Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How Bloody Was 'Bloody Mary'?

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

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

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bad twixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Bad Twixter Sheets. And because we care about you and your safety and your well-being and your general snugglediness, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults

about adulty things and an adulty way covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too. And we call that the fair do's warning, because if you keep listening and you happen to get upset at some of the stronger stuff, well, what can I tell you? Tough cuss that one's on you, Fair deuce, we did warn you. Right on with the show. Nicknames are cruel at the best of times, aren't they?

And the worst thing about them is they just stick. Once someone's giving you a nickname, that can be it for life. Just ask Mary Tudor, daughter of the infamous Henry VIII. Her nickname, Bloody Mary, has lasted several lifetimes and is still going strong. And as nicknames go, one that paints you as a mass murderer, I mean, that's got a fair bit of stigma to it. But are we doing Mary a disservice with this title? Is it fair to call her Bloody Mary?

Is there more to her than meet the eye? Was it her religious faith that was driving her to burn all of those people? I think we might actually have a hard time redeeming her for this one. But we're going to try. We're going to give it a go. Right, on with the show. Oh, and welcome back to Petricks the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society with me, Kate Lester.

You would think that when your dad is a bloodthirsty killer, Henry D8, you might want to go in a different direction when it was your turn to rule. You might look at what he did and thought, nah, I'm all right, mate, I'm going to do it my way. But I think it's probably fair to say that the apple did not fall far from that tree for Mary Tudor when it came to bumping people off. I mean, she did seem to do a lot of it, didn't she? Or is that just anti-Catholic propaganda that came after her lifetime and she was a lovely, adorable, cuddly type of a person who wouldn't hurt a fly.

Huh. Well, joining me today to try and unpick this one is the fabulous author and historian, Professor Anna Whitelock. And if anyone can help us get grips with who Mary really was, and to find out just how bloody her reputation deserves to be, it's Anna. So I am ready. If you are ready, let's do this. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets. it's only Anna Whitelock. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. How are you, Kate Lister? I'm so excited to have you back because we were just talking me and my producers at a pitch meeting.

We were working out what episodes? We've realized we've never done Bloody Mary. We've never done Mary. The first what on earth do we think that we're playing at, quite frankly? The first crowned queen of England, the ultimate trailblazer. It's where it all began for female rule. Do you know what? I've got a real soft spot for Mary. And I'm really hoping that you're going to come on this podcast, and you're going to go, it was all slander. She was lovely. She was great to the servants. She had lovely, she loved her pets, that all that Bloody Mary stuff was a load of nonsense.

I don't know if you're going to do that. Up to a point, because of course the Bloody Mary stuff came from John Fox, who was writing a kind of piece of propaganda, really, ultimately about all the burnings of the Protestant martyrs. And of course, that's where Mary got her name from, the fact that, During her reign, during her short reign, almost 300 men, women and children were burnt for their beliefs. A lot of people. But what's important to remember is that was the accepted punishment for heresy at the time burning.

And actually, although it was a kind of ferocious period, it wasn't unprecedented. And of course, Elizabeth I first hung, drawn and quartered many, many. Did she? Catholics. Yeah, absolutely. So we need to remember to put Mary's reign in the context of the time. And she's had a really bad press because of very effective Elizabethan spin, really. And she's still suffering as a result.

She's kind of got a reputation as being like the Tudor Frump. Like there's Elizabeth the first who's like this golden, beautiful. And then before it was Mary who was slightly troll-like and tragic and just sort of shuffled off. Is any of that? Fair, no. Well, up to the point, and you know what, you're so right. And when I used to teach this a lot, I would, do you remember the 1998 Elizabeth I first, Shirk a Kapoor film?

Yep. And basically, Kathy Burke played Mary. I loved Kathy Burke in that. I love Kathy Burke, but, like, she wasn't playing the kind of glamorous sort of Mary figure. So she was like, it was all dark and dingy and Mary was dying, and it was Kathy Burke in a Kathy Burke way playing the part. And then the next scene was basically Kate Blanchett's skis. skipping around with her golden hair in the sunshine, playing the part of Elizabeth.

