The Reign of Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research

Author(s): David Loades

Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies , Winter, 1989, Vol.
21, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 547-558
Published by: The North American Conference on British Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4049536

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4049536?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The North American Conference on British Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Reign of Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research

David Loades

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 dissem-
bled, 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...."2 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 dis-
cover 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.3
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. In 1563 John Foxe
published his classic work of protestant triumphalism, The Actes and Monuments
of these latter and perilous days, a book which, among many other things,
established Mary's historical reputation as an instrument of Divine judgment.
We shall never find any reign of any prince inthis land or any other, which did ever
show in it (for the proportion of time) so many great arguments of God's wrath and
displeasure, as were to be seen in the reign of this queen Mary, whether we behold
the shortness of her time, or the unfortunate event of all her purposes....
And so she became "Bloody Mary," and her reign the self-destructive death
throes of Catholic England, a myth which received its most forceful expression
at the uninhibited hands of J. A. Froude:
The catholics, therefore, were permitted to continue their cruelties until the cup of
iniquity was full; till they had taught the educated laity of England to regard them
with horror; and till the Romanist superstition had died, amid the execrations of the

1 Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, ed. R. Brown, C. Bentinck, and H. Brown (London, 1864-
98), VI, ii, 1058.

2 "The Count of Feria's despatch to Philip II of 14 November 1558," ed. S. Adams and M. J.
Rodriguez Salgado, Camden Miscellany, 28, 320/329.
3 Public Record Office, SP 12/1/64.
4 J. Foxe The Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous days touching matters of the
church, ed. S.R. Cattley and G. Townsend (London, 1839-44), 8: 625.

Albion 21, 4 (Winter 1989): 547-558 ? Appalachian State University 1990 All Rights Reserved

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
548 David Loades

people of its own excess....5

Of course, there was always a different tradition, just as there was a different
version of Henry VIII's "Godly proceedings," which got rid of the Pope and
the monasteries in favor of the Royal Supremacy and the English Bible. To
Nicholas Sander, as to the anonymous author of the verse epitaph composed a
few days after her death, Mary was a "daughter of misfortune," a "second
Griselde," whose simple and heroic virtues were wasted upon an unregenerate
nation of self-seeking heretics.6 Writing in 1643 from distant memories of stories
told by a very old lady, Henry Clifford described in his life of Jane Dormer,
Duchess of Feria, how Mary's household before her accession had been
the only harbour for honourable young gentlewomen, given any way to piety and
devotion. It was the true school of virtuous demeanour, befitting the education which
ought to be in noble damssels....7
The Mary who emerges through these pages is a sad and gentle creature, doing
her royal duty as best she could in adverse circumstances. To protestant histo-
rians from Foxe to Froude and beyond, the explanation of the queen's historic
failure was straightforward. She was alienated from her subjects and indifferent
to their aspirations, as well as being ignorant of the Divine purpose. Her Ca-
tholicism and her Hispanophilia were in this respect two sides of the same coin,
and protestant eschatology could merge into Whig history with no perceptible
break. The will of God was indistinguishable from progress. Catholics, on the
other hand, could find no such simple formula. To them her failure was a trag-
edy, and the doctrine of progress unavailable. For understandable reasons they
tended to blame the Spanish marriage, once they were no longer Spanish pen-
sioners. Using hindsight no less assiduously than their protestant counterparts,
they identified Mary's devotion to Philip, rather than her faith, as the cause of
an alienation which they also recognized. Ironically, such an interpretation did
little to rescue the historical reputation of a queen to whom they were strongly
sympathetic. Instead of being evil, or totally misguided, Mary became a foolish
and infatuated woman, betraying her divine mission for the sake of a human
love which then betrayed her in turn.
Both these traditions, rooted in religious apologetics, lingered strongly into
the twentieth century. To A. F. Pollard, writing in 1913, the keynote of her
reign was sterility. It was a regime which achieved nothing because the queen
insisted upon swimming against the tide of history. "Israel," he wrote with strong
echoes of his puritan forebears, "took to its tents."8 Elizabeth, on the other hand,
recognizing that the voice of the people was the voice of God, identified herself
with the dominant ideology of protestant nationalism, and was rewarded with

5 J. A. Froude, The Reign of Queen Mary (London, 1856), p. 320.

6 N. Sander, De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani (1585); An epitaphe upon the death of
the Moste excellent and our late vertuous Queene Marie (London, 1558).
7 The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, by Henry Clifford, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1887).
8 A. F. Pollard, The History of England from the accession of Edward VI to the death of Elizabeth
(London, 1913), p. 172.

