← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Maddy Pelling
Hello everyone. It's us, your hosts, Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.
- [00:04]
Anthony Delaney
But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time.
- [00:08]
Maddy Pelling
If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards.
- [00:18]
Anthony Delaney
So go to the Show Notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm they will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds.
- [00:31]
Maddy Pelling
If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show.
- [00:40]
Unknown
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- [01:28]
Maddy Pelling
Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.
- [01:31]
Anthony Delaney
And I'm Anthony.
- [01:32]
Maddy Pelling
And we are back for part two on Bloody Mary. Last week we looked at the build up her traumatic childhood and her relationship to both her mother and her father. This time we're diving right in into how she earned her dark reputation. Warning, we are beginning with a description of execut.
- [01:58]
Anthony Delaney
On an otherwise peaceful Summer's Day in 1557, the Market Square of Lewes transformed into a furnace of fear and faith. As smoke curled into the blue sky, 10 Protestants, men and women, stood chained to stakes. The gathered crowd watched intense silence. Moments later, the flames roared to life, devouring the wood. Then the chained people, the condemned, lifted their voices in prayer, their cries mixing with the crackle of fire and the stench of charred flesh. This was not justice. This was a spectacle of terror crafted by a monarch determined to turn back the tide of reform. Under Queen Mary I, the England of solemn prayer and English Bibles had become a land where heresy meant death and loyalty to conscience was punished by fire. Lewes, a quiet Sussex town bore witness to one of the darkest chapters in Mary's reign and the largest bonfire of people in English history. These martyrs, remembered now in stone and firelight each year, were but a few of the nearly 300 souls burned during the short but brutal rule of the Queen, who became known as Bloody Mary.
- [03:44]
Maddy Pelling
Hello and welcome back to this two parter on Mary the First, AKA Bless Bloody Mary. In this episode, we'll be exploring her ascension to the throne and the reign that followed. Some would say a reign of terror. But did she earn the title Bloody Mary? And was she any more or less tyrannical than the other monarchs that had come before her and those who would come after? Anthony? I once slept in a church, a Catholic church that was built during the reign of Mary up in Lancashire. I did an episode of a podcast for the church's Conservation Trust and me and the presenter and the producer slept in this church and it was remarkably spooky. But it's. It's left me with a fascination with Mary and her reign and I am really, genuinely excited to get into this because it's such an unusual, short, violent, eventful reign. I mean, this is just a few years that she is Queen of England, but they are supposedly very bloody ones. So let's start with how she comes to take the throne. In the last episode, we spoke all about her childhood and her relationship with Catherine, her mother with Henry viii, but also with her sister Elizabeth, and even, right at the end, her brother Edward. And we left it with Edward taking up the throne after his father Henry's death. So how have we got to the point where Mary is now on the throne?
- [05:14]
Anthony Delaney
Well, Edward doesn't live very long. He dies on 6 July in 1553 at age just 15. The working theory at the moment is that he had some form of tb. I think that that's what killed him. And then we know that because he was a minor when he was monarch, he was ruled by the Seymour faction, who were very essentially Protestant factions, certainly reformist, and England had essentially become a Protestant nation under their custodianship. And what they didn't want now was for that act of succession from 1543 to kick in and for Mary to become a Catholic queen and undo everything that they had done. So they put, as we've seen in a former episode, Lady Jane Grey, or they tried to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. So go back and listen to that episode. We're not going to spend too much time with Jane at this moment in time, but she was there for I.
- [06:06]
Maddy Pelling
Will say it was an even shorter reign than Mary and Edward.
- [06:11]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, she was there. What was it, nine days or something? Famously. So to come back to Mary's perspective on what's happening during this time, she is quickly gathering support. She kind of takes an awful lot of Catholic support, obviously, but also from those who really do acknowledge the Succession act and see that she is the legitimate heir and it grows throughout both the people and the nobility. So it's kind of widespread support for Mary because they really do see that that's she's supposed to be. So on the 3rd of August, she then enters London to claim her throne and Elizabeth. So tellingly now, after all they've been through, her sister Elizabeth is by her side when this occurs and we have banners and crowds and bonfires. This is a real public spectacle. Mary is coming to claim her throne.
