Customer Reviews

Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror

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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.)

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.

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.

I think that I am with Todd (see his review below) on this one. It is a great topic, but one that seems unduly light in the hands of Ridley. I do not mind the salacious aspects of the burnings at all. The problem is that Ridley cannot make up his mind if he is going to regal us with stories of grisly burnings till we can almost smell the burning flesh, or rather engage in a sort of mildly analytical narrative of the fluctuations of the Catholic vs. Protestant battles that went on in the hearts and minds of people in 16th Century England and Europe.

Both objectives would be fine by me. But he really just starts on track and then quickly switches to another. I can handle the fact that he is merely regurgitating "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" --there are a lot of august historians that make their honest living doing this well -- but Ridley really never pulls it off.

There is of course some of the value judgements that rear their heads at obscure and incomplete times. At times Ridley reminds me of some of the disjointed conversations I used to have with some of my (ancient English) relatives on the perils of Popery! in the 21st Cen! --- One would think that we could get past that. In other passages Ridley talks about the struggle in the hearts of all people and the brutal "terror" of the burning -- which easily eclipsed the rather limited burnings of Henry VIII.

Just barely kept my interest. I selected it as my ripping read of the week (you know, the one you read after you have grown bored with reading philosophy of science books and you can no longer concentrate on Hobsbawm -- the time where you just want to revel in the joys of Counter Reformation excess before crawling off to bed), but this book did not accomplish that for me....

It was OK, but with a read like this it does not encourage one to read Ridley's other works.

Ridley, a well known scholar and writer of UK history, really disappoints with this biased and amateur account(more like a retelling of a more famous book) of one of the Tudor's most infamous periods. Expecting so much more, from the first page it's obvious that Ridley (A Catholic?), seeks to place the blame on someone without looking at the psychological warfare that was going on inside Queen Mary (the first)to begin with.

It's never referred to and never accounted for the number of "Privy Councillors" that Mary had and listened to compared to the other Tudor Monarch's that were there step by step and through ever day of her reign. At one point, it got up to well over twenty, whereas in comparison, Elizabeth never went beyond five !! Then there is also the presence of the Hapsburgs particulary Phillip II who I hold responsible, in every way just as