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research 549

forty-five years of success, and a place in the secular pantheon. Forty years
later, Father Philip Hughes, in his immensely learned and judicious history of
the English reformation, spoke sadly of Mary's "colossal misfortune of entan-
glement in Spain's feud against France." To him the missing savior was Cardinal
Reginald Pole. Had Pole been in England in the autumn of 1553
the queen would not then, ever, have sacrificed to Spain either herself or the prospects
of restoring the catholicism still latent in the souls of her people.9
Neither of these historians had much time or sympathy for Mary herself. To
Pollard she was a perverse bigot, to Hughes a virtuous but sadly incompetent
princess who allowed herself to be manipulated by unscrupulous foreigners.
However, rehabilitation of a sort was already at hand. The human and gentle
Mary of Henry Clifford reappeared just after the beginning of the century in
an almost hagiographical biography by Jean Stone. With chapter titles such as
"Via Dolorosa" and "The Forsaken Queen," Stone presented her heroine primar-
ily as a woman beleaguered by the greed and unscrupulousness of the men
about her, struggling to retain the integrity of her conscience, and constantly
betrayed by those whom she trusted.10 For several years thereafter the historical
and biographical accounts were separated by a considerable gulf. Beatrice
White's Mary Tudor of 1935 followed Stone's approach in most respects, al-
though without the hagiographic touches.

A bleak childhood, a persecuted adolescence, a harassed and suffering maturity, pro-

duced the woman who was to go down to posterity unwept, unhonoured and unsung.
Her many admirable qualities, her absolute sincerity, her fine integrity, her high
courage, lofty and abiding- qualities of leadership, princely qualities-were deadened
by a fatal lack of that subtle appeal that awakens popular sympathies.11
Although both of these biographies were respectable pieces of historical writing,
and are still worth reading, their apologetic intention was so obvious that they
have not been treated with the seriousness which they deserved. Both were
superseded in 1940 by the appearance of Helen Prescott's scholarly and balanced
Spanish Tudor. This work, which was revised in 1952, brought the historical
and biographical traditions back together again.12 A sensitive and intelligent
piece of writing, it was based upon the best research then available, and at this
moment (April 1989) is still the standard life. Three other biographies have
appeared more recently, by Milton Waldman, Jasper Ridley, and Carolly Erick-
son, but although each made use of work published after Prescott, none ap-
proached her skill and originality.13 Prescott's Mary is not a saint, or a heroine,
but a renaissance princess, caught in the fierce political currents of the mid-
sixteenth century. Forced into compromise, and too easily swayed by her emo-

9 P. Hughes, The Reformation in England, 3 vols. (London, 1953-56), 2: 185.

10 J. M. Stone, Mary the first, Queen of England (London, 1901).
" Beatrice White, Mary Tudor (London, 1935), p. vii.
12 H. F. M. Prescott, Spanish Tudor (London, 1940); revised as Mary Tudor (London, 1952).
13 Milton Waldman, The Lady Mary (London, 1972); Jasper Ridley, Mary Tudor (London, 1973);
Carolly Erickson, Bloody Mary (London, 1978).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 550 David Loades

tions, she was simply unable to overcome the handicap of her sex, and the many
fortuitous misfortunes which beset her.
By the time that Prescott's revision appeared, historical scholarship had ad-
vanced well beyond Pollard's limited research and jaundiced conclusions on the
Marian period. James Muller's Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction was
published in 1926, followed in 1933 by his edition of Gardiner's letters.'4 These
two important and durable works shed a great deal of light upon the career and
character of Mary's Lord Chancellor, a man who had been too easily stereotyped
by traditional historiography. Gardiner was a politician to his finger tips -not
without convictions as his imprisonment under Edward VI demonstrated-but
impatient of simplistic solutions and not suffering fools gladly, even when they
were his sovereigns. A few years later the diplomatic history of the reign
received its first full treatment in E. Harris Harbison's Rival Ambassadors at
the Court of Queen Mary, a thorough and highly original study of the conflict
between Simon Renard and Antoine de Noailles, which centered upon the
queen's marriage negotiations in 1553-54.'5 Harbison based his study firmly
upon the archives in Paris, Besangon, and Vienna, breaking a great deal of new
ground in the process, and setting England's domestic preoccupations firmly in
their proper continental perspective. Harbison later abandoned the sixteenth cen-
tury for other fields, but, like Muller's, his work has retained its value because
of its high research content. His general conclusions, however, were a good
deal less exciting than the means by which he arrived at them. Endorsing
Pollard's verdict of sterility, he also declared that Mary's marriage had been a
poison which had contaminated everything that touched it, and a policy that
had "yet to find its apologist."'6 Tudor history in the 1950s was dominated by
Geoffrey Elton, whose Tudor Revolution in Government set the agenda for the
main debate, and by Sir John Neale, whose Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments,
1559-1581 appeared in the same year.'7 Neither was much interested in Mary,
and Elton's chapter on that period in his highly successful textbook, England
Under the Tudors, which appeared in 1955, added little to the familiar picture.
The second volume of Philip Hughes's history of the English reformation was
of much greater importance for the study of Mary's reign, but, like Harbison,
his conclusions were less interesting than his research.'8 It was partly for that
reason that I decided to concentrate my own work, in the years after 1958, upon

