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.