BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Bloody Mary from Lucy Worsley 05/22/2025 DTSTAMP:20250522T170338Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:278-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Bloody Mary from Lucy Worsley \n\n https://www.pbs.org/v ideo/bloody-mary-eldwhl/\n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n PREVIEW\n\n\n\n ht tps://www.pbs.org/video/bloody-mary-her-earliest-portrait-ngd8gk/\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n ♪ Lucy Worsley\, voice-over: London\, the 1st of Octo ber\, 1553.\n\nThe next monarch of England is preparing to be crowned.\n\n For the first time\, the country will be ruled by a woman-- Mary I... [Thu nder] ♪ but this monarch will be remembered not as a pioneer\, but as a monster.\n\n♪ In her 5-year reign\, hundreds are killed in the name of r eligion\, earning her the label Bloody Mary\, but does England's first que en really deserve her reputation as one of Britain's most evil tyrants?\n\ n♪ In this series\, I'm reinvestigating some of the most dramatic and br utal chapters in British history.\n\nOh\, yes.\n\nHere we go\, Man: And no w you're face to face with William the Conqueror.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: T hey know that sex sells and that violence sells.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: These stories form part of our national mythology.\n\nThey harbor mysterie s that have intrigued us for centuries... Worsley: It turns very dark here .\n\nClearly showing us-- Refugees.\n\nThere's such graphic images of reli gious violence.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: but with the passage of time\, we have new ways to unlock their secrets using scientific advances and a mod ern perspective.\n\nHe was what we would now call a foreign fighter.\n\nWo rsley\, voice-over: I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.\n\nI'm going to reexamine old evidence and follow new clues...\n\nThe human hand.\n\nW orsley\, voice-over: to get closer to the truth.\n\nIt's like fake news.\n \nWorsley: You're questioning whether we can actually take that seriously as a piece of evidence.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Hampton Court Palace- - family home of England's original Tudor queen\, daughter of Henry VIII-- Mary I.\n\nShe walked these cloisters and lived in these rooms.\n\nThere are echoes of Mary's presence here\, but the real Mary seems lost in histo ry.\n\nWorsley: Mary was England's first crowned female monarch\, and this meant she had to create a whole new role-- the role of queen regnant\, or ruling queen-- and Mary created a blueprint that all the queens to come w ould follow\, from Elizabeth I to Victoria to Elizabeth II.\n\nI think of Mary as a female trailblazer\, but she's all too often remembered as a blo ody tyrant.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: During Mary's 5 years in power\, more than 280 people were killed for their faith.\n\nHer reputation seems sealed\, but Mary lived in a divided time\, and\, as a historian\, I know there's always more than one side to a story\, so I want to look at Mary a fresh through different eyes-- her supporters'\, her enemies'\, and Mary's own-- to examine how she navigated ruling as a woman and if Bloody Mary i s really how she deserves to be remembered.\n\n♪ I'm starting my investi gation with a very rare glimpse of Mary as a child.\n\nWorsley: \"Special Collections.\"\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: In the stores at the National Port rait Gallery\, I'm hoping to be able to come face to face with the young p rincess.\n\nHere are some exciting-looking little boxes.\n\nWorsley: voice -over: I'm here to see what's thought to be the earliest portrait miniatur e produced in England.\n\nThe art form's intended to give a sense of intim acy.\n\nIt's an image of Mary dating to 1522.\n\nThere she is.\n\nThere sh e is.\n\nCan I touch?\n\nYeah.\n\nAh.\n\nAh\, thank you.\n\nYou're very we lcome.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's Mary.\n\nYeah.\n\nIncredible level of details.\n\n She's got really red hair\, hasn't she... Yeah.\n\nShe does.\n\nlike you'd expect from Henry VIII's daughter.\n\nIt's such a precious-feeling little thing\, and it's 500 years old.\n\nYes.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: I'm inte rested in what this painting reveals about Mary's status.\n\nThe gallery's state-of-the-art microscope might give me an even closer look.\n\nWorsley : It's just fantastic.\n\nYou can see the individual flakes of the paint.\ n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: When this portrait was made\, Mary was a much -loved 6-year-old.\n\n♪ Worsley: This was painted for a special reason\, and the clue to what that was-- there it is--it's down here.\n\nYou can s ee that on her dress\, she's wearing a brooch\, a golden brooch\, and it s ays on it in tiny letters\, \"The Emperor\,\" so this is one of the Europe an rulers.\n\nIt's the Emperor Charles V\, and the picture's been painted because Mary's just been engaged to him.\n\nThis is the fate of a princess .