14 J. A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction (London, 1926); idem, The Letters o
Stephen Gardiner (London, 1933).

15 E. H. Harbison, Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary (Princeton, 1940); also ide
"French intrigue at the court of Queen Mary," American Historical Review 45 (1940): 533-51.
16 Rival Ambassadors, p. 330.
17 G. R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge, 1953); J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I
and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581 (London, 1953), and 1581-1603 (London, 1957); Elton, England
under the Tudors (London, 1955).

18 Hughes's study is by far the most detailed to have appeared to date. He argues that Mary's
government was canonically wrong to execute as heretics those who had been born and baptized after
the schism began; also that many of those burned were anabaptists who would have been executed
by a protestant government (see above, n. 9).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research 551

what then appeared to be a neglected area, the secular and domestic politics of
the years 1553-58. Working under Geoffrey Elton's supervision, I wrote a thesis
about the opposition to Mary's government, and published a substantial part of
it in 1965 as Two Tudor Conspiracies.'9 At the end of that study I concluded
that, far from having been sterile, Mary's reign had been a most fruitful period,
although not at all in any way that she intended or desired. By pursuing several
very unpopular policies simultaneously, and surviving the consequent conspir-
acies and unrest, she demonstrated the great strength which the English Crown
had come to possess, even in the hands of a woman. Although failing to over-
throw her, her opponents nevertheless succeeded in frustrating several of her
more cherished plans, including Philip's coronation and the exclusion of Eliz-
abeth from the succession. Religion, I then argued, was less politically important
than had been supposed, particularly in connection with the Wyatt rebellion,
and the House of Commons began to develop a power of opposition which was
soon to render insurrection obsolete as a vehicle of protest. Above all, Mary
gave her successor an invaluable political education. Survival may have been
the art of the possible, but success was the art of the acceptable.
At first these views seemed to arouse little controversy, and the book was
regarded simply as a contribution to the picture of the reign that was then being
built up largely from units in works whose purpose was somewhat different,
such as A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, Sidney Anglo's Spectacle,
Pagentry and Early Tudor Policy, and the third volume of David Knowles's
Religious Orders in England.20 Shortly afterwards other parts of my thesis
began to find their way into print, in the form of articles upon the enforcement
of the Catholic reaction and upon Marian press censorship.2' By the late 1960s
interest in the reign was beginning to build up, particularly among the thriving
and growing band of doctoral students on both sides of the Atlantic. Anne
Weikel completed her study of Mary's Privy Council in 1966 at Yale; G. A.
Lemasters his on the same subject at Cambridge in 1971. Robert Braddock
wrote of the Royal Household (1971), Rex Pogson on Cardinal Pole as Legate
to England (1972), and Jennifer Loach on opposition in Mary's parliaments

19 Loades, "Popular subversion and governmcnt security in England during the reign of Mary I"
(Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1961).

20 Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1964) devoted two chapters to Mary's reign, in a
study which virtually ended with 1559; Anglo, Spectacle Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford,
1969), discussed the entries and court festivities of the period as a distinctly down-beat appendix to
the splendors of Henry VIII's reign; Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 3, The Tudor
Age (Cambridge, 1961), devoted part four to the Marian revival, presenting the fullest and most
balanced account to have appeared to date. J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1964), also devoted a section to the revived Catholic tradition,
suggesting that it was ornate and academic rather than popular and effective.
21 Loades, "The press under the early Tudors," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical
Society 4 (1964): 29-50, and "The enforcement of reaction, 1553-58," Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 16 (1965): 54-66.

