The Reign of Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Loades
Keyword(s):  
Full Measure ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Mary Tudor ◽  
Great Harm ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Mary made the unfortunate mistake of antagonizing her successor, without being able to impose any limitations upon her freedom of action. Writing in 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michieli, observed “although it is dissembled, it cannot be denied that [the queen] displays in many ways the scorn and ill will she bears her [Elizabeth]….” The younger woman reciprocated such feelings in full measure, and a few days before her accession, when there was no longer any need to be discreet, the Count of Feria reported, “She is highly indignant about what has been done to her in the queen's lifetime….” Such personal antagonism may not go far in explaining Elizabeth's decision to reverse so many of her sister's policies, but it certainly helps to account for the animus that the new queen's most trusted servants so quickly developed against their predecessors. In the last days of 1558 a royal commission was issued “to discover by what means the realm hath suffered great harm” under the previous regime, and soon came up with a long list of secular and ecclesiastical grants. Most of the latter were immediately resumed in the succeeding Parliament. It was to be another quarter of a century before Elizabeth finally emerged as the winner, and Mary as the loser, of the English reformation struggle, but those in power after 1558 did not wait to celebrate their victory.

Re-Imaging The Marian Catholic Church

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-364
Author(s):  
William Wizeman
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Late Professor ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Mary Tudor

The late Professor Geoffrey Dickens in his book, The English Reformation, condemned the Marian church for ‘failing to discover’ the verve and creativity of the Counter-Reformation; on the other hand, Dr Lucy Wooding has praised the Marian church for its adherence to the views of the great religious reformer Erasmus and its insularity from the counter-reforming Catholicism of Europe in her book Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England. However, by studying the Latin and English catechetical, homiletic, devotional and controversial religious texts printed during the Catholic renewal in England in the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–58) and the decrees of Cardinal Reginald Pole's Legatine Synod in London (1555–56), a very different picture emerges. Rooted in the writings of St John Fisher—which also influenced the pivotal decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–63) on justification and the Eucharist—Marian authors presented a theological synthesis that concurred with Trent's determinations. This article will focus on three pivotal Reformation controversies: the intrepretation of scripture, justification, and the Eucharist.

The Conflict Between Queen Elizabeth and Roman Catholicism

1947 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry M. Shires
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Political ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mary Tudor ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
Made In

During the reign of Mary Tudor, Queen of England from 1553 to 1558, Roman Catholicism became the official religion of the English state; and the English Crown once again recognized the authority of the pope. English Roman Catholics were jubilant while the Protestants believed that all of the gains of the English Reformation had been lost. The religious and even the political future of England was therefore clearly in the hands of Queen Elizabeth when she ascended the throne in 1558. She was subjected to strong pressure from both the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, and for some years the ultimate issue was in doubt. The religious decisions which were made in England during this period were, however, vital for the cause of Protestantism and of extreme significance for Roman Catholicism. Much of the historical writing which describes these crucial events is, naturally enough, the product of Protestant or Roman Catholic apologetic; and the subject is one which has need of calm and reasoned study as well as of ordered presentation.

Discord, Dissent, and Division

John Heywood ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 207-225
Author(s):  
Greg Walker
Keyword(s):  
English Reformation ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Royal Supremacy ◽  
Mary Tudor ◽  
The Way

Even if we cannot follow Heywood’s engagement with the fine details of political events in his work in these years in quite the way that we could through his earlier interludes, it is nonetheless possible, and important, to track his path against the wider picture of English Reformation politics, the advance of royal policy and the reactions it provoked, in order to see how the twists and turns of Fortune’s favour affected him, his family, and influential patrons such as Mary Tudor, and how and why Heywood was brought to his own crisis of conscience in the winter of 1543. This chapter examines Heywood’s fortunes in the years following More’s death against the curious contortions of Henry VIII’s religious policy, describing the evolution of Henry’s Erasmian ‘middle way’ in religion, and the tensions that it permitted and exacerbated, setting the scene for Heywood’s condemnation for treason for denying the Royal Supremacy in 1542.

“Rowme” on the Street (A Cheshire “Cat Massacre”)

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Odai Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Mary Tudor

I want to begin with a memory of buried faith that speaks rather precisely to the argument that follows about the duplicitous nature of performance during the English Reformation. The memory belonged to Benjamin Franklin, who opened hisAutobiographywith an account of his Protestant family during the reign of Mary Tudor:This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin.

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