Hi my name's Kevin Hicks, welcome to my YouTube
channel The History Squad. Now today's video, controversial. Bloody Mary, Mary the first, that
Tudor Queen, daughter of Henry VIII. What drove her to sanction the burning alive of so many
people? So we're gonna have a little look at her and at the end of the whole business I want you to
sum up in your own mind, did she deserve the title Bloody Mary? So who was Mary? Yeah? We know that
she became Mary the first, the first true Queen of England shall we say, but she was somebody's
child, Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. That makes Mary half Spanish, she had
Spanish nobles as her relatives. This young girl, born into a Catholic family. Her mother, devout
Catholic, she knows no other religion. This young girl is schooled in her faith and part of the
Catholic faith, no divorce. So when her father and mother are divorced, Archbishop Cranmer,
remember that name, and he dissolves the marriage, it must have broke her heart. One minute she's the
daughter of Henry VIII, she's going to be loved and she's going to you know be groomed and married
off and so on and so forth. Now she's cast aside, her father remarries uh her mother
loses her title, she loses title, it must have been absolutely devastating for
her. And the one interesting reflection here, apparently she had more stepmothers than she did
friends. Now as things go on she ends up with a half sister Elizabeth and a half-brother Edward.
Now Edward takes the throne after Henry's death. He is absolute Protestant. He guides England
through this new phase but unfortunately he gets tuberculosis we think, an infection in the
lung. 1553 he dies. Now before he died though he made sure that Lady Jane Grey, a cousin,
would become Queen, Protestant but she only stood for nine days because Mary didn't stand
idle. She raised a force and very quickly the support for poor Lady Jane Grey simply dissolved
and Mary becomes Queen of England, July 1553. One of the first things that Mary did on
her accession to the throne was to actually release imprisoned Catholic dignitaries. Two of
them quite important, Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner who she remade as
the Bishop of Winchester and her Lord Chancellor. Now you might know that name Stephen Gardiner
from a previous video I did about the torture and execution of Anne Askew. This kind of shows you
the kind of people that we are actually dealing with. But it was Gardiner who actually crowned
Mary on the 1st of October 1553, but before she was crowned she had leading Protestant churchmen,
clergy imprisoned, including Thomas Cranmer. But she'd issued a proclamation, I'm going to read it,
hold on it's very simple. Uh ‘she wouldn't compel any of her subjects to follow her religion’. So
from the beginning she's, she's leading people into a false sense of security. She's not going
to compel anybody to follow in her footsteps with the Catholic religion yeah? Well let's have a
little look into that shall we? Shortly after Mary was crowned Queen of England her first Parliament
October 1553 sits and her parent’s marriage is is declared valid. So the divorce is abolished, Henry
and Catherine of Aragon their marriage legal, so their daughter was not a bastard. There's a little
twist in all of this. Also the break with Rome, that's kicked out. All of her brother's religious
reforms, Edward VI, that is kicked out as well, so basically what was happening was church
doctrine was being taken back to 1539, to the six articles of Henry VIII. Now amongst these articles
was, you had to have a complete adherence to the Catholic faith. Believe in transubstantiation,
the uh, in communion. The, the bread and the wine actually becoming the blood and body of Christ.
You also had to have priests who are celibate. Believe in the confessional. There were all these
different angles. Now if you went against it, you could be fined, imprisoned, but if you
recanted hey just a heavy old fine. But if you didn't recant you could be put to death and all of
your chattels, all of you belongings confiscated. Put to death for heresy. By the end of 1554 a deal
had been made with the Pope. People were concerned in England you see that the Catholic Church will
be claiming back land that had been confiscated in the Reformation under Henry VIII, but that
didn't happen because there were some notable families there, and you didn’t want to put their
noses out. But one thing that did come out of this deal with the Pope was the reinstatement of that
heresy Act. What does heresy mean? Okay well I've got the definition here ”A theological doctrine
or system rejected as false by ecclesiastical authority”. I'll tell you that's a mouthful. It
actually comes from the Greek meaning ‘self-chosen opinion’ or an organization that has that same
opinion, but in this case it means that if you go against the Catholic church, if you don't
believe in what they believe in, and you don't recant you will be put on trial and you'll be
found guilty of heresy and you'll be burned alive. So on top of all of this heresy business and
Catholic reform, Mary decides she's going to get married. Now she's been urged before to marry
this guy or that guys, but she decides to marry, a Spaniard. Philip II of Spain. Her own advisors
tell her ‘don't do this it will make you unpopular’, but she won't have any of it. 1554 she
marries Philip II of Spain. The problem is this, in those days if you married, if you were a lady
and you married, your husband had claim to your chattels, to your property. So in fact Philip II
will become King of England, although Mary will be the Queen of Spain, but in fact from what I've
read they did reign jointly, it's going to cause a lot of problems for her in her reign, for there
will be wars between Spain and France and that could drag England into a war. But that's a whole
different story and if you're interested in this, have a read have a read about Mary because
there's more to her than meets the eye. She fell in love with Philip, she adored him, but
it's what happens next which earns her the title Bloody Mary. You see it wasn't until February 1555
that the first execution for heresy actually took place. John Rogers uh burned alive at the stake,
but you've got to consider this, Mary only reigned for five years, it's a very short reign and within
that something like 280 people were executed for heresy, most of them being burned at the stake.