- [06:56]
Maddy Pelling
That's wild to me that Elizabeth is by her side and it says something about their relationship and that now the tables are turned and it's Elizabeth who has to be strategic and stay close to the action whilst having a very different perspective on it to her big sister. They essentially march on London, they enter London to claim the throne. Mary, as you say, is legitimized through the act that her father set in place. She was the second in line to the throne. This all seems calm and reasonable and there is support for it. But of course, she is going to return the country to a level of Catholicism that she desires, and also not only that, but to denounce Protestantism as heresy, and that is going to be no small thing.
- [07:44]
Anthony Delaney
Yes, and it is a interesting point. I think that we have to look at the fact that England had never had a real queen regnant before. So this is Mary ruling in her own right. What does a female on the throne actually look like? And we talk about this in terms of Elizabeth's reign, Right, but she's not the first. Mary is the first. And there have been queens, of course, but they've always been secondary to the king, or there's been, at different points in history, examples of a dual monarchy thinking, 1688, 1689, which is chronologically later to this period. Of course it is, we do know that, but there has not been a queen regnant. And queen regnant means ruling in her own right, as opposed to just being the spouse of the king or the consort. So the fact that she's going to bring this true religion, as she sees it back and the fact that she's a woman is interesting and it brings with it some Backlash? Inevitably, I suppose, yes.
- [08:49]
Maddy Pelling
So there are. We said at the beginning that she has this support early on to take the throne, but this does not necessarily continue, or at least there are risings against her in different factions. And one of those, of course, is Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554. So tell me, bit about what happens then and also what's going on at the royal court in terms of Mary trying to shore up this power.
- [09:12]
Anthony Delaney
It's interesting because she has this support to begin with in 1553, but Wyatt's Rebellion's the year after in 1554, and we kind of go, gosh, well, what changed? We knew what she was bringing. Why didn't you try and stop her taking the throne? Well, what has changed, I suppose, is her plan to marry Philip of Spain. And of course, this is a match with Catholic superpower, I suppose, in terms of Europe at this time. And Wyatt's rebellion is going to plans to overthrow Mary and place, of course, her Protestant sister Elizabeth on the throne. So again, it's to bring back what they had cultivated during Edward's reign. And 3,000 men march on London, but they are stopped by Mary's men. And you know, Maddy, we always talk about people when they're talking about Elizabeth, always talk about the I have the heart and stomach of a king speech, right, that Elizabeth gives in the following.
- [10:07]
Maddy Pelling
Reign, which she probably never said, of.
- [10:09]
Anthony Delaney
Course, but what we overlook is that Mary is also making quite dramatic and influential and persuasive speeches. So when she marches, she herself goes with her soldiers to take on these 3,000 men. And she says to her soldiers, she says, and this further I say unto you in the wor a prince. I cannot tell how naturally a mother loveth her children, for I was never the mother of any. But certainly a prince and governor may as naturally and as earnestly love subjects as the mother doth her child. Then assure yourselves that I, being sovereign lady and queen, do as earnestly and as tenderly love and favour you. And I, thus loving you, cannot but think that ye as heartily and faithfully love me again. And so we together shall be able to give these rebels a short and speedy overthrow. I kind of love it.
