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- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
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- [01:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely all. Also the Tudors. Mary I is so often overshadowed by her half sister, Elizabeth I. In parts, it's understandable, because Elizabeth's reign stretched for 45 years, while Mary's only lasted five. But Mary has also become saddled with the epithet Bloody Mary because of the burnings of mainstream Protestants that occurred on her watch and seemingly at her command. And yet the image of Mary that has come down to posterity is not an unbiased one. It was largely shaped during the reign of Elizabeth and subsequent generations when it served the politics of England and later Britain, to deem Catholicism as something foreign and the rise of Protestantism as inextricably bound up with the fate of the nation and a form of ineluctable progress. Mary I was the daughter, the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of aragon. Born in 1516, she was raised by her mother to rule. Catherine, having grown up in Trastamada, Spain, where her mother Isabel had been sovereign and proprietary queen of Castile, knew that women were capable of reigning. And she prepared an educational program for Mary led by Juan Luis Vivez, the humanist, to fashion Mary's mind for leadership. In 1525, the nine year old was sent to Ludlow as her deceased uncle Arthur had been, as a kind of training in the rigors of rule in the Welsh Marches. And then of course, disaster struck her father's infatuation with Anne Boleyn. It ultimately led to the moment in 1531 where Mary as a teenager was separated from her mother until both accepted Anne as Queen and Catherine and Henry's marriage as invalid, which would make Mary illegitimate. This they refused to do and the price was paid by both. Mary was also exiled from her father until after her mother's death when finally she was brought to her knees and made to declare her own bartidy. This act of self abnegation, the sacrifice of her mother's memory, this traducing and travesty of her own deeply held beliefs, shaped her. As my guest today says, she never did it again. It's little wonder that when finally she came to take the throne in defiance of those, including her half brother Edward, who'd supported their cousin Lady Jane Grey to the throne, Mary clung fiercely to her principles and in her reign sought to dial back the changes that had been wrought by her mother's rejection and her father's schism with her beloved Roman Catholic Church. To explore Mary's life, her reign and her reputation, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Anna Whitelock. Professor Whitelock is Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of the History of Monarchy at City University in London. She is also the author of a biography of Mary Tudor, Mary Tudor, England's First Queen, as well as Elizabeth's An Intimate History of the Queen's Court and most recently the Sun Is Rising, James I and the dawn of a Global Britain. And she's my go to person when I have questions about the Marian regime. Anna, Professor Whitelock, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back I should say.
- [05:45]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, well, thank you and thank you very much for having me. It's pleasure to be back.
- [05:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Always a delight to talk to you and your work on Mary has been so important in reshaping how we think about her. So you're the obvious person to come to, to talk about this.
- [06:01]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Thank you. I mean certainly when I began my research on Mary, which, gosh, was a long time ago, more than 20 years ago, which is scary when I think about that. I remember going to a conference on Mary in Oxford and the headline act was David Loads, who was the sort of pinup of Marian studies. One of quite just a small number of people who were really working on Mary and it was full of English academics, lots of researchers thinking about her from a religious point of view. David Loades had sort of began to argue for her more as a kind of political figure, but with lots of kind of areas of failure. And I suppose it's striking to me that fast forward a number of years and in 2023 there was a conference on Mary to mark an anniversary of her death. And it was held at UCL co run or run by Alexander Sampson. And it was probably half and half English academics and Spanish ones. And it in a way I think shows how far studies on Mary have come because for so long, and of course you know this very well, Tudor studies were entirely sort of Anglo centric, maybe a bit of Europe through the language of England from an English perspective. And actually what's happened in that sort of 20 year period with focusing on Mary is that there's been a sense of looking at her as a European queen. And of course from the point of view of the Spanish, she was this great successful Catholic queen who was doing really great things. And so that conference was just really amazing first of all just because of the merging of languages and perspectives. But it just showed how actually if you position yourself outside of England and obviously particularly across the Channel in Spain, Mary looks very different.
- [08:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, that's really interesting and I should like to get into some more of that new perspective, new evidence, new way of seeing her as we go on. I'm sure that will come out. I suppose we ought to deal first of all with the fact that she is still in many quarters called Bloody Mary. So let's perhaps talk about the way first of all that her reputation has been shaped over the centuries by the direction taken religion under Elizabeth John Fox, the posthumous creation of a Protestant national myth and what we should do with that now.
