Creepy Stories Halloween Special!!

Mary 1 Queen of England (Before Bloody Mary)

Location: England

She was the first-ever Queen of England to rule in her own right, but to her critics, Mary I of England has long been known only as “Bloody Mary.”

This unfortunate nickname was thanks to her persecution of Protestant heretics, whom she burned at the stake in the hundreds. But is this a fair portrayal? Was she the bloodthirsty religious fanatic that posterity has bequeathed to us? While hundreds died under Mary’s reign, her dark legacy may have as much to do with the fact that she was a Catholic monarch succeeded by a Protestant Queen in a country that remained Protestant. History, as they say, is written by the victors

First, it’s important to understand that heresy was considered by all of early modern Europe to be an infection of the body politic that had to be erased so as not to poison society at large. All over Europe, the punishment for heresy was not only death, but also the total destruction of the heretic’s corpse to prevent the use of their body parts for relics. Therefore, most heretics were burned and their ashes thrown into the river and Mary’s choice of burning was completely standard practice for the period.

Her sister, Elizabeth I, was a little more savvy: in her reign those convicted of practicing Catholicism by training as priests or sheltering them were convicted as traitors and punished accordingly, by being hanged and quartered. The idea behind the different crimes was that, while people could dispute religious belief, no one could ever possibly agree that treason was permissible.
I

f one person can be held responsible for Mary’s reputation, however, it is the Protestant “martyrologist,” John Foxe. His bestselling work, The Actes and Monuments, better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was a detailed account of each and every martyr who died for his or her faith under the Catholic Church. It was first published in 1563, and went through four editions in Foxe’s lifetime alone, testament to its popularity.

Although the work covered the early Christian martyrs, the medieval Inquisition, and the suppressed Lollard heresy, it was the persecutions under Mary I that got, and still receive, the most attention. This was partly due to the custom-made, highly detailed woodcuts depicting the gruesome torture and burning of Protestant martyrs, surrounded by flames. In the first, 1563 edition, 30 out of the 57 illustrations depict executions under Mary's reign.

Protestant martyrs become powerful folklore

First published five years after Mary’s death, Foxe’s work was a huge success. Printed as an enormous folio, the second edition was ordered to be installed in every cathedral church and church officials were told to place copies in their houses for the use of servants and visitors. But by the end of the 17th century Foxe’s work tended to be abbreviated to include only the most sensational episodes of torture and death. So the graphic accounts of pious Protestant martyrs submissively going to their painful ends at the hand of a “tyrant” became the folklore of the English Reformation.
M

ary died at age 42 in 1558 during an influenza epidemic (although she had also been suffering from abdominal pain and may have had uterine or ovarian cancer). Her half-sister, Elizabeth, succeeded her as a Protestant monarch and England remained Protestant. Even if the various sects of that religion were then so at loggerheads that they plunged the kingdom into a civil war, Catholicism—or what they called “Popery”—was something they could all agree was worse than anything else.

So this took me a hot minute but I skimmed through it and wow.

So if you read it thoroughly unlike me, you'll see a part where it says "Was Mary as bloody thirsty as the legend says,"  obviously not in those specific words but thats probably where the Legend originated from.

I actually didn't know Queen Elizabeth had a sister let alone a sister with her own fucked up legend. If you know a bit more about this legend or Mary I please comment I'd love to hear about it and I will definitely add that to these chapters.

𝕯𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖋𝖚𝖑

🥀