it is about famous peoples

[indrute]

why was mary tudor called ''bloody mary''?

[Aaralyn]

Mary I has largely been called 'Bloody Mary' because of the many Protestants she burnt at the stake for their faith. However, compared to other Tudor rulers, the 280 people that she sentenced to death was not a dramatic figure for the period in which she ruled. In fact compared to the other Tudors she did not really sentence very many people to their deaths. For instance, after the Northern rebellion in her successor, Elizabeth I's reign, over 300 people were hanged. Therefore it is unlikely that it was the number of people she had killed but rather the reason she had them killed that meant she ended up being labelled as 'Bloody Mary'.

Yet even this explanation is not straightforward. Mary burned people because of their religion. Yet whilst this may be called unjust today, at the time it was common practice within Catholic countries to kill those labelled by the Church as 'heretics'. Take, for example, the Spanish inquisition. They were doing exactly the same as Mary but on a much larger scale.

A large part of the reason Mary's name has been blackened is due to Foxe's Book of Martyrs. In it he describes the Protestant heretics Mary had burnt as saints, and the book was highly acclaimed during the reign of Elizabeth I who ordered that a copy be placed in every church, using it as propaganda against her sister in order to win support for herself. Therefore Mary Tudor was called 'Bloody Mary' less for what she actually did, but rather because of a retrospective Protestant campaign of vilification against a Catholic queen.

The Victorians also helped to blacken Mary's rule as they were always anxious to stress the historical basis for English liberty and liked to see Catholicism as perilous in the position of the throne.