How Bloody Was 'Bloody Mary'?

Before Mary I was Queen, no other woman had worn the crown of England. This made her a Tudor trailblazer, and a target. During her short reign she burned some 300+ people, earning her the nickname 'Bloody Mary'. Was this nickname justified or was it a case of bad press? Joining Kate today is the fantastic Anna Whitelock, historian and author of books including Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen, to help us get to know this woman. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Batwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Batwixter Sheets. And because we care about you and your safety and your wellbeing and your general snuggliness, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way of covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And we call that the Fair Deuce Warning, because if you keep listening and you happen to get upset at some of the stronger stuff, well, what can I tell you, tough, that one's on you because Fair Deuce, we did warn you. Right, on with the show!

• 1:07Kate Lister?

  Nicknames are cruel at the best of times, aren't they? And the worst thing about them is they just stick. Once someone's given you a nickname, that can be it for life. Just ask Mary Tudor, daughter of the infamous Henry VIII. Her nickname, Bloody Mary, has lasted several lifetimes and is still going strong. And as nicknames go, one that paints you as a mass murderer, I mean, that's got a fair bit of stigma to it. But are we doing Mary a disservice with this title? Is it fair to call her Bloody Mary? Is there more to her than meets the eye? Was it her religious faith that was driving her to burn all of those people? I think we might actually have a hard time redeeming her for this one, but we're gonna

• 1:52Kate Lister?

  try, we're gonna give it a go. Right, on with the show!

• 2:22Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. You would think that when your dad is a bloodthirsty killer, Henry VIII, you might want to go in a different direction when it was your turn to rule. You might look at what he did and thought, nah, I'm all right, mate. I'm gonna do it my way. But I think it's probably fair to say that the apple did not fall far from that tree for Mary Tudor when it came to bumping people off. I mean, she did seem to do a lot of it, didn't she? Or is that just anti-Catholic propaganda that came after her lifetime? And she was a lovely, adorable, cuddly type of a person who wouldn't hurt a fly. Huh. Well, joining me today to try and unpick this one is the fabulous author

• 3:07Kate Lister?

  and historian, Professor Anna Whitelock. And if anyone can help us get grips with who Mary really was, and to find out just how bloody her reputation deserves to be, it's Anna. So I am ready. If you are ready, let's do this.

• 3:28Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to the Twixt the Sheets. It's only Anna Whitelock. How are you doing?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I'm doing very well. How are you, Kate Lister?

• 3:36Kate Lister?

  I'm so excited to have you back because we were just talking, me and my producers, at a pitch meeting. We were working out what episodes. We realised we've never done Bloody Mary. We've never done Mary. The first, what on earth do we think that we're playing at, quite frankly?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  The first crowned queen of England, the ultimate trailblazer. It's where it all began for female rule.

• 3:57Kate Lister?

  Do you know what? I've got a real soft spot for Mary and I'm really hoping that you're gonna come on this podcast and you're gonna go, it was all slander. It was, she was lovely. She was great to the servants. She had lovely, she loved her pets. That all that Bloody Mary stuff was a load of nonsense. I don't know if you're gonna do that.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Up to a point, because of course the Bloody Mary stuff came from John Fox, who was Was writing a kind of piece of propaganda, really, ultimately about all the burnings of the Protestant martyrs. And of course, that's where Mary got her name from, the fact that during her reign, during her short reign, almost 300 men, women and children were burnt for their beliefs.

• 4:38Kate Lister?

  That's a lot of people.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  But what's important to remember is that was the accepted punishment for heresy at the time.

• 4:45Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Burning. And actually, although it was a kind of ferocious period, it wasn't unprecedented. And of course, Elizabeth the First hung, drawn and quartered many, many.

• 4:56Kate Lister?

  Did she?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Catholics, yeah, absolutely. So we need to remember to put Mary's reign in the context of the time. And she's had a really bad press because of very effective Elizabethan spin, really. And she's still suffering as a result.

• 5:14Kate Lister?

  She's kind of got a reputation as being like the Tudor frump. Like there's Elizabeth the First, who's like this golden, beautiful. And then before her, it was Mary, who was slightly troll-like and tragic and just sort of shuffled off. Is any of that fair? No.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Well, up to a point, and you know what? You're so right. And when I used to teach this a lot, I would, do you remember the 1998 Elizabeth the First, Shere Kaqpor film?