And that really did sum up that kind of juxtaposition. And as I say, so much of it was down to the Elizabethan spin doctors, basically trying to kind of airbrush Mary from history, even though Mary actually was the one who established that women could be crowned queens, that no woman before, people talk about Lady Jane Grey, but Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, but she wasn't crowned queen. No woman before had worn the crown of England.

It's impressive. No woman before had decided to marry as a queen, try and negotiate a really effective pre-nup that kind of contained, to some extent, you know, the power of the foreign king that everybody feared would sort of take over. And we can discuss how kind of successful that was, but she really did do what she was supposed to do,

which was marry as a woman, and also desperately, sadly and unsuccessfully, tried to have a child and also failed in that. So although her reign was a very sort of tragic end, and of course it proved to be a dead end in the sense that she didn't restore Catholicism, which was her big kind of project, actually she was a chude a trailblazer.

She's been, I would say, entirely underestimated. And you know what? I mean, the brilliant kind of image of this is she's actually buried beneath Elizabeth I had hated that. Oh, she'd have been so angry. But you know what? So would Elizabeth Kate, because what the thing. Because Elizabeth did not want to be buried there. This is this act of great royal tomb raiding that happened. So James I, who of course comes to the throne after Elizabeth First, he decides quite as soon

after his accession, that when he dies, he wants to be buried in Westminster Abbey with the founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry the 7th, in the chapel, because he wants to, you know, the two founders of new dynasties, it's the kind of top spot. He wants to reserve it for himself. But actually, where he wants to be buried is where actually Elizabeth is buried. So relatively recently, it was found payments made in the accounts to dig up Elizabeth's body. move her to the side aisle of Westminster Abbey where Mary the first body had been dumped with sort of an unmarked grave.

Elizabeth's body's placed on top and this, you know, this nice tomb, but still a tomb to Elizabeth is there and essentially says partners both in throne and grave here, rest we two sisters in the hope of one resurrection. And although Elizabeth, you know, she's on the top and there's this kind of lavish tomb, in fact, James is really having a laugh

because what he's done is sideline both Mary and Elizabeth together as essentially barren queens. It's a kind of mausoleum of barren queens. Neither of them have children. And on the other side of the chapel, he actually puts his mother, who he moves her body from Peterborough Cathedral, would you believe it, down the A1. Because she's a sort of fertile woman who's, so he completely does this tomb raiding. And so Mary and Elizabeth end up being buried together. but I also think just the image of Mary's body beneath that of Elizabeth really sums up the idea that her reputation is being buried beneath that of Elizabeth too.

It really does, doesn't it? That's almost poetic. I know. There does seem to be a lot of sadness in Mary's life. Like it starts very well. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. First and only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She's the future. It's all fabulous.

Mummy and Daddy love each other very much. Well, she's the future, but she's also, I mean, let's not overstate that. She's proof that they can have healthy children, but of course she's the wrong gender. She needs to be a boy. So it's kind of like, I mean, Henry's happy about it and he'll bounce her around at court, but it's kind of like, and the next time it will be a son. Okay, okay. But she's loved by her parents in that sense.

Yeah. Still a very important child. Yes. Yes. I think so. And then what happens when her dad gets the hots for Anne Boleyn and, and or, I mean, children have divorced a tricky area, but Mary seems to have had a particularly rough time with this.

Yeah, I mean, Mary basically is stripped of her status as the princess, as the, you know, next in line to the throne. And she becomes, rather than Princess Mary, she becomes the lady Mary. And actually is then sent to her baby half-sister, Elizabeth's household, where she's effectively kind of a sort of either half-in-prison, half made in Elizabeth's household. And she loses her status.

