Noble Blood - The Later Life of Bloody Mary

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

When Mary rode into London to claim her crown, she was met with celebration the likes of which had never been seen before in the city streets. Five years later, at the end of her reign, she was a hated figure. Today, she's known as Bloody Mary. [Side note: You can pre-order ANATOMY: A LOVE STORY here! https://read.macmillan.com/lp/anatomy-a-love-story/] Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists. We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys. We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode. They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. Video on Demand.

This guy's bobo-bubim. 2 a whatever time it is. Lizzie McGuire. And I'm like, the paper view. It was like a first closet moment from me where I was like, I don't feel like she's hot, like the rest of that. No, no, no. I was like, she's beautiful.

But I'm appreciating her. in a different way than these boys are. I'm not like, but listen to Los Coleristas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised.

If you've ever been a child at a sleepover party, chances are you've played a game called Bloody Mary. This is how it works. You, the tiny sleepover attend. go into a bathroom and turn the light off. You're holding a candle or maybe a flashlight. You close the door behind you so that you're alone in the dark. It's at this point that the only sounds you can hear are your friends muffled giggles from the other side of the door and your own breathing. You're supposed to look into the mirror holding the candle aloft and repeat the name

bloody Mary 10 times. If you dare. Most often, you get to about six or seven and bail on the experiment, shriek and explode from the bathroom, and claim that you saw something and that you were so freaked out. Then you and your friends all laugh and drink some more Diet Coke and go watch Adam's family values on VHS. Kids at slumber parties, at least in my experience, were too frightened to get up to saying the name Bloody Mary 10 times. According to the myth, if you were holding a candle and looking in a mirror in a darkened bathroom and you said the name Bloody Mary 10 times, you would see her face reflected in the mirror behind your own. Who is Bloody Mary, the specter of slumber parties? It's hard to find an exact answer. As with so much mythology and lore, rumors and speculations

vine themselves together until they're impossible to unravel from fact. Some say that Bloody Mary is actually a witch who was hanged at Salem, although evidence for that is fairly non-specific. But historically, the nickname Bloody Mary was ascribed to an actual woman. Queen Mary the of England. Mary Tudor, the oldest daughter of King Henry VIII, eventually became a queen. She was a devout Catholic who burned Protestant heretics at the stake, an act which eventually led to her bloody nickname. Mary became a hated figure, decried as one of the worst monarchs in history, a woman tyrannical, monstrous. If you believe the rumors, the cocktail bloody Mary, was named for her as well,

the tomato juice for the blood of Protestant martyrs, and vodka to symbolize the flames of the pyre. God knows what the clam juice was supposed to be, maybe the way she expanded the Navy. But hated as Bloody Mary is in theory today, before her coronation, the people rejoiced as Mary rode into London to claim her crown. There was cheering in the streets,

and a swell of popular support. She was a beloved figure, a heroine come home, to save the kingdom from usurpers. So how did the first female monarch of England in her own right go from becoming a populist hero to a monster out of a myth? The answer is, unsurprisingly, complicated. History is written by the victors, and victors in the case of England's religious,

religious disputes were the Protestants. For Mary, the combination of an unpopular marriage, military losses, and the failure to produce an heir became a perfect storm, ensuring a legacy that would be vulnerable to the interpretation of her enemies. And everyone, from children at slumber parties to historians, loves a bloody villain. I'm Danish Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Over the course of six wives, Henry VIII had three children, but even so, the Tudor dynasty was far from secure. His youngest child, Edward, was the only boy, the heir. But he was still a child and a fairly sickly one at that. As Henry VIII approached death, he needed an order of succession that accounted for young Edward dying before he had children of his own.

But that issue was fairly complicated. Remember the whole six wives thing? Edward was the son of wife number three, sweet, beloved Jane Seymour, who died of complications after the birth. Henry's other two would-be legitimate children, his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were daughters of Catherine of Avergonne and Anne Bolein, respectively.

And they were both retroactively delegitimized. Mary was delegitized when Henry annulled his own marriage with Catherine to marry Anne, and then Elizabeth, when Henry declared that Anne was a traitor and had her beheaded. But Henry's options for heirs were running short, and so in 1543, a few years before his death, Henry VIII had Parliament pass his Third Succession Act, in which he declared the line of succession would be first, young Edward, and then Mary, and then Elizabeth. The latter two were still considered illegitimate.

