Little King Edward, the Godly Imp, sadly only made it to fifteen years old, succumbing to a lung infection, the days of Norman and Plantagenet royal death by arse-gravy being deemed rather passé by the Tudors. Rumours were rife that Mary had had the Imp poisoned but most historians now discount this.
Desperate as he was to prevent Mary coming to the throne; afraid - quite rightly it turned out - that she would return the country to Catholicism, the dying Edward named as his successor the Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant with a lesser but still legitimate claim to the throne.
Scrivens! Cremuell, pass the smelling salts!
Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn, before breathing in …
Ah, the tragedy of the Nine Days' Queen … Poor Queen Jane managed to hang on for just nine (count 'em) days, holed up in the royal apartments at the Tower of London. She would never leave …
Mary stormed down from Framlingham Castle (one of the homes of our old friends the Bigods) with fourteen-thousand soldiers, one-thousand cavalry, eight-hundred Catholic nobles and her little sister Elizabeth in tow. Queen Jane was deposed and later quietly executed under a false charge of treason. All that's left of her now is the Bob Dylan song … adopt nasal whine: "Won't you come see meee, Queen Jane?" &c.
As Foxe tells us, to gain her army Mary initially proclaimed that she would not compel any of her subjects to follow her religion.
For those of you not used to reading black-letter, Mary gathered the fighting men of Norfolk and Suffolk to Framlingham Castle …
"The Suffolke men; who being always forward in promoting the proceedings of the Gospel, promised her their aide and help, so that she would not attempt the alteration of the Religion, which her brother King Edward had before established …
To make the matter short, unto this condition the(y) eftsoones agreed, with such promise made to them that no innovation should be made of Religion, as that no man would or could then have misdoubted her."
Yeah, right … "Eftsoones" by-the-bye, is archaic Middle English for "soon afterwards".
So how long did Mary keep her promise?
Before her bottom had even warmed the throne all the leading Protestants, including Latimer and Cranmer, were thrown into prison and all-round bad-hat Stephen Gardiner freed from the Tower to act as her arch-persecutor.
It was all change again at Norwich Castle as Catholics and Protestants swapped places for the third - and not for the last - time. "Okay, get off the rack; now it's your turn to torture me."
Within a month of coming to her throne, Queen Mary reversed all of Henry and Edward's religious reform laws and revived the Heresy Acts. Then she set to a'burnin' with uncomfortable relish. Bloody Mary imprisoned and tortured thousands and managed to burn more than two-hundred-and-eighty people at the stake in her mercifully brief reign.
My Foxe describes each and every one with gleefully ranting, canting rhetoric and delightfully illustrative woodcuts.
Delightfully illustrative woodcuts of poor old Cranmer getting the Bloody Mary treatment.
Courtesy Old Dive.
Next time … What Mary Did Next … you might want to peep through your fingers at that one.
Sources:
Acts and Monuments: Foxe: Old Dive's 1621 edition.
The History of the Reformation of the Church of England: Gilbert Burnett: Old Dive's 1730 edition.
Clark's Lives - The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History: Samuel Clark: Old Dive's 1675 edition.Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: published 1753 to 1775
Lollardy and the Reformation in England: An Historical Survey: James Gairdner: 1908: 4 Vols
Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society
East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009
Holinshed's Chronicles: 1577: Old Dive's 1808 edition. 5 Vols.
The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002
Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996
Norwich Cathedral Close: Roberta Gilchrist: 2005
Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981
Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983
4 comments:
Cranmer was burned outside Balliol College, as I remember it. I studied and lived there for a summer month in 1999, and thought of him every time I stepped outside the college gates and saw the cross in the pavement. I hope it's still there.
Kathy Burke as Mary I in "Elizabeth." Also in "Absolutely Fabulous." Now that's an actress with range.
Kathy Burke's a brilliant actress and comedienne and now a brilliant film director, too (Vanessa Redgrave scolded her Guardian interviewer earlier this week, telling him to stop calling her an actor when she's an actress … times are changing again).
Yes, the cross is still there. We're still doing work on Trinity College but because of Covid I can only work there remotely; I miss wandering around Cambridge.
My dear friends live in Cambridge. They used to have a flat in London so I haven't visited them in Cambridge. But I loved Oxford madly and dream of going back.
You are more than welcome any time, Petrea. I can't wait for Covid to be sufficiently under control to allow you to explore English history in the flesh once more. To walk the streets knowing what happened there.
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