- [08:53]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, exactly. And you summarized it perfectly. John Fox, the creation of a posthumous Protestant narrative The myth of Bloody Mary, of course, John Fox, the infamous book of martyrs, or acts and monuments of these latter and perilous days, which I remember when I started studying Mary, a couple of people told me how that was still looked to or referred to at certain Sunday schools in certain Protestant churches. I mean, there was a sort of real sense of this being a seminal text. And of course, it recounted in graphic detail with woodcuts and so on, the 287 men, women and children who were burnt under Mary. And it did, you know, published during Elizabeth's reign, it really did set up this evil caricature of Mary and, of course, Elizabeth as direct contrast to that. Bringing light, where Mary was darkness, bringing truth, where there was deception. And that myth did endure for such a long time. I mean, if you even think back to, I think, the 1998 Cherka Kapoor Elizabeth I film, I mean, I was just so struck by. By the sort of juxtaposition of scenes. There was one with Kathy Burke, brilliant actress, but I'm like, no, this is not the kind of like, you know, remake of a figure of Mary. She was very dour. The scene that she was there laying, dying, it was all dark. It was sort of surrounded by Catholic paraphernalia and so on. And then the next scene is Elizabeth, played by Cate Blanchett, sort of skipping in the sunlight. And in a way that really did just in a modern way represent the darkness and light polarity that had been set up, really by John Fox. But you're absolutely right that really, the epithet Bloody Mary that didn't directly get coined by John Fox. I mean, he refers to the bloody time of Mary, but doesn't actually use that epithet. So we're not entirely sure exactly where that can be attributed to or from, but certainly from that point onwards, Mary as a kind of Catholic tyrant, this figure that was deluded by her faith, that was Thinking back to 20th century historiography, people like John Guy and Geoffrey Elton and Pollard, they all had a kind of sterility, the intensity of a nun. It was all very much about her religion, her faith. Not at all about her as a political figure and certainly not about her as a, as I would have it, as a Tudor trailblazer, as the first woman who was crowned queen. And then over time, we've seen a sort of shifting and an evolution of the historiography. First thinking around religion and actually the work of Eamon Duffy, and a brilliant book, Fires of Faith, really showed how even on the question of religion, we need to think of it. Less as a simply a kind of regressive turning the clock back, that it was simply about sort of trying to stamp out or indeed burn out Protestantism. But actually Mary and Cardinal Reginald Paul had a program of much more enlightened Counter Reformation inspired thinking around re Catholicizing people. It was a question of hearts and minds, and there was all kinds of new catechisms published. And it wasn't simply about burning. And also he put it in the context of European burnings and said, you know, we need to understand that it was devastatingly effective and we shouldn't always be squeamish about it. We have to understand that burning was the accepted form of punishment for heresy. And so it's important to put it in the context of the time. So there was a kind of reframing of the religious point. But then increasingly, really from David Loades onwards, you know, I wanted to make a contribution to this, thinking about her as a political figure and getting beyond the whole question of Bloody Mary and actually, you know, trying to instead insert the kind of effa, I suppose, the first queen of England, which of course she was and which many, many people didn't realize because Elizabeth and Elizabeth's advisors and spin doctors, for want of a better term, had been such, had done a great job of blackening Mary's reputation, but also completely overshadowing her.
- [13:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I was really struck by the gendered nature of some of those epithets that were applied to her by historians in the 20th century. Sterility being the, what is it, the prime note of her reign or one of those comments like that where you're just not just talking about the fact that she doesn't have an heir. You're talking about her as a failure as a woman.
- [13:42]
Professor Anna Whitelock
I think that's really interesting. And what really struck me when I was thinking about Mary and the question around gender and indeed, I mean, it's true of, you know, obviously female queens thereafter, that female queens regnant, that, of course, the expectation of a queen regnant, and this was, of course, Mary was playing this role for the first time, was not simply to provide an heir, as was the responsibility of all monarchs, but actually to produce an heir. And that put the female body front and center in a way that it simply hadn't been before. I mean, of course, women also, we have to start from the premise that sexual potency and sort of promiscuity for men is seen as a sign of virility and political potency and strength or whatever. Women, first of all, absolutely have to protect their reputation for chastity. Otherwise, it's sort of the end for them. But also that queen's regnant and Mary, you know, and obviously, ironically, both the first woman to be crowned queen and attempt to have a child in office, as it were, to provide an heir or to produce an heir for the very first time. And it's actually Mary's body, her female body, that lets her down in that way. So I think there's the gendered language, as you say, around sort of the intensity of a nun and the sterility. But I think it's also just really interesting to see how for the first time, we have a monarch literally having to produce an heir and ensure the succession by their own body. And I think, you know, that's incredible. Yes.