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
552 David Loades

(1974).22 And there were a number of others, some sadly but inevitably, left
uncompleted. As a result, a "revisionist" view of Mary began to be formulated,
particularly by Pogson and Loach, and presented in articles from 1974 onward.23
Pogson argued trenchantly that, far from being alienated from her subjects in
religious matters, the queen represented a broad consensus. The Catholic reac-
tion was soundly based on traditional sentiment, and was making rapid progress
at all social levels by the end of the reign. Although handicapped by the financial
pressures of war after 1557, and by Philip's quarrel with the papacy, it was
showing every sign of success when it was brought to a premature halt by
Mary's death. In a similar vein, Loach presented the Catholic publishing and
propaganda of the period as being both more prolific and more effective than
had hitherto been claimed, and could find few signs of deliberate opposition in
Mary's parliaments, which were rather characterized by compliance on all issues
of importance, modified by persistent grumbling about property rights. These
articles, followed up by The Mid-Tudor Polity, 1540-1560, and by Jennifer
Loach's Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor, have altered
the terms of the debate.4 In the late 1970s C. S. L. Davies and Penry Williams
also drew attention to the importance of harvest failure and epidemic disease
in the latter part of the reign, suggesting that supposed demoralization of 1557-
58 was largely the result of these physical misfortunes, and cast no aspersions
on either the government or the church.25 Davies supported his view with an

22 A. Weikel, "Crown and Council; a Study of Mary Tudor and Her Privy Council" (Ph.D. diss.,
Yale University, 1966); G. A. Lemasters, "The Privy Council in the reign of Queen Mary I" (Ph.D.
diss., Cambridge University, 1971); R. C. Braddock, 'The Royal Household, 1540-1560" (Ph.D.
diss., Northwestern University, 1971); R. H. Pogson, "Reginald Pole, Papal Legate to England in
Mary Tudor's Reign" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1972); J. Loach, "Parliamentary Opposi-
tion in the Reign of Mary Tudor" (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1974); among other relevant
theses completed at the same time were: C. G. Erickson, "Parliament as a representative institution
in the reigns of Edward VI and Mary" (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1974); B. Bradshaw, "The
Irish Constitutional Revolution, 1515-1557" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1975), and J. P.
Marmion, "The London Synod of Cardinal Pole" (M.A. thesis, Keele University, 1974).
23 Loach, "Pamphlets and Politics, 1553-58," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 48
(1975): 31-45; Pogson, "Revival and Reform in Mary Tudor's church," Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 25 (1974): 249-65; and "Reginald Pole and the priorities of government in Mary Tudor's
church," Historical Journal 18 (1975):3-21.

24 J. Loach and R. Tittler, The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540-1560 (London, 1980), containing "Con-
servatism and consent in parliament, 1547-59" (Loach); "The Marian Council re-visited" (Weikel);
"The emergence of urban policy, 1536-58" (Tittler); "Social policy and the constraints of govern-
ment, 1547-58" (Paul Slack); "The Legacy of Schism; confusion, continuity and change in the
Marian church" (Pogson); "Public Office and private profit; the legal establishment in the reign of
Mary Tudor" (Lewis Abbott); and C. S. L. Davies, "England and the French war, 1557-59." J.
Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986).
25 C. S. L. Davies, Peace, Print and Protestantism (London, 1977); Penry Williams, The Tudor
Regime (Oxford, 1979). Some of these ideas had been put forward a decade earlier by F. J. Fisher in
"Influenza and inflation in Tudor England," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 18 (1965).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research 553

important article on the Anglo-French war of 1557-59, arguing that the English
did better than their Spanish allies were prepared to give them credit for, and
that the failure at Calais was aggravated by subsequent Elizabethan pro-
pagandists.26 By 1980 the "Marian debate" was developing on a number of
fronts. The long neglected figure of Cardinal Pole had reappeared in a rather
uninspired biography by Wilhelm Schenk in 1950, and in two interesting and
important articles by J. H. Crehan in 1955 and 1956.17At about the time that
Pogson was completing his thesis, Dermot Fenlon published Heresy and Obe-
dience in Tridentine Italy, a study which cast much new light on Pole's career,
and on the background to the English mission.28 Nor was interest confined to
England. Starting in 1964 the Spanish historian J. I. Telechea Idigoras produced
a series of articles and edited documents dealing with the Cardinal's relationship
with Bartholome Carranza, and with other Spanish clergy who spent time in
England in the service of King Philip.29 Meanwhile the reissue in 1966 of C.
H. Garrett's Marian Exiles, originally published in 1938, served as a reminder
of the importance of that exodus for traditional protestant historiography, and
raised again the question of the veracity and integrity of John Foxe, a subject
since pursued by a number of scholars.30 In 1970 1 published The Oxford
Martyrs, which was an attempt to analyze the theory and practice of religious
politics between 1535 and 1558, following up the suggestion, which I had made
earlier, that Mary and her council were far more in control of the English church
after 1554 than their own principles should have allowed them to be.3" This

26 In The Mid-Tudor Polity, see n. 24. See also D. L. Potter, "The Duc de Guise and the fall of
Calais," English Historical Review 98 (1983): 481-512.

