Lest we Forget

It was 460 years ago today (19th July, 1553) that Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen of England.

Now, over the past generation, the scholarship had made it quite clear that any one-sided, purely Protestant view of English history is inadequate. We can no longer buy the line that everything Edward did was great, everything Mary did was pure evil, and everything Elizabeth did was kinda mixed but ok overall. Nonetheless, it remains true that the burnings which took place during 'Bloody Mary's' reign were a real low point in the history of England and its Church. However much they may have secured some re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, they certainly served to put a lot of people off too. And, when coupled with the fact that Mary had no children, they probably ensured that England would never again be Catholic.

The first martyr under Mary was John Rogers who had produced the first authorised English Bible, Matthew's Bible. Among the others were, of course, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer. She also exhumed Bucer and Fagius and had their corpses burned for their heresies right here in Cambridge. It was all pretty awful.

Mary died after having only ruled for five and a half years and, almost unbelievably, Cardinal Pole, who replaced Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, died on the same day too. This cleared the way for Elizabeth and Matthew Parker to begin the work of settlement and restoration of much of the Protestantism of Edward and Cranmer. Mary and Elizabeth are now both buried in the same tomb, built by James I, in Westminster Abbey.