And then she is kept from seeing her mother. And, I mean, she gets to a point where ultimately she submits to her father and her spirit is completely broken. And when her mother dies, she basically says, okay, you know, I'll acknowledge that my mother's marriage was invalid to you, that I'm a bastard child and that you're head of the Church of England. And in a way, that was such a... formative moment for her in 1536 because it broke her. But actually in that moment of total

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

importance of her faith. Was that present right throughout her life, that really strong devotion? Is that something we see developing? No, it's absolutely there. It's core to her identity. And in fact, when, I mean, although, as I described that moment where she actually submits to her father as head of the Church of England, in that sense, for a moment, looks to forsake her Catholic faith.

It really is just in a moment. Because after that, and during her brother's reign, during the reign of Edward the Sikh, she's very provocative. essentially with her Catholic faith. So she will, despite being told in no uncertain terms by her brother, who she dismisses as, you know, essentially you're my little brother. You know, I'm not going to take orders from you. But contrary to what her brother, the king is ordering and his counsel,

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

committed. And where historians' views have evolved is that people would say what Mary tried to do when she became queen is just turn the clock back to pre the Reformation. So basically she wanted to get everything back to how things were when her mother and her father were married. England was a Catholic country. The Pope was head of the church and so on. But actually, historians now say it was much more enlightened than that. It wasn't simply a kind of campaign of like burning people into submission. There was also a campaign of education. There was published sermons. There was a whole investment in education.

So it was a kind of battle for hearts and minds. And so actually people say that it was much more kind of progressive rather than simply repressive. And in that sense, you know, we need to see her more than simply as Bloody Mary. I'll be back with Anna after this short break. So Henry dies, very sad, I suppose, for some people. I don't know. I don't know how Mary would have reacted to that.

I don't know what kind of relationship she had with her dad at that point. Complicated, I think it's fair to say. Very complicated. You know, at the end of his life, his children were sort of back at court. But it was obviously an incredibly difficult relationship that she had. And of course, after her father's death, yeah, her little brother essentially becomes king. That would be weird, don't you think?

Like, your little brother gets to be king. Yeah. And he's a precocious boy. He's also, of course, a Protestant, and he's surrounded by Protestants. And so Mary is now basically in the line of fire because she is a defiant Catholic and will not submit to her brother. So there's a, I mean, and there's accounts that her brother writes where he basically talks of, you know, a kind of war of words

between the two siblings where, you know, he's saying, you have to follow my orders. And Mary basically saying, well, you grow up first and then I might. Wow. Go Mary. But during those years, she's defiantly Catholic. And she, of course, proves to be a real courageous and pragmatic fighter because, of course, she has to at least prepare to fight for the throne, even though ultimately she secures the throne.

There is a succession crisis. There's that whole Lady Jane Grey mess that happened. It is. It is. No, no. No. Well, I don't know. She gets too much sympathy.

And people think I spend a lot of time saying, no, Lady Jane Grey was not the crowned queen. Mary was the first crown queen literally. It was never going to work that plan, was it? Like just we'll find some 16 year old and go you get to be queen now and as if Mary was going to go, all right then I'll just be over here

if anyone needs me. Well, yeah, but the point is, I mean, it's control of London at that point was really important. And actually Lady Jane Grey was married to Guilford Dudley who was the son of the Duke of Northumberland who was basically the puppet master at the time

who was holding all the cards. He was controlling things as Edward the 6th, Mary's brother becomes ill and then subsequently dies. And crucially, later Jane Gray and those around her who were essentially pulling her strings had the control of London, the armoury, the munitions, the treasury. Mary at this point was essentially this kind of landowner in East Anglia who kind of moved between her various residences, hearing mass in the home counties and East Anglia. And so in a way, nobody gave her a hope in hell. And he was a way, it was just as Edward started to really decline his health.