- [11:05]
Maddy Pelling
Beautifully read. There's no way she said this 100%. No, in the same way that Elizabeth didn't say, you know, I have the heart and stomach whatever. Like, it's, it's. The tropes are the same, they're repeated throughout. And it's this idea of. And, you know, this is a problem that comes up so much in Elizabeth's reign, that her physical womanliness, her biology, her body is at the heart of every conversation about her power. And it's seen as completely holding her back, it's seen as not being used properly, that she, you know, she's the Virgin Queen, she doesn't have any children. And here we have the same with Mary. It's like, oh, you haven't procreated, so therefore there's sort of something missing in terms of womanhood there. But she, as the monarch, occupies a distinctly masculine presence that she says, you know, she's speaking as a prince. She's almost taking on the guise of this. And I think it's very interesting talking to her subjects in this way. When we think about the relationship between the monarchy and the general populace in this moment, that Mary is positioning herself as this parental figure, albeit a sort of masculine one in some ways, someone who is benevolent, someone who is kind, someone who is seeking alliance and a trust that goes both ways in order to defeat the rebels, as she terms them. But if we think about the sort of religious attitudes that she has and the sort of religious experiences that people have come to expect in this moment, that Protestantism to a certain extent democratizes faith, right? It removes some of the middlemen. It allows people to feel that they have a personal relationship with God in a way that Roman Catholicism in this moment does not. And it's about ritual, it's about mystery. It's about all those sort of steps and barriers between you and God and that. That is mediated by a priest or priests and, you know, thinking about the. The motivations of the rebels. They are fighting not just for the fact that they don't recognize or they don't want Mary on the throne anymore, but they're fighting for their faith, for their very relationship with God, with the divine. They're fighting to save their afterlives. They're fighting for. The stakes are just so high. So I think from a modern perspective, it's hard to get in the mindset of why this would be a life and death situation. And I think there's just something really interesting there about the different perspectives on hierarchy that you have the Queen pitching herself as this parental figure, playing with her gender, playing with her womanhood and this idea of sort of manliness and being princely in some way. And she is having to adapt and manipulate the idea of power and what that looks like from her perspective. And then you have the people rebelling against her who are looking to break down those same hierarchies of power and to hold up these new hierarchies that have been introduced in the generation before by Henry and certainly through the reforms of Anne Boleyn and people around her, and then by the Seymours, and then these things are then clashing. You can see where the violence is going to erupt. But also, I suppose what I'm trying to get at is just how high these stakes are. This is extremism on both sides. This is a campaign that transcends the earthly. This is fighting for heaven and hell, essentially.
- [14:33]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And it also, you know, just to drop in, there is this idea that monarchs can be changed. And I always think when I hear these things that we talk about in such absolute terms of how with power, the monarchs were in England in the medieval and then into the early modern period and thereafter, of course. But actually, if the people decide that the monarch is not fit for purpose, for whatever reason, then they do change them. And here's an attempt to do that. Now, they're unsuccessful because Mary's involvement works and they were able to quell this rebellion. But there is inevitably a fallout from this, of course, and that is that a lot of people that are involved are taken and executed in the Tower, for instance, including Lady Jane Grey's father, because there was a fear that he was continuing to be this Protestant figurehead. Of course, he was. Now, remember as well that key to Wyatt's rebellion was the fact that they wanted to replace Mary I with her sister and put Elizabeth on throne. So therefore, Mary feels like she has no choice but to imprison Elizabeth under suspicion of being directly involved in this rebellion, too. And people have often seen this as rash. Right. And, you know, almost like her womanhood led her to be this rash decision maker where she couldn't quite analytically put a better strategy together. But actually, it's not a bad strategy to go. Do you know what? Get her out of the picture for now. I used her. She walked into town with me, but now she can't be here. I don't need her. You know, again, it's very Henry VIII of her in many ways. Right.
- [16:06]
Maddy Pelling
That's really interesting. And again, it comes back to the. The idea that we sort of unearthed of Mary in episode one as strategic, that she is someone who is plotting her next move all the time. And, you know, at least to begin with, that was a mode of survival, and now it's. Well, I suppose it's still survival, but it's in pursuit of the ultimate, powerful position.
- [16:26]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And, I mean, don't forget that the whole Cause of this in the first place was the marriage or the proposed marriage to Philip of Spain and would eventually is an actual marriage. This is a deeply unpopular idea for a lot of England because people are going, well, hold on, hold on a second. Who is this guy? He is not the blood of this throne. He's a man. You're a woman, that is Mary's a woman. That means you are going to be ruled by him and he's going to be the King of England. What does Spanish influence on England actually look like? We're going to get dragged into all their wars and they're at war quite a lot. We're going to be part of their politics, part of their finances. And Parliament is very tense around this idea of Philip becoming the king, but they do come to a decision that he will be king in name only and have absolutely no power over the throne or no claim to the throne after Mary's death. So they take care of that in terms of the admin around that marriage.
