The Later Life of Bloody Mary

behind you so that you're alone in the dark. It's at this point that the only sounds you can hear are your friend's 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 ten 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 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 ten 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 ten 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 find 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 First of England. Mary Tudor, the oldest daughter of King Henry the eighth, 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. It 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, heroin 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 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 reportation of her enemies, and everyone from children at slumber parties to historians loves a bloody villain. I'm Danish sports and this is noble blood. Over the course of six wives, Henry the eighth had three children, but even so the Tutor

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 the Eighth 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 Aragon and Anne Boleyn, respectively, and they were both retroactively delegitimized. Mary was delegitimized when Henry annulled his own marriage with Catherine to marry Anne, and then Elizabeth when Henry declared that Anne was a trader and had her be headed.

But Henry's options for heirs were running short, and so in fifteen forty three, a few years before his death, Henry the Eighth had Parliament passed 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 a legitimate but still getting back in the succession order at all for Mary was

a massive coup. Her relationship with her father, Henry the Eighth, had been a nightmare of chaos and betrayal since she was about twelve 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 the Eighth 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 five, 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 Aragon 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 marry, 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 ed Word 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 sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, was so patient and loving that she almost made them all look like a happy family. At certain points, 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 Eighth died at age fifty five in fourteen fifty seven, and Edward, just nine years old, became King Edward the sixth 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 at World 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 Cats Rebellion. The regency council, operating on behalf of Edward the sixth, 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 Eighth 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 six, 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 larger Catholic country, and Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry

the eighth, was still a 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 thirties, 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 sixth diplomatically saying how much she loved and honored him and that she needed to remain true to her faith, and continued to attend Mass in the language that was good enough to be used at their father's funeral. When Mary came to court in fifteen fifty for Christmas, thirteen 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 king dressing down his adult sister. The scene ended with both of them in tears. By fifteen fifty three, 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 the eighth had outlined it and

his succession plans. Edward, or rather his advisers, 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. Edward's advisers positive that if Henry the eighth 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 Gray, would be the one to

take the throne own after him. Lady Jane Gray was the granddaughter of Henry the Eighth'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 six 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 in Army. Norwich was a particularly smart strategic move. They absolutely hated Dudley there because that had been where he had viciously put down the catch rebellion.

Edward the sixth died on July sixty three 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 ten that the 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 lewed 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 deadly marched with three thousand men, Mary at Framlingham Castle in Suffolk,

had twenty thousand. 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 Rain of Lady Jane Gray. 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 and 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 Gray's father in law was killed. At this point, Mary was in

her late thirties. The most important thing to her was restoring England to Catholicism, but she was well aware that if she failed to produce an air, 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 advisers 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 five, 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 into Henry's demands, and when Edward the sixth 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 his son Philip,

Mary and grade her counselors were outraged. Philip, a slightly younger man, was a Spaniard. That was bad enough, but his father, being the Holy Roman 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 gas, 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, Gilford 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 and 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 aided 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 fifteen fifty five, almost as soon as Mary had become queen. Around eight hundred prominent Protestant leaders fled to the continent, but for those who were left and

refused to recant their faith, a grim fate awaited. Approximately three hundred men and women were burned at the stake, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, whom Mary replaced at his post with Reginald Pole, the son of her former governess Margaret Pole. 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 r I P. Was even planning to burn Catholics before Edward the sixth premature death. And again, awful as it sounds, three hundred executions is almost nothing compared to the number of executions Married's father, King Henry the Eighth ordered over the course of his reign,

sometimes rumored to be as high as fifty thousand. Another source I read has that as high as fifty seven thousand, factoring in the citizens and nobles who he had brutally killed if they acted uprising against him, although that number might be exaggerated. Edward the six suppressed the Prayer Book rebellion, which led to the death of over five thousand Catholics.

Elizabeth the First would go on to order executions of around eight hundred Catholic rebels, and she had a hundred and eighty three Catholics, mostly Jesuit missionaries, hanged, drawn and quartered. So why is Harry 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 the First 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 traders, which

gave the people less to argue with. Even if people disagreed about religion, everyone hated traders, 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 fifteen fifty seven, 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 do date came and went. The belly sank, but the weakness stayed, and Mary, it 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 ovari insists, Mary the First died on November fifty eight at the age of forty two, 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 the First would usher in what's considered to be a golden era in England's history, an era of culture and of European 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 sponsor break 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 where recap episodes of the showtime series The Tutors, 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 maccab Victorian version of a love story, but set in the underbelly of Edinburgh in the eighteen hundreds, mostly about body snatchers and how gruesome surgery was back there. So if you think it's sort of your kind of thing, that there's a link in the episode description. In her will, Mary stated that she wanted to be buried next to her mother,

Catherine of Aragon. The other proudan 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 I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Minkey, 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 dot com.

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