She was summoned to court. And effectively she was given a tip-off to basically tell her not to come to court because if she did go to court, there was a sense that she would be arrested. And so she basically got the tip-off and then fled. And she fled across East Anglia. First she went to Kenning Hall, one of her houses in Norfolk. And then she went to Farnham Castle. And remarkably, she managed to rally her entourage,

then much wider groups of people who flock to her. And so you have this standoff where Lady Jane Gray is proclaiming herself Queen and Mary is also proclaiming herself Queen and in the archives you see documents with Mary the Queen and a proclamation saying, you know, you need to obey my orders and pay allegiance to me. And what's really smart and people kind of overlooked for a long time is that they assume that in the succession crisis Mary was kind of screaming about her. Catholicism and it was all about, you know, come to me, I'm the kind of Catholic queen. But actually, she played down her patholism in a really smart way.

And instead she played up the fact that she was Henry the 8th's legitimate daughter, that she was in the line of succession. And Edward hadn't gone through Parliament in his plan for Lady Jane Grey to succeed him. So she ends up managing to win support from both Catholics and Protestants as Henry the 8's daughter, which, you know, goes against this whole view that she was kind of Catholic maniac who was blinded by her devotion to Catholicism and couldn't be politically smart and savvy too. And the succession crisis shows that she really could be. And that she was popular because people were really excited to see her, weren't they? Yeah, I mean, she was,

people accepted that she was the legitimate heir. She was by the terms of Act of Parliament and by Henry the Eighth's will, she was, you know, next in line to the throne. And so she managed to, I mean, she gathered such a sort of display of support and forces at Framingham Castle, but essentially the councillors in London saw the way that things were going and were like, now, this isn't going to work. And they all fell on their swords and pledged allegiance to Mary. And so she becomes Queen having not had to fight, but being absolutely prepared to do so. And bye-bye Jane. By-bye Jane. Beginning of the end for Jane. Beginning at the end. Yeah, exactly.

But it's such a remarkable story. You know what? And if it happened in Elizabeth's Rainer's, succession crisis. I've no doubt there would have been so many Hollywood films that would have really dramatized the moment. But instead, we're still waiting for the, we're still waiting for the Hollywood blockbuster on Mary. We are, aren't we? All right. So she's got to be queen. I think that takes remarkable confidence, by the way, to have, you know, not said, sorry, I'll just stay over here, but to have marched in and go, no, I'm going to bloody well be queen and, you know, tough tits, Jane. But now we've got a situation, she's like, was she 36 when she, when she became queen? So she becomes queen and everybody at the time we have to understand is women were seen as the weaker sex were seen as being led by their emotions were actually also seen as being far more sexually voracious than men so there was like basically she had to marry there was no argument about it she needed to provide an air but she needed a king to provide the masculine element of government and so there was you know all kinds of discussions about who might be a suitable match and in the end she went for philip of spain who you know it made sense yeah well i mean all

Although, you know, people at the time were scared about England getting swallowed up by Spain, Mary herself was half Spanish. Catherine of Barragone, of course, was Spanish, her mother. Of course, oh, yeah. The Emperor Charles V, her uncle, had been a great supporter of him. And his son, Philip, was now set to be Mary's husband. And Spain was this hugely important force. So it was a smart marriage.

And what Mary did more than, of course, Henry Dade or anybody else had done, She also put the marriage before Parliament. So if you think about kings in the past, I mean, they'd just chosen who they were going to marry. That was it. Mary says, oh, you know, I will put it before Parliament. And basically, if Parliament don't want to support this marriage treaty, effectively I won't go ahead with it.

And of course, they do support it. She also defeats a rebellion, what was known as why it's rebellion, which was a rebellion, various motives, religion, but also the marriage. And Mary's advisers basically say, get out of London, you know, it's not safe. Mary's not having any of it. She rides to the Guildhall in London and she delivers a speech

and she basically says, pluck up your hearts. You know, I may look like a woman, but I'm the mother of this nation. You know, you need to defend me and, you know, put pay to the attempts of the rebels. Really, really bold and powerful speech, which unlike the Tilbury speech

in the Armada by Elizabeth, which has slightly dubious authenticity, Mary gave this speech. She refused to leave London and she gave this really strong rally in speech which ultimately defeated the rebellion. She gets the marriage through Parliament. She secures a pre-nup

which tries to limit Phillips' role in government and she goes ahead and marries him and then, unfortunately, thinks she's pregnant and has this most desperately tragic phantom pregnancy. It's so sad. Yeah. She seemed to love Philip or maybe that's another like myth, like the heartbroken, poor Mary.