\n\nShe's like a little chess piece that her father is using to play the game of European politics.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: The Mary I'm seein g here had her whole future mapped out\, but then in her teens\, everythin g changed.\n\n♪ Here we have Henry VIII... and he's married to Catherine of Aragon from Spain\, a very devout Catholic.\n\nPoor Catherine had a wh ole series of miscarriages\, stillbirths\, children who died young.\n\nThe ir daughter Mary was the only one of their children to survive.\n\nWorsley \, voice-over: But Henry was desperate for a male heir.\n\nHe and Catherin e had not had the all-important son\, so he wanted a divorce to marry Anne Boleyn.\n\nIn 1533\, he got his way by splitting from Rome and the Cathol ic Church\, opening the door to the English Protestant Reformation and div iding the country.\n\n♪ Mary was now declared illegitimate.\n\nAt 17\, s he was stripped of her royal title and threatened with death as a traitor for her beliefs.\n\n♪ She would come to define her life by her Catholic faith and her right to the throne.\n\n♪ This sounds like a woman with im mense self-confidence\, and I'm curious about her journey from outcast to queen.\n\nI'm heading to Framlingham in Suffolk\, where Mary would make so me crucial decisions 6 years after her father's death.\n\n♪ Mary had bee n Henry's eldest child.\n\nThen came Elizabeth\, followed by Henry's longe d-for son Edward.\n\nOn Henry's death\, 9-year-old Edward inherited the th rone\, but he would die as a young teenager.\n\nAged 37\, Mary could now c laim her right to the crown.\n\n♪ Now\, there'd never been a ruling quee n in England before.\n\nThere had been queens\, but they'd been the wives of kings.\n\nUnlike some of the countries of Europe\, though\, there was n othing in English law to stop there being a female ruler.\n\nTechnically\, at least\, Mary could go right ahead and take the throne.\n\n♪ Worsley\ , voice-over: But King Edward had been influenced by powerful Protestant n obles.\n\nOn his deathbed\, he bypassed Catholic Mary and declared a dista nt cousin\, the Protestant Lady Jane Gray\, as his successor.\n\nTo win he r crown\, Mary would need to fight\, and on the 12th of July\, 1553\, she came here to her castle at Framlingham to rally support for her cause.\n\n ♪ Worsley: The stakes couldn't have been higher for Mary at this moment. \n\nIf her attempt to seize the throne failed\, she'd either have to go in to exile or if\, they caught her\, she'd be executed as a traitor.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: I'm meeting a specialist in Tudor relationships who believes that applying modern analysis to old evidence might reveal Mary's tactics.\n\nMelita\, we're sitting on the spot of what was once the Great Hall of Framlingham Castle.\n\nThere's bits of Tudor walls up there.\n\nI think we can imagine Mary spending some anxious hours in here thinking\, \"Who's on my side?\"\n\nCan you tell me a bit more about your research in to Mary's network?\n\nYes.\n\nI've been doing what's called social network analysis\, so I've put together--and I'm still working on it-- it's a mas sive database of all of the connections that Mary had to different people. \n\nMy goodness\, it looks like a Spirograph.\n\nYes.\n\nIs that Mary righ t in the middle?\n\nIt is Mary\, right in the center.\n\nSo\, Melita\, are we looking at the Tudor version of LinkedIn?\n\nThat's it\, absolutely.\n \nYes.\n\nNow\, the different colors of connection represent different thi ngs.\n\nOK. Green represents an award\, so it's a grant of office.\n\nWe'v e got also purple lines\, and that's gifts in a more tangible sense\, so j ewelry or quite often clothing or fruit.\n\nWe've got quite a lot of recor ds from her Privy Purse expenses from in the 1530s and '40s.\n\nShe's give n an awful lot of gifts\, hasn't she?\n\nMary was very generous.\n\nAnd is this how you build up a following if you want to be a powerful Tudor pers on?\n\nExactly\, yes\, because the trick is\, you always wanted them to be slightly grateful to you.\n\nOh\, there's a Framlingham filter in the pro gram.\n\nYes\, and we can see who supported Mary immediately.\n\nNow\, two in there you can see with little red spots\, they were actually members o f Edward's Privy Council\, and yet they were immediate supporters of Mary. \n\nAnd if you click on Richard Southwell\, we can see-- That over a perio d of years\, he and Mary have exchanged gifts...\n\nYes.\n\nOh.\n\nand she 's given him more than he's given her.\n\nOh\, yes\, so she has kind of... Cultivated.\n\ncultivated him.\n\nOh\, you've got a filter that's actuall y called Defected to Mary\, brilliant.\n\nLook at it doing its thing.\n\nI t's amazing.\n\nSo one of the people who defected to her was Henry Fitzala n\, Earl of Arundel.\n\nHis first wife had been one of her ladies in waiti ng\, and of the men who support her in 1553\, you can often see that there are relationships through their wives and their sisters.\n\nSo it's inter esting that she's built up friendships with the females of this family and they bring over their male relatives.\n\nYes.\n\nI think we can definitel y see a connection between family pressure through women's networks.