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Hello and welcome to Western CIV.
Episode two hundred and ninety three, Burning

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England. Last week we witnessed Mary, the first Queen of England, earned

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the nickname we all know her by, Bloody Mary. I suppose it should

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be Burning Mary, but I guess
Bloody Mary just sounds better. Mary was

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determined to make England Catholic again,
even if that meant burning every heretical evangelical

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in the Kingdom. But the fact
of the matter is, as we will

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see in our final episode today,
on Bloody Mary and England had simply gone

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too far to turn around the ship. By large, many, if not

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most Englishmen were fine going back to
the age of Henry the Eighth. They

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accepted that much, but going back
past Henry's break with Rome was now simply

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impossible. Based on a variety of
factors, Mary does not live to be

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queen for very long. In the
end, she reigns a bit longer than

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Edward, but not by much,
perhaps a few months, and her death

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will unequivocally end any Catholic dreams of
a final restoration. Mary had no compassion

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for unabashed heretics. In February fifteen
fifty five, two Catholic priests preached sermons

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against the burnings. They believed it
was better for heretics to quote live and

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be converted end quote. More likely
than not, what was happening here was

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an effort by King Philip, no
longer in England, to pump the breaks

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on an increasingly unpopular crusade. To
those in the continent, Mary's actions were

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beginning to look like madness, but
these voices were in the minority amongst her

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conservative faction. In fifteen fifty six, a different priest, Spanish priest,

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dedicated a lengthy work to Philip justifying
the death penalty for heretics. The punishment

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was, he wrote, after all, only reserved for those who refused to

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recant, a fact Mary's apologists consistently
pointed Outnumber fifteen fifty five, Mary's agents

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were closing in on what could only
be described as the most important confession of

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all the former Archbishop Cranmer. Cranmer
had been wavering for a long time.

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Now no one could help but notice
that the more he inch toward confession,

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the better his conditions of captivity became. The message was unmistakable. On January

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the twenty eighth of fifteen fifty six, he signed a statement recognizing the authority

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of the pope quote so far as
God's laws and the customs of the realm

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will permit end quote. An elastic
confession, for sure, but one nonetheless

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under intense pressure. He made two
more ambiguous confessions in mid February that then,

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with his execution date quickly approaching March
the seven, he cracked. Grandmurred,

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desperate to avoid the stake, ultimately
signed a comprehensive surrender, affirming papal

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supremacy, purgatory and even transubstantiation,
a doctrine he had preached against four decades.

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It was a stunning reversal, yet
it did not signal a complete victory

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for the Conservatives. Many within Mary's
Council feared that the names affixed to the

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confession, those of two Spanish friars, would inflame already xenophobic concerns smoldering in

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London. These concerns were heightened by
the discovery of a truly insane treason plot.

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This one is up there, probably
with the gunpowder plot that we'll get

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to some year. The plot,
this time was to raid the Royal Mint

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and then use that money to fund
an army in place Princess Elizabeth on the

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throne. Amidst these concerns, Cranmer's
execution date was once more postponed and a

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new recantation deemed necessary. But in
the end none of this mattered. Henry

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might be dead, but Elizabeth still
needed a scapegoat, and Cranmer was to

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marry Honestly, the architect of it
all, the architect of the break with

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Rome and were still Mary believed Cranmer
to have been the man who had broken

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up her parents' marriage. That wasn't
precisely true, but given what the young

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Mary went through, her desire for
vengeance I suppose is understandable. The problem

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was it wasn't a politically astute move. Despite realizing this was the end,

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Cranmer signed another recantation just before his
execution on March the twentieth. Many observers

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might have thought, if he said
the right things while facing the pire,

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he might yet be saved. Yet
indeed, there were some well placed gentlemen

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in the audience who surely assumed such
was the case. But then something strange

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happened. Cranmer had another change of
heart. Instead of confessing, he shouted

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out that he revoked all his previous
statements. He reaffirmed his writings against Gardner

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and the Eucharist. At the top
of his lungs, the elderly man proclaimed,

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quote and as for the Pope,
I refuse him as Christ's enemy and

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anti Christ end quote. Gramner was
then bustled quickly over to the execution site.

