Mary I and the Failed Return to Catholicism
How She was Unable to Destroy Protestantism in England
Nov 18, 2008
Mary was a fanatical Catholic, who wished to return her Kingdom to the Roman fold, and reverse the heretical policies of her father and half brother. Gardiner was released from the Tower and made Lord Chancellor. The exiled Cardinal Pole was recalled from Rome, and as Papal Legate was in charge of bringing the English Church back under Roman authority. Mary was prepared to use executions to help restore the Catholic faith, and destroy Protestantism in England. Maybe she would have succeeded if she had lived longer or produced an heir. The failure of the plot to place Lady Jane Gray on the throne meaning that the plotters were executed (Cowie, 1970 p.l08).
Persecution of the Protestants
Parliament also restored the heresy and treason laws, and re-established Papal Supremacy. With the heresy laws restored, the Marian regime commenced upon its persecutions of mainly common people from the Southern counties or London. It was the burning of the former Bishops, Rodgers, Hooper, Latimer and Ridley, who were used as examples by the regime. The burning of Cranmer provided much unexpected propaganda for the Protestants; he denied his recantation and died bravely (Vale, 2006 p. 29).
The burnings became very unpopular, due to Protestant propaganda. Effective Protestant propaganda that would tarnish Mary’s reputation for decades included Foxe’s 'Book of Martyrs'. The persecution also shocked due to its scale, and the normality of many of the victims (Plowden 2002 p.l51).
Mary's religious persecution contrasted with her more lenient treatment of political rebels. She had, for example allowed Lady Jane Grey to live, only having her executed after Wyatt's rebellion, she was less punitive than her father was in the wake of the Pilgrimage of Grace and Elizabeth was after the Northern rising. In the early part of the reign as many as 800 Protestants had gone into exile without much obstruction from Mary’s government. In fact, Gardiner had deliberately frightened as many Protestants as possible into fleeing abroad. He even informed the Imperial ambassador Renard that this was his policy. Gardiner apparently only wanted to punish hard line Protestants. Allowing so many of them to escape was to backfire badly for the government (Loades, 1979 p. 155).
Death Without A Catholic Heir
Mary's attempt to restore the Roman Catholic Faith ended in failure. Her marriage had remained childless, which left the succession open to the Protestant Elizabeth. The formal return to Rome was just that, people conformed but did believe in Catholicism enough to resist the re-establishing of the Church of England (Vale, 2006 p. 30).
The burning also made the Protestants more respectable and equated the Catholic faith with terror and foreign influence. Capital punishment was widely carried out in Tudor England and Wales, with many methods of execution and torture. It was an age when hundreds of crimes could lead to the death penalty. Even so the Marian religious persecutions were on a scale that was virtually unrivalled even then (Coffey, 2000 pp. 80-81).
Bibliography
Coffey, J. Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689 - Studies in Modern History (2000), Pearson
Education
Loades, D. The Reign of Mary Tudor 1553- 1558(1979)
Vale B, A History of the Church of England, 1529 - 1662, (2006) authorsonline.co.uk