\n\nWa s it presumably Catholics who were the fastest in coming forwards?\n\nCath olics were definitely amongst her core supporters\, but she also had Prote stants because she was the legitimate heir.\n\nThe Mary you're talking abo ut sounds like she's friendly.\n\nShe's generous.\n\nShe's well-connected. \n\nShe's somebody who knows how to build loyalty.\n\nI think she had the gift of friendship\, and Mary's a lot more fun than people give her credit for.\n\nReally?\n\nShe loved to dance.\n\nShe loved to hunt.\n\nShe did a rchery.\n\nShe knew in her heart that she was a queen\, and I think that w as another element\, her self-belief and her determination.\n\nShe said\, \"I'm queen\, and I'm gonna be queen\, and I'm gonna absolutely insist on my rights.\"\n\nShe was a politician to the tips of her royal fingers.\n\n Absolutely.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: It strikes me that Mary had no hope o f seizing the throne without her quite considerable emotional intelligence .\n\nShe needed to win hearts and minds to her side.\n\nThere's no sign of the cold-hearted tyrant here.\n\nWorsley: This was a woman who was sociab le.\n\nShe was generous.\n\nThis was a leader who people wanted to follow\ , and follow Mary they did.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: In July 1553\, Ma ry gathered hundreds of her supporters here\, ready and willing to fight f or the throne.\n\n♪ In the end\, no battle was needed.\n\n♪ The tide o f support had turned in Mary's favor\, so the Protestant nobles conceded d efeat.\n\nMary had thrown off years of bitter persecution and rallied a co untry behind her to win the throne\, but she would now have to deal with t he rituals of royalty\, which were\, until this moment\, made for men.\n\n [Bells ringing] ♪ Nearly 500 years ago\, on the 1st of October\, 1553\, Mary walked down this very aisle in Westminster Abbey to be crowned.\n\nMa ry was at the front of this whole long procession of her knights and her c ounselors and her dukes.\n\nShe did have some ladies with her\, but the fo cus was all on Mary herself.\n\nFor the first time at a coronation\, a wom an was leading the men.\n\n[Men singing Gregorian chants] Worsley\, voice- over: But a coronation designed for kings presented some problems for the first queen.\n\nHer coronation regalia included the spurs of a knight\, bu t\, unlike kings before her\, Mary didn't put them on.\n\nShe did receive the sword\, a symbol that she was now defender of the realm.\n\n♪ Worsle y: It seems to me that Mary had a very difficult line to tread here.\n\nSh e almost had to blur the genders.\n\nShe had to portray herself as a king for legitimacy and authority\, but she also had to tear up the rule book a nd make the ritual suitable for a woman\, and what she did would set the p attern for all the female monarchs who followed.\n\n[Choir singing] Worsle y: This area up here is off limits because that mosaic is over 750 years o ld.\n\nIt's much too fragile to be walked on\, but that's the exact spot w here Mary was crowned\, and it's still the exact spot where monarchs are c rowned to this day.\n\nAt the actual moment of crowning\, Mary was on the Coronation Chair-- it was placed on a platform-- and the Crown Imperial wa s put onto her head.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: The coronation service w as a full Catholic Mass.\n\nMary couldn't officially restore the Catholic faith until Parliament reconvened... ♪ so she was crowned Supreme Head o f the Protestant Church of England.\n\n[Cheering and applause] Worsley\, v oice-over: The country celebrated\, and there were parties in the streets of London\, but within just 5 years\, hundreds of ordinary people would be killed in Mary's name.\n\n♪ The new Queen's Catholic beliefs would make her rule hugely polarizing.\n\n♪ Naturally\, as a historian\, I want to interrogate this period from different angles\, so I wonder what I can le arn from the experience of someone living on the other side of the religio us divide.\n\nThis is a copy of a page from \"Foxe's Book of Martyrs.\"\n\ nWorsley\, voice-over: It's an account of Mary's reign by a strongly Prote stant critic.\n\nIt's very one-sided-- I've got to be wary of that-- but i t does give the story of a Protestant woman who found Mary's rule horrifyi ngly harsh.\n\nWorsley: She's referred to here as \"Drivers wyfe\,\" meani ng the wife of a man called Driver.\n\nShe's presented very much as his pr operty.\n\nShe was \"about the age of 30 yeares\,\" and she \"dwelt at Gro sborough...in Suffolke.\"\n\nIt says that\, \"[h]er husband did use husban dry\,\" which means a subsistence farmer.\n\nThen we get quite a lot more detail about what happens to her\, and then here\, her name was Alice.\n\n Alice Dryver.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: This young farmer's wife lived just 10 miles from Framlingham Castle\, the site of Mary's triumph\, but u nder the new regime\, her faith put her at risk of execution.\n\n♪ To ge t a sense of why a woman like Alice might become a threat to the Queen of England\, I've come to Grundisburgh in Suffolk\, where Alice lived.