- [15:21]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And by their own body means putting their life on the line at this time. You know, up until now, producing an heir has meant perhaps putting your wife's life on the line, but now she's putting her own life on the line because childbirth is very dangerous.
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- [15:36]
Professor Anna Whitelock
I think, you know, when you start to think about that, it also, for me, adds to this way in which you can kind of rehabilitate Mary to think of her as actually an incredibly courageous figure, both in terms of her faith, both in terms of her politics, or her political courage to even get to the throne. But, yeah, I mean, here she is for the first time, actually, as a monarch ruling the country, a personal monarchy, power being entirely centered on the monarch at the time. She's obviously had to marry, and for the first time, of course, a female monarch marrying a male figure. When, of course, the expectations at the time were that women were led by emotions. It was very necessary to have a masculine element in government that almost by default, her husband would be the senior political figure as soon as that marriage happened. So she had to navigate that and then produce an heir and just, I mean, obviously, you know, there's these dramatic and sort of pitiful accounts of her thinking she's pregnant and the phantom pregnancies. And, you know, that's awful, and it's kind of dramatic, but I mean, if you kind of think, oh, my goodness, you know, this was a. William Cecil said later about Elizabeth first. He said, you know, everything depends on the breath of our sovereign lady. And of course, that's absolutely true. And that was also true for Mary. But here she was retiring into her chamber, believing that she was pregnant and, as you say, putting her life on the line in childbirth when, you know, the odds were pretty dicey.
- [17:09]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So she has all these challenges to contend with as the first crowned queen regnant. I wonder how much you think she was shaped by the circumstances, the traumas of her childhood.
- [17:21]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, I think she absolutely was. And I think the turning point really for Mary was when she actually submitted to her father in 1536, when essentially she said, having whilst her mother had been alive, Catherine of Aragon. And of course Henry had disavowed Catherine of Aragon, Mary had absolutely stayed loyal to her mother. But really with her mother's death, there was a sense of her kind of being broken. And she at that point acknowledged her father's headship of the Church of England. I mean, these paragraphs that she signs drafted by Cromwell. And you can see Mary basically signing away everything, forsaking her faith, acknowledging her legitimacy, acknowledging or her illegitimacy, therefore acknowledging the invalidity of her parents marriage. And I think that completely broke her. And it was from there in a way that she would never do that again. So during the period of her brother's reign, Edward vi, when, you know, she was being persecuted, there was even a suggestion that she might flee to the continent for safety. She was absolutely committed and determined and defiant in her faith and thereafter. And I think, you know, at one point she said, you know, I'd rather lay my head on the block than forsake my faith. And so I, I do think that moment of submission was also the moment which kind of defined her and from which she became absolutely steadfast and strong. And, you know, I've always thought that the quote which is attributed to Elizabeth, problematically, I had the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king. I mean, that sums up Mary so, so, so well. You know, she was so courageous. You know, in the midst of a rebellion early in her reign, she rode into London. She did not flee London. She stood up to Wyatt's rebels. But ultimately it was her body which proved to be, you know, weak and feeble and her undoing.
- [19:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's very interesting in that turning point of 1536, that thereafter she can say that she would rather put her head on the block than turn away from her faith. She's actually echoing her mother in 1534, when Charles Brandon went to tell Catherine, who was of course separated from Mary for the last five years of her life during Mary's teens, and that she said that she was told that she was Princess Dowager. She said, I am your queen and I'd rather be humiliating in pieces than depart from this assertion. And it's almost exactly the same sentiment, the same kind of outlook.
- [20:03]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Absolutely. And I mean it goes back to that gender point because actually, you know, you know, Mary's being kind of castigated for, you know, her sterility and her weakness and the sort of intensity of a nun. But actually, you know, we need to look back at Catherine of Aragon, who you know, we can think of as being the kind of middle aged from peak wife that Henry ultimately rejects. But of course she was the great catch of Europe at the time of their marriage, praised by Erasmus for being this sort of great learned princess, but also that her mother, Isabella of Castile, Mary's grandmother, had been like on the front line, had been educating her children on the front line, in camps, in campaigns against the Moors. So actually Mary comes from a really strong, strong line of women. It's actually an impeccable line really of defiant women. And so Mary, her courage and her tenacity shouldn't in a way come as a surprise to us. And you know, people obviously look to Elizabeth as the kind of great English heroine and the great kind of courageous champion and particularly look to the armada. But actually Mary in many ways is a more credible candidate for, for that billing than Elizabeth was.
- [21:21]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. And it's true also that Mary's father was not known for his pliancy.