That's something like three or four a week and that doesn't include all of the others that
were executed for other crimes yeah? This is just the martyrs. So why burn them? Why burn them
alive? Why not cut their heads off or hang them something like that? But from what I found out, it
was all to do with the cleansing of the soul. If the body is burnt to ash it's a punishment because
they have no body to take in to the afterlife, heaven or hell. But there's also this
business from the Spanish Inquisition who favored the burning of people because it goes
against the Catholic doctrine to shed blood, so if you burn somebody alive you're not
shedding blood are you? And there's another kind of sad twist here, they didn't
strangle them before they killed them. Very often people who are burned at the stake,
witches for instance, were strangled before they were set on fire, but if you were in Mary's time
found guilty of heresy and you're going to burn, you're gonna take the pain. Now I've made a
model just to kind of show you how this was done. Now you weren't just piled up with faggots of
twigs as they call it or kindle. You were stood in an empty barrel that used to contain pitch,
so that eventually is going to catch fire. All of your normal clothes are gone, you're in just
your shirt or a shift. You're bound via the neck, the waist and by your feet, so you are
iron bound or chained to the post. If these bundles of wood are nice and dry you're
going to go in in minutes. If they’re green, it's going to take a long time. If there is
wind then it's going to be a heck of a death, and can you imagine being burned alive? It must
be one of the most painful ways to die that you can imagine. And I'm going to show you a book
here. Now when Mary started her business of going against the Protestants, 800 notable Protestants
left England. One of them was Foxe and he wrote a book Foxe's Book of Christian Martyrs. Um a lot
of people think this is uh propaganda but actually what it is it's a record of those who literally
were burnt to death, and I've I've got one here when I read it I was heartbroken.
When you read about John Hooper, he was watched and what they observed was in his
house he brought all the beggars and starving people into his house, and in his hall they will
be seen to be eating meat and bread and he then wouldn't eat until they had had their fill and
they had left. He was a really kind man. His servants gave evidence that every night he would
feed the poor before himself. But of course he'd be made a bishop in the reign of Edward VI so he
was Protestant when Mary come to the throne he is questioned he refuses to become a Catholic and
follow the Catholic Doctrine. He's put in prison, 18 months. Then he's going to, 1555, he's going
to be burnt at the stake. As they are putting the iron bands around him or chain him he says ‘
Ah no, you don't need to do my feet and my neck just the one around the middle of suffice’ and he
says and by the way ‘I forgive you’ that's the man who's going to burn him alive. I forgive you.
But what Hooper didn't realize was the fire had been made with green wood. Green wood doesn't burn
very well. Takes 45 minutes in the flames to die. He is praying until his lips shrivel
back, then he is banging his chest until his hand actually sticks to the iron
band and is pulled and burned off, so he uses his other hand. I could go on but some of this is
so distressing, even to a tough old guy like me, and as it says in the end now ‘he reigns
as a blessed martyr in the joys of Heaven’ It's impossible to read, read this without
feeling compassion, but I've got another one here. It's the 13. That's all I'm going
to say, 13 are going to be burnt together. Self same thing, they won't actually accept the
Catholic faith. There are 11 men and two women. They try all the kind of tricks, what we call in
the police cross-serving they sift. They put two separate groups and told the one group that the
other group had bubbled them, had told all the truth about them, but they wouldn't believe it.
Then they were mocked and saying oh there are so many beliefs here it's ridiculous, so they draw
up one belief, and they all signed it. The belief of the Protestant church. They burnt them, two
stakes. Men were divided in half and fastened to the two stakes, back to back and the two
women were placed in between them, they weren't fastened and they were all burned alive. So the
last one we're gonna look at is Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop Cranmer, 21st of March 1556. Now
this is the guy who was forced to watch the double burning of his two friends Latimer and Ridley.
Can you imagine watching your friends burn alive? Archbishop Kramer didn't want to die. He
didn't want to be burnt alive, he was in shock, so he recanted the Protestant faith. He was made
to write out two confessions which were then kept, but then he finds out they're going to kill him
anyway and he gives a sermon in Saint Mary's Church. But then it comes to the to the end and
he goes I, I confessed because I feared death. Since my hand offended, it will be punished.
This is the hand that signed the confessions, when I come to the fire it will be burned first,
and as for the Pope I refuse him as Christ's enemy and Antichrist. And he goes on, and people whoar,
oh my goodness me, but what can the Catholics now do to him? He's gonna die, he's on his way to
the fire, and when he arrives at the stake, takes off his clothes, he's got his long shirt
takes off his hat and everybody sees him for what he really is. An old man. He was bald, he got no
hair on his head, a great big long beard and both Catholics and Protestants alike they felt sorry
for this old man. Well they bind him to the stake, they set it on fire. What does he do?
He says “this unworthy right hand” puts it into the fire and it catches fire
and he holds it up. He is then consumed by the flames. Wow what courage these people
had. And that was the problem, all these people were being burnt they weren't screaming and
begging for mercy, they were praying and it was backfiring because even some of Philip's own
advisors, as well as Mary's were saying this is gonna go wrong. You're going to turn people
against the Catholic church if we're not careful. The sad thing is Mary desperately wanted an
heir, a Catholic heir that would prevent her sister Elizabeth becoming Queen and changing
England back to being a Protestant state, but she didn't make it. She died ovarian cancer,
so we understand, 1558. Very sad at the end because her husband Philip actually abandoned
her, so it's a real sad ending to this queen, who at the end of the day was following her faith.
But did she deserve the title Bloody Mary? Of you compare her to her father, I mean her father
had over 70,000 was it executed in his reign, but it was the way Mary did it. The way she had
those 280 Souls burned alive, but that's down for you to decide. Let's see what you think
in the comments. Well I hope you found that video interesting, if not a little disturbing,
if you did, like share and subscribe and don't forget turn on the all notification buttons
because you just don't know what coming down the line from the History Squad. But before I go,
quick mention to a couple of our PATREON members Pablo Plissken and Andrew Blacet. Now Andrew did
I pronounce your name correctly? Let me know if I did or if I got it wrong and as for everybody
else, hey guys thanks a million. See you soon.