\n\n♪ Here's a piece of 16th-century evidence that I think might give an insigh t into Alice's life here.\n\nThis is Fitzherbert's \"Booke of Husbandry\" from 1523\, and here's a section called \"The Duties of Wyves.\"\n\nPresum ably\, this is the sort of thing that Alice was expected to do.\n\n\"It is a wyves occupacyon to winow all manner of corne...\" ♪ \"in tyme of ned e to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne\,\" the muck wain being th e \"dounge carte\"... [Rooster crows] ♪ and she also has to \"dryve the plough\,\" which sounds quite masculine\, actually-- a bit surprised about that-- and she also has \"to go...to the markette to sell the butter\, \" the chese\, the mylke\, the egges\, the chekens\, the hennes\, the pygges. \"\n\nThat sounds like a pretty hard life with a lot of hard labor in it\, long hours\, I guess.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: At the heart of villag e life when Alice lived here was the church\, and Alice would likely have worshiped in this very building nearly 500 years ago.\n\n♪ Look at these amazing angels on the roof with their big wings.\n\n♪ Now\, Alice\, ext raordinarily\, would have been here in the service with them up above her. \n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: This church building would have been a const ant in Alice's life\, but the religion practiced here varied.\n\nShe was j ust 5 when Henry VIII turns this from a Catholic church to Church of Engla nd.\n\nAlice grew up in the Protestant faith\, but 20 years later\, it wou ld change back again.\n\n♪ Worsley: It was maybe here at the church that Alice learned that Queen Mary had come to the throne and that this church would once again become Catholic.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Mary's res toration of Catholicism meant Alice would no longer be allowed to worship in here as a Protestant.\n\nShe would now need to convert or risk getting into trouble.\n\n♪ Mary herself had experienced pressure to convert.\n\n She had fought hard for her Catholic faith.\n\nNow as Queen\, her drive to make the whole country Catholic set her on a collision course with Protes tants across England... ♪ but those who supported Mary must have had a v ery different view of her reign\, so I've come to Cambridge University Lib rary in search of a source that should offer a much less familiar take on Bloody Mary-- a Spanish one.\n\nMary was half Spanish on her mother's side .\n\nI've enlisted a Spanish historian to help me decipher this perspectiv e.\n\n♪ This is quite exciting\, isn't it?\n\nOh\, look how dinky it is. \n\nIt's like a little toy book.\n\nSo there's his name\, which I fear I'm going to make a terrible job of pronouncing.\n\nWill you say it for me?\n \nHis name is Pedro de Ribadeneira.\n\nAnd he was a Spaniard who came to E ngland?\n\nYes.\n\nHe did.\n\nHe came to England in 1558.\n\nHe was a Cath olic priest\, and he stayed in the kingdom for a few months.\n\nI am readi ng this.\n\nI think it says\, \"The virtues of the Queen.\"\n\nSo \"Delas virtudes de la Reina dona Maria\" is\, as you very well said\, \"On the vi rtues of Queen Mary.\"\n\nWhat are they?\n\nWhat are the virtues?\n\nTake me through it.\n\nWell\, Ribadeneira thinks that Mary is a good Catholic w ho's leading her kingdom towards salvation.\n\nShe respects the primacy of the Pope.\n\nShe cares for her people.\n\nMay I just say\, he would say t hat\, though\, wouldn't he\, with his Catholic perspective.\n\nOf course h e is going to be seeing her in such a good light\, which contrasts a lot w ith what other Protestant historians were writing about Mary in the 16th c entury.\n\nDoes he give any comment about her performance once she's in th e role as queen?\n\nYes.\n\nHe does indeed.\n\nThe economic situation that Mary inherits is not an easy one\, but from the very beginning of her rei gn\, she decides that she's going to make changes and reforms.\n\nAccordin g to Ribadeneira\, she reforms the Court of the Exchequer\, and she create s a new book of rates that increases the Crown's income.\n\nSo she cuts ta xes\, she reforms bureaucracy\, and she increases crown revenues.\n\nShe's doing a great job.\n\nShe is indeed.\n\nWe usually tend to see the beginn ing of Elizabeth's reign and the prosperity as something that is achieved by Elizabeth...\n\nIt was achieved by Mary.\n\nbut she is the one achievin g it.\n\nShe's the one that is setting base for that future prosperity.\n\ nAnd how does she go about restoring Catholicism?\n\nHow does she actually do that in practice?\n\nNow\, she's cautious at the beginning in the sens e that she doesn't want to force people.\n\nShe understands that there has been a lot of upheaval\, and she is very pragmatic.\n\nOn this page\, she is talking about how those who had acquired church land during the dissol ution of the monasteries of her father's reign are being allowed to keep t hat land\, and over\, here we see that she allowed all marriages that had taken place through the Protestant rite to remain valid.\n\nYou're talking as if Bloody Mary the tyrant was actually quite reasonable and sensible a nd pragmatic.