27 W. Schenk, Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England (London, 1950); J. H. Crehan, "The return to
obedience; new judgement on Cardinal Pole," The Month, n. s. 14, (1955): 221-29; and "St. Ignatius
and Cardinal Pole," Archivum Historicum Societatis lesu 25 (1956): 72-98.
28 D. B. Fenlon, Heresy and obedience in Tridetine Italy (Cambridge, 1972).
29 J. I. Tellechea Idigoras, "Bartolomd Carranza y la restauraci6n cat6lica inglesa (1553-58)," An-
thologia Annua 12 (1964): 159-282; "Pole y Paul IV; una cel6bre Apologia in6dita del Cardenal
Ingl6s," Archivum Historiae Pontificae 4 (1966); "Una denuncia de los Cardenales Contarini, Pole y
Morone per el Cardenal Francisco de Mendoza (1560)," Revista espaniola de Teologia 27 (1967):
33-51; "Pole, Carranza y Fresnada. Cara y cruz de una amistad y de una enemistad," Dialogo
ecumenico 8 (1974): 287-293; Fray Bartolome Carranza y el Cardenal Pole (Pamplona, 1977).
30 C. H.Garrett, The Marian Exiles (Cambridge, 1938; reprint ed., London, 1966); J. F. Mozeley,
John Foxe and his Book (London, 1940); W. Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation
(London, 1963); K. R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530-1645 (Oxford,
1979); V. N. Olsen, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley, 1973); S. J. Smart, "John Foxe
and 'The Story of Richard Hun, Martyr,"' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986):1-14. Jane
Facey, "John Foxe and the Defence of the English Church," in P. Lake, ed., Protestantism and the
National Church in Sixteenth-Century England (1987). Catherine Davies and Jane Facey, "A
Reformation Dilemma: John Foxe and the Problem of Discipline," Journal of Ecclesiatical History
39 (1988): 37-66.

31 Loades, The Oxford Martyrs (London, 1970).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 554 David Loades

view has subsequently been supported by the researches of Gina Alexander and
others.32 I also continued to argue that the persecution was widely unpopular
and that the restored Catholic church lacked both evangelical energy and
spiritual leadership. This position was attacked, more implicitly than directly,
by Pogson, and also by Christopher Haigh, who entered these particular lists in
1975 with Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire.33 The propaganda
and publishing issue had also been carried a stage further by the appearance in
1979 of A Chronological Bibliography of Propaganda and Polemic, 1553-1558,
edited by E. W. Baskerville for the American Philosophical Society.34
Baskerville's research and conclusions have subsequently been criticized by
Loach, and to a lesser degree by Philippa Tudor, but supported in an unpublished
London thesis by Patricia Took.35 Dr. Loach has recently developed her inter-
pretation further, suggesting that Mary's government was not so much incom-
petent or indifferent in the promotion of propaganda, as pursuing different ob-
jectives.36 Whatever the explanation, there was a sharp decline in printing ac-
tivity in London after 1553.
In 1979 I attempted to gather together the threads of my own research over
some twenty years into what I described as an "interim report" entitled The
Reign of Mary Tudor.37 In this work my main thesis was that the reign should
be seen in two parts. Before the summer of 1555 the queen was largely suc-
cessful in imposing her policies, in spite of stiff opposition over both her marri-
age and church lands. After the failure of her "pregnancy," however, and Philip's
departure in August 1555, the regime rapidly lost confidence and momentum.
The protestants continued to be unexpectedly recalcitrant, and deteriorating
relations with the papacy hampered the church. The successful financial policy
of 1553-57 was destroyed in a few months by the outbreak of war with France.
Only at the administrative level did machinery, largely controlled by Lord Paget,
continue to function with its former efficiency. I continued to maintain my

