Mary I Notes

Mary I: Revision Notes

Historiography

• Traditional (A. F. Pollard + G. R. Elton): Mary’s policies were unimaginative and counter-productive, they failed in three key areas: marriage (offended English nationalism and led to foreign war), foreign policy (led to loss of Calais), religion (offended nationalism, gave her the title ‘Bloody Mary’). A. F. Pollard pronounced Mary’s reign as a ‘sterile interlude in Tudor history’.G. R. Elton: Mary was ‘arrogant, assertive, bigoted, stubborn, suspicious and rather stupid; devoid of political skill, unable to compromise’.

• Revisionist (Professor Russell, Jennifer Loach, Christopher Haigh, Eamon Duffy, A. G. Dickens): Mary’s policies are unfairly presented as unrealistic and doomed to fail. Her performance was hampered by bad luck, especially in foreign policy and economic conditions, she also lacked time given she only had five and a half years.Professor Russell: Mary was ‘good, easily influenced, inexpert in worldly matters, and a novice all round’. A. G. Dickens: Mary ‘failed to discover Counter Reformation’, and the ‘the reign must still be judged not merely a huge failure, but one likely to have become more monumental with every succeeding year’, ‘policies were clumsily counter-productive and enshrined the virtual inevitability of Protestant victory’.

• Renard: Mary could be both impressible and strong when she wanted to be, she was also adept at using her perceived principal weakness as her prime strength in negotiation.

• Robert Wingfield in Vita Mariae Reginae shows a woman capable of determined and positive action in extremely dangerous circumstances.

Accession

• When Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, Jane’s proclamation as Queen was supported by council and the political establishment.

• Death of the young king in July 1553 plunged England into a political crisis. The Duke of Northumberland, the leading member of the privy council, joined with the dying Edward to draw up a "devise" altering the succession to the throne. Princess Mary was legally the next heir since Edward was too young to have produced children of his own. However, the "devise" gave the Crown to Lady Jane Grey.

• Jane was a highly educated classical scholar who excelled at Greek. She was married to Northumberland's son Lord Guilford Dudley and she was a committed Protestant.

• He hoped that by naming Jane instead of Mary he would preserve the Protestant reformation that had surged ahead during his reign.

• Several members of the privy council were uncomfortable about the coup and signed the "devise" with great reluctance.

• It was widely understood that her accession flouted the express wishes of both Henry VIII and of parliament. Mary was in East Anglia when she heard the news of Edward's illness and death, and she fled at once to avoid being captured by Northumberland's forces. On her way to the great royal castle at Framlingham where she planned to hold out, she gathered a trickle of support that steadily broadened to an unstoppable flood.

• Vita Mariae describes how men started to flock to her side. Mary was crucially dependent on a small, tightly-knit group of Catholic gentry, but she made it clear to all that she was prepared to fight for her right to succeed. She spoke inspiringly to her own household, then to those who joined her, and finally to the army that gathered at Framlingham to battle for her.

• 10 July 1553 "Queen Jane" was proclaimed in the capital and elsewhere across England, but on hearing of Mary's challenge Northumberland left London on 14 July intending to put down the rising in East Anglia. Three days later privy councillors overturned the "devise". They withdrew their support for Jane and turned to Mary. At Cambridge, Northumberland was forced to accept that his attempted coup d'état had failed, and Mary at Framlingham was told the joyous news that she would not need to start a civil war before ascending the throne.

• Mary proclaimed herself as Queen at her house at Kenninghall, and watched support rise in her favour among the commons and the provincial gentry of East Anglia and the Thames Valley. Northumberland moved against her and his forces deserted him, and the council in London lost its nerve and declared Mary as Queen.

• It was a vote in favour of dynastic legitimacy and against political chicanery.

• In a critical misinterpretation, Mary became convinced that there was general and enthusiastic support for the religious counter-revolution she intended to launch, ‘from this initial misreading of the facts, sprang a whole chain of errors’.

• T.M Parker: ‘it was not so much Mary’s religion, as her ancestry…which commended her to the nation as a whole’.

• There is evidence of genuine and spontaneous popular enthusiasm for the expected return to Catholicism. At the proclamation of Mary, ‘the whole commonalty in all places in the north parts greatly rejoiced, making fires, drinking wine and ale and praising God’.

• Many parishes, like Chester-Le-Street, greeted the news of Mary's accession by the spontaneous restoration of the Latin mass; in Grantham, Mary's proclamation was accompanied by the singing of the drunk in Melton Mowbray the altar stones were back in place before mass was said for the dead king.

• Even in London, there was much spontaneous rejoicing and the re-appearance of hidden images of the Virgin and Saints.

• At the beginning of her reign, Mary was a strong and decisive monarch.

• Taking power from Lady Jane Grey was a spectacular displace of power and authority.

• Jennifer Loach: Mary’s accession is ‘one of the most surprising events of the sixteenth century’.

• Mary constructed a new privy council composed of experienced men who had served her father and brother but who were prepared to accept a return to Catholicism.

• Seventeen of the new privy councillors had signed the "devise" for Jane, but in her need for competent men Mary forgave them. In addition she promoted to the privy council several Catholics who had supported her in the crisis of her accession but who...

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