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There, with one final act of
defiance, he thrust his right hand,

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the hand which had signed the false
confessions, into the heart of the

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fire. Granmer's death marked a major
turning point. He was now clearly a

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martyr, and there was nothing Mary
could do about it. Worse still,

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I mean, truth be told,
it had all been her fault. Now,

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Mary did enjoy some successes. John
Cheek, of famous English Protestant living

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in exilen Strasburg, was lured by
Mary's agents into visiting the Low Countries.

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There, Philip's agents grabbed him.
Philip, in addition to being the Lord

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of Spain, now ruled the Low
Countries. Not particularly effectively, though,

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as I'll talk about in the next
episode, Cheek had no interest in burning

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alive. He confessed to everything almost
immediately, much to the lament of his

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fellow exiles. But heresy as a
whole showed no signs of diminishing. Fifteen

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fifty six proved to be a hotter
year in England than had been fifteen fifty

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five. Eighty five alleged heretics were
burned, a further eleven died in prison.

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Of those fifty five, by the
way, twenty two were women.

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Geographically, the executions were not even
Almost all the executions took place around London,

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Essex, and Kent. In twenty
six English counties, there were no

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burnings at all. To an extent, the burnings happened where the authorities wanted

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them. To Mary's Court all the
way to the end saw London in that

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particular region of England as the epicenter
of the heresy problem. Executions normally passed

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with no major protest, at least
no recorded protest. Mary was eventually forced

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to follow the lead of the Spanish
Inquisition. Burning people in their home counties

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just simply wasn't popular, so executions
were done, oftentimes in batches and in

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regional centers. Sympathy for the victims
was countered by assurances that they deserved to

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die, they were not martyrs but
malignants. With the support of poll now

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installed in Cranmer's place as Archbishop of
Canterbury. Writers contrasted the heretics quote that

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lately have been justly burned end quote
with true martyrs quote which have suffered for

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the unity of the Catholic Church end
quote. Men like Sir Thomas Moore Lay

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Catholic writers likewise praised those martyrs who
had died under Henry and mocked condemned evangelicals

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and their supporters. They wrote that
their deaths consigned them to deserve oblivion,

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and that the only memorial to them
would be quote enrolled in a few three

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halfpenny books which steal out of Germany
end quote. Abroad, Edwardian clerics used

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the time and space to stamp out
radical elements within the Evangelical faith, and

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a baptism was no longer to be
tolerated. By and large. These flocks

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in exile followed the fifteen fifty two
Book of the Common Prayer. Hence,

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as we go forward, what you
might notice is an increasing orthodoxy amongst the

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Evangelicals, especially upon their triumphal return. Persecutions purified English Protestantism in its heart

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and its heart lands. It steeled
itself to resist the onslaught of what it

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saws the Antichrist. In May of
fifteen fifty six, heresy commissioners in East

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Anglia received an alarming report from a
small group of beleaguered Catholic citizens in Ipswich.

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Inhabitants had fled the town and quote
lurked in secret places end quote.

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Another twenty refused to receive the sacrament, and a dozen came to church,

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but refused and looked away at the
elevation of the host. There were also

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a half dozen priest wives that have
access to their husband. At least that's

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what they said. Things were worse
still in the town of Colchester, according

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to a letter from the priest written
in fifteen fifty six. Quote, the

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detestable sort of schismatics were never so
bold since the King and Queen's Majesty's reign

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as they are now at this present. They assembled together upon the Sabbath day

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in the time of divine service,
sometimes in one house, sometimes in another,

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and there keep their privy conventals and
schools of heresy. The ministers of

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the church are hemmed in in open
streets and called knaves. The blessed sacrament

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of the Altar is blasphemed and rallied
upon in every ale house and tavern,

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and fasting is not regarded. Seditious
talks and news are rife, both in

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town and country end quote. All
of this, by the way, was

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in spite of a slew of exemplary
burnings in the town six at once actually

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on April twenty eight, fifteen fifty
six, and a recent visit from the

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Bishop. Colchester in reality was probably
the most Protestant place in all of England.

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Yet even or especially here, religious
rivalries continued to shape social divisions.