32 G. Alexander, "Bonner and the Marian persecutions," History 60 (1975): 374-92; M. Jagger,
"Bonner's episcopal visitation of London, 1554," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 45
(1973): 306-11; K. G. Powell, The Marian Martyrs and the Reformation in Bristol (Bristol, 1972).
33 C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975); and subsequently
The English Reformation Revised (London, 1987), reprinting articles originally published in 1982 and
1983. Professor A. G. Dickens has joined issue on this interpretation ("The Early expansion of
protestantism in England," Archivfuir Reformationsgeschichte 78 [1987]: 187-222).
34 Edward J. Baskerville, A chronological bibliography of propaganda and polemic published in
English between 1553 and 1558 (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1979).
35 P. Tudor, "Religious instruction for children and adolescents in the early English Reformation,"
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984): 391-413. P. M. Took, "The government and the printing
trade, 1540-1560" (Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1979).

36 J. Loach, "The Marian establishment and the printing press," English Historical Review 100
(1986): 138-51.

37 Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor (London, 1979).

38

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research 555

interpretation of the Wyatt rebellion, although different views had been ad-
vanced by Peter Clark in 1977 and by M. R. Thorp in 1978.38 On the other
hand, I no longer believed that parliamentary opposition to Mary had been
particularly effective, although it had certainly been present and council manage-
ment had declined in efficiency after Gardiner's death. The religious situation,
it seemed to me, corresponded neither to the traditional nor to the revisionist
view. I could find plenty of support for the queen's conservative policies at the
beginning of her reign, but only a very grudging acceptance of the papacy, and
little sign of reviving Catholic zeal thereafter. The new bishops were of good
quality and stuck manfully to their task, but whereas religious conservatives
clearly remained in a large majority at the end of the reign, genuine Roman
Catholics appeared to be no more numerous than the protestants they were so
anxious to persecute. After a lot of new work on the marriage, I came to the
conclusion that it had been a perfectly justifiable policy, up to a point, but that
it had been engineered by Charles V for his own purposes. From his point of
view it was a qualified success, enabling Philip to take over the Netherlands in
safety, but from the English point of view it was a complete failure. Philip gave
England very little, and although he took from it much less than was once
supposed, his insistence on participation in his war with France in 1557 did the
country a major disservice.
Within a few months of the publication of this work, The Mid-Tudor Polity
also appeared, containing (in addition to the article by Davies already referred
to) the first published versions of Loach's views on parliament, and Weikel's
on the council.39 Robert Tittler developed further some ideas which he had
previously aired on urban policy, and Rex Pogson continued his exposition of
the Marian church.40 In 1983 Tittler's valuable and skilfully condensed Seminar
Study, The Reign of Mary I, summarized what was by then emerging as the
revisionist view of the period. The queen was broadly supported by a pre-
dominantly conservative people and nobility, who only became difficult when
they felt their property interests to be directly threatened-a situation which
could be paralleled in every Tudor reign. The Spanish marriage was unpopular,
but not gufficiently unpopular to threaten the stability of the regime; the council
governed the country with considerable efficiency, and the Catholic church was
rapidly recovering the allegiance of all but a small hard core of dissenters by
the time of the queen's death. Mary's failure was consequently not the result
of any mistakes which she herself had made, nor of any failure on the part of
her government, but of the natural disasters of harvest failure and epidemic

38 p. Clark, English Provincial Society firom the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics
and Society in Kent, 1500-1640 (Brighton, 1977); M. R. Thorp, "Religion and the Wyatt rebellion
of 1554," Church History 47 (1978): 363-80.
39 See above, n. 24.
40 R. Tittler, "The incorporation of boroughs, 1540-1558," History 62 (1977): 24-42; Pogson, see
n. 24; Tittler, The Reign of Mary 1, Seminar Studies in History (London, 1983).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 556 David Loades