\n\nCompared to other rulers of her time\, I would say absolu tely.\n\n♪ Wasn't that fascinating to get a Spanish perspective on Mary\ , one that sees her as a pretty effective ruler?\n\nNow\, I do concede tha t Ribadeneira is a partial witness.\n\nHe's very pro-Catholic\, pro-Mary\, but he does admit that she has some flaws.\n\nThere's a bit of balance th ere\, almost as if Mary wasn't entirely good or entirely bad\, almost as i f she was a human being.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: According to this si de of the story\, at the start of her reign\, Mary wanted to restore Catho licism but didn't want to use force.\n\nProtestants like Alice Dryver were left in peace for now.\n\n♪ So if this is true\, why did Mary change di rection?\n\n♪ In the summer of 1554\, about 9 months into her reign\, Ma ry got married.\n\nShe needed a husband because she needed an heir... Hi t here.\n\nHey\, madam.\n\nCould we go to the Spanish Embassy\, please?\n\nC ertainly.\n\nBelgrave Square.\n\nThanks.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: but a ma n at her side could potentially undermine Mary's position as queen.\n\n♪ Her new husband was a devout Catholic and a cousin on her mother's side-- Philip of Spain.\n\n♪ Mary and Philip married in July 1554.\n\nPhilip w as the son of the emperor Charles V\, ironically the very man Mary had bee n betrothed to as a child.\n\n♪ Philip was heir to the Spanish throne an d an enormous European empire.\n\n♪ Even before the wedding took place\, a group of Protestants mounted a rebellion to try to stop the marriage an d overthrow the queen... ♪ so how does a married woman rule with authori ty in a traditional society where men dominate?\n\n♪ To find out\, I'm m eeting an expert in 16th-century marriage treaties.\n\n♪ Worsley: Alexan der\, we've got a completely unprecedented situation here.\n\nWe've got Ma ry\, a female ruler\, with a male consort\, and he's a foreigner\, as well .\n\nYes.\n\nHow are they going to rule in practice?\n\nHow's she going to make sure that he doesn't boss her about?\n\nWell\, one of the key\, key ways of doing that is through the stipulations that they have in their mar riage contract\, and here we have the copy from the National Archives of t he English draft that formed the basis of the document that they both even tually went on to sign.\n\nSo this is like a prenup.\n\nExactly\, yes\, se tting out all of the kind of legal limitations on his power and also settl ing her position constitutionally.\n\nThis is one of my favorite clauses d own the bottom-- \"That the said noble prince shall nothyng do\, \"whereby anything be innovate in the state and right publique.\"\n\nSo he's not al lowed to make new laws or anything like that.\n\nHe's not allowed to make new laws or to change anything\, effectively\, constitutionally particular ly... Stay in your lane\, Philip.\n\nso I think we can see that in this fi rst clause here that he \"shall not promote\, admit\, or receive \"to any office\, administration\, \"or benefice in the said realm of England \"any one who is not a natural born subject of the Queen of England.\"\n\nSo he' s not going to be allowed to put any of his own people into English jobs a nd positions and offices.\n\nExactly that.\n\nHe is excluding specifically powers of patronage\, taking them away from Philip\, ensuring that Mary r etains complete control of who is in the key offices of state.\n\nThere we re people who saw the Spanish marriage as very dangerous.\n\nPeople in Eng land did not want England to become a satellite state of this broader Hisp anic monarchy\, this broader European empire.\n\nFor Mary\, it's obviously really important that her subjects and parliament know that power will be not given away to Philip too much.\n\nYeah.\n\nYeah.\n\nHow does she circ ulate that news?\n\nShe has the terms declared and proclaimed to all the p eople of England\, and in addition to this\, the English Parliament passes in 1554 the Act for the Queen's Regal Power\, which essentially settles c onstitutionally her right to rule in her own right\, and so the name of ki ng and queen are kind of made equivalent so that all legislation which ref ers to kings now applies to queens\, and\, in fact\, it's the constitution al basis for Elizabeth's authority in the Elizabethan period which follows on straight from this one.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: On paper\, Mary h ad successfully managed the power dynamic with Philip\, but I've got proof that she still had something of a PR problem.\n\n♪ For the first time i n the English coinage\, we've got two people on the money.\n\nThere's Phil ip\, there's Mary\, and a little floating crown to show that they rule tog ether\, but you can also see the scale of the problem that she had because the person on the left in a double portrait is the person who's more domi nant\, and in this case\, that person is Philip.\n\nA craftsman who would earn a shilling as his day's wages would get this in his hand\, and he'd t hink\, \"Oh\, yes\, Philip and Mary.\n\nThey are our rulers now.\"\n\nOur queen has given away her power.