, and that they should not city of London as everywhere else, For the regime, there was
wilfully cast away themselues. The the numerical weight and influence a delicate balance of advantage
tougher-minded diocesan registrar, of evangelicalism remained an and danger to be weighed in
impatient of such hesitation, called unknown quantity. Gospellers the publicity surrounding the
out testily in hast to ridde them were certainly present in strength burnings. The Queen ordered that
out of the way, and make an end, in the crowds who flocked to see Hooper was to be burned in his
and Dunning eventually passed the first burning, of the preacher cathedral city of Gloucester, for
sentence. x John Rogers at Smithfield on the example and terror of suche
Even if one accepts the February 4th 1555. Vociferous as he hath there seduced and
absolute sincerity of these demonstrations of support for mistaught, and bycause he hath

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 Bloody Mary?

done moste harme there. xvi If evangelical sympathisers, hostile the persuasive effect of Protestant
the burnings were to fulfil their Catholics, and the great unwashed courage and eloquence at the
deterrent purpose fully, they had in search of sensation. A crowd stake, so to offset that, sermons
to be staged where Protestantism of seven thousand turned out to against the victims were routinely
had established a hold. So, witness the burning of Hooper preached at burnings. The Queens
although in 1555, at the start of in February 1555, and Professor instructions for Hoopers execution
the campaign, Essex heretics were Pettegree thinks such crowds were warned that he was as heretiques
burned at a range of locations not there to demonstrate their be, a vain-glorious person, and
spread across the county, from approval of this aspect of Marian delyteth in his tongue, and having
1556 onwards all the executions policy. xvii Perhaps, or perhaps not. liberty, may use his sayd tongue to
in the county were carried out in The burning of a bishop for heresy perswade such as he hath seduced,
Colchester, not despite but because was an event without precedent in to persist in the myserable opinion
opposition was most vociferous English history, and Hooper, the that he hath sowen among them.
there. Gruesome deaths like the most abrasive of new brooms, had Neither at the place of execution
botched slow roastings of the been a controversial and in many nor on the way there was he to
wretched Hooper at Gloucester quarters an unpopular figure in be allowed to speak at large,
and of Ridley at Oxford certainly both his midland dioceses. Foxe therefore, but thither to be
evoked pity from onlookers, as himself tells us that the crowd at ledde quietly, and in silence xix
they still harrow Foxes readers, but the burning was so large partly Nevertheless, there soon emerged
the public torment of condemned because it was market day, and a symbolic code of behaviour at
criminals was a hugely popular that manye also came to see the point of execution, designed
spectator sport in Tudor England, his behauiour towards death: to underline the claim that the
and we should not project modern curiosity was as likely a motive as victims were martyrs for Christian
sensibilities on to the people of sympathy in such spectators. xviii truth. Laurence Saunders, Rawlins
the past. The crowds attending All the same, everyone in White, Christopher Wade and
burnings were mixed assemblies of authority was of course wary of John Bradford all went to their

City of London/HIP/TopFoto

The execution of John Bradford and John Leafe at Smitheld 1555.

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 Bloody Mary?