disease -and above all of her own premature death. Professor Patrick Collinson
has recently argued that, if Mary had lived to be sixty, it is highly unlikely that
a middle-aged Elizabeth, succeeding in about 1576, would have wished to alter
a stable and well established situation.4' It could equally well be suggest ed,
however, that if Edward VI had lived to be sixty, England would have become
a protestant country much more quickly than it did. Once determinist positions
are abandoned, the historical disputes about the interpretation of Mary's reign
are more about what might have happened than about what did happen. The
lesson that does seem to have emerged so far is that the Crown was strong;
strong enough to be effective even in the hands of a woman of no political
experience and with a very mixed bag of advisers. Most scholars would agree
that the Spanish marriage did nothing to help Mary, but the extent to which
her Catholicism was an asset or a liability will continue to be debated.
There are many matters upon which more research is clearly needed. Philip
as king of England remains a shadowy figure, and his relationship with Mary
appears less straightforward the more it is investigated. Mia Rodriguez Salgado's
Changing Face of Empire has recently reviewed these years in his career from
a continental viewpoint, and concluded that he was at first frustrated by the
weakness of his position in England, and angered by the slight to his honor,
but after 1555 became largely indifferent, except over the issue of war.42 By
1558 he was only too happy to cut his losses and come to an amicable agreement
with Elizabeth. Over twenty years ago, in some articles which have received
insufficient attention, Tom Glasgow argued that Philip was responsible for the
rebuilding of the English navy, a process which Glasgow rightly pointed out
began in 1555, not 1559.43 More recently I have tentatively suggested that Mary
may have been less devoted to Philip than used to be supposed, and that it was
she, rather than her subjects, who curtailed his role in England.44 Perhaps the
work now in progress by Dr. Glyn Redworth will help to resolve some of these
problems. Another area which remains underexplored is the English court during
the reign, and particularly Mary's Privy Chamber. My own Tudor Court dealt
with the matter far too summarily, and John Murphy's contribution to The En-
glish Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War added only a few
details to the familiar picture.45 I have returned to the subject myself within the

41 P. Collinson, The Birth Pangs of Protestant England (Cambridge, 1988).

42 M. J. Rodriguez Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire (Cambridge, 1988), which supersedes
earlier accounts of Philip's policies during these years.

43 T. Glasgow, "The navy in the French wars of Mary and Elizabeth, 1557-1564," Mariner's Mirror
53 (1967): 321-42; 54 (1968): 23-37; "The maturing of naval administration, 1556-1564," Mariner's
Mirror 56 (1970): 3-27.

44 "Philip 11 and the government of England," in C. Cross, D. Loades, and J. Scarisbrick, eds., Law
and Government under the Tudors: Essays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton (Cambridge, 1988), p
177-194.

45 Loades' The Tudor Court (London, 1986); J. A. Murphy, "The illusion of decline: the Priv
Chamber 1547-1558," in D. Starkey, ed., The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civi
War (London, 1987), pp. 119-146.

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Mary Tudor: Historiography and Research 557

last year, but remain acutely conscious that there is more to be done.
The publication of source material is always of great importance, and although
most of the principal sources for Mary's reign were printed long ago, the critical
volume of the Calendar of State Papers, Spanish appeared only in 1949 and
1954.46 We still await a satisfactory calendar of the State Papers Domestic from
1547 to 1580, although the matter is well in hand.47 A number of interesting
contemporary writings have also received scholarly editing for the first time. In
1975 P. S. Donaldson published what he described as "A Machiavellian treatise
by Stephen Gardiner," ostensibly a treatise on English history presented to
Philip.48 Donaldson claimed that this work, which survives only in an Italian
version, was written in the last months of his life by the Lord Chancellor, who
was anxious to ingratiate himself with a monarch whose coming he had orig-
inally opposed. This interpretation was strongly challenged in a subsequent
review by Dermot Fenlon.49 More recently (in 1984) Diarmaid MacCulloch ed-
ited the important Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae by Robert Wingfield of
Brantham in Suffolk, a work which sheds considerable light on the succession
crisis of 1553 and upon the formation of Mary's council.50 And in the same
volume of the Camden Miscellany Mia Rodriguez Salgado and Simon Adams
presented for the first time a full text of the Count of Feria's despatch of 14
November 1558, which provides interesting insights into Elizabeth's state of
mind on the eve of her accession.5"
Work which is wholly or partly devoted to the reign of Mary continues to
come from the press at a lively rate; Jennifer Loach's Parliament and the Crown,
which is basically her 1974 Oxford thesis; Andrew Pettegree's Foreign Protest-
ant Communities in Sixteenth Century London, in the same series, which is a
revised doctoral thesis of 1983;52 and Margaret Aston's authoritative England's