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Mary's marria ge had reignited anti-Catholic feeling\, and\, for me\, Mary's marriage ra ises questions about her persecution of Protestants.\n\nDid her husband in fluence her to take a harder line\, or did she feel she had to assert her authority in the face of religious division?\n\nEither way\, she tightened her grip.\n\n♪ [Bell tolls] ♪ In December 1554\, Mary reintroduced he resy laws.\n\nProtestant beliefs were now punishable by death.\n\nIt was a n act that would come to define her reign\, in large part because of a boo k which claims to tell us what happened next-- \"Foxe's Book of Martyrs\,\ " the book where I found the story of the farmer's wife Alice Dryver.\n\nT hank you.\n\nOoh\, it's heavy.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: I wonder if seeing an original copy at Trinity College\, Cambridge\, can help me understand this book's power.\n\nWorsley: This is \"Foxe's Book of Martyrs\,\" and it 's a history of the church going from the first century right up until the reign of Mary I. Worsley\, voice-over: But this is a history book with a clear bias because John Foxe was a prominent Protestant.\n\nWorsley: What John Foxe doesn't like about Mary is her Catholicism\, and at the start of her reign\, he and his family went to live in exile.\n\nHe was out of Eng land when he was writing this.\n\nLet's go to the part of the book where M ary appears.\n\nHere it is\, \"The comming in of Queene Mary\,\" and the w hole of the rest of it\, 700 pages here\, are basically about the terrible things done to Protestants in her name.\n\n♪ What makes the book so pow erful\, I think\, are the images\, the woodcuts.\n\nThey're such graphic i mages of religious violence.\n\nThis one shows a man being burnt alive at the stake\, the most horrible\, long-drawn-out\, painful death imaginable\ , and you can tell he's alive\, although the flames are all around him\, b ecause he's saying\, \"Lorde\, receive my spirite\,\" and there's a crowd\ , and the crowd are visibly distressed.\n\n[People screaming] ♪ Worsley\ , voice-over: Looking at Foxe's account\, it's easy to believe that Mary w as a queen on the rampage... ♪ but I think it's time for more of Mary's side of the story.\n\n♪ There's an intriguing source from 1555 that give s some insight into her thinking at the time.\n\n♪ This is a report to t he church authorities recording the opinion of the Queen of England\, \"wh ich she has written out with her own hand\,\" so it's a record of Mary's a ctual words\, and she says that\, \"Touching the punishment of heretics\"- - by \"punishment\,\" she does mean burnings and executions-- she says\, \ "[I]t would be well to inflict punishment... without much cruelty or passi on\,\" so she's emphasizing moderation.\n\nShe says that she wants to targ et the people who deceive the simple\, by which I think she means clever p reachers who are out there actively spreading the Protestant message\, and the punishments are to be an \"example to the whole of this kingdom\,\" s o they're supposed to be a deterrent\, so that's quite surprising when it comes to the burning of Protestants.\n\nMary seems to want quite a targete d approach.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: If this is to be believed\, Mary was aiming to make an example of the leaders of the faith in the hope the rest would submit\, but Alice Dryver wasn't a powerful leader\, just a Suf folk farmer's wife.\n\n♪ We don't know who betrayed Alice... ♪ but \"F oxe's Book of Martyrs\,\" our main source on Alice\, tells us that she and another Protestant were hiding from the authorities when they got caught. \n\n♪ Alice was taken to the local town and imprisoned to await trial an d her fate.\n\n♪ [Gate opens] From the summer of 1555\, the number of bu rnings across the country were ramping up.\n\nRecords show they more than doubled between the first half of the year and the second.\n\n♪ I want t o understand how Mary was feeling at this point.\n\nI suspect it's not a c oincidence that this was happening during a moment of personal upheaval.\n \n♪ In the spring of 1555\, Mary withdrew to her private chambers at Ham pton Court.\n\nShe believed she was pregnant.\n\nThis child would secure M ary's line of succession and the future of Catholicism in England.\n\n♪ These are copies of ambassadors' letters from court-- this lot are in Fren ch-- and the hot topic is the Queen's pregnancy.\n\nHe's talking about \"t he size of her stomach and the hardening of her mamelles\"-- he must mean her breasts-- \"and they are distilling a liquid.\"\n\nI guess that might mean lactating.\n\nPoor Mary.\n\nThese are really intimate details being s hared\, seems completely inappropriate\, but I guess it's her job.\n\nShe' s supposed to produce the heir to the throne\, so her body is public prope rty.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Documents from this time that Mary herse lf had a hand in add to the sense of joyful anticipation.\n\n♪ Worsley: These cards-- pre-prepared\, ready to be sent out to dignitaries across Eu rope announcing the birth when it happens-- they've been signed by \"Mary the Queen\"... ♪ and they announced the birth of a prince at Hampton Cou rt... ♪ and then a gap's been left blank here just for the date to be po pped in when it actually happens.