But still, getting back in the succession order at all for Mary was a massive coup. Her relationship with her father, Henry VIII, had been a nightmare of chaos and betrayal since she was about 12 years old, when Henry declared that his marriage to Catherine wasn't legitimate, was never legitimate, that he was the head of Church of England, and that he was going to marry Anne Boleyn no matter what anyone said about it. young Mary's life was ripped out from under her. In the first part of this episode series, I discussed that more in depth, the betrayal of her father turning against her,

isolating her from the people she loved and who loved her, forbidding her to see her mother, even as her mother approached death. It would be years before the relationship between Mary and King Henry VIII became cordial again, and only then it was because she was willing to submit to the terms he forced upon her, acknowledging that he was the head of the Church of England and that the marriage between her parents was illegitimate.

Mary was a devout Catholic and a devoted daughter to her proud mother. Mary only signed her father's statement at the encouragement of her cousin, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles had been one of Mary's only allies since the time she was little. They were actually betrothed when she was a toddler, but their age difference was too large for Charles to want to wait. So instead of marriage, he merely tried to offer his support to his cousin Mary and to Catherine of Ergon from afar after Henry turned against them. Mary swallowing her pride and signing the statement turned out to be the right choice.

She was welcomed back into the courtly fold and given a household again. And just as important to Mary, she was still observing secret Catholic Mass privately. Henry didn't really mind. By the time wife number three, Jane Seymour died, Mary was so back in her father's good graces that she was made godmother to the infant Edward, and she acted as chief mourner for her stepmother's funeral. Occasionally, when Henry was between wives, Mary would act as hostess at court, a de facto queen. Henry's sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, was so patient and loving that she almost made them all look like a happy family.

At certain point, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward were all at court with their father and on good terms with their stepmother. But religion sometimes has a way of tearing away the facade of harmony. King Henry the 8th died at age 55 in 1457, and Edward, just nine years old, became King Edward the 6th. Because he was still a minor, he was only king in name. Really, the country was being run by a regency council, first led by his maternal uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, but later dominated by a man named John Dudley, who distinguished himself with his military victories, particularly the way he put down a group of anti-landowner rebels in Norwich in an uprising called Ket's Rebellion. The Regency Council, operating on behalf of Edward the 6th, started making

a lot of religious changes to the Church of England. This is going to be a vast, vast oversimplification of a very complicated issue, but this is an Edwards episode, so in the broadest possible terms, Even though King Henry the 8th had declared himself separate from the Pope and head of the Church of England, the Church of England under Henry wasn't all that different from Catholicism. But then, under Edward the 6th, particularly under the influence of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sweeping religious reforms were enacted. The book of common prayer, written in English, becomes the church's liturgy. Priests are allowed to marry, worship of idols,

and relics became discouraged. The Church of England was already Protestant, but it became Protestant. It should be noted that at this time, Protestantism was still considered the religion of a wealthy minority, the people with access to education and new information about culture and the goings-on of Greater Europe. England was still, by and large a Catholic country, and Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was still a key. Catholic woman. That would be what would cause the most friction in the relationship between Mary and her half-brother king. Mary, a woman in her 30s, spent most of her time on her own estates where she was still privately attending Mass in Latin. A representative from court arrived,

telling her to stop. Mary stood her ground, writing a letter back to her brother, Edward the 6th, diplomatically saying how much she loved and honored him, and that she needed to remain true to her faith and continue to attend Mass in the language that was good enough to be used at their father's funeral. When Mary came to court in 1550 for Christmas, 13-year-old Edward publicly reprimanded her in person for her disrespect. The scene was a humiliation for both of them,

embarrassing for the boy pretending to be an all-powerful can, dressing down his adult sister. The scene ended with both of them in tears. By 1553, Edward was close to death, and maybe he knew it because while he was still a young teen, Edward, with the guidance of his chief counselor John Dudley, began making secret plans to prevent Catholic Mary from taking the English throne, the way her father, Henry VIII, had outlined it in his succession plans.

Edward, or rather his advisors, didn't want a Catholic sweeping in and undermining all of the Protestant progress that they had made. They would have much preferred that the crown go next to Edward's other half-sister, Elizabeth, also a Protestant. But Elizabeth and Mary were both illegitimate, and to take one out of the line of succession meant taking both out. Edwards' advisors posited that if Henry VIII was allowed to delineate the order for succession after he was king in his will, well, why shouldn't the current king also be able to do that? And so, before Edward's death, he secured his own private succession document, saying that his cousin, or I suppose actually his grand niece, Lady Jane Grey, would be the one to take the throne after him.

Lady Jane Gray was the granddaughter of Henry the 8th's younger sister, and Lady Jane Gray also happened to be the daughter-in-law of Man Pulling the Strings, advisor John Dudley. Dudley began shoring up support for Jane to become queen after Edward's death. He knew it would be challenging, especially because the people so loved Mary. They had been rooting for her and for her patient, devoted mother, Catherine, all through their periods of submission, and Mary, like most of the population, still believed in the Catholic faith. All of the changes that Dudley, I mean Edward the 6, had been making was too much too fast for many. And so now, an attempt to undermine the locked-in order of succession was an ambitious

move. Dudley knew that his plan would have a far greater chance of success if he literally kidnapped Mary and prevented her from raising her own support. Mary received an invitation to London, summoning her to visit her dying brother. She knew it was a trap. And so instead, Mary fled from her property to East Anglia, Norwich, to start gathering an army. Norwich was a particularly smart strategic move. They absolutely hated Dudley there, because that had been where he had viciously put down the Kett's Rebellion. Edward the 6th died on July 6, 1553, from a fever and a cough that had been gradually worsening for months.

Dudley decided to wait to announce the death for a few days while he gathered his own reinforcements and planted ships on the coast to prevent Mary's escape and also to prevent her from receiving backup from any European powers. It wasn't until July 10th that the count was. Council announced that Lady Jane Gray was going to be Queen. She was taken to the Tower of London, where traditionally monarchs awaited their coronations. The people on the street when they heard the announcement were a little confused. They muttered amongst themselves, shot each other glances.

Mary sent a message to the Privy Council, stating that she intended to claim her right and title. The Privy Council responded. that she was illegitimate, supported by, quote, a few lewd, base people. They would soon see how very wrong they were. It didn't take long for the council to hear rumors of Mary's growing number of supporters marching from East Anglia to London. It wasn't just religious conservatives who supported Mary. There were many who just genuinely believed that the legitimate succession shouldn't be overturned

for religious purposes, and they saw Jane Gray as a political pawn, which she was. By July 19th, Dudley marched with 3,000 men. Mary, at Fremlingham Castle in Suffolk, had 20,000. The rest of the Privy Council realized that they had made a serious miscalculation and bet on the wrong horse. They hastily proclaimed that Mary was the legitimate queen, effectively ending what some consider to be the nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey. Mary rode into London on horseback, victorious, with her half-sister Elizabeth riding beside her. The city rejoiced. Some sources say that

such a celebration had never been heard in the city before. Mary Tudor, who had been abandoned and cast aside, humiliated and hurt, was finally Queen of England. Lady Jane Gray became a prisoner of the tower where she had, merely hours before, been a would-be queen awaiting coronation. But Mary decided on mercy. Though Jane Gray would be tried and convicted of treason, Mary chose not to actually act on the sentence, death. Although, of course, Jane Grey's father-in-law was killed. At this point, Mary was in her late 30s. The most important thing to her was restoring England to Catholicism, but she was well aware that if she failed to produce an heir,

the next Queen of England would be her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. And so Mary, Queen of England, set out to decide on a husband. There were a few options for her, and more than several advisors vying for their favorites to get the position. But the only advice that Mary really cared for was that of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who had been an ally to Mary and to her mother ever since she was a child, and she was briefly betrothed to him. Charles, her cousin, had advised her when to give in to Henry's demands, and when Edward V.6th was making his Protestant reforms,

Charles was there to offer Mary an escape to the continent if she needed it. Mary trusted him. Her life had been a series of betrayals by her father, by Edward, by the Privy counselors. Trust was hard-won and valuable, and it was rare in Mary's life. Charles suggested that Mary, Mary, Mary, agreed. Her counselors were outraged. Philip, a slightly younger man, was a Spaniard. That was bad enough. But his father, being the Holy Roman, woman emperor? As Mary's husband, legally Philip would have control over her, right? And since she's the queen, did that mean he would have control over all of England's resources? Clearly, all of these things need to be straightened out. And again, I think it bears repeating, he was a Spaniard. Gasp.