But so you get a sentiment that she really loved him and he was like, meh, maybe that's wrong. She was a means to an end for him. I mean, he was a means to an end for her, but I also think, you know, without wanting to kind of over kind of analyze it, you can imagine that her uncle, Philip's father and Philip had been a kind of support for her during her life

and it was a link to her mother. So I think, you know, as a male support, if nothing else, she kind of looked to Philip. And yeah, I mean, she believed she was pregnant. And what, of course, Mary has to face for the first time, which again is often overlooked, is, you know, we all know that monarchs, one of the main jobs they have to do is provide an air and preserve the succession. But for the first time when you have a queen regnant, in other words, a reigning queen, the responsibility of the monarch isn't just to provide an air, it's to produce an air. So Mary's body is on the line and scrutinized in a way that no male monarchies.

I mean, if Henry VIII doesn't have a child or has, you know, stillborn children, he just gets another wife or has another attempt at pregnancy. If you are the queen, your body is an issue. And the vulnerability of your body, the weakness of your body, it's really hard that that doesn't undermine your rule. And that kind of happens to Mary because she thinks she's pregnant. She has a sort of, you know, swollen breasts. It seems like she has a...

Doctors think she's pregnant too, don't they? I just think she's completely imagining this. No, and they, I mean, it seems likely that she had some kind of like tumour or something on a protrureate gland. I mean, she's sort of displaying symptoms of a phantom pregnancy. She withdraws into her chamber. There's all the ceremony that goes with this. You know, everybody holds their breath and the weeks go by, the months go by. And eventually she has to kind of reemerge with like, well, that was a kind of false alarm, which in a sense, her authority never recovered.

And you can understand why. I mean, you know, if we think of political leaders, even now, when they look weak, that's curtains for them. You know, they show any physical weakness. It's really bad. If you're a monarch in the 16th century where all power centers on you and you're a woman in a man's world and you've just said you're about to provide the air and then suddenly you don't. It's a really bad look and it's desperate. Do what makes it even sad for me is like that there was so much fanfare and like and everyone was braced for the announcement like, like, where. nurses were brought in and people bringing gifts of cradles and baby clothes and everyone's getting ready for the prince and it's so public that she has to kind of oh it's just awful kind of slink away after about like was it like 12 month pregnancy or something eventually admit it's not happening yeah and you know and it's easy to think oh well that was a different time but you know when

I was doing commentary on some of the royal births you know before Prince George was born I was thinking oh my goodness you know okay when Mary was in in confinement, apparently in labour. There weren't like people on ladders and gazebos of television cameras outside the hospital, but all eyes literally across Europe were on London and on the court. And you just think, can you imagine now when actually monarchs don't will political power if suddenly there would be like nowhere, there'd been no baby, it was a full salon. Imagine back then how much of a big deal that was.

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

I'll be back with Anna after this short break we've got to talk about the Bloody Mary reputation and about what was going on so we've got this young woman who's enduring an awful lot and you really get a sense of how important her faith is to her and then a prominent narrative around this is that she gets to be queen and then goes fucking mental

and just like right I'm queen now everyone's a Catholic, you're a Catholic, if you're not a Catholic, that's it, burning everybody. What actually happened with this? Well, I think she, I mean, as I say, her sort of right-hand man in this regard was Cardinal Reginal Paul, who was the kind of Pope's representative to help bring England back into the fold, back into the Catholic Church. But also, Philip wanted the timing to be that he would essentially take the credit. So after the marriage, you know, typical man, one might say,

I will be there to be part of the bringing back England into the Catholic fold. There was a sense that a few burnings would be sort of instructive and set examples. And at the burnings, I mean, they were public spectacles. People would be, you know, selling cherries and people would be gathering around. It would be a social event. There'd be sermons and stuff. And the idea was that a couple of burnings would sort of set the tone. And also that it is about cleansing the soul.

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

The Catholic historian Amon Duffy wrote this book called Fires of Faith. And he basically said he talks about the burnings even as being devastatingly effective. And he said that by the end of Mary's reign, England was broadly Catholic once more. I could see how that would be effective if you're seeing people being burnt to death. Fine, I'm a Catholic. Well, exactly. But, you know, it's also that, you know, the argument is that people were, you know, catechisms of like these instruction manuals were being printed,

that people really were engaging again. And of course, England hadn't been Protestant for that long. No, it's not very long, is it? It's like, was it 50 years? Yeah. I mean, if you think about the main kind of, you know, reformation was sort of 1530s, 5, you know, 1536, then, you know, Mary is coming from.

to the throne in 1553. So it's really not very long at all. No, it's not, is it? And lots of churches had kept all their sort of Catholic paraphernalia out the back. There was a sense that they were in this kind of interim stage. So yes, Mary has this reputation. It came largely from John Foxy's Book of Martyrs, which was this very graphic, encyclopedia, really,

of all the Catholic burnings that went into great detail. And, of course, really put them on Mary. and it was that that kind of created this reputation, which of course Elizabeth and Elizabeth and Spin Doctors really did dine out on. Was there a lot more burnings than they thought that there would be there? Would that be a fair assessment that there was a lot more resistance than she thought and a lot of people did get burnt?

Yeah, in that period of time, because really we're only looking at like two and a half years. So actually for that number of people, it was in that short period of time. It was pretty intense. Oh, wow, like two years and how many people? It was just under 300 men, women and children. And there are, you know, if you look at the woodcuts in John Foxy's Book of Martyrs,

you know, there's an image of, I think on the Isle of Guernsey, there's a pregnant woman being burned, and then these illustrations suggest that she was in labour, and then the baby was thrown back into the fire. You know, it was really graphic stuff. But, as I say, in Elizabeth's reign, there were many priests that were hung drawn and quartered. So what about Edward? Did he been doing similar?

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

much more than the fact that she burned Protestants. And she didn't, I'm trying very hard here, but she didn't burn them herself as well. Exactly. Like how much would she have been aware of what was going on? Well, exactly. I think that's exactly the point. I mean, it's always the argument, isn't it,

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

and people being re-educated to re-engage with the Catholic Church. And what was the effect of these Protestant matters? I mean, even at the time, did it create that narrative? Maybe it's not a good thing that were burning people to death. Was that? No, not really. and that wasn't the sensibility if we look what comes later. But of course, you know, the fact is that once Mary, you know,

for all the Aymand Duffy and others will say that the burnings were devastating effectively effective and England was broadly Catholic, of course, during Elizabeth's reign, we moved to the establishment of the Church of England once again and, you know, England being a Protestant country. So, I mean, that's one of the other things that Mary's reign is seen in some sense as a kind of historical cul-de-sac, you know, that it's an anomaly, it's this five-year period.

There's no that she doesn't have a child. Her main project, which was to restore Catholicism, is a failure. And so there's not much to be said about her. And that's really how historians, for such a long time, regarded her reign as just a bit of a blit before the more exciting reign of Elizabeth. How close did she come to having Elizabeth executed? I mean, Elizabeth was put in the tower.

Elizabeth was a thorn in her side. Elizabeth was, of course, next in line to the throne, and she was a rallying point for those disaffected. It seems that actually Philip warned Mary off kind of taking action against Elizabeth. So, I mean, I think she was a definite threat to Mary. So, I mean, Mary was, you know, we sort of kind of struggle with thinking, is she this weak and pathetic woman or is she this Catholic tyrant? And actually, she was somewhere in the middle.