- [17:20]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And this is an issue that comes up again and again with female monarchs. Right. We see it with Elizabeth I and her struggle to choose a partner and ultimately her rejection of everyone as a potential equal, I suppose, or as a king at least. And then, of course, we see it with Queen Victoria in the 19th century, with Albert. There is real paranoia in the British parliament in the 19th century that Albert is going to rule over Victoria and to, you know, live this lavish lifestyle at the expense of the British public. So I suppose this is the first, because Mary is the first proper Queen of England. This is the first time that we're seeing these issues, but it certainly won't be the last.
- [17:57]
Anthony Delaney
And if you were to zoom out of that kind of view of what's happening behind closed doors and where the power lies, and then zoom out across a European wide view, you see that these Counter Reformational moves that Mary is making in England is part of a much broader European movement too. And so this is obviously very unsettling for that reformist or Protestant faction in England. But from Mary's point of view, and from the rest of Europe who are taking part in this Counter Reformation as well, they truly will have believed that this was for the salvation of the people's souls, that they had to row back this heretical form of religion that was making incursions in Europe in order to do that in England. Mary restored the Latin Mass, she reinstated the Catholic clergy and the liturgy, and she reunites England with Pope Julius iii. So, you know, these are steps she's taking, which in some cases are just, you know, tokens but at the same time mean an awful lot. But then we move from these token gestures to the reinstatement of the heresy laws and this is where this history starts to turn and where Mary gets the legacy that we all kind of know of her, I suppose.
- [19:27]
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- [21:55]
Maddy Pelling
So tell me more about these heresy laws, because it seems it's one thing to reattach England to the Catholic Church, but it's quite another to call out Protestantism as heresy. And presumably there is going to be punishment involved in this.
- [22:10]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. Because for most people, day to day, reattaching England to the papacy is not going to really impact their lives. Right. But the heresy laws very much might. Now, these originate in the 14th century. They were appealed under Henry VIII and Edward VI, so they've been gone for the last couple of reigns, but Mary reinstates them and this means that she has the ability to execute anybody opposing or not adhering to the state religion, which, for now, is Catholicism. And it gives secular bodies the power to enforce this too. So it's a real restatement of how Catholicism is going to save the soul of England, as I said. And how do you counter the opposition to this? Well, you do it by burning. And it is a very violent but very visual way of counteracting that kind of rebellion against this new Counter Reformation and showing the strength of Catholic authority. But it's also because of the visual element, it's what sticks with us. Right. It's one of the things that really has stayed with us across generations is this idea of the fire.
- [23:22]
Maddy Pelling
How common was burning then, as a punishment across Europe at this time? Is this something that Mary introduces that's new, or is this something that is happening everywhere?
- [23:31]
Anthony Delaney
It's happening everywhere. And I think that is. Well across Europe. And I think that's key to bear in mind what Mary does once more is she strategically employs something that's used across Europe in terms of heresy crimes. This isn't a standout occupation of hers. She's not some kind of strange pyromaniac queen. This has a European context as a heretical context, and she just uses it. So we see it in the Spanish Inquisition, we see it in the French War of Religions and we see it used throughout the Holy Roman Empire. So all she's doing is, again, is being strategic. It's not a strategy that courts her a lot of favour, of course. And we can look at, I suppose, some of those major figures that come afoul of this heresy law. If I. When we're talking about these heresy laws, Mattie, who is one of the people that kind of comes to mind that was burned under this. This law?
- [24:25]
Maddy Pelling
Well, I suppose a very Famous example would be Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who I believe annuls the marriage between Henry and Catherine. Right. So I'm guessing he's pretty high on Mary's revenge list.