• 5:38Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And basically Cathy Burke played Mary.

• 5:41Kate Lister?

  I loved Cathy Burke in that.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  I love Cathy Burke, but like she wasn't playing the kind of glamorous sort of Mary figure. So she was like, it was all dark and dingy and Mary was dying. And it was Cathy Burke, in a Cathy Burke way, playing the part. And then the next scene was basically Cate Blanchett skipping around with her golden hair in the sunshine, playing the part of Elizabeth. And that really did sum up that kind of juxtaposition. And as I say, so much of it was down to the Elizabethan spin doctors, basically trying to kind of airbrush Mary from history, even though Mary actually was the one who established that women could be crowned queens, that no woman before, people talk about Lady Jane Grey,

• 6:27Speaker 01

  but Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed. Queen, but she wasn't crowned queen. No woman before had worn the crown of England.

• 6:34Kate Lister?

  It's impressive.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  No woman before had decided to marry as a queen, try and negotiate a really effective prenup that kind of contained to some extent, you know, the power of the foreign king that everybody feared would sort of take over. And people can, we can discuss how kind of successful that was, but she really did do what she was supposed to do, which was marry as a woman. And also desperately, sadly and unsuccessfully, tried to have a child and also failed in that. So although her reign was a very sort of tragic end, and of course it proved to be a dead end in the sense that she didn't restore Catholicism, which was her big kind of project.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Actually, she was a Tudor trailblazer. She's been, I would say, entirely underestimated. And you know what? I mean, the brilliant kind of image of this is she's actually buried beneath Elizabeth the first in Westminster Abbey.

• 7:33Kate Lister?

  Oh, she'd have hated that.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Kate Lister?

  Oh, she'd have been so angry.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  But you know what? So would Elizabeth, Kate, because what the thing.

• 7:40Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Because Elizabeth did not want to be buried there. This is this act of great royal tomb raiding that happened. So James the first, who of course comes to the throne after Elizabeth first, he decides quite soon after his accession that when he dies, he wants to be buried in Westminster Abbey with the founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry the seventh, in the chapel. Because he wants to, you know, the two founders of new dynasties, it's the kind of top spot. He wants to reserve it for himself. But actually where he wants to be buried is where actually Elizabeth is buried. So relatively recently, it was found, payments made in the accounts to dig up Elizabeth's body.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Move her to the side aisle of Westminster Abbey where Mary the first body had been dumped with sort of an unmarked grave. Elizabeth's body is placed on top and this, you know, this nice tomb, but still a tomb to Elizabeth is there. And it essentially says, partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters in the hope of one resurrection. And although Elizabeth, you know, she's on the top and there's this kind of lavish tomb. In fact, James is really having a laugh because what he's done is sideline both Mary and Elizabeth together as essentially barren queens. It's a kind of mausoleum of barren queens. Neither of them have children. And on

• 9:01Speaker 01

  the other side of the chapel, he actually puts his mother, who he moves her body from Peterborough Cathedral, would you believe it, down the A1 because she's a sort of fertile woman who's, so he completely does this tomb raiding. And so Mary and Elizabeth end up being buried together. But I also think just the image of Mary's body beneath that of Elizabeth really sums up the idea that her reputation has been buried beneath that of Elizabeth too.

• 9:27Kate Lister?

  It really does, doesn't it? That's almost poetic.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I know.

• 9:31Kate Lister?

  There does seem to be a lot of sadness in Mary's life. Like, it starts very well. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. First and only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She's the future. It's all fabulous. Mummy and daddy love each other very much. And then...

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Well, she's the future, but she's also, I mean, let's not overstate that. She's proof that they can have healthy children. But of course, she's the wrong gender. She needs to be a boy. So it's kind of like, I mean, Henry's happy about it and he'll bounce her around at court, but it's kind of like, and the next time it will be a son.

• 10:05Kate Lister?

  Hmm. Okay, okay.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  But she's loved by her parents in that sense. Yeah.

• 10:09Kate Lister?

  Still a very important child.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:12Kate Lister?

  Yes, I think so. And then what happens when her dad gets the hots for Anne Boleyn and all, I mean, children of divorce are a tricky area, but Mary seems to have had a particularly rough time with this.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Mary basically is stripped of her status as the princess, as the... You know, next in line to the throne and she becomes rather than Princess Mary, she becomes the Lady Mary. And actually is then sent to her baby half sister Elizabeth's household where she's effectively kind of a sort of either half in prison, half maid in Elizabeth's household. And she loses her status and then she is kept from seeing her mother. And I mean, she gets to a point where ultimately she submits to her father and her spirit is completely broken. And when her mother dies, she basically says, okay, you know,

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I'll acknowledge that my mother's marriage was invalid to you, that I'm a bastard child and that you're head of the Church of England. And in a way, that was such a formative moment for her in fifteen thirty six because it broke her. But actually, in that moment of total vulnerability, she became really strong. And after that, I would say Mary becomes this warrior queen.

• 11:29Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  In a way that again, we think of as of Elizabeth. You know, Mary defeated a rebellion during her reign. She was prepared to put her head on the block and die for her faith. So actually, there is such a great tenacious spirit in Mary that, yes, she looked weak from her upbringing, but my word, she pulled it around. And, you know, perhaps ultimately her body lets her down more than her kind of heart. In fact, you know, I often say, you know, the famous Tilbury quote that is attributed to Elizabeth. I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king. That really sums up Mary really, really well.

• 12:07Kate Lister?

  A key to understanding her as much as we can does seem to be her faith and the importance of her faith. Was that present right throughout her life, that really strong devotion, or is that something we see developing?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  No, it's absolutely there. It's core to her identity. And in fact, when, I mean, although, as I described, that moment where she actually submits to her father as head of the Church of England, in that sense, for a moment, looks to forsake her Catholic faith, it really is just in a moment. Because after that, and during her brother's reign, during the reign of Edward VI, she's very provocative, essentially, with her Catholic faith. So she will, despite being told in no uncertain terms by her brother, who she dismisses as, you know, essentially, you're my little brother, you know, I'm not going to take orders from you. But contrary to what her brother, the king, is ordering, and his counsel, she continues to say mass in her household, even though it's outlawed. And in fact, there's accounts

• 13:04Speaker 01

  where she comes riding with her entourage into London, effectively like sort of swinging her rosary beads, in this sort of great sense of defiance. Yeah, there was a plan at one point that she might actually escape to the continent, because for safety. And then she says, no, actually, I'm going to stay, I'm going to stay and fight and be here for, you know, my claim to the throne. And then at that point, she does say, you know, I'd rather put my head on a block than forsake my faith. So although later, we can say Bloody Mary, and so on, Mary herself was prepared to die for her faith. She was absolutely committed. And where historians' views have evolved is that people would say, what Mary tried

• 13:45Speaker 01

  to do when she became queen is just turn the clock back to pre the Reformation. So basically, she wanted to get everything back to how things were when her mother and her father were married, England was a Catholic country, the Pope was head of the Church, and so on. But actually, historians now say, it was much more enlightened than that. It wasn't simply a kind of campaign of like, burning people into submission. There was also a campaign of education, there was published sermons, there was a whole investment in education. So it was a kind of battle for hearts and minds. And so actually, people say that it was much more kind of progressive, rather than simply repressive. And in that sense, you know, we need to see her more than simply as Bloody Mary.

• 14:32Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Anna after this short break.

• 14:44Speaker 02

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• 15:41Kate Lister?

  So Henry dies. Very sad, I suppose, for some people.

• 15:49Kate Lister?

  I don't know. I don't know how Mary would have reacted to that. I don't know what kind of relationship she had with her dad at that point.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Complicated, I think it's fair to say.

• 15:56Kate Lister?

  Very complicated.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  You know, at the end of his life, his children were sort of back at court. But it was obviously an incredibly difficult relationship that she had. And of course, after her father's death, yeah, her little brother essentially becomes king.

• 16:11Kate Lister?

  That would be weird, don't you think? Like, your little brother gets to be king?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's a proteitious boy. He's also, of course, a Protestant, and he's surrounded by Protestants. And so Mary is now basically in the line of fire because she is a defiant Catholic and will not submit to her brother. So there's, I mean, and there's accounts that her brother writes where he basically talks of, you know, a kind of war of words between the two siblings, where, you know, he's saying, "You have to follow my orders." And Mary basically saying, "Well, you grow up first, and then I might."