deaths dressed in long white shirts escaped because the priest did the authorities was quite different,
which friends provided for the not know their names, but eleven with most of the victims being
occasion. There was a gruesomely locals were arrested for drinking burned singly, often in small and
practical dimension to this gesture: with her, nine women and two relatively obscure places, scattered
thick clothing prolonged the pain. men, including a former sheriff of widely through the diocese. Thus
But the white robes were also a Warwickshire. xxi All later recanted. the fifty-seven victims from
deliberate allusion to the white- The geographical spread of outside the Canterbury diocese
robed army of martyrs in the book the burnings was very uneven: were executed at forty different
of Revelation, whose blood cried one hundred and thirteen in the sites, and the public impact of
out to God for vengeance. xx diocese of London, seventy-five of these single executions must have
Some of the victims kissed the them in or near the city itself, most been quite different from those
stake and the faggots, and John of the others in Essex, fifty-two in Canterbury. This difference in
Bradford and his disciple John in Canterbury, where almost all method in the London diocese
Leafe elaborated this gesture by the victims came from the towns probably reflected uncertainty
prostrating themselves in prayer and villages of the Weald. There about the likely public reaction to
for a minute on either side of the were nine more in the other Kent the burnings on the part of Bishop
stake before going to it and kissing diocese of Rochester, twenty-six Bonner. If so, his doubts and those
it. Elaborate prayer or psalm- in the diocese of Chichester, all of of the other bishops must either
singing at the place of execution them men and women from the have been resolved by experience,
were other elements in the archdeaconry of Lewes, seven in or overridden by authority, because
symbolics of martyrdom. Lichfield and Coventry, seven in from 1556 onwards the Canterbury
At first glance, the burning Bristol, four in Ely, three in Oxford, pattern was used. It has often been
of Joyce Lewes at Lichfield in two in the whole of Wales, and the claimed that the campaign faltered
September 1557 provides a text- rest of the dioceses with single and tailed off, in response to public
book example of spontaneous executions, or, as in Durham, none hostility: in fact the figures reveal
popular support for the victim of a at all. that it become more, not less,
cruel and politically inept regime. Raw numbers alone might aggressive. From the start of 1556
Members of the crowd Foxe give the misleading impression onwards the majority of those
says the most part shouted that the scale and intensity of the burned died in group executions
Amen to her prayer at the stake campaign against heresy remained of three or more, and the fires
for deliverance of the realm from more or less constant through were concentrated at fewer and
papistry, and a great number of its first three years. In fact it fewer sites, so as to make a more
the women present drank a toast intensified, both in ferocity and impressive and public impact. So
with her before her death. In fact, in its likely impact. There were the forty-one places of execution
however, the spectators were far seventy-five victims in the eleven used in 1555 were reduced to
from unanimous in her support. months from the first executions twenty-three in 1556, dropped
Bystanders railed at and reviled her in February 1555, eighty-five in again to fourteen in 1557, and
as she passed through the crowd 1556, eighty-one in 1557, and a finally to thirteen in 1558. There
and while she stood chained at significant scaling down only in were especially gruesome mass
the stake, though Foxe insisted 1558, a year of political disruption burnings at Stratford-le-Bow, one
that this hostility must have been and epidemic disease. But the of Londons satellite villages, in
coordinated by the authorities. approximately constant numbers June 1556, when eleven men and
However that may be, there was in the first three years conceal a two women died in a single fire,
certainly nothing spontaneous dramatic change of direction and at Lewes in Sussex in June 1557,
about the demonstrations in style from 1556. In the campaigns when ten people were executed at
support of Mistress Lewes, either. first year, no fewer than eighteen once, and at Colchester in Essex
Foxe tells us that the night before of the seventy-five victims were the same month, when another
her death she desired certaine of executed in Canterbury diocese. ten died in two fires on a single
her frends to come to her, with These Canterbury Protestants all day. A few sites Smithfield in
whom shee consulted how shee came from the villages and towns London, Colchester, Lewes, and to
might behaue herself, that her of the Weald, but they were all a lesser extent Bristol and Bury St
death might be more glorious to burned in the cathedral city in four Edmunds served repeatedly as
the name of God, comfortable group executions, between July stages for these lethal dramas. The
to his people, and also most and November that year. No citizen campaign was always fiercest in the
discomfortable vnto the enemies of Canterbury could have avoided summer months, peaking in June
of God. The authorities got wind witnessing at least one of these 1557, when a total of twenty-eight
of this, and a local priest was grizzly spectacles. The majority were executed in a single month.
stationed by the pyre to write of the other executions that first By the last year of Marys
down the names of anyone offering year (thirty-one out of fifty-seven) reign, the number of executions
encouragement or comfort. Her took place in the London diocese. was declining steeply. This decline
supporters from outside the town Here, however, the approach of has often been interpreted as a

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 Bloody Mary?