46 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, ed. Royall Tyler, vols. 12 (London, 1949) and 13 (London,
1954). Other principal printed sources are: F. Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary
(London, 1831): Acts of the Privy Council, ed. J. R. Dasent (London, 1890-1907); Calendar of State
Papers, Venetian (see n. 1); Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, ed., W. Tumbull (London, 1861);
Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Edward VI and Mary (London, 1924-39); The Chronicle of Queen Jane
and of Two Years of Queen Mary, ed., J. G. Nichols, Camden Society, o. s., 48 (1850); The Diary
of Henry Machyn, ed., J. G. Nicholas, Camden Society, o. s. 42 (1848); A. de Guaras, The Accession
of Queen Mary, ed., R. Gamett (London, 1892); Statutes of the Realm, ed., A. Luders, et al. (London,
1810-28); P. F. Tytler, England Under the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary (London, 1839); P. L.
Hughes and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 2 (New Haven, 1969).
47 A new edition by Dr. Charles Knighton is in preparation.
48 P. S. Donaldson, A Machiavellian Treatise by Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1975).
49 Historical Journal 19 (1976): 1019.
50 "The 'Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae' of Robert Wingfield of Brantham," ed. D. MacCulloch,
Camden Miscellany 28, Camden Society, 4th ser., 24 (1984).
51 See above, n. 2
52 Both Oxford, 1986.

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
558 David Loades

Iconoclasts, which shows achievement lagging well behind intention in the Mar
ian church.53 Articles of interest and significance have also come from K. Barle
W. B. Robison, J. W. Martin and a number of others.54 The reign has also been
coupled with that of Edward VI, not only in The Mid-Tudor Polity, but also
Michael Graves's useful study of the House of Lords." I have written on t
Marian bishops, and on the spirituality of the restored church," while importa
theses by C. G. Erickson, Patricia Took, Paul Boscher, and Glyn Redworth sti
await the attention of publishers.57 No doubt there are many more. Nor is the
any sign of the pace flagging. Dr. Redworth's work on Stephen Gardiner shoul
appear soon, while Philip II is a longer term project. Professor Dale Hoak is
moving onward chronologically from Edward VI, while I have challenged the
female dominance of Mary's biography in my new study.58 Long the most
neglected as well as the most maligned of the Tudors -the victim of her sister's
long reign and flair for self-advertizement -Mary and her reign are now receiv-
ing the generous attention of historians. We are not likely to agree, but without
a dialectic there is no advancement of understanding.59

53 London, 1988.

54 K. Barlett, "'The Misfortune that is wished for him': The Exile and Death of Edward Courtenay,
eighth Earl of Devon," Canadian Journal of History 14 (1979): 1-28; "The English Exile Commu-
nity in Italy and the Political Opposition to Mary I," Albion 13 (1981): 223-41; J. W. Martin, "Miles
Hogarde, Artisan and Aspiring Author in Sixteenth Century England," Renaissance Quarterly 34
(1981): 359-83; "The Protestant Underground Congregations of Mary's Reign," Journal of Ecclesi-
astical History 35 (1984): 519-59; W. B. Robison, "The National and Local Significance of Wyatt's
rebellion in Surrey," Historical Journal 30 (1987): 769-90; R. C. McCoy, "From the Tower to the
Tiltyard: Robert Dudley's Return to Glory," HistoricalJournal 27 (1984): 425-35; R. Tittler and S.
L. Battley, "The Local Community and the Crown in 1553: The Accession of Mary Tudor
Revisited," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57 (1984): 131-39.

55 The House of Lords in the Parliaments of Edward VI and Mary: An Institutional Study (Cam-
bridge, 1981); see also Graves, "The House of Lords and the Politics of Opposition, April-May
1554," in W. P. Morrell: A Tribute, ed. G. A. Wood and P. S. O'Connor (Dunedin, 1973).

56 "The Bishops of the Restored Catholic Church Under Queen Mary," Miscellanea Historiae
Ecclesiasticae 8 (1987): 343-55.

57 Ericson, see n. 22; Took, see n. 35; P. G. Boscher, "Politics, administration and diplomacy
Anglo-Scottish border, 1550-1560" (Ph.D. thesis, Durham University, 1985), G. R. Redworth, "The
political and diplomatic career of Stephen Gardiner" (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1985).

58 D. E. Hoak, "Two Revolutions in Tudor Government: The Formation and Organisation of Mary
I's Privy Council," in Revolution Reassessed, ed., D. Starkey and C. Coleman (London, 1986), pp.
87-116. Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1989).
59 The notes to this discussion do not pretend to mention everything of significance which has been
published on the reign. In particular, there are a number of other biographies relating to important
figures of the period, which it has not proved convenient to introduce into the text. For example: F.
G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary [Sir William Petre] (London, 1971); S. R. Gammon, Statesman and
Schemer, William, First Lord Paget, Tudor Minister (Newton Abbot, 1973); G. W. Bernard, The
Power of the Early Tudor Nobility: A Study of the Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury (Brigh-
ton,1984).

This content downloaded from

5.150.98.254 on Tue, 11 May 2021 13:54:36 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms