After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Truth About Bloody Mary's Reign of Terror

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Last week we heard about Mary's formative years. Today we get to her reign, the infamous burnings and ask ourselves if Bloody Mary was as bad as people think.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. 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. 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. 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. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. 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 execution. On an otherwise peaceful summer's day in 1557, the market square of Lewis transformed into a furnace of fear and faith. As smoke curled into the blue sky, ten Protestants, men and women, stood chained to stakes. The gathered crowd watched intense silence.

Moments later, the flames roared to life, devouring the wood and 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. in 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. and loyalty to conscience was punished by fire. Lewis, 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 aka 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, it 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 left me with a fascination with Mary and her reign. 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? 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. Let's just say it was an even shorter reign than Mary.

And Edward, 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 where 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. LW 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. Yes. And it is an 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. L. Which is chronologically later to this period, of course. B. 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. 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. One of those, of course, is Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554. So tell me a little 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. AC It's interesting because she has this support to begin with in 1553, but Wyatt's Rebellion is 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 why its 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 3000 men march on London. Edward's reign and 3000 men march on London, but they are stopped by Mary's men. And you know, Maddie, we always talk about people when they're talking about Elizabeth always talk about the, I have the heart and stomach of a king's speech, right? That Elizabeth gives in the following reign. And she probably never said, of 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 3000 men. And she says to her soldiers, she says, and this further I say unto you in the word of a prince, I cannot tell how naturally a mother loveth her children, for I was never

the mother of Annie. 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. 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 tropes are the same. They're repeated throughout. It's this idea of, and 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. It's seen as completely holding her back. It's seen as not being used properly. 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 something missing in terms of womanhood there. But she, as the monarch, occupies a distinctly masculine presence that she says 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 religious attitudes that she has and the religious experiences that people have come to expect in this moment, that Protestantism to a certain extent democratises faith. It removes some of the middlemen and allows people to feel that they have a personal relationship with God in a way that Roman Catholicism in this moment does not. It's about ritual, it's about mystery, it's about all those

does not. It's about ritual, it's about mystery, it's about all those steps and barriers between you and God and that is mediated by a priest or priests. Thinking about 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 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. I think from a modern perspective, it's hard to get in the mindset of why this would be a life and death situation. 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 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. 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.

Yeah. And it also, just to drop in there 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 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, the key to Wyatt's rebellion was the fact that they wanted to replace Mary the First with her sister and put Elizabeth on the 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? That's really interesting. And again, it comes back to 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, to 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.

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 which 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, i.e. 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. 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 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. 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.

And 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 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 offer, I suppose. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseum? find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit.

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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 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. 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? 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, has 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, Maddie, who is one of the people that kind of comes to mind that was burned under this law? 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 Wright.

So I'm guessing he's pretty high on Mary's revenge list. You talked about that axe that she had to grind in episode one. Well, here is the axe coming into play. Yeah, he had annulled that marriage, as you rightly said. He had brought in further reformists slash 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, were 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 we, 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 enemies in the same way as her father did in many ways. Do you know what I mean? 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

sort of hysterical way. So that's very true that's very true. Okay. So Krammer is imprisoned. We know he's going to face the flames. What happens? Before his execution, Krammer 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 survive, I suppose. It's just human, but at the same time, it doesn't work. And on the 21st of 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. 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. It's 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. CB. Except that 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 and anti-Christ. 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. stakes 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 Lewis, because we opened this episode with

a scene in the marketplace at Lewis, which by the way is a very beautiful town if you've never been. Is it? Okay, I need to go. With lots of 18th century buildings. Put that on my list. But you would not have wanted to be there in the 16th century in the marketplace. No, you wouldn't. And this is kind of where so we have Cranmer fine. But we also have the 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.

So we have 17 men and women from various backgrounds who are refusing to accept Mary's dictates 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 iron masters and carpenters. And between 1555 and 1557, they are burned in various groups. There was 10 burned together in one day at one point, which is a huge amount of people in a small town that will draw attention and draw very kind of negative feelings. And the burning 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. monarchy and power, it garnered sympathy for the people on the street. And therefore, because of who those people were, it garnered sympathy for the Protestant cause. And this is just something that has 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. Ten years afterwards, or just shy of 10 years afterwards, John Fox describes these people

in his Book of Martyrs in 1563. 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 pub in Brighton, and his Bible was thrown into the barrel with him when he was about to be burned, apparently. 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 Lewis who holds this bloodstained 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 hear, once they start hearing about it. 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. So talk to me about this, 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? 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.

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 the First, because it is such a visual representation of her killings as opposed to what Henry did or what Elizabeth did after her. brutality by any standard, whether you're in the 16th century or today, is so deeply shocking and

troubling to any human beings. It just goes against any kind of natural instinct. So how is she justifying that? We've heard that she painted herself as this benevolent ruler, but she's burning people at stake. 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 of the nation.

Like burning them at the stake. 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, and it's absolutely true. But I think that's what's behind all of it, really. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were.

That's the Ancients from History hit. 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 Lewis, 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 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? This is the revelation for me, right? This is what, for me, goes, wait, 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 looked at this and these are the numbers they've come up with. Under Mary I, we think about 280 Protestants were burned between 1555 and 1558. OK, 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. 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. 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. Yeah. Okay. So she's, she's predominantly burning people then if 280 out of 300 are executed. Okay. Are we ready from some Henry the Eighth stats to go alongside this? Because this is, I know it's going to be worse. Are we ready for some Henry VIII stats to go alongside this? Because this is kind of wild. I know it's going to be worse.

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. I beg your pardon. I don't see that being possible realistically. Now we have a more realistic number of religious persecution. We're looking at about two to three hundred Catholics and about fifty seven Protestants. So we're looking at about, you know, 350,

360 executions for religious reasons during Henry VIII's reign. So that's more in line with Mary then. It's still more than Mary. 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 a thousand. That seems more realistic than what we're hearing about Henry. 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.

Good point. And so that's a lot of people to be killing in five years, whereas Elizabeth is on the throne for significantly longer. Yep. And. 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.

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 two to three, 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. Yeah, don't say. Yeah. 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, it seems like she's the expert, to get Phoebe's take on some of this. MW I'm sitting in the shadow of St James's Palace, where Mary I's reign ended in 1558.

A fit in 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. Antony, do you think that we have not been treating Mary Fairley? 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? Because I love what Phoebe's saying there at the end. 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. 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? Like, 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 try to depose her. And in Elizabeth's reign, that is celebrated. But when it comes to Mary, we don't value those attributes in Mary so much. And I do think it comes down to one 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. Therefore, she's seen as the opposite to everything that Elizabeth is and what she molds the country to be. So yeah, I think she has been unfairly maligned actually.

LH – 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. And if you have like a good Mary the First book recommendation, leave them in comments on socials or leave them in the future.