She was a politically savvy, religiously deterred. faithful woman who blazed a trail in all kinds of ways and ultimately had a sort of tragic death let down perhaps by her body more than her kind of will and her instincts. What did happen to her? Because that's the subject of a lot of mythology as well. What took Mary out in the end? Well, it's likely that she had some kind of tumour, some kind of cancer. I mean, so she dies in her early 40s. She's only queen for five years. But, you know, and so people will say, well, isn't it, as I say, a historical dead Henry, nothing really happens. But actually, I would say that she set precedence in terms of female rule, which, you know, were really, really important. And everything that in many ways,

Elizabeth positioned herself and represented herself as not Mary. And that allowed Elizabeth to be a certain thing, like Elizabeth being all English, whereas Mary was half Spanish, for Elizabeth to have the kind of ability not to be forced to marry immediately because, of course, by the end of Mary's reign, Philip had been seen to lead England into one of his wars against France and ultimately England lost its last territory in France Calais. So that was all seen as a negative too. So Elizabeth managed to benefit, really, from Mary's mistakes, Mary's reign. But I always like to think that, you know, the image that on Mary's death, Mary's coronation ropes were hastily, refurbished for Elizabeth.

And in that sense, Elizabeth was the kind of hand-me-down queen wearing clothes originally worn by Mary. And then Elizabeth comes in and then we're Protestant again, although it's not that simple. But I often think, like, what did the people just out in the sticks,

like the peasant people, somewhere in like, you know, around rural hull who isn't at court and who doesn't see this, oh, now we've got Edward, now we've got Mary, now I've got Elizabeth, and this constant, did they often wonder?

Like, did they have any, sense of what their religion is supposed to be now? Well, I mean, it's such a good question, because actually that's exactly the point that ultimately it's so patchy. Yeah. Different people have different positions, different clergy, will it enforce things to different extent? The further away from London tends to be more conservative than the southeast. And, you know, historians tend to use wills as a kind of index of people's faith. So how they, you know, what their last will and testament is, is it framed in a Catholic or Protestant way? And yeah, I mean, the ultimate sense is it takes a long time.

It's really patchy. And that's why we should always be really careful when we start talking about Protestants or Catholics or England's now Catholic or Protestant because there is such a tapestry of different positions. It's really not as simple as that. You're absolutely right. So as a final question then,

I think I know what you're going to say, is the reputation Bloody Mary well deserved? or do we need to give her a complete reassessment? She needs a makeover. We need, I think, Penelope Cruz to play the part of Mary in a Hollywood. Do you think she was good looking? Was she a look at Mary? She was striking.

I think she was a woman that was, you know, she was half Spanish. I think she's not been given a fair treatment. And I just think, given the way that Henry Yates was depicted by, what was it, Jonathan? Reis-Mise. Yeah. I mean, come on, Mary, let's have an attractive Mary. Let's have Mary looking... Sam the Hayak.

Yeah, and just doing the courageous thing she did. And let's have the Hollywood blockbuster. And let's see her as this female trailblazer rather than simply this kind of very dowdy, frumpy Catholic tyrant. Anna, you've been wonderful. I knew that you would be. Thank you so much for coming to tell us about Bloody Mary or not so Bloody Mary or not bloody at all, Mary.

But if people want to know, more about you and your research, where can they find you? They can find me online in all the usual places and if they want to know more about Mary, my book Mary Tudor, England's First Queen, has been out for a number of years published by Bloomsbury and it's in all good retailers, stockists and online. So yeah, check it out there. Thank you so much. You have been fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you, Kate. Well, thank you for listening and thanks so much to Anna for joining us. And if you like what you heard, get therapy. That's what I would say.

If you listen to this and thought, yeah, burning people to death, that was fabulous. Get therapy. But if you like the podcast as a whole, then maybe you could like it, review it and follow along, because that does actually really help us. Coming up, we have got inside the Icelandic witch trials and another on the truth about Mary Shelley. And if you want us to explore a subject, or maybe you fancy defending Mary to the hilt, then you can drop us an email at Betwixtw. at historyhit.com.

This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.