- [21:25]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Exactly. So.
- [21:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let'S talk about Mary's achievements then. You know, one way of seeing this is as a single issue, reign taking England back to Rome. Is that true and what were her achievements, if any?
- [21:43]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean the obvious, you know, you're absolutely right. And the obvious thing and to some extent, whilst I think people didn't see Mary's reign for a long time as worthy of study, was that it was a kind of dead end. I mean, for a time England went back to Rome, it was a dead end, end of story. It was only five years long. And back to when I began studying Mary, the thesis of a guy called Whitney Jones from the 1970s which still doing the rounds. The mid Tudor crisis. Was there a mid Tudor crisis? Was a very popular A level question.
- [22:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It may still be, who knows?
- [22:17]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Well, I worry that, I think I gave a talk to some students doing A level and I just said for goodness sake, there was no crisis and slightly kind of overplayed it. But I said there was no crisis, you know, and emphasized continuity. And they were in the questions, they're like, we haven't been told there wasn't a crisis. We thought there was a crisis. Now you're telling us something new. And so I think Sometimes these things take a while to percolate through. But actually, continuity, the fact of Tudor legitimacy kind of wins out regardless of whether you have a boy king or you have a female monarch. But so what were Mary's achievements? Well, first of all, securing the throne and maintaining the Tudor line in that way, which paved the way for Elizabeth. Elizabeth let the side down by not having an heir, and of course, the Tudor dynasty died with her. But Mary, by winning the throne, it meant that obviously Lady Jane Grey and the line wasn't diverted there. So Tudor legitimacy won out. The Tudor dynasty was protected. She also blazed a trail for all the female monarchs that came after her. I mean, she navigated. You know, we talk now about queenship, but there hadn't been a regnant queenship before. So she sort of degendered monarchy or made gender neutral, if you like monarchy. If you think about it up until that point, laws and so on referred to, you know, male monarchs. The figure of a monarch was a male one. And Mary showed, and that didn't need to be the case. 1554, an act was passed. It's got a very long title, but it was the act for regal power. And actually it was, I mean, really, really important because essentially it argued for the kind of gender equality of both male and female monarchs. It said this was in the context of an alleged proposal whereby suggestion was made by Mary's supporters that she could kind of rule above the law, because the law was referring to male monarchs before, and therefore she could kind of do what she liked. And instead, this law basically said that, you know, female monarchs would have the power as fully and absolutely as their male predecessors. So there was this sense of really, like leveling the playing field for the first time, you know, showing how a female monarch could be crowned. And of course, up until this point, on the eve of coronation, of the coronation, you know, the practice, of course, was that the knights of the bath would plunge naked and emerge and kiss the monarch's shoulder. Well, you couldn't have that with a female monarch. And so practices like that had to be changed. Does a queen regnant hold the scepter that had previously been held by the reigning monarch, the male monarch? And what about the scepter of the female consort? All of these just weird things which sound minor, but actually completely changing the perception and ultimately the acceptance of what a monarch was and looked like. So that was really important. There was some steps to reform the navy and the coinage. And I think that, you know, although the hurt the turn towards the Catholic Church, failed. We shouldn't see or disregard the fact that there was influences from Europe. You know, this sort of Eamon Duffy talks about England as being a laboratory for Counter Reformation thinking. You know, these kind of currents of sort of intellectual thought. European influence of course were there in Mary's reign. But I think if I had to point out to her biggest achievement, it would be securing the throne, maintaining the Tudor dynasty and showing and navigating being a woman very much a man's world.
- [26:15]
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- [28:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In terms of returning England to Roman Catholicism, how realistically could she have returned England to pre Reformation Catholicism? Was that just not possible?
- [29:01]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question, isn't it? I mean, because obviously, you know, we're talking, well, turning the clock back to. To sort of 1529 or whatever. And Mary, of course, came to the throne in 1553. So through that period we'd had Henry VIII, obviously, and the Reformation Parliament, but a position by the end of Henry's reign, of course, which was some would describe in the shorthand as sort of Catholicism without the Pope, essentially. Transubstantiation. Yes, the King as head of the Church, but very, you know, very much Catholics could feel broadly like they weren't, you know, it wasn't a lost cause in a way. During Edward's reign, of course, Britain, England moves to a more Protestant position, but of course that's only 1547 to 1553. And, you know, there's been a lot of work over the years looking at how across the country it was a much more patchy picture about where people's religious positions were. I mean, work pioneered by people like Christopher Haigh, looking at people's wills and how they are framed, but also thinking about how much of the kind of. During the Protestant years of Edward, you know, much of the kind of Catholic paraphernalia wasn't melted down, but actually just sort of pushed at the back of churches to be brought out later. So I think, would it have been possible to turn back to 1529? Probably not, because of the influence of people like Reginald, poor Paul, who had been a key figure within the Council of Trent, which was the reforming council of the Catholic Church. And so when he was sent as the Papal Legate to oversee the reunion with Rome, he came with new Counter Reformation thinking ideas about education, the use of the printing press and so on. So I think it was always going to be a sort of different kind of Catholicism than that pre Reformation. And I don't think Mary was simply looking to turn the clock back. And I think the fact of Cardinal Paul's role would also point to that.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And looking at Paul and thinking about counsel around Mary and this whole question around gender, who were the counselors on whom she was relying apart from him? And to what extent did being a little controversial here, but to what extent did they have real power or did she?
- [31:31]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, that is the ultimate question, of course, because, I mean, when I part my PhD was which had the snappy title in opposition and in government, the Households and affinities of Mary Tudor. And I was supervised by David Starkey. And of course, the work that he had done was looking at the privy chamber as a power base rather than the Privy council. And he'd argued against his own supervisor, Geoffrey Elton, to say, actually it was in the informal relationships of power, not, you know, and in roles like the groom of the stool, where a lot of political influence lied, where people who had face time with the monarch, that was really important. And so what I was wanting to look at under Mary is, okay, you obviously have to have a privy chamber that is filled with women and not men, but does that mean that the centre of politics reverts back to the Privy Council, the kind of formal arena of governance in that way? And certainly that was the historiography at the time. And it talked about Mary being distanced from the Privy Council and, by implication, sort of distance from politics. So I guess what I was trying to explore is, well, first of all, what about those women in the privy chamber? Do we simply disregard them because they're women, when, of course, they were with her for so many hours of the day, actually, as a female monarch, many hours, just simply dressing and undressing the monarch. And obviously, it's quite difficult to source a lot of these things, but we do know that the ambassadors were close, you know, would have relationships with. For information, with those around Mary, women around Mary, to find out, you know, was she having regular periods, all of this kind of thing, which, again, of course, going back to our earlier point about the female body being at stake in a different way, was really important. So that was an access point. But also people like Jane Dormer, the Duchess of Feria, she had an important role as well, you know, as a kind of political broker. So we shouldn't disregard the women. But what I also looked at is how the men of East Anglia, the men who had supported her in the succession crisis, who were sort of regional figures, people like Robert Rochester and Edward Waldegrave, who had been loyal men in her household for many years, they actually played a really significant role and continued to. So in other words, those positions of trust and friendship and loyalty that had built up over many years still held sway. And then additionally, in terms of influence on Mary, and I guess you can argue that maybe this was a gendered point. The three men that I, you know, identified that did have a very significant influence were, firstly, Simon Renard, the Imperial ambassador, and he, you know, you see accounts of Mary basically, you know, asking him to come in and see her under the COVID of darkness, you know, so he was a really key source of counsel to her. Perhaps not surprising, of course, because the Emperor Charles V, who was of course Mary's cousin, this was family in many ways, and that was really important to her. So he was a considerable influence. Then Reginald Paul, who also had an influence both on the Privy council, but also she clearly talked to him and was advised on things by him. And then, of course, later Philip, and who, although wasn't in England for huge periods of time, we know he set up channels of correspondence and appointed a kind of select council, an inner ring, to keep him informed of business in England when he was away. So I suppose the thrust of that was that there was informal sources of counsel. And the sort of summary of where I got to in that piece of research was really to say that, you know, the key decisions of the reign, which were the marriage with Spain, the reunion with Rome and going to war with France, were decisions that were taken outside of the Privy council and dictated to it through initial conversations with Mary and some of those other individuals.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's fascinating, Anna. And let's think a bit more about that marriage. Because Charles V is not only her uncle, but becomes her father, father in law. One could argue that the marriage to Philip proved disastrous. You may have. There may be other opinions on this now, but do you think that's the case? And if so, do you think that could have been foreseen? What alternatives did she have in this decision that she made, which of course is so contrary to the one that her sister would go on to make.