- [24:38]
Anthony Delaney
You talked about that axe that she had to grind in episode one. Well, here is the axe coming into play. Y. He had annulled that marriage, as you rightly said. He had brought in further reformist Protestant reforms under Edward vi. He had introduced key texts, Protestant texts, the Book of Common Prayer. The church services were in England because of him, Partially because of him. And he'd gotten rid of this silly idea of transubstantiation and celibate priests. When you look at it like this, he'd also supported Lady Jane Grey, and therefore he's very much an enemy of Mary and he's made no bones about that. And so when he's arrested in 1553, after she comes to the throne, he's put in the Tower of London and the charges for heresy are put against him. And again, it's very in line with what Henry VIII would have done. So I don't know, I just. Sometimes I wonder about this idea of this radical, unhinged, wild, uncontrolled woman, as opposed to a monarch, a ruler who's dealing with her enem in the same way as her father did, in many ways. Do you know what I mean?
- [25:47]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. He's not necessarily described as being overly emotional, is he, Henry viii? I mean, he's certainly condemned for a lot of his actions, but he's not described in that. In that sort of hysterical way. So that's. Yeah, that's very true. Okay, so Cranmer is imprisoned. We know he's gonna face the flames.
- [26:06]
Anthony Delaney
What happens before his execution? Cranmer decides, look, if we're talking strategy here, we need to be strategic. So I'm going to acknowledge Mary, I'm going to acknowledge the authority of the Pope. I will reject the Reformation, I will absolutely take on transubstantiation again. Now, this is not done under just a whim from Cranmer. We are probably looking at severe psychological pressure, isolation, torture. Exactly. And somewhere in the back of his mind he's probably going, look, this is all I can probably do. So you can't really fault him for trying to sort survive. I suppose it's just human, but at the same time it doesn't work. And on 21 March 1556, so three years after she comes to the throne, Cranmer is taken to St. Mary's Church in Oxford to reaffirm his rejection of all of the Protestant paraphernalia one last time.
- [27:02]
Maddy Pelling
That's a really important thing that he has taken to a church to be placed in front of God. To say this, he's essentially swearing on the Bible in the presence of the divine. This is not. It obviously is a strategy to stay alive, but it would have been incredibly meaningful to him to do this, to make this affirmation publicly and in front of God. And he must have been afraid of God's wrath as well as of what was about to happen to him. Right. Because he's presumably lying at this moment. He doesn't really believe that Mary is a suitable, legitimate Catholic monarch, except that.
- [27:38]
Anthony Delaney
He doesn't do what they want him to do. He retracts his own recantations. And he says, no, my right hand will burn first if you burn me at the stake, because that's the hand that signed the document that rejected his beliefs initially. And he is burned as a heretic, apparently. Again, this is probably apocryphal, but he puts his right hand into the flame first to ensure that that is what burns first, and becomes a Protestant martyr in so doing. And apparently says, and as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy, Antichrist. So, you know, again, it's all this very dramatic. People are martyring themselves, and he won't toe the line any further. And so he becomes this Protestant martyr.
- [28:21]
Maddy Pelling
It is difficult, isn't it, to access the mindset of someone like Thomas Cranmer. But again, it comes back to this idea that the stakes, and by that I mean not the literal stakes involved in the burning, not those. Not those. The stakes involved in this struggle for faith are so high that people are prepared to die for them. And it's just hard to access that. I think it is. Tell me about the people who are burned in Lewes, because we opened this episode with a scene in the marketplace at Lewes, which, by the way, is a very beautiful town, if you've never been.
- [28:56]
Anthony Delaney
That's it. Okay.
- [28:57]
Maddy Pelling
I need to go with lots of 18th century buildings.
- [28:59]
Anthony Delaney
Put that on my list.
- [29:00]
Maddy Pelling
But you would not have wanted to be there in the 16th century in the marketplace.