\n\nThe reason they're still blank is tha t 9 months went past and no baby came.\n\nMary was actually experiencing a phantom pregnancy.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: To delve into this myster ious condition and the impact it would have had on Mary\, I'm hoping a psy chiatrist can give me a modern medical perspective.\n\nMary I has had a ph antom pregnancy.\n\nCan you tell me what that actually is in medical terms ?\n\nPhantom pregnancy means false pregnancy\, pseudocyesis\, so it means you think you're pregnant because you see the signs and symptoms\, but act ually\, you're not.\n\nDo you ever see this today in your practice?\n\nIt doesn't seem like it's a very common condition.\n\nIn Western medicine\, y ou wouldn't typically get a case of phantom pregnancy because if you think you're pregnant\, you will have a urine test to check your pregnancy.\n\n You will have a Doppler scan\, ultrasound scan\, a blood test\, so automat ically right at the start\, you would know you're not pregnant.\n\nI've go t something to show you.\n\nThis is a medical paper from America\, 1951\, of a variety of cases of pseudocyesis.\n\nOh\, \"A Psychosomatic Study in Gynecology\,\" and there are \"[b]reast changes...enlargement\, tenderness \; secretion of milky or cloudy fluid.\"\n\nThey've mentioned here a case study where there were 27 patients who presented as pregnant\, and this wa s confirmed in 9 of the cases by doctors.\n\nThe doctors were taken in\, s o in relatively recent times\, people were still having phantom pregnancie s\, 1951... Mm.\n\nand what causes it?\n\nIf we like to categorize\, we mi ght think psychological or hormonal\, so the psychological side\, there's a variety of risk factors-- so if someone has had emotional abuse\, if som eone's longing to be pregnant\, if someone's had difficulty getting pregna nt.\n\nThere's a variety of reasons.\n\nThere's quite a few things that yo u just listed that do apply to Mary.\n\nShe did have a difficult childhood .\n\nShe wasn't taken care of.\n\nPeople threatened her with death and a h uge\, huge\, huge amount of pressure to bear a child.\n\nIs it possible fo r you to speculate as to what might have happened to her after the phantom pregnancy was over\, then?\n\nI imagine a great deal of distress.\n\nIt m ust be quite frightening\, actually\, because she would have had a distend ed abdomen and she would have had these bodily changes but no understandin g why that's happening.\n\nAnd I suppose she's lost a whole imagined futur e.\n\nI mean\, if we think\, you know\, you're longing for a child\, you'v e created a bond\, and that's suddenly taken away\, so I can imagine she m ust have felt very anxious\, very low in mood\, and emotionally\, psycholo gically\, it must have been absolutely dreadful to go through it.\n\n♪ [ Crying] ♪ Mary must have felt like her body had failed her\, and she was 39 years old\, which\, in 16th-century terms\, meant that her chances of getting pregnant again were diminishing very fast.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice- over: As a woman\, this would have been a huge personal trauma\, but as a queen\, it was a crisis.\n\nWith no heir\, the future of Catholic England hung in the balance.\n\n♪ Tensions were rising.\n\n♪ Troops were broug ht into London to maintain order.\n\nBy 1556\, a major plot against the qu een was uncovered\, an attempt to replace her with her Protestant sister E lizabeth.\n\nMary was now living in fear.\n\nShe was sleeping only 3 hours a night.\n\nWorsley: Mary was clearly struggling on a personal level with her mental health\, her physical health\, and I'm left wondering what tha t might have meant for her as a ruler.\n\nWas her authority still intact?\ n\nWas she really able still to govern the country in the same way?\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: In places like rural Suffolk\, it was local authori ties who wielded the power.\n\nThey could decide how to enforce religious policies.\n\n♪ The Protestant source\, \"Foxe's Book of Martyrs\,\" cont ains a detailed account of how Alice Dryver's trial unfolded.\n\nAlice is brought to her trial at Ipswich.\n\nShe would have been quite likely the o nly woman present.\n\n♪ Then a lengthy theological debate begins\, and d uring it\, Alice shows that she's more than capable of standing up for her self intellectually.\n\nAs she says here to the courtroom-- it's amazing\, this\; she just goes off onto this speech of her own-- she says\, \"I was an honest poore man's daughter\, \"never brought up in the universitie as you have bene...\" ♪ ...but I have driven the plough before my father m any a tyme\, and I thank God.\n\nIn defense of God's truth and in the caus e of my master Christ\, by his grace I will set my foote against the foote of any of you.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: She's standing up for herself\, a nswering back.\n\nShe will set her foot against the foot of any of these m en sitting in trial upon her.\n\nIt's an extraordinary moment of courage.