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Protestants drank at one pub, the
King's Head, Catholics drank at another,

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the White Heart. One writer went
so far as to comment on quote,

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to the old law, where the
people of God were the most straightly commanded,

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they should not mingle themselves with the
ungodly heathen end quote. To many,

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salvation lay in separation, and hatred
sometimes did not end in death,

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nor were the dead safe from punishment. In January fifteen fifty seven, the

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former professor of Divinity at Cambridge,
Martin Bucher, was dug up, declared

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a heretic, and dragged to the
town square, where in his coffin he

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was duly chained to the stake before
being consumed by the flames. He might

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have been the only victim of Mary's
fires for whom the process was at least

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not physically painful. Having been already
dead. Prior to his return to England,

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Reginald Pole, the Pope's Legate,
pondered whether it was right to exhume

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all evangelicals buried in consecrated grounds.
Luckily, several high ranking officials steered him

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away from that particularly divisive and terrible
idea. There were even some rumors that

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Mary had her father, Henry the
Eighth dug Up, exhumed, burned,

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reduced to ashes, but so far
as my research can tell, that is

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a patent falsehood. The exhumation and
subsequent burning of Bucher was more than just

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a petty, vindictive act. It
was the symbolic face of a serious and

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successful campaign to reclaim the major universities
of England for Catholicism, culminating in legateine

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visitations by Pole of Oxford in fifteen
fifty six and Cambridge in fifteen fifty seven.

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This was a priority for him,
who actually had become the Chancellor of

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Cambridge upon the death of Stephen Gardner
in fifteen fifty five, and Oxford just

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a year later. New statutes,
new curriculum, including the restoration of the

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faculties of canon law, and a
thorough purge of heretical books from college libraries,

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did much to restore official confidence in
the university's essential orthodoxy. Now to

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a considerable extent, these universities already
purged themselves. A wave of exiles washed

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over to Germany and Switzerland, particularly
from Cambridge, where within six months of

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Mary's ascension to the throne, only
three former heads of House remained in place.

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The others were all replaced by reliable
Catholics. Now, while all this

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was going on, what no one
realized is how short on time everyone really

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was. The Catholic bishops didn't know
it, and so the program of refurbishment

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and restoration rolled on throughout fifteen fifty
seven. In fifteen fifty four, only

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half all the parishes in Bath and
Wells met the requirements for books and altars.

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By fifteen fifty seven, just three
years later, that number had gone

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from fifty percent to eighty six percent. There remained some evidence of what the

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Catholic bishops called heresy here and there, but by and large. The English

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Church once more at least looked Catholic
Masses for the dead were back by fifteen

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fifty seven. Between fifteen fifty four
and fifty eight, the number of requests

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for said masses increased four times in
wills recorded in East Sussex, and that's

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probably not an anomaly. But getting
back to practical matters, Mary still did

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not have an air and that was
a major problem. Under the terms of

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Henry's will, which is what gave
Mary her legitimacy, Princess Elizabeth was next

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in line. Even secretly, of
course, Philip, Mary's husband, began

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to wonder about a match with Elizabeth
should Mary die. Elizabeth had been a

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willing member of Mary's core since her
release from captivity at the end of Edward's

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reign. She remained so now in
fifteen fifty seven, And of course there's

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always the matter of politics. None
of these religious questions take place in a

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vacuum. The English returned to Rome
got caught up in European politics, specifically

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the seemingly never ending conflict between the
Habsburgs and the French House of Valois.

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In one of its many permutations,
in fifteen fifty six, the Pope again

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switched sides, allying himself with France
over Philip of Spain. In a somewhat

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petty move. This Pope, Paul
the fourth then revoked Reginald Pole's papal legate

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position in England. In his place, Paul appointed an almost completely unknown quartier,

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whom Mary patently refused to allow in
the country that Jerry. On the

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top of this whole affair was a
brief but busy are uprising in Yorkshire,

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led by none other than an evangelical
nephew of Cardinal Pohl papal legate. His

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unsuccessful bid to raise the population against
Mary ended with his head being separated from

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his neck on May the twenty eighth, fifteen fifty seven. Mary, however,

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believed that the French King I'll read
the second to have been behind the

