Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror [Hardcover]

Jasper Ridley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 9, 2001

In this chronicle of a Catholic monarch's heartless rage, a nation's fear, and the unimaginable courage of the Protestants who died for their faith, the award-winning historical biographer Jasper Ridley explores the dark years of Mary Tudor's reign and the most extreme persecution ever to occur in England -- more than three hundred victims in less than three years. Within months of her ascension to the English throne in 1553, Mary restored Roman Catholicism to the nation, reinstated papal supremacy, wedded the Spanish prince Philip, and sealed an alliance with Catholic Spain. Her marriage failed to produce an heir, however. That failure -- a sign, in Mary's view, of God's displeasure with the practice of "heretic" religion in England -- prompted the childless queen to initiate her purge. Thus began the fires at Smithfield, and hundreds of Protestants -- among them the Anglican bishop Hugh Latimer and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, as well as many prominent members of the nobility -- met their death at the stake. In an absorbing narrative, this meticulously researched history relates their tragic, brutal, and often inspiring tale.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

By the standards of 20th-century terrors, the numbers of men and women who fell victim to reactionary Catholic oppression during the reign of Queen Mary (1554-58) were modest: fewer than 300 were executed for their Protestant faith. But the experience cast a long shadow over English history. Oppression bred new ideologies of civil resistance, and as Linda Colley has shown in Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (1992), the later association of Catholicism with bigotry and tyranny was central to the development of quasi-democratic nationhood. In his footnote-free description of the persecution, deeply indebted to John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Ridley (biographer of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, as well as Mussolini) recites a "litany" of moving stories: an eight-year-old boy dies after being beaten during a visit to his incarcerated father; a woman gives birth while being burned alive, and her baby is thrown back into the flames. There is little here that is new; after a concise account of usual suspects and events preceding and during Mary's rule (Sir Thomas More "was a particularly nasty sadomasochistic pervert" who "enjoyed being flogged by his favourite daughter"), Ridley concentrates on the witch hunts and their victims. One wishes for a deeper explanation of the culture and psyche of intolerance which was, after all, the hallmark of the age (more so, perhaps, in the 16th century than in the much maligned medieval past), and Mary's reign provides useful case material. But to his credit, Ridley recognizes that tyranny was by no means a monopoly of the Catholic Church it's hard to ignore the next "400 years of persecution and discrimination" suffered by the Catholics and concludes with a more general clarion call for present-day tolerance. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers; 1St Edition edition (August 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786708549
• ISBN-13: 978-0786708543
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,269,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly entertaining, but deeply flawed, September 13, 2002

By 

Todd Porter (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror (Paperback)

There is no question that Ridley's book is mildly entertaining to read--any work based upon Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" should contain a certain amount of gripping material. Unfortunately, this book is little more than a rather tepid summary of some of the more salacious portions of Foxe. Ridley's prose occasionally evinces a dry wit, but more often it is simply banal and overly simplistic. It almost seems as though he was writing for a juvenile audience. Moreover, he makes little attempt to analyze the experience of the martyrs, preferring instead simply to repeat the narrative details supplied in Foxe. Most unforgivable, however, are Ridley's continually distorted moral and historical judgments, which render this book a very pale shadow of serious history. Opinions are certainly welcome in the study of history, but surely Ridley could have done better than to repeat some rather tired old cliches. It's really a shame and a surprise that this book is not better, considering the fine books Ridley has written in the past (e.g. biographies of Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley, two of the most prominent Marian martyrs.)

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good history, November 26, 2001

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror (Hardcover)

Between February 1555 and November 1558, 227 men and 56 women were brutally killed for their faith, during the reign of "Bloody" Queen Mary. In this book, Jasper Ridley tells their story, exposing all of the inhumanity that enfolded in those 45 dark months. The final chapter discusses the early years Elizabeth I's reign, and significance of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

This book makes for some hair-raising bedtime reading! It goes into excruciating detail of the victim's sufferings, giving a fairly in-depth understanding of what happened. Unfortunately, the author doesn't spend any space offering any analysis. For example, the Queen's false pregnancy was mentioned, but the author does not examine her mental stability, as I wish he would have. Also, I could have wished for an analysis of what the effects of this persecution were on English society. So, let me say that this is a good, but not a great book on Mary's persecutions. I therefore give it a somewhat qualified recommendation.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A horrifying tale of sadism, cruelty, and intolerance, August 22, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror (Hardcover)

It would be hard put to find a more pathetic, neurotic English Monarch than Mary Tudor (aka "Bloody Mary") with the exception of maybe her merciless, egotistical (yet forever fascinating)father Henry VIII. Mary Tudor was a Queen who actually thought she was doing God's work by roasting the flesh of Protestant "heretics." What makes this book so good besides the writing is that it tells how hypocritical some of the persecutors were i.e. people who rejected Papal Supremcay under Henry VIII all of a sudden condemning people to the stake for holding the same positions on Papal Supremacy that their persecutors once held. 283 men and women were sent to the stake from Feb. 1555 until a week before Mary I's death in Nov. 1558. Although some were famous Churchmen (the most prominent being Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in Oxford - who was subjected to psychological torture that would have made any Stalinist proud), most were simple artisans and laborers who heroically refused to recant their disbelief in the Real Presence in the Host and also refused to accept that the Pope was the Head of the Church in England. The stories about these poor martyrs are very horrific indeed. One is of a blind girl who was a rope maker who was sent to the stake, others were mere teenagers who had been taught nothing but Protestant doctrines since their childhood during the reaign of Edward VI (1547-53). The villains in this holocaust are: Mary Tudor, Bishop Bonner, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Archdeacon Nicholas Harpsfield and assorted clerics and persecuting Bishops and political chameleons such as the infamous Richard Rich and Edmund Tyrrel. Ridley has written several books on Tudor England and its monarchs. In this book and in his other books he does not disguise his dislike for Sir Thomas More calling him "a particularly sadomasochistic pervert who enjoyed being flogged by his own daughter." Far from being an anti-Catholic bigot though he does mention that the Protestants udner Edward VI and Elizabeth I did burn a handful of Anabaptists and that some of those martyred under Queen Mary did approve of burning Anabaptists. Nevertheless there is a lesson in the book that we can learn from in the present time- that is to avoid religious fanaticism under any circumstances. The book is short (only 230 pages) and well researched. A minor error is where Ridley refers to "Richard Bilney" when the martyrs real name was Thomas Bilney. However I do recommend this book highly as well as his 3 Tudor Biographies which are : Statesman and Saint (a dual biography of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Sir Thomas More), Henry VII, and Elizabeth I.