Burnings of Protestants and the Failure of Marys...

Burnings of Protestants and the Failure of Marys Religious Policy After Mary had taken the throne from Lady Jane Grey in 1553, she had, in her view, the task of returning the church to the state it had been in at the start of 1534. By the end of the year of her accession, Mary had re-implemented the heresy laws and by her death in November 1558, a minimum of 287 Protestants had died in the flames at Smithfield and elsewhere across the country. At the end of Marys reign Protestantism was far from being suppressed, and upon the accession of Elizabeth, England once again swung to Protestantism. England would never be officially Catholic again. Although it can be argued that Catholicism was not a†¦show more content†¦Mary had considered that policy would not be too difficult to pursue, as the country had been officially Catholic only 10 years previous. It has been argued as to what the causes of the failure of her religious policy actually were, and it is undisputed that there are a number of possible causes. Historians from John Foxe (writing in 1563) to Robert Tittler (1991) have disputed the effect that the burnings had on the populace. The initial argument was that the burnings had such a profound effect on the people of England that they took up the new religion in favour of Catholicism. This argument hangs on the idea that people saw the victims of the burnings being prepared to die for their faith, and were converted as a result. Tittler talks of widespread popular witness and sympathetic reaction to the burnings that took place under Mary[2], and David Loades concurs when he describes the burnings of Rogers and Hooper: At the same time the heroism of the early victimsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦made a deep impression upon many who were notShow MoreRelatedTO WHAT EXTENT WAS THERE A â€Å"MID TUDOR CRISIS† DURING THE REIGNS OF EDWARD VI AND MARY I?2006 Words   |  9 Pagesthe west and in Norfolk (which had been partly caused by his own policies). As Dale Hoak points out his colleague s decided to get rid of him at this point not because he supported the poor but because he was incompetent. When Northumberland came into power, even though his reforms were far more extreme, with no possibility of alternative interpretation, he did not at that time cause crisis by putting the country in a firmly Protestant position. By being more decisive than Somerset, he was aimingRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagescolonies after 1870 as a predictable culmination of the long nineteenth century, which was ushered in by the industrial and political revolutions of the late 1700s. But at the same time, without serious attention to the processes and misguided policies that led to decades of agrarian and industrial depression from the late 1860s to the 1890s, as well as the social tensions and political rivalries that generated and were in turn fed by imperialist expansionism, one cannot begin to comprehend the