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rebellion. He wasn't, and in
fact himself had less than two years to

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live still in her name alone,
Mary declared war on Scotland and France on

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June the seventh. At first the
war went well. The English slash Spanish

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won a resounding victory in Pickardy.
But then disaster struck. Not a military

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disaster either, a vicious strain of
influenza hit England during the late summer fifteen

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fifty seven. It proved to be
the worst epidemic in England during the entire

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sixteenth century. Mortality rates were sixty
percent higher than normal, and the pressures

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on the poor were unprecedented. Hull
responded that November by preaching a sermon of

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repentance, and he meant something specific
by that. Sure, the Evangelicals had

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built a few hospitals in London,
but the Catholic Church had built hundreds across

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the city of northern Italy. If
the people who had stolen the wealth of

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the Church under Henry the Eighth Pule
railed would just give it back, then

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maybe the Church could do something to
ease the suffering of the poor. Greed,

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immorality, disobedience. According to Paul, these were all legacies of the

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schism. He traced a logical line
of decline from King Henry's first assumption of

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his what he called strange time idol
to the heresy and iconoclasm of recent years.

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Once again, Sir Thomas Moore was
propped up as a true martyr for

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the cause. The themes were obvious. Rome was a cohesive agent. It

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could create a charitable society. The
other option was heresy, schism, and

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the collapse of all order. There
was no third option. This was the

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theme of numerous sermons by bishops and
others at Saint Paul's Cross, by preachers

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licensed by Pole for various dioceses,
and by clerical officiants all throughout England.

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The Marian regime was as eager to
proclaim its message from the pulpit as its

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Edwardian predecessor had been, and to
emerge triumphant from an intensifying battle of ideas.

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Of course, it was ironic to
the least that at the turn of

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fifteen fifty seven fifty eight, when
Pole in England was embroiled in this bitter

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conflict, the Pope considered Cardinal Pole
a flagoned heretic. But the new year

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began badly. A surprise French attack
in early January succeeded in recapturing Calais,

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the last remnant of the once mighty
English Empire. In France, people could

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scarcely believe it. The campaign against
heresy slowed down in fifteen fifty eight,

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a result of disruption caused by the
influenza epidemic. Though a far from negligible.

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Forty three people were burned over the
course of the year, bringing the

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total for the reign to two hundred
and eighty four, with a further twenty

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eight accused heretics dying in prison those
still heavily concentrated in the southeast. The

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victims of fifteen fifty eight were executed
across eleven counties. The single burnings taking

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place in Exeter and Richmond and Yorkshire
were unusual spectacles for their residence. Many

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of those executed came from secret churches
or prayer groups of evangelicals. That might

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prove, depending on how you want
to look at it, that the Marian

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regime was getting better at breaking down
such illicit meetings, or that the Evangelicals

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were strengthening their resolve. Either way, one conclusion was unmistakable. The authorities

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were nowhere close to winning the battle
against heresy. Indeed, the question amongst

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the Evangelicals, both within Eggland and
in exile, was not whether to conform

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or not. It was whether to
abstain from the Marian Church or affirmatively oppose

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it. It seemed that the tide
was turning. Mary could not, after

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all, burn England clean of heresy. She had tried, and she had

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failed. In early fifteen fifty eight, John Knox published his inflammatory tract,

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A First Blast of the Trumpet against
the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Its purpose,

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as the title suggested, was to
argue for the unlawfulness of female rule,

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which was, according to Knox,
quote repugnant to nature, contumingly insult

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to God, the subversion of good
order end quote. Knox was blaming really

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a trio of Popish marys, that
of England, of Scotland, Mary of

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Geese, and pronounced that quote women
may and ought to be deposed from authority

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end quote. If this weren't enough
of an argument, Knox published again in

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July of fifteen fifty eight, the
outline for an envisioned second Blast. In

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it, he argued that monarch should
be elected rather than succeed by inheritance,

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that Catholics and notorious sinners must be
barred from bearing rule, that oaths of

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allegiance to such rulers were null,
and that unfit rulers might legitimately beat posed.