• 16:42Kate Lister?

  Wow, girl Mary.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  But during those years, she's defiantly Catholic. And she, of course, proves to be a real courageous and pragmatic fighter because, of course, she has to at least prepare to fight for the throne, even though ultimately she secures the throne, there is a succession crisis.

• 17:01Kate Lister?

  There's that whole Lady Jane Grey mess that happened.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  It is.

• 17:05Kate Lister?

  Poor Lady Jane Grey.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 17:07Kate Lister?

  No.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. She gets too much sympathy and people think, I spend a lot of time saying, no, Lady Jane Grey was not the Crown Queen. Mary was the first Crown Queen.

• 17:18Kate Lister?

  Heard it here first.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 17:19Kate Lister?

  It was never going to work, that plan, was it? Like, just we'll find some 16-year-old and go, you get to be Queen now. And as if Mary was going to go, all right, then I'll just be over here if anyone needs me.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but the point is, I mean, it's control of London at that point was really important. And actually, Lady Jane Grey was married to Guildford Dudley, who was the son of the Duke of Northumberland, who was basically the puppet master at the time, who was holding all the cards. He was controlling things as Edward VI, Mary's brother, becomes ill and then subsequently dies. And crucially, Lady Jane Grey and those around her, who were essentially pulling her strings, had the control of London, the armoury, the munitions, the treasury. Mary, at this point, was essentially this kind of landowner in East Anglia, who kind of moved between her various residences, hearing mass in the home counties and East Anglia. And so, in a way, nobody gave her a hope

• 18:13Speaker 01

  in hell. And it was just as Edward started to really decline his health, she was summoned to court. And effectively, she was given a tip-off to basically tell her not to come to court, because if she did go to court, there was a sense that she would be arrested. And so she basically got the tip-off and then fled. And she fled across East Anglia. First, she went to Kenningham, one of her houses in Norfolk, and then she went to Fymlingham Castle. And remarkably, she managed to rally her entourage, but then much wider groups of people who flocked to her. And so you have this standoff where Lady Jane Grey's proclaiming herself Queen, and Mary is also proclaiming herself Queen. And in the archives, you see,

• 18:57Speaker 01

  you know, documents with Mary the Queen and a proclamation saying, you know, you need to obey my orders and pay allegiance to me. And what's really smart, and people kind of overlook for a long time, is that They assumed that in the succession crisis, Mary was kind of screaming about her Catholicism and it was all about, you know, come to me, I'm the kind of Catholic queen. But actually, she played down her Catholicism in a really smart way. And instead, she played up the fact that she was Henry VIII's legitimate daughter, that she was in the line of succession and Edward hadn't gone through Parliament in his plan for Lady Joan Grey to succeed him. So she ends up managing to win support from both Catholics and Protestants

• 19:40Speaker 01

  as Henry VIII's daughter, which, you know, goes against this whole view that she was a kind of, you know, Catholic maniac who was blinded by her devotion to Catholicism and couldn't be politically smart and savvy too. And the succession crisis shows that she really could be.

• 19:54Kate Lister?

  And that she was popular because people were really excited to see her, weren't they?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, she was, people accepted that she was the legitimate heir. She was by the terms of Act of Parliament and by Henry VIII's will, she was, you know, next in line to the throne. And so she managed to, I mean, she gathered such a sort of display of support and forces at Framingham Castle that essentially the councillors in London saw the way that things were going and were like, no, this isn't going to work. And they all fell on their swords and pledged allegiance to Mary. And so she becomes queen, having not had to fight, but being absolutely prepared to do so.

• 20:32Kate Lister?

  And bye bye Jane.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Bye bye Jane, beginning of the end for Jane, beginning of the end. Yeah, exactly. But it's such a remarkable story, you know what? And if it had happened in Elizabeth's reign, this succession crisis, I've no doubt there would have been so many Hollywood films that would have really dramatized the moment. But instead, we're still waiting for the, we're still waiting for the Hollywood blockbuster on Mary.

• 20:53Kate Lister?

