Bloody Mary Quotes

“Three days after her birth they had Mary baptized as a Catholic at the Church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich. Still a tiny, squirming child, her life had already been touched by the two great factors which would come to define it: her father’s search for an heir, and the Catholic faith.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“A failed harvest in 1555 led to rising grain prices and the widespread trouble food shortages always triggered. A Parliament called by Mary in 1555 solved some of the problems but also created others. For example, Parliament granted the government a large sum of money through taxation to alleviate the financial difficulties, but it refused to approve another measure put forward by Mary: the confiscation of property belonging to nobles who had gone into exile.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“With laws against heresy once more in place, trials of leading Protestants began. On 4 February 1555, John Rogers became the first priest to be burned to death under the revived laws, but he was followed by hundreds of others, including several bishops. The most notable was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and a noted theologian.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Mary viewed the world through the lens of religion. To her, the loss of her child was a sign from God. She interpreted it as a punishment for the toleration of Protestant heretics she had shown in her country.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Some, perhaps including Mary, called for the execution of her half-sister Elizabeth. There was suspicion that she must have been involved in the plot, and her very existence provided a figurehead for Protestant opposition to the Queen. But Elizabeth claimed to have had nothing to do with the rebellion, and despite extended questioning of Wyatt, no evidence could be found connecting her. She was held for a while in the Tower of London and then sent into house arrest.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Mary summoned a meeting of Parliament to undertake the work or reform, and they went about the task between October 5 and December 6, 1553. Legally at least, England was once again Catholic. Protestant services were banned, and married priests were removed from their positions as the old order was restored. Of course, this had an important effect on the Protestant leadership; many of them were arrested for treason or sedition as the reformed laws turned their religious practices into crimes against the crown.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“While Henry VIII is widely credited with founding the Church of England, and thus establishing the Protestant faith in England, Henry was not a Protestant. His break with Rome was political in both motivation and intention, meant to free him from the authority of the Pope and give him control of the church hierarchy in England, but from a doctrinal standpoint, Henry remained quite Catholic.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“many of those still loyal to the Roman Catholic Church regarded her as Henry VIII’s only legitimate child since they considered his first divorce invalid and his subsequent children illegitimate as a result. The same view was held by many Catholic rulers on the continent; with Protestantism on the rise, they would have liked to see a staunch Catholic ruling England.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“As a precursor to this, he oversaw the 1536 Act of Succession, which excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the royal succession in favor of any children he and Jane had, and by spring of 1537 Jane was pregnant. To Henry’s delight, she gave birth to a son named Edward on October 12, but joy at the royal birth was followed by sorrow as Jane caught a postnatal infection and died on the night of October 24.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Eventually, Anne was accused of incest and adultery and executed in May 1536. She had been queen for only a thousand days.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Four months later, in May 1533, a court led by Thomas Cranmer declared the Henry-Catherine marriage null and void just five days before declaring the Henry-Anne marriage valid. Anne was now queen-consort of England. In June 1533, Parliament passed the Act of Succession 1533 (First Succession Act) declaring Princess Mary illegitimate (stripping her of her erstwhile place in the line of succession); declaring legitimate Anne’s offspring; and perhaps most importantly repudiating the power of “any foreign authority, prince or potentate” over English subjects.  Interestingly, the Act also forbade anyone from publishing or printing that the Henry-Anne marriage was invalid; such conduct would constitute high treason and might result in the hanging, drawing and quartering of the accused.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Unfortunately for Henry, Pope Clement VII was at the time imprisoned and under the direct control of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was Queen Catherine’s nephew and unsurprisingly was ardently opposed to Henry’s attempt to dissolve the marriage with his aunt. Henry was now compelled to ask Wolsey to effectuate a solution, and Wolsey obliged by convening an ecclesiastical court to resolve the annulment question. It remains unlikely that the papal legate ever was empowered by the Vatican to grant the annulment. The Pope rejected the authority of such a court to grant Henry his annulment and ruled that a decision would be given only in Rome, where Henry’s hand-picked jury could not pre-ordain a result in his favor. But before the Pope issued such a decision, Queen Catherine’s polite, respectful, formidable and defiant plea before the court secured for itself a place in the legends.  She played deftly the part of a woman wronged and scorned by a philandering, lying husband. It also earned Catherine permanent isolation from the King and her daughter Mary. Henry VIII’s means of extortion were that only if Catherine would accept that her marriage to the King was invalid, she might regain her access to Mary and vice versa. Both refused. Catherine died in 1536, probably of cancer.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“By the time of Mary’s second French betrothal, Henry was already beginning to doubt the validity and the usefulness of his marriage to Catherine and considering the possibility of annulment. At least in Henry’s eyes, Catherine had failed him by having no sons, and Henry had lost interest in her. Instead, he was interested in a certain France-returned coquettish aristocratic courtier descended from the powerful Howards of Norfolk (the incumbent Duke’s niece), Anne Boleyn. Try as he might, Henry could not get Anne to become his mistress, but she did agree to become his Queen consort, famously telling him, “I beseech your highness most earnestly to desist, and to this my answer in good part. I would rather lose my life than my honesty”.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“Inbreeding significantly increased the risks of miscarriage and child mortality, and the lack of medical knowledge at the time added to the likelihood that children would die young. Nobody knew about germs and the importance of hygiene, so even while the lost medical knowledge of the ancient Greeks was being revived by the Renaissance and interactions with Muslim nations, superstition was still as important as science.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen

“It was a situation which fostered inbreeding; in fact, the very foundation of the Tudor dynasty was a marriage between cousins two generations before Mary. After Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, it helped bring an end to the Wars of the Roses.”
― Charles River Editors, Bloody Mary: The Life and Legacy of England’s Most Notorious Queen