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Now, these were not universal or
even majority views among the exiles,

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let alone the more prudent evangelicals keeping
their heads down at home. But in

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the late fifteen fifties, it was
becoming more widely accepted by Catholics as well

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as evangelicals, that the duty of
political obedience was contingent rather than absolute,

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that the obligations to the laws of
God or of his Church always took precedent

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over merely human regulations. Christians,
i suppose, had always known and believed

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this, but for thirty years or
more the English people had been parties to

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an unrelenting series of arguments, both
coming from the prince and from the pulpit,

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continued in homes, continued in taverns, about what God's laws actually were.

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The difficulty of identifying god laws accurately
shook to the core any residual assumption

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that kings, parliaments, or bishops
could automatically be relied upon to implement them

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correctly. These ideas really started with
John Calvin in Geneva and his compact theory,

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the idea of a contract one that
is open to interpretation. And now

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they were coming to fruition. Henry
the Aightes pitched his people had been simple

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trust and obey. It was a
strategy not even Henry's excessive personal or regal

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charisma could prevent from misfiring, and
one that was even less likely to succeed

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when the old king was replaced first
by a child and then a woman.

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Edward and Mary claimed to be followers
rather than embodiments, of the true religion,

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and they commanded their people to worship
as they did. Their policies in

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propaganda, though totally opposed to each
other, had the similar effect of an

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emboldening sum in their support for official
religion and confirming others in their opposition to

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it. Yet a third group,
probably the majority, were eager to obey,

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but had been left with an uneasy, unshakable sense that their political loyalty

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and their religious convitions were different and
incompatible things. This was the lesson of

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the sixteenth century, if you needed
to sum it up in one sentence.

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But there were practicalities. As I
mentioned before, In January fifteen fifty eight,

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Mary informed her husband that she believed
herself to be pregnant. Philip had

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last been in England in July of
the preceding year, so clearly she should

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have done decisively by that point whether
or not she was. She was not

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pregnant. To Mary, this realization
was a cruel cut. No doubt she

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thought back to her own mother,
whose inability to conceive a baby boy heralded

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her political fall. But the fact
of Mary's inability to conceive is also the

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decisive political fact of her reign.
By April, Mary had to admit she

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was not pregnant. Had she conceived
in July, she would have been over

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nine months at that point. Zme, Yeah, time to admit it.

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But things took a turn for the
worse. In late summer, Mary developed

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a fever and took to her apartment. It got worse still in October,

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Mary's health took a turn. She
was dying. Mary historians believe, but

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still do not know for sure,
had ovarian cancer. Philip knew he had

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no chance of succeeding his wife as
king. It had been the key term

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of their marriage treaty. His goal
became to see a smooth transition of power,

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and crucially one in which the French
were cut out. To that end,

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Philip quietly acknowledged the Princess Elizabeth as
Mary's heir apparent was after all,

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what was specified in Henry's will.
As always, Henry the eighth continued to

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loom like a massive shadow over England
even a decade after his death, Mary

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duly changed her will on October twenty
eighth to reflect this new reality. Parliament

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confirmed Elizabeth as the heir on November
the fifth, and two days later the

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princess herself got the news. Mary, in her final days, demanded to

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know that Elizabeth was a good Catholic. Elizabeth quickly assured the messengers sent to

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see her that she was not that
any of that really mattered. Queen Mary

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the First of England received the Catholic
right of extreme unction on November thirteenth,

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fifteen fifty eight. On the morning
of November seventeenth, fifteen fifty eight,

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she died. Reginald Pohl, whose
health had also been failing for some time,

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outlived his queen by only twelve hours. Perhaps it was for the best.

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He would not like to have seen
what happened next. For Protestants living

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abroad, there must have been some
hope, but I say some and not

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total. Elizabeth was twenty five years
old, She was very much an unknown

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quantity, and now she was Queen
of England. Before we continue with England

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next week, I want to pick
up on Phillip's story actually and discuss the

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royal quagmire that he had gotten into. That was the Low Countries in the

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interim. If you're interested in any
more content or to support the show,

295
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you can check out the link for
a free trial of Western Civ Podcast two

296
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.160
point zero, or Deep into Roman
History and the Punic Wars. At this

297
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:48.799
point, there's hours upon hours of
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