sign of loss of nerve by the regime: beganne to ruffle and to take to London to explain himself.
I think it makes more sense to see vpon them not a little: so that all The wretched Benbridge was duly
it as a sign of the loss of evangelical quarters were full of persecution executed, on yet another botched
nerve, fewer intransigents to and prisons almost full of pyre, (Foxe thought it deliberate)
burn. Its true, however, that the prisoners. xxv Executions peaked in which did rather broyle hym, than
inspirational and propaganda June that year, with twenty-eight burne him. xxviii
value of the burnings to the burnings, most of them in Kent Was all this working? I think
beleaguered evangelical community and Sussex. Determination to deal on the whole it was. By Marys
was prompting a tactical rethink once and for all with the devyllishe last years the regime was eyeball-
in London. As one London opinions of dissenters provoked to-eyeball with a hard core of the
informer told the evangelical growing Conciliar impatience zealous and convinced. These men
book-smuggler Elizabeth Young, with the loophole provided by last and women went to their deaths,
You care not for burning, By minute recantations. In August and in some cases deliberately
Gods bloud, there must be some 1558 this hard line manifested provoked their deaths, influenced
other meanes founde for you. xxii itself in the appallingly protracted by dismay at the progress of
By the summer of 1558 those in execution of a Hampshire Catholic restoration and the
charge of the burnings in London gentleman, Thomas Benbridge. xxvi defection of former gospellers, by
had concluded that the Smithfield Benbridge had been condemned by guilt-feelings over their own earlier
executions provided the London Bishop White bishop of Winchester compromises or recantations, by
gospellers with too much publicity. for maintaining, among much the example of more courageous
John Story, one of the campaigns else, that the devil was the head brethren, and by the steadily
sternest strategists, suggested of the Roman Catholic Church. At mounting pressure of anti-
that in future condemned heretics his execution, hostile onlookers Nicodemite literature smuggled in
should be sent for execution into called for his tongue to be cut out, from mainland Europe, pamphlets
odde corners into the countrey. xxiii and the pyre was badly built denouncing all compromise with
This is the conclusion Bishop Foxe notes that he was nothing the synagogue of Satan, and
Bonner himself drew. At the like covered with faggotes. The exhorting the faithful (from a
end of June 1558, in the wake sluggish flames slowly scorched safe distance) to make a stand.
of the demonstration organised his beard and legs, and Benbridge The Colchester serving-wench
by Thomas Bentham which Ive shouted out that he recanted: Elizabeth Ffolkes was a case in
already referred to, Bonner wrote his friends hastily dismantled point: arrested for conventicling,
to Cardinal Pole suggesting that six the fire. The Catholic preacher her judges found an excuse to
Islington conventiclers remaining attending the burning, cobbled release her, in the hope she would
in custody should be speedily together a recantation, which the leave the town. However, hearyng
and quietly burned elsewhere, to reluctant Benbridge signed, using that some doubted that shee
avoid such scenes. They were duly the stooped back of a bystander hadde yealded to the Pope [she]
executed at Brentford on July as a writing-desk. The sheriff, was in suche anguishe of minde
14th, and, as expected, nobody Sir Richard Pecksall, thereupon and terrour of conscience, that
protested. xxiv called the execution off, on his (no remedye) shee woulde to the
But this was a change of own authority. This was entirely Papistes agayne ... and commyng
tactics, not of heart: there was in the spirit of the Cardinals before them at Cosins house at the
certainly no sign that the Privy declared hope that heretics even white Harte in Colchester, she was
Council, which had all along at the very last having the terror at vtter defiaunce with them and
driven the campaign forward, was of judgement before their eyes their doctrine: they had no option
looking for an exit strategy. On might plead for mercy. xxvii but to re-arrest her, and this time
the contrary, the growing political The Privy Council, however, were she was condemned.
radicalism of Protestant writers furious when they were informed. But such doughty souls were a
like John Ponet and Christopher They ordered Pecksall to execute dwindling band: the half-convinced
Goodman, openly advocating Bembridge out of hande. Even and the cowardly were running for
rebellion, had led in 1557 to a if he continued in his recantation, cover, and conforming. At Ffolkes
stepping up of the search for as he outwardly pretendeth, execution along with five others
heresy, and a growing harshness there must be no reprieve, but in August 1557 her employer,
in handling it. A new and more only some discrete and lerned Alderman Nicholas Clere, was
draconian national Heresy man, to confer with him for the very extreme against her and her
Commission was established in better confirmation of him in the companions, even preventing them
February 1557, and in its wake Catholyke faythe and to be present from praying aloud at the stake.
hitherto teflon lay leaders like also with him at his death for the At her trial, Ffolkes had warned
the Sussex ironmaster Richard better ayding of him to dye Goddes unspecified halting Gospellers
Woodman were finally tracked servaunte. Bishop White was in the court to beware of blood.
down and executed. As Foxe ordered to provide a suitable priest, Clere himself was just such a
observed, these new Inquisitours and the sheriff was summoned halting gospeller, having been a

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 Bloody Mary?

notable evangelical under Edward. campaign to associate Catholicism

Like many well-to-do people with foreign invasion or treachery
all over England, he was now at home. The princess Elizabeth,
busy establishing a safe distance if not fatally compromised by
between himself and the fatal whiff involvement in Protestant plots
of heresy. xxix against her sister, would in all
The executions had done likelihood have been neutralised
their work, and none but the by being married off to a Catholic
most determined and courageous prince, and the English history
held out openly. In 1558 the books might well have been full of
parish constable of St Brides, the praises of the golden days of
Fleet-Street, notoriously a nest good Queen Mary.
of evangelicals, was admonished
by Thomas Darbyshire to counsel Eamon Duff y is Professor of History
one suspect, Elizabeth Young, to of Christianity and a Fellow and
conformity. So do I, replied the former President of Magdalene
Constable: I bid her go to Masse, College, Cambridge. His research
and to say as you say. For by the and teaching interests centre on the
Masse, if you say the Crowe is history of late medieval and early
white, I will say so too. xxx Such modern popular religious belief
ignoble surrender was hardly the and practice, on Christian art and
stuff of Counter-reformation material culture, on the history of the
Catholic zeal. But it boded even English Roman Catholic community
less well for continuing Protestant and on the history of the papacy. He
resistance. is the author of many articles and
History is kind to the victors. books, the latest being Fires of Faith,
Marys religious policies were Catholic England under Mary
undone by the coincidence of Tudor.
her own death and that of her
cousin Reginald Pole on the
same day, depriving the renewed
English Catholic church she had
recreated of the strong leadership
it would have needed to defy a
Protestant successor. Had she
lived, Mary would of course have
had a continuing Protestant
problem, as her sister was to have
a continuing Catholic problem.
But a weak and divided European
Protestantism would have been
an altogether less formidable
threat to a Catholic England than
Habsburg Catholicism proved to
Elizabeths Protestant state. By the
same token, a dissident Protestant
minority in the 1560s and 1570s
would have had a far narrower
community base at home, and
no major financial or political
backers abroad. The burnings
would almost certainly have gone
on, but in dwindling numbers,
and the lurid spectacle of fiery
execution, so novel and so fraught
in 1555, might have become as
routine and unremarkable as a
hanging for sheep-stealing or rick-
burning. There would have been no
Foxes Book of Martyrs, no black
legend, no government-sponsored

9 The History Magazine

 Bloody Mary?

Footnotes, The Burnings

xv
APC V pp 139, 141, 147, 150, 153, 154.
i
John Christopherson, An exhortation to all menne
xvi
to take hede and beware of rebellion, London 1554, Burnet, History of the Reformation, vol II pp
STC 5207, sig c iij. ccccxx (Records, Part III Books IV-VI, no xxxvi).

xvii
ii
Printed in Burnet, History of the Reformation, Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, p 157.
vol II p cclxxiv (Records, Part II, Book II no. xxii).
xviii
Foxe [1583] p 1509.
iii
For Marys acceptance of Poles authority in
xix
relation to her fathers reputation, see above, Burnet, History of the Reformation, vol II, p
p XXX. Poles letter to the bishops September ccccxxi, (Part III, Books iv-vi, no xxxvi).
1555, endorsing Marys instructions, CRP vol 3
xx
no. 1363, Epistolarum, vol. V, p. 86-8, and below For this connection, see the letters of John
p XXX. For the Venetian ambassador on Marys Denley printed in Foxe [1563] p 1246, of Richard
dependence on Poles advice, Calendar of State Rothe, [1583] p 2019, and of William Tyms, p
Papers Venetian vol VI Part 1, pp 391-2: for Poles 2141.
account of his close collaboration with Mary, CRP
xxi
vol 3 no 2252, Epistolarum, vol V, pp 71-2: and Foxe [1583] pp 2012-3, 2023.
see the discussion of this letter (to Carranza) in
xxii
my essay, Cardinal Pole Preaching in Loades Foxe [1583] p 2063.
and Duffy Church of Mary Tudor, pp 176-200,
xxiii
esp. p 180. The Lyfe and death of John Story (STC 23297) sig
Di (verso).
iv
John Strype, The Life of the Learned Sir John
xxiv
Cheke, London 1705, p 150; Calendar of State Petyt Ms 538/47 fol 3r, a reference I owe to Dr
papers Venetian, vol VI part 1, pp 510, 526, 536, Thomas Freeman.
668.
xxv
Foxe [1583] pp 1970-1.
v
Calendar of State Papers Spanish, vol VI (i), p
xxvi
226. For Benbridge, R. H. Fritze, Rare Example of
Godlyness Amongst Gentleman: The Role of the
vi
APC IV, pp 322, 327-8, 330, 333, 338, 349, 387, Kingsmill and Gifford Families in Promoting the
394, 395, 403: vol V, 17, 61, 88. Reformation in Hampshire in Protestantism and
the National Church, ed. Peter Lake and Maria
vii
Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Oxford 1822, vol Dowling (London, 1987), pp 154-55.
III part 1 pp 338-9: Gilbert Burnet, A History
xxvii
of the Reformation of the Church of England, Epistolarum V p 88.
Oxford 1850, vol II p cclxxi (Records, Part II,
xxviii
Book II no xix). APC VI p 361: Foxe [1583] pp 2246-7.

xxix
viii
Foxe [1583] p 1767. Foxe [1583] p 2008.

xxx
ix
notably Robert Ferrar, Bishop of St Davids at the Foxe [1583] p 2064.
end of March, in April George Marsh, formerly
curate to Lawrence Saunders and conspicuous as
one of the few evangelical activists in Lancashire,
and at the end of May John Cardmaker, vicar of
St Brides, Fleet Street.

x
Foxe [1583] p 1912.

xi
Foxe [1583] p 1912.

xii
Foxe [1583] pp 1525-7.

xiii
Foxe [1583] p 1508.

xiv
APC vol V p 104.

10 The History Magazine