But Mary was queen, and she intended to act as one. She said that she would put the issue of her marriage to Parliament and, if they objected, only then would she withdraw her choice for a husband. And so Parliament put together something called Queen Mary's Marriage Act, a strange compromise where they ironed out the kinks of a woman in power for the first time. Philip would be styled, King of England, and all acts of Parliament and official documents would have both his and Mary's names, but only for Mary's lifetime. England wouldn't need to provide any military support to Philip's family, and Philip couldn't act without Mary's consent or appoint foreigners to English offices.

No one was really happy about this arrangement. Not even Philip, who was miffed that he wasn't getting more power. He was only marrying Mary for political reasons. He wasn't actually in love with her. But when I say no one was happy about this arrangement, I do mean no one was happy except Mary, who did really love Philip and who had tremendous affection for him and was thrilled at their union. But the country was furious. Marriage Act or not, everyone knew that a woman submitted to her husband in marriage, and now their queen would be submitting to a foreigner. Add to that the anger

among Protestants that Mary would be undoing all of the Protestant progress made in the country, there was outrage. Upon the announcement that she would be marrying Philip, there was a rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt the Younger with the goal of deposing Mary and replacing her with Elizabeth. Mary put down the revolt handily and efficiently and arrested all of the conspirators. She also arrested Elizabeth, although she wasn't personally involved. Elizabeth remained in the tower for two months before she was put under house arrest. but one of the conspirators in the Wyatt rebellion was Lady Jane Gray's father.

That family was still causing trouble trying to overthrow Mary yet again. It was at this point that Mary decided that mercy for the Grays was no longer necessary. Lady Jane Gray and her husband, Guilford Dudley, were both executed by beheading. Shortly after putting down the rebellion, Mary would have another cause for celebration. Her period stopped. Her belly became swollen. She began feeling sick in the mornings. Her doctors confirmed it. She was pregnant. It was a miracle, a gift from God, and the most important step to securing her Catholic legacy in England. Mary even invited Elizabeth back to court into her good graces to come back and be there for the birth. But then the birth never came.

Mary waited. The court waited. They waited longer. It wasn't a baby after all, just what sometimes referred to as a hysterical pregnancy. Mary's desperation had manifested into physical symptoms. Her husband, Philip, left to fight his wars in Flanders. Their marriage would almost never have the two of them in the same place again. Mary rode with him to see him off to his ship. She waited until he was gone and she was alone when she was standing on a cliff and she believed that no one could see her before she started to cry. The false pregnancy, Mary believed, was God punishing her for tolerating heretics in England. The executions of Protestants began the next year in February 1555, almost as soon as Mary had become queen around 800 prominent Protestant leader. fled to the continent, but for those who were left and refused to recant their faith,

a grim fate awaited. Approximately 300 men and women were burned at the stake, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, whom Mary replaced at his post with Reginald Pohl, the son of her former governess Margaret Pohl. Cranmer had renounced his faith before his execution, which should have meant that his life was spared. It wasn't. In Mary's mind, these early executions would act as a, quote, short, sharp shock, a warning signal to the rest of Protestants in the country to frighten them into returning to Catholicism. Mary wrote that the executions should be, quote, so used that the people might well perceive them, not to be condemned without just occasion, whereby they shall both understand the

truth and beware to do the like. Her targets were religious leaders, people converting others away from what Mary saw as the true faith. By burning one person, she could be saving the souls of thousands. Grizzly, as it seems, burning at the stake was just the de facto execution for religious heretics. The idea was that it would give them a taste of the fires of hell, so that they might have the opportunity to confess and set themselves straight. before death to prevent that fate eternally. Thomas Cranmer, RIP, was even planning to burn Catholics before Edward VI's premature death.

And again, awful as it sounds, 300 executions is almost nothing compared to the number of executions Mary's father, King Henry VIII, ordered over the course of his reign. Sometimes rumored to be as high as 50,000. Another source I read has that as high as 57,000, factoring in the citizens and nobles who he had brutally killed if they acted an uprising against him, although that number might be exaggerated.

Edward VI suppressed the prayer book rebellion, which led to the death of over 5,000 Catholics. Elizabeth I would go on to order executions of around 800 Catholic rebels, and she had 183 Catholics, mostly Jesuit missionaries, hanged, drawn and quartered. So why is Mary the only one with the bloody nickname that's carried through history? Well, it's a case of bad PR. A few years after Queen Mary's death, the Protestant historian John Fox published his Book of Martyrs,

an intimate account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church in England and Scotland. It was also illustrated with incredibly visceral woodcut prints. The book was one of the most ambitious publishing projects to date, and it became ubiquitous, sometimes even in pews, along with the Book of Common Prayer. Elizabeth I would also be a little bit more savvy when it came to her executions. When she wanted to kill practicing Catholics, she convicted them as traitors, which gave the people less to argue with, even if people disagreed about religion.

Everyone hated traitors. And as joyful as Mary's ascension was, as Queen, she became incredibly unpopular fairly quickly. Her husband, Philip, pulled England into a war with France, which led to the French invading and reclaiming Calais, which was England's last possession in France. It was a humiliating loss and a visceral one. Upon hearing that Calais was lost, Mary declared, quote, when I am dead and opened, you shall find Philip and Calais lying in my heart. And there were also things fully beyond Mary's control, an outbreak of influenza, failed harvests.

Philip spent almost all of his time abroad, and Mary was left alone, devastated by her inability to have children. She tried to make positive national policies like fiscal reform and expanding the Navy, but she only barely got started before her sudden death. Elizabeth, her successor, would get most of the credit for policies that began in Mary's reign. In 1557, after a brief visit from her husband, Mary once again believed that she was with child. She was weak and her belly was swollen. But once again, the due date came and went. The belly sank, but the weakness stayed.

and Mary was privately forced to reckon with the fact that she was closer to death than she might have hoped, and that her half-sister Elizabeth would be the next queen. Elizabeth, a Protestant, who would undo everything that she, Mary, had worked so hard to achieve. It was all for nothing. Clutching her stomach in pain from what might have been either uterine cancer or ovarian cysts, Mary I died on November 17, 1558 at the age of 42, after only five years as queen. Philip, her husband, who was out of town at the time, wrote in a letter that he felt a reasonable regret upon hearing of Mary's death. Elizabeth I would usher in what's considered to be a golden era in England's history, an era of culture and of European.

in prominence. While Mary would remain a footnote, the boogeyman in Protestant stories, the woman of faith who had failed and been failed again and again. That's the story of the reign of Mary the First, but keep listening after a brief spontobric to hear a little bit more about her death. And on a personal note, this is just a quick reminder that you can join the Noble Blood Patreon, where we're recapping episodes of the Showtime series, The Tudors, and where you can also get episode scripts and behind the scenes, tidbits, photos, a little bit more information about the characters involved in these stories. Also, another personal reminder, I wrote a novel called Anatomy, a Love Story. And if you're a fan of Noble Blood, I really think you're going

to like it. It's a love story, sort of. It's a very much. Cobb Victorian version of a love story, but set in the underbelly of Edinburgh in the 1800s, mostly about body snatchers and how gruesome surgery was back there. So if you think it's sort of your kind of thing, there's a link in the episode description. Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists, we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys. We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode. They put on Lizzie McGuire 2 a.m. Video on Demand. This guy's boo-o-a-m.

To-A-N-W-A-M-Wi-W. Lizzie McGuire. And I'm like, a wild bat you were with. It was like a first, like, closet moment for me where I was like... You're like, I don't feel like she's hot, like the rest of that. No, no, no. I was like, she's beautiful.

But I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are. I'm not like... But listen to Los Coleristas on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od, and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria.

I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never. before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the Mycultura podcast network available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

In her will, Mary stated that she wanted to be buried next to her mother, Catherine of Avergon, the other proud queen who had refused to give up her faith and who had also failed in the goal of producing a son. Mary's request wasn't heated. Instead, she was interred in Westminster Abbey. Eventually, she would be joined in her tomb by Elizabeth. The plaque above them reads, in Latin, consorts in realm and tomb, we sisters Elizabeth and Mary, here lie down to sleep, in hope of the resurrection. But here's the detail that I find so interesting. Elizabeth's coffin would be placed on top of Mary's. Elizabeth would overshadow Mary even in the grave.

Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Readers, Katie's finalists,

we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys. We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode. They put on Lizzie McGuire 2am, video on demand. This guy's bobo-o-bub-a-m. 2-A-Mu-Ware. And I'm like, A wild batch you were with.

It was like a first closet moment from me where I was like, I don't feel like she's hot, like the rest of that. No, no, no. I was like, she's beautiful. But I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are. I'm not like, but listen to Los Angeles on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.