  We are, aren't we? All right, so she's got to be queen. And I think that takes remarkable confidence, by the way, to have, you know, not said, it's all right, I'll just stay over here, but to have marched in and go, no, I'm going to bloody well be queen and, you know, tough tits Jane. But now we've got a situation, she's like, was she 36 when she, when she became queen?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  So she becomes queen and everybody at the time, we have to understand, these women were seen as the weaker sex, were seen as being led by their emotions, were actually also seen as being far more. Sexually voracious than men. So there was like, basically, she had to marry. There was no argument about it.

• 21:25Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  She needed to provide an heir, but she needed a king to provide the masculine element of government. And so there was, you know, all kinds of discussions about who might be a suitable match. And in the end, she went for Philip of Spain, who, you know, it made sense.

• 21:40Kate Lister?

  Good choice?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, although, you know, people at the time were scared about England getting swallowed up by Spain. Mary herself was half Spanish. Catherine of Aragon, of course, was Spanish, her mother.

• 21:52Kate Lister?

  Yeah, of cour-, oh, yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  The Emperor Charles the Fifth, her uncle, had been a great supporter of him. And his son, Philip, was now set to be Mary's husband. And Spain was this hugely important force. So it was a smart marriage. And what Mary did, more than, of course, Henry VIII or anybody else had done, she also put the marriage before Parliament. So if you think about kings in the past, I mean, they'd just chosen who they were going to marry, that was it. Mary says, oh, you know, I will put it before Parliament. And basically, if Parliament don't want to support this marriage treaty, effectively, I won't go ahead with it. And of course, they do support it. She also defeats a rebellion, what was known as Wyatt's Rebellion,

• 22:33Speaker 01

  which was a rebellion, various motives, religion, but also the marriage. And Mary's advisers basically say, get out of London, you know, it's not safe. Mary's not having any of it. She rides to the Guildhall in London. And she delivers a speech and she basically says, pluck up your hearts, you know, I may look like a woman, but I'm the mother of this nation, you know, you need to defend me. And, you know, put pay to the attempts of the rebels. Really, really bold and powerful speech, which, unlike the Tilbury Speech in the Armada by Elizabeth, which has slightly dubious authenticity. Mary gave this speech, she refused to leave London, and she gave this really strong rallying speech, which ultimately defeated the rebellion.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  She gets the marriage through Parliament, she secures a prenup, which tries to limit Philip's role in government. And she goes ahead and marries him and then, unfortunately, thinks she's pregnant and has this most desperately tragic phantom pregnancy.

• 23:35Kate Lister?

  It's so sad.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37Kate Lister?

  She seemed to love Philip, or maybe that's another, like, myth, like the heartbroken, poor Mary. But so you get a sentiment that she really loved him and he was like, meh. That's, maybe that's wrong.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  She was a means to an end for him. I mean, he was a means to an end for her, but I also think, you know, without wanting to kind of over kind of analyse it, you can imagine that her uncle, Philip's father and Philip had been a kind of support for her during her life and it was a link to her mother. So I think, you know, as a male support, if nothing else, she kind of looked to Philip. And yeah, I mean, she believed she was pregnant and what of course Mary has to face for the first time, which again is often overlooked is, you know, we all know that monarchs, one of the main jobs they have to do is provide an heir and preserve the succession. But for the first time, when you have a queen regnant, in other words, a reigning queen,

• 24:30Speaker 01

  the responsibility of the monarch isn't just to provide an heir, it's to produce an heir. So Mary's body is on the line and scrutinised in a way that no male monarch is. I mean, if Henry VIII doesn't have a child or has, you know, stillborn children, he just gets another wife or has another attempt at pregnancy. If you are the queen, your body is an issue. And the vulnerability of your body, the weakness of your body, it's really hard that that doesn't undermine your rule. And that kind of happens to Mary because she thinks she's pregnant. She has a sort of, you know, swollen breasts, it seems like she has a-

• 25:03Kate Lister?

  Doctors think she's pregnant too, don't they?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Doctors think she's pregnant.

• 25:05Kate Lister?

  Completely imagining this.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  No, and they, I mean, it seems likely that she had some kind of like tumour or something on her pituitary gland. I mean, she's sort of displaying symptoms of phantom pregnancy. She withdraws into her chamber, there's all the ceremony that goes with this. You know, everybody holds their breath and the weeks go by, the months go by, and eventually she has to kind of reemerge with like, well, that was a kind of false alarm, which in a sense, her authority never recovered and you can understand why. I mean, you know, if we think of political leaders, even now, when they look weak, that's curtains for them. You know, they show any physical weakness, it's really bad. If you're a monarch in the 16th century where all power centres on you and you're a woman in a man's world

• 25:50Speaker 01

  and you've just said you're about to provide the heir and then suddenly you don't. It's a really bad look and it's desperate.

• 25:57Kate Lister?

  Do you know what makes it even sadder for me is like that there was so much fanfare and like, and everyone was braced for the announcement. Like, like wet nurses were brought in and people were bringing gifts of cradles and baby clothes and everyone's getting ready for the prince. And it's so public that she has to kind of- Oh, it's just awful, kind of slink away after about like, was it like 12 month pregnancy or something and eventually admit it's not happening?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, and it's easy to think, oh, well, that was a different time. But, you know, when I was doing commentary on some of the royal births, you know, before Prince George was born, I was thinking, oh my goodness, you know, okay, when Mary was in, you know, in confinement, apparently in labour, there weren't like people on ladders and gazebos of television cameras outside the hospital, but all eyes literally across Europe were on London and on the court. And you just think, can you imagine now when actually monarchs don't wield political power, if suddenly there had been like no heir, there'd been no baby, it was a false alarm. Imagine back then, how much of a big deal that was.

• 27:02Kate Lister?

  It must have been unfairly so, but it must have been very humiliating.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:07Kate Lister?

  For her.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I think so. And of course, people can then say, you know, Mary was this very tragic figure as well as being a Bloody Mary. But actually, Elizabeth, I think, you know, the fact is Elizabeth doesn't marry, she doesn't even try and have a child. And so she doesn't in a way test her body and make herself vulnerable in a way that Mary really did. And so in a way, I think Mary did try and deliver and do what she was supposed to do, not just as a monarch, but as a female monarch. And in that sense, you know, it's pretty remarkable.

• 27:40Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Anna after this short break.

• 27:49Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 28:31Kate Lister?

  We've got to talk about the Bloody Mary reputation and about what was going on. So we've got this young woman who's enduring an awful lot. And you really get a sense of how important her faith is to her. And then a prominent narrative around this is that she gets to be queen and then goes fucking mental and just like, right, I'm queen now. Everyone's a Catholic, you're a Catholic. If you're not a Catholic, that's it, burning everybody. What actually happened with this?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Well, I think she, I mean, as I say, her sort of right hand man in this regard was Cardinal Reginald Paul, who was the kind of Pope's representative to help bring England back into the fold, back into the Catholic Church. But also Philip wanted the timing to be that he would essentially take the credit. So after the marriage, you know, typical man, one might say, I will be there to be part of the bringing back England into the Catholic fold. There was a sense that a few burnings would be sort of instructive and set examples. And at the burnings, I mean, they were public spectacles. People would be, you know, selling cherries and people would be gathering around. It'd be a social event, there'd be sermons and stuff.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And the idea was that a couple of burnings would sort of set the tone. And also that it is about cleansing the soul. People were believing the wrong things and therefore the punishment and the sort of cleansing process was burning. What I think happened was that to some extent, it kind of got out of control because people were then taking Mary's, that general early position and then carrying on and get, you know, and it was running away with it. So what we have to remember is, you know, Mary was not signing off every death warrant. She wasn't personally had a hand in everything. There was definitely a kind of tone was set. But I think she genuinely believed that it was going to be a process of a few burnings.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And then much more importantly, this process of people being reeducated and re-engaged. The Catholic historian Eamon Duffy wrote this book called Fires of Faith. And he basically said, he talks about the burnings even as being devastatingly effective. And He said that by the end of Mary's reign, England was broadly Catholic once more.

• 30:42Kate Lister?

  I could see how that would be effective if you were seeing people being burnt to death. Fine, I'm a Catholic.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. But you know, it's also, but you know, the argument is that people were, you know, catechisms of like these instruction manuals were being printed, that people really were engaging again. And of course, England hadn't been Protestant for that long.

• 31:01Kate Lister?

  No, it's not very long, is it? It's like, was it 50 years?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if you think about the main kind of, you know, Reformation was sort of 1530s, five, you know, 1536. Then, you know, Mary is coming to the throne in 1553. So it's really not very long at all.

• 31:19Kate Lister?

  No, it's not, is it?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  And lots of churches had kept all their sort of Catholic paraphernalia out the back. There was a sense that we, they were in this kind of interim stage. So yes, Mary has this reputation. It came largely from John Foxy's Book of Martyrs, which was this very graphic encyclopedia, really, of all the Catholic burnings that went into great detail and of course, really put them on Mary. And it was that that kind of created this reputation, which of course Elizabeth and Elizabethan spin doctors really did dine out on.

• 31:52Kate Lister?

  Was there a lot more burnings than they thought that there would be there? Would that be a fair assessment that there was a lot more resistance than she thought and a lot of people did get burnt?

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, in that period of time, because really we're only looking at like two and a half years. So actually for that number of people, it was in that short period of time, it was pretty intense.

• 32:10Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. Like two years and how many people?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  It was just under 300, men, women and children. And there are, you know, if you look at the woodcuts in John Foxy's Book of Martyrs, you know, there's an image of, I think on the Isle of Guernsey, there's a pregnant woman being burnt. And then these illustrations suggest that she was in labor and then the baby was thrown back into the fire. You know, it was really graphic stuff. But as I say, in Elizabeth's reign, there were many priests that were hundron and quartered. So.

• 32:37Kate Lister?

  What about Edward? Had he been doing similar?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Henry too. I mean, you know, there were religious killings and, you know, it's really important that we don't see Mary as this complete anomaly. And I would argue. That yes, you know, we can look at her as Bloody Mary, but we also need to think of her as a Tudor trailblazer, as the first crowned queen of England, who was a woman who showed that you could rule in a man's world, who put her body on the line in a way that no woman had before, you know, so there's much to be said about Mary that is much more than the fact that she burned Protestants.

• 33:15Kate Lister?

  And she didn't, I'm trying very hard here, but she didn't burn them herself as well. That's like, how much would she have been aware of what was going on?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. I think that's exactly the point. I mean, it's always that argument, isn't it, about when you have a regime? How far is it being done? Because people believe that's the will of the regime and how much are they just taking, you know, control in their own hands? So, you know, Mary did not think, I'm going to just burn loads of people. Her vision was a Catholic England once more. She felt that there would be some people that would be burnt, but after that, there would be a sense of the example being set and people, you know, being reeducated to reengage with the Catholic Church.

• 33:57Kate Lister?

  And what was the effect of these Protestant martyrs? I mean, even at the time, did it create that narrative? Maybe it's not a good thing that we're burning people to death. Was that?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  No, not really. And that wasn't the sensibility if we look at what comes later. But of course, you know, the fact is that once Mary, you know, for all that Eamon Duffy and others will say that the burnings were devastatingly effective and England was broadly Catholic, of course, during Elizabeth's reign, we moved to the establishment of the Church of England once again and, you know, England being a Protestant country. So, I mean, that's one of the other things that Mary's reign is seen in some sense as a kind of historical cul-de-sac, you know, that it's an anomaly, it's this five-year period, there's no, that she doesn't have a child, her main project, which was to restore Catholicism, is a failure. And so there's not much to be said about her.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And that's really how historians for such a long time regarded her reign as just a bit of a blip before the more exciting reign of Elizabeth.

• 34:57Kate Lister?

  How close did she come to having Elizabeth executed?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  I mean, Elizabeth was put in the tower. Elizabeth was a thorn in her side. Elizabeth was, of course, next in line to the throne and she was a rallying point for those disaffected. It seems that actually Philip warned Mary off kind of taking action against Elizabeth.

• 35:18Kate Lister?

  Interesting, okay.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  So I think she was a definite threat to Mary. So I mean, Mary was, you know, we sort of kind of struggle with thinking, is she this weak and pathetic woman? Or is she this Catholic tyrant? And actually, she was somewhere in the middle. She was a politically savvy, religiously determined, faithful woman who blazed a trail in all kinds of ways. And ultimately had a sort of tragic death, let down perhaps by her body more than her kind of will and her instincts.

• 35:49Kate Lister?

  What did happen to her? Because that's the subject of a lot of mythology as well. What took Mary out in the end?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Well, it's likely that she had some kind of tumour, some kind of cancer. I mean, so she dies in her early 40s. She's only queen for five years. But, you know, and so people will say, well, isn't it, as I say, a historical dead end? Nothing really happens. But actually, I would say that she set precedence in terms of female rule, which, you know, were really, really important. And everything that, in many ways, Elizabeth positioned herself and represented herself as, as not Mary. And that allowed Elizabeth to be a certain thing, like Elizabeth being all English, whereas Mary was half Spanish. For Elizabeth to have the kind of ability not to be forced to marry immediately.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Because of course, by the end of Mary's reign, Philip had been seen to lead England into one of his wars against France. And ultimately, England lost its last territory in France, Calais. So that was all seen as a negative too. So Elizabeth managed to benefit really from Mary's mistakes, Mary's reign. But I always like to think that, you know, the image that on Mary's death, Mary's coronation robes were hastily refurbished for Elizabeth. And in that sense, Elizabeth was the kind of hand-me-down queen, wearing clothes originally worn by Mary.

• 37:11Kate Lister?

  And then Elizabeth comes in and then we're Protestants again, although it's not that simple. But I often think like, what did the people just out in the sticks, like the peasant people, somewhere in like, you know, around rural Hull, who isn't at court and who doesn't see this, oh, now we've got Edward, now we've got Mary, now we've got Elizabeth and this constant, did they often wondered, like, did they have any sense of what their religion is supposed to be now?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's such a good question because actually that's exactly the point, that ultimately it's so patchy.

• 37:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Different people have different positions, different clergy, will it enforce things to different extent. The further away from London tends to be more conservative than the South East. And, you know, historians tend to use wills as a kind of index of people's faith. So how they, you know, what their last will and testament is, is it framed in a Catholic or Protestant way? And yeah, I mean, the ultimate sense is it takes a long time. It's really patchy. And that's why we should always be really careful when we start talking about Protestants or Catholics or England's now Catholic or Protestant, because there is such a tapestry of different positions. It's really not as simple as that. You're absolutely right.

• 38:23Kate Lister?

  So as a final question then, I think I know what you're gonna say. Is the reputation Bloody Mary well deserved? Or do we need to give her a complete reassessment?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  She needs a makeover. She needs a makeover. We need, I think, Penelope Cruz to play the part of Mary in a Hollywood-

• 38:41Kate Lister?

  Do you think she was good looking? Was she a looker, Mary?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  She was striking. I think she was striking. I mean, I think she was a woman that was, you know, she was half Spanish. I think she's not been given a fair treatment. And I just think, given the way that Henry VIII was depicted by, what was it, Jonathan Rees-Meys?

• 38:59Kate Lister?

  Amen, yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, come on, Mary, let's have an attractive Mary. Let's have Mary looking-

• 39:05Kate Lister?

  Sam Hayek.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And just doing the courageous thing she did. And let's have the Hollywood blockbuster. And let's see her as this female trailblazer, rather than simply this kind of very dowdy, frumpy Catholic tyrant.

• 39:20Kate Lister?

  Anna, you've been wonderful. I knew that you would be. Thank you so much for coming to tell us about Bloody Mary, or not so Bloody Mary, or not Bloody at all Mary. But if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  They can find me online in all the usual places. And if they want to know more about Mary, my book, Mary Tudor: England's First Queen, has been out for a number of years, published by Bloomsbury, and it's in all good retailers, stockists and online. So yeah, check it out there.

• 39:50Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You have been fantastic.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Brilliant. Thank you, Kate.

• 39:57Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you for listening and thanks so much to Anna for joining us. And if you like what you heard, get therapy. That's what I would say. If you listen to this and thought, yeah, burning people to death, that was fabulous. Get therapy. But if you like the podcast as a whole, then maybe you could like it, review it and follow along, because that does actually really help us. Coming up, we have got inside the Icelandic witch trials and another on the truth about Mary Shelley. And if you want us to explore a subject, or maybe you fancy defending Mary to the hilt, then you can drop us an email at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society,

• 40:41Kate Lister?

  a podcast by History Hit.