- [36:23]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, and I would argue that Elizabeth had some sort of wriggle room because of the experience that, you know, Mary had had. I'm not sure if Elizabeth was in Mary's position as the first crowned Queen Regnan, with the expectations of needing a male figure and needing an heir, she would have been able to procrastinate in the way that she did. I mean, obviously there was always going to be the option of an English noble or a foreign prince. Obviously, English nobles could. Can create a lot of faction. And really the importance for Mary was recognition as the first crowned Queen of England by foreign powers. And, you know, what better than to have recognition from one of the preeminent powers in Europe, the Habsburgs. This was a big deal. This was the Anglo Spanish alliance, I suppose, that had obviously been created way back with the Treaty of Medina del Campo between Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur, you know, that saw their marriage. So this was building on an Anglo Spanish alliance that had actually kind of almost underwritten the Tudor dynasty from its very foundation. So it made perfect sense. It was both family, but it was also about the prestige of a European family and dynasty and powers blocks of the status of the Habsburg. So it made total sense. And I think, I'm not sure that there were other really credible alternatives. But also what is important to remember is that Mary, so there was a rebellion against the marriage, Wyatt's rebellion, that as all Tudor rebellions and probably rebellions the world over, there's always multiple causes we shouldn't see or, you know, see it as simply about marriage. But Mary agreed that she, she would put the marriage treaty before parliament and essentially says, you know, if it doesn't get secure popular support, in other words, parliamentary approval, she wouldn't go ahead with it. Well, this was unlike any. I mean, Henry VIII had never brought his marriage treaties before parliament. So this in itself was pretty significant. And she also managed to negotiate a kind of prenup based on the model of the marriage of her grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella, which protected and limited the role that Philip would have in government. Now, you know, we can debate how far the tenets of that marriage treaty were followed, but on paper it was a good deal. She put it before the people, as it were. And as historians like Glynn Redworth and others have shown, many men who were missing the masculine element of government. And by Philip's marriage to Mary and his coming to England, things like jousts and stuff started to take place again at court. And ultimately, of course, Philip did lead effectively an English army into France. And, you know, people did nobles who won who were war hungry and wanted that kind of enterprise. Did support Mary. They did support Mary and did support Philip and referred to him as, you know, our Lord, our master. So they. There's a much more nuanced reading of the Anglo Spanish marriage from the traditional one of the black legend.
- [39:48]
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- [41:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's interesting. So I think we must spend some more time thinking about the black legend, the association of Spanishness, Catholicism, bloodthirstiness, that kind of develops. We touched on it, of course, at the beginning, but I think we need to address head on this question of how we should assess the burnings now. I mean, I'm struck by the idea that I think was put about by Philip Hughes even in the 1950s, that actually the association of Catholicism and bloodthirstiness didn't originate in the actual experience of Mary's reign, but in the popularizing of it. The far more people learned about it after the fact than at the time. But you know, on the other hand, it's a. It's quite a lot of people, 312, including those who died in jail, who died as a result of their faith. And the thing is that they were mainstream Protestants. They're not Anabaptists, they're not radicals. They are mainstream Protestants who elsewhere in Europe are being accommodated to varying degrees at this point in time. What do you make of it?
- [42:14]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, it's a tricky one. I mean, first of all, you know, we have to remember the attitudes towards burning then are not ours now. I mean, people, you know, used to go and watch these things, and there were people selling cherries and they were kind of public spectacles. And you'd go out and, you know, you'd hear the sermon, you'd watch the burning, you know, so just sensibilities are just so, so different. So I think that's really important to really properly address. It's also true that we're talking about a pretty small window of time here. So there was an intensity and a ferocity to the burnings that I think we can't get away from. But if you look at the number of people who died for their faith, who were conjured and executed for their faith under Elizabeth or under Henry or in other reigns, you know, over a longer period, you see people dying for their faith, but they're just without this ferocity. So I think that is important. I think, of course, given the fact that Mary was married to Philip, there's always the association of the Spanish Inquisition with this and the sort of particular kind of religious ferocity. And then I think there's also the question of, you know, it's about sort of the question of how far Mary absolutely knew of all the burnings that were going on. How far was it people acting in the name of the regime, denouncing their neighbors, people doing things at a local level that was beyond what Mary had originally intended? I mean, I think there was a sense that Mary had thought that, you know, some timely examples, some making examples of some people actually would sort of snuff out remaining remaining opposition. And I think, you know, was perhaps naive in that view. But there's also a sense that that people were more ferocious, bishops, bishop of London and so on, were kind of acting under their own initiative too. So I get, you know, are the burnings notable and significant and should they define Mary's reign? Yeah, in part, of course they should, because, yes, we shouldn't look at them with the sensibilities of today, but still they were significant at the time, given the numbers, as you, you know, as you said. But of course, as we, right back at the beginning of our conversation, we talked about John Fox's book, which was first published in what, 1563, so after Mary's reign. And I think you're absolutely right in thinking that the sort of outrage to the burnings and the centrality of them to the perception of Mary came afterwards. And I would argue that at the time it was the loss of Calais, you know, the war with France, Mary's lack of an heir and the sort of draining away of authority that came after those phantom pregnancies that was more significant than her being seen as a figure that should be, you know, criticized because of the burnings. I just don't think, you know, I don't think that was as defining as it became afterwards. I think you're absolutely right in that.
- [45:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I sort of want to ask a follow up question. I think this may be impossible to answer, but I wonder if there's a sense of the monarchs, the reigning kings and queens of the Tudor period, whether we can tell whether Mary's faith was more deeply personal to her by comparison with the other Tudor monarchs, or whether we can see a degree of pragmatism there.
- [45:42]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting question. I remember, I think, as a sort of a level question thinking about that in relation to Elizabeth and how far was the kind of, you know, via media of Elizabeth's religious policy reflection of her own personal faith. I mean, I think with Mary, you know, the experience of her upbringing is really telling. I think that whole submission to her father and then her committing to her faith against the odds and at times of, you know, real persecution under Edward. So I think, you know, I think that's true. However, she wasn't, and I would argue, you know, against whether it was John Guy or Pollard who talked about her being blinded by her Catholicism. That actually, and you and I have spoken about this before, that in the succession crisis, she actually played down her Catholicism. She didn't make her calling card being I would be the Catholic queen, she actually played up her Tudor legitimacy. And so when the Duke of Northumberland and all those supporters of Lady Jane Grey were kind of trying to make it about Protestant versus Catholic conflict, and lots of sort of shrill Protestant noises were coming out of London, actually, Mary was very pragmatic, and those around her, who, of course, were Catholic supporters and committee Catholics themselves, they didn't make a big thing out of her Catholicism. And in that sense, I think there was a pragmatism that we actually see then and in the sort of early days, weeks and months of. Of Mary's reign, the return to Rome didn't happen until after the marriage. And part of that was, you know, the emperor wanted to be seen as sort of it, part of the. That being his victory and Philip's victory. But the other way of looking at it is that, you know, the ferocity that came was very much inspired by the Spanish influence rather than simply that of Mary. And certainly, as we've spoken about, you know, there was this much more enlightened, positive plan of re Catholicization that was about education and infusing people's hearts and minds more than simply just burning out any resistance.
- [48:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One policy that would have been partly inspired by the Spanish is the war against France. And very much was her mother's perspective, too. You've mentioned it a couple of times. Tell us about the sort of key objectives of that war.
- [48:22]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, essentially this. I mean, historians talk about, you know, the loss of Calais, which was the last English territory in France, sort of being the final nail in the coffin of Mary's reputation. And, you know, the argument was that obviously Habsburg Valois conflict, you know, Spain, France locked in battle, England being a key power from balance of power perspective. And in a sense for Philip, the English marriage always being about tipping the balance against France. And that essentially, as was people's great fear that when Mary married Philip, that ultimately England would be dragged into the Habsburg wars. And, of course, as it was by the, you know, end of Mary's reign, that's exactly what happened, that England ended up being drawn into a campaign led by Philip and ultimately losing. Callie, it's important to say, you know, Elizabeth did not make great overtures to recapture Calais because of her reign. Calais was much more of a sort of symbolic importance at this point. But still, I mean, certainly, I think if we're thinking about the kind of crude caricature of Mary's reign, it's Bloody Mary and Lost Callais, and in that sense, kind of sold out to the Spanish. And to go back to our, you know, earlier point of view, of course, that's the English perspective on Mary. The Spanish perspective is she was this, you know, amazing, courageous woman who was determined to restore England to its rightful place within the Roman Catholic Church, who engaged with the Spanish. Spanish culture, was proud of her Spanish heritage, and in that sense, they're so proud of the role that she played and. And that she died tragically. And I think. I mean, going back to the question of Philip, of course, you know, it's easy to forget that Philip, who is most famous in sort of popular narrative for sending the Armada against England, was once its king. But it's only really relatively recently, you know, as you all know, that books started to appear which even talk about Philip, King of England. And actually, you know, that itself was really excluded from the study of Mary. And going back to that first conference that I went to, I mean, Philip was just a footnote. I mean, it was an English conference about Mary. And, you know, why was that? Well, one argument, I think, and a very key one, was the fact that one of the things that has limited Tudor studies for such a long time and now it's so different. This sort of new generation of scholars coming through is understanding the importance of languages and being able to look at the European archive to understand the Tudors, and simply kind of looking at the English sources is always going to be very partial. And I think that explains in part why Philip wasn't a feature. But I also think there was this sort of sense of the lingering black legend. You know, we don't want to acknowledge this king who sent the Armada as actually being married to our queen and being king for a time, too. So, you know, in a way that just shows how both the study of Mary and more broadly, the study of the Tudors, I think, has changed, and why, when people love the Tudors and there's so many people studying it every single year, actually still we can find new ways of explaining and analyzing and new threads of research and new narrative directions because people are now looking at the sources for the first time in different countries and then looking at these figures from the position of European countries and elsewhere. And I think that in its sense just shows how the study of history and this period in particular, can continually evolve.
- [52:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In the end, it is her body that fails her. She dies relatively young, younger than either of us, I should say. And if we look at her effigy, she has that great swollen belly. Did she have two phantom pregnancies? Do we know in the end what it is that killed her?
- [52:42]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Yeah, I mean, she did have two phantom pregnancies. I mean, obviously phantom pregnancies. What we mean by those can also vary. It's a kind of popular way of talking about the fact that certainly, you know, most particularly the first example, Mary absolutely thought she was pregnant. She went through the whole process of retiring into what would be her birthing chamber. You know, the country held its breath, Europe held its breath. There were false alarms. Then suddenly guns were fired in Antwerp, believing that the news had come that there was a child. And of course, all of this proved entirely to be false. There was no baby. And after a number of months of promises and recalculations by her doctor, Mary had to sort of re emerge. I mean, can you imagine the kind of shame of that with no baby? And then later again, she thinks she's pregnant. You know, what was happening here, I have to say I still don't feel confident that we. Well, I don't think we will ever really know. Medics have looked at this. Explanations have ranged over time from a tumor on her pituitary gland to ovarian cancer or stomach cancer, which created a swollen belly. But also certainly by some ambassadors accounts, I think you talked about swollen breasts and so on. So there was a sense of the symptoms of pregnancy, but whether that was through swellings caused by cancer or whether it was by particular kind of symptoms, potentially, I think actually starting to express milk. I think there was a suggestion which could be related to a tumor on the pituitary purity gland. I don't think we know or certainly don't know definitively.
- [54:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So to end then, what do you think we should say about her now? Do we talk about her as a failure? Can we say that's because of poor decisions or circumstances being stacked against her? Or is there another way of concluding what we make of these five years of Marian rule?
- [54:44]
Professor Anna Whitelock
I mean, I would argue that she was absolutely a trailblazer I would argue that she was one of the most underestimated monarchs in history. I would also argue provocatively, that Elizabeth is one of the overestimated ones. I mean, I think Mary did what she was supposed to do and none of those things were easy. And they all demand huge courage. You know, being a female monarch for the first time, having to fight against the odds, or being prepared to fight for the throne in the succession crisis. You know, staying in England during Edward's reign, when there was suggestions that she should flee abroad, enduring all that she had to during the reign of her father, and then, of course, facing down a rebellion in London, speaking at the Guildhall with this most courageous, inspiring, uplifting speech, where we know that she gave this speech, this isn't like the Tilbury speech of Elizabeth, where she's talking about, you know, defeating the rebels and showing her defiance by remaining in London, marrying because she had to, marrying Philip of Spain. And then as we've talked about, realizing that she needed to not just provide an heir, but produce an heir and go through all of that. So, yes, the sort of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I mean, ultimately her body let her down, but her, her heart and her courage, I think, were absolutely there. And if we think about what could have been if she had, if her body hadn't failed her, if she had managed to have an heir, an Anglo Spanish heir, you know, things could have looked very different. You know, there was the model of strong female rule through Isabella and Ferdinand, her grandparents. There was a way in which this could have been a much more equal, significant partnership or at least something edging towards that. But ultimately not just, you know, did she die prematurely, but she had that horrible shit of the phantom pregnancies and believing that she was pregnant when she wasn't. But that shouldn't overlook, nor should the burnings, the bloody Mary ephet that politically she played an important role and that we shouldn't just see her reign as a dead end, but actually it set the blueprint for things that followed, not least actually the female monarchy of Elizabeth.
- [57:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Professor Anna Whitelock, thank you so much for this fulsome and fascinating discussion of Mary and how we should now consider her. Thank you.
- [57:29]
Professor Anna Whitelock
Thank you so much.
- [57:32]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode we are on. Always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorsistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors from History Hit.
- [58:09]
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- [58:39]
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