- [29:06]
Anthony Delaney
No, you wouldn't. And this is kind of where. So we have Cranmer, fine. But we also have what become known as the Lewis Martyrs. Right. Cranmer is one thing, but you start taking this to the ordinary man and woman on the street, and it starts to become a whole other thing. Right. So we have 17 men and women from various backgrounds who are refusing to accept Mary's dictates for the authority of the, in relation to the authority of the Pope. They don't like this reintroduction of the mass and Latin and transubstantiation and blah, blah, blah, blah. But these are not Cranmer types. These are turners and ironmasters and carpenters. And between 1555 and 1557 they are burned in various groups. You know, there was 10 burned together in one day at one point, which is a huge amount of people in a small town. That's. That will draw attention and draw very kind of negative feelings. And the burning of the Lewis martyrs, again, as they became known, was meant to send a warning, I suppose, from Mary's point of view and to demonstrate her authority and God's authority. But instead, and this is so human, I think in the face of monarchy and power, it garnered sympathy for the people on the street and therefore because of who those people were, garnered sympathy for the Protestant cause. And this is just something that is stuck in the English psyche, I think, because even come the 19th century, say there was a memorial erected to the memory of these martyrs 10 years afterwards, or you know, just shy of 10 years afterwards, John Fox describes these people in, in his Book of martyrs in 1563. And so he gives us details into lives that we would not otherwise know, such as Derek Carver, for instance, he's Flemish, born a lay preacher who ran a Brighton. And his Bible was thrown into the barrel with him when he was about to be burned apparently. And apparently he then threw it back out to the crowd and they took it and they hid it. And apparently now there's a society in Lewes who holds this blood stained Bible. But it's just this story crafting. They are so powerful, these stories are so powerful because they're ordinary people. And I think that's really what hits home for people across England once they start hearing about it.
- [31:22]
Maddy Pelling
And I think that's an interesting point that you've made there as well about the, the long reaching legacies of these executions. You know, even today when you go to the famous Lewis bonfire celebrations alongside all the Guy Fawkes related figures, the Lewis martyrs are remembered. You know, there are 17 burning crosses that are carried in their memory. And it's obviously, you know, something that really caught the imagination of people at the time and certainly in the centuries since. And I suppose a lot of that comes down to the brutality. Yes, but as you mentioned at the start of this Anthony, also the spectacle.
- [31:57]
Anthony Delaney
So talk to me about this kind of contemporary Bonfire spectacle thing. Because it feels like I don't know about this, really. It's not something I've grown up with. And obviously. Does it take place on the 5th as well? The 5th of November. Is it all tied into that or is it totally separate?
- [32:09]
Maddy Pelling
I believe so. I've never actually been. But it's very, very famous in England, certainly, and you'll see it on the news. And it's an annual event, as I understand it, where huge guys for the bonfire are built. Huge puppets, essentially. I mean, we're talking huge. But interestingly, there are often contemporary figures in there. I distinctly remember David Cameron once being carried down the street to be burned, you know, so it's a kind of political historical event. But, yeah, it's incredibly famous and I'm desperate to go. So we should do an after Dark, live from there at some point. But, yeah, kind of interesting folk tradition that's still going strong. Blazing away, some might say.
- [32:48]
Anthony Delaney
But again, you're talking about this. It's a very visual thing, right? These blazes of fire, and you just mentioned the word fire to people, and they will instantly conjure up an image. And the thing about that is, I think it feeds into one of the reasons why this legacy of Bloody Mary and these burnings have endured for so long. Because, you know, Henry VIII is killing people, Elizabeth I is killing people, but they tend not to burn them. And it tends therefore to be less of a thing that is essentially singed into your mind. It's one of the reasons why this idea of brutality endures alongside Mary I, because it is such a visual representation of her kill, as opposed to what Henry did or what Elizabeth did after her.
- [33:31]
Maddy Pelling
What is Mary's justification for this? This is what I'm wondering. Because the brutality, by any standard, whether you're in the 16th century or today, is so deeply shocking and troubling to any human beings. It's. It's just goes against any kind of natural instinct. So how is she justifying that? As you know, we've heard that she painted herself as this benevolent ruler, but she's burning people at the stake.
- [34:00]
Anthony Delaney
I suppose it's worth coming back to that idea of her being the mother of the nation, as she supposedly said in that speech when she came to the army, her army, to put down Wyatt's rebellion. And sometimes mothering involves making difficult decisions for your children. In this case, the children are like.
- [34:21]
Maddy Pelling
Burning them at the stake.
- [34:23]
Anthony Delaney
And she's willing to. And it feeds into that thing you were saying about Cranmer. Actually, it's hard for us to truly invest in the idea of faith that these people had. But Mary believes in this. She is going to save the soul of her nation by stopping the spread of reformist ideas. And if that means those who will not recant, bear in mind they can recant. These people are just choosing not to. I'm talking from her perspective now. And if that's the case, she will not allow them to continue to infect her nation. And she will save the soul of her nation by ridding the nation of these people. And so that's where it's a hard mindset to come to grips with. As you said about Cranmer, it's absolutely true. But I think that's what's behind all of it, really.
- [35:24]
Unknown
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- [36:24]
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- [36:50]
Maddy Pelling
It's interesting to me that even in the years immediately following her reign so in 1563, when John Fox's Book of Martyrs comes out, which gives this description of the 17 martyrs at Lewes, that the brutality, the extent of these executions is already being mythologised. That's not to say that Fox's book doesn't include important detail and useful historical information, but there's already a narrative being built and so I wonder, are you able to give me some actual statistics of how many. How many people were killed for heresy in this era. And if Mary is actually unusual in the number that she puts to death compared to, say, her father before her.
- [37:39]
Anthony Delaney
This is the revelation for me. Right? This is what for me goes. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We need to rethink Mary the first, and we need to rethink what we think we know about her, because I have some stats, Maddie, and this may help you to reframe some of the thoughts that we have around her and whether or not she is particularly bloody. Bear in mind some of these will be estimates. We don't have exact numbers, but historians have. Have looked at this, and these are the numbers they've come up with. Under Mary the First, we think about 280 Protestants were burned between 1555 and 1558. Okay. So that's not particularly unusual for persecution levels in the 16th century. So we're looking at 280 Protestants. It's a lot of people. Or reformists. It's a lot of people. 280.
- [38:26]
Maddy Pelling
I mean, yes, it's a lot of people. It's 280 human beings. But I would. I sort of expected that it would be in the thousands.
- [38:34]
Anthony Delaney
Well, that's the impression you'd be given. And to be fair, religious, like, heretical executions make up a very big total of. I think there's a figure around 300 in total in our entire reign executions. So if it's 280 heretics, then that's quite a lot, you know, for religious purposes.
- [38:53]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. Okay, so she's predominantly burning people. Then if 280 out of 300 are executed.
- [39:00]
Anthony Delaney
Okay. Are we ready for some Henry VIII stats to go alongside this? Because this is. I know. It's going to be worse.
- [39:06]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, it's going to be worse.
- [39:07]
Anthony Delaney
It is. I'm going to say it, and then you can take it with as much of a pinch of salt as you feel you need to. Apparently, historians have estimated that under Henry VIII, between 57,000 and 72,000 people were executed. Now, I would like to see the breakdown of that because I don't know where he would have gotten the time to do that.
- [39:31]
Maddy Pelling
I beg your pardon?
- [39:33]
Anthony Delaney
I don't see that being possible realistically. Now we have a more realistic number of religious persecution. We're looking at about 2 to 300 Catholics and about 57 Protestants. So we're looking at about, you know, 350, 360 executions for religious reasons during Henry VIII's reign.
- [39:50]
Maddy Pelling
So that. That's More in line with Mary then it's still more than Mary.
- [39:53]
Anthony Delaney
It's more than Mary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's in, you know, it's, it's in that kind of thing. Then let's look at Elizabeth. Executions under Elizabeth in total have estimated at being somewhere between 800 to 1,000. That seems more realistic than what we're hearing about Henry.
- [40:08]
Maddy Pelling
Also her reign is very long and I suppose this is the thing to say about Mary, right, that her reign is only five years.
- [40:14]
Anthony Delaney
Good point.
- [40:16]
Maddy Pelling
And so that's a lot of people to be killing in five years, whereas Elizabeth is on the throne for significantly longer, as is Henry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's still a lot of people, a lot of people are dying is the takeaway here. But is Mary unusual? It's a high concentration.
- [40:32]
Anthony Delaney
It is, but it also seems to fall generally within the number for religious persecution that both Henry and Elizabeth have in terms of that 2 to 3, 350 mark. You see that for religious persecution specifically in Elizabeth's reign. Although as you say, and I think it's a good point, it's much longer reign, but it falls within the boundaries of that. There are consequences though and the consequences for Mary undertaking these religious persecutions is that she becomes very isolated.
- [41:02]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, don't say yeah.
- [41:03]
Anthony Delaney
I think it's important to point out at this stage that our incredible researcher Phoebe Joyce, who's worked on this episode, has done an awful lot of research, postgraduate research on the self fashioning of Mary I. And it's because of her research that we've been able to talk around some of these topics. Phoebe, as I said, is a researcher here at After Dark, but she's also a deputy team leader at the Tower of London. So she's right in the centre of where some of these histories are unfolding and we just thought it'd be a good idea to get. Seems like she's the expert to get Phoebe's take on some of this.
- [41:35]
Phoebe Joyce
I'm sitting in the shadow of St. James's palace where Mary I's reign ended in 1558. A fitting place, I think, to reflect on her complex legacy. She was the first crowned Queen regnant of England, navigating immense political and gendered pressure. Yes, the 280 burnings during her reign must be acknowledged. But reducing her to that alone ignores the full picture. She was deeply devout, shaped by trauma, isolation and the burden of proving her legitimacy. Over and over again she's harshly judged in ways that male rulers like her father Henry VIII are not. Mary wasn't a tyrant, she was a human being navigating impossible odds whilst also managing what she believed was her divine duty to return England to the faith she was so committed to. It's time we viewed her reign with the same depth and fairness we grant others in history.
- [42:30]
Maddy Pelling
Anthony, do you think that we have not been treating Mary fairly? I know you've spent a lot of time with her in preparation for these two episodes to tell me the story. What's your reading on it? Cause I love what Phoebe's saying there at the end.
- [42:43]
Anthony Delaney
I think Phoebe's absolutely right. I think we betray historical analysis if we are not more rigorous in the way that we tell Mary's history. And if Mary's history is just about fire and flame, and I get why it is, then we're not telling the whole history. Right. And we're kind of advocates for that here in After Dark, aren't we? Tell the whole history. We have to, even if some of it's unpleasant. But in Mary's case, we seem to very much concentrate on the unpleasant parts and not really talk about her as a strategic ruler, as the head of state, as somebody who wields and garners power. She is not deposed, despite the fact that people tried to depose her. And in Elizabeth's reign, that is celebrated. But when it comes to Mary, we don't. We don't value those attributes in Mary so much. And I do think it comes down to one thing. Thing. It comes down to the fact that she is the turning point where we really start to see that England becomes a Protestant nation and she does not fit the mold of what greatness. I'm not saying she's necessarily a great monarch, because I don't think she's that either. But the points at which she does rule effectively become redundant. They're not useful to the narrative of what England becomes as a Protestant nation. So therefore, she's seen as the opposite to everything that Elizabeth is and what she moulds the country to be. So, yeah, I think she has been unfairly maligned, actually.
- [44:15]
Maddy Pelling
Yes, I agree. I think there's so much more to say about her and we, hopefully we have painted her as something of a strategic thinker and actor in the arena of Tudor politics. But I think there is more to say and I would love to revisit her. I think there is so much more about her reign, about her personal relationships, about her relationship with her body that we would love to explore. So we will be back, I think, for Mary in the future.
- [44:42]
Anthony Delaney
And if you have like a good Mary the first book recommendation. Leave them in comments on socials or leave them in the comments on Spotify or whatever because I now want to read a really good all round Mary the first biography. So get those recommendations coming into us too.
- [44:57]
Maddy Pelling
And as ever, if you have any suggestions for episode topics, you can get in touch with us at after dark@history hit.com.
- [45:11]
Unknown
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- [45:27]
Anthony Delaney
Hey Tinsley, why don't we use Ezcator to order food for staff lunches?
- [45:30]
Unknown
Because my 46 page acronym system is so easy. I just have to salad stay alert to late arriving deliveries, pie put in expenses and guga pie. Go out and get everyone's preferences and allergy information.
- [45:43]
Anthony Delaney
That's supposed to be simple.
- [45:44]
Unknown
No, simple is Steven, Irma and Margie prefer lasagna and empanadas.
- [45:49]
Anthony Delaney
Omg.
- [45:50]
Unknown
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