\ n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: Alice staunchly defended herself and her fait h.\n\n♪ She was found guilty of heresy.\n\nWhat strikes me reading this is that Alice and Mary weren't so very different.\n\nThey were both of the m women who broke the rules.\n\nThey were women who did things that women weren't supposed to do\, and they also had such a deep religious faith tha t they defended it at enormous personal cost... which is why it's so very painful that it's now in Mary's name that Alice is condemned to die.\n\n ♪ Worsley\, voice-over: There's no paper trail linking Mary to Alice's f ate.\n\nIt was the church authorities who chose how extreme the punishment should be.\n\n♪ On the 4th of November\, 1558\, Alice Dryver was burnt alive at the stake.\n\n[Alice screaming] She was one of the last people to be killed under Mary's regime because only two weeks later\, on the 17th of November\, Queen Mary herself died.\n\n♪ She'd been struggling with i ll health ever since her phantom pregnancy.\n\n♪ The likely cause of dea th was cancer.\n\nShe was 42 years old.\n\nNow her Protestant sister Eliza beth I would succeed to the throne\, and I believe Mary would become the v ictim of a smear campaign.\n\n♪ There's no denying the brutal religious persecutions of Mary's reign.\n\nThose Protestant accounts are based on re al deaths\, but at this time\, Europe was bitterly divided between Catholi c and Protestant\, with mass killings on both sides.\n\nHenry VIII had tho usands put to death in the name of religion.\n\nIn Edward's reign\, around 900 were killed and an estimated 600 under Elizabeth.\n\nApproximately 28 4 deaths are attributed to Mary.\n\nObviously\, her reign was shorter\, bu t the numbers are pretty comparable\, but it's Mary who has been vilified and dubbed a bloody tyrant\, and I believe that's thanks to her enemies.\n \nThis pamphlet was published in 1558.\n\nThis little book by John Knox is called \"The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.\"\n\nJohn Knox really makes me see a kind of red mist because he's so massively misogynistic.\n\nHe says that women\, queens like Mary\, are unfit to rule\, \"made to serve and obey man\, not to rule and command hi m\,\" and he thinks that women are \"weake\, fraile\, impaciet\, feble\, f oolishe\, and cruell.\"\n\nNow\, this isn't just about Mary's gender.\n\nJ ohn Knox was a very fiery Protestant.\n\nHe was against Mary as a Catholic queen\, and the way Knox sees the burning of Protestants is as a punishme nt to everybody for having put Mary\, a woman\, on the throne in the first place.\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: This Protestant pamphlet was a cataly st for more vicious attacks on the reputation of the Catholic queen.\n\nIt was soon after that \"Foxe's Book of Martyrs\" was published.\n\nIn 1571\ , it was ordered that copies be put in every cathedral and church in the c ountry alongside the bible.\n\nFoxe's graphic imagery and unflinching\, on e-sided stories of what he called the bloody time of Queen Mary now came t o be seen as the gospel truth\, the definitive history of the period.\n\nI wouldn't describe him as a historian.\n\nI would describe him as a propag andist and an incredibly good one.\n\nIt's this book that has given Mary h er reputation as a bloody tyrant.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: The long reign of Elizabeth I firmly established England as a Protestant country\, and it surely suited Elizabeth that her sister be remembered as a Catholic monst er.\n\nI think the smear campaign against Mary has clouded out all that wa s achieved by our first queen.\n\n♪ As well as having to navigate all th e problems of being a female leader in a world made for men\, she was also ruling at a time of brutal religious division\, and she had physical heal th problems and such traumatic experiences of her own to overcome\, I'm ju st left astounded by Mary's courage and her completely underestimated poli tical skills.\n\nShe really redefined what it means to be a monarch.\n\n ♪ Worsley\, voice-over: There's one final telling footnote to Mary's sto ry here at Westminster Abbey.\n\nThis is Mary's tomb\, but it's shared wit h her sister Elizabeth\, and it's Elizabeth whose effigy is on top and who se initials adorn the monument.\n\nThere's an inscription right down here like a footnote\, and it says that there are two queens here-- Elizabeth a nd Mary\, \"et Maria.\"\n\n♪ Worsley\, voice-over: But this tiny referen ce is the only mention of Mary on the whole tomb.\n\nWorsley: I think the tomb says a lot about how we remember Mary today.\n\nHere\, she's literall y overshadowed by her sister\, the mighty Elizabeth I\, but I think that E lizabeth was mighty not least because of what she learned from her big sis ter Mary.\n\nWorsley\, voice-over: For too long\, Mary has been misunderst ood\, overlooked\, vilified.\n\n♪ I think it's time we restored England' s first ruling queen to her rightful place in history as a female trailbla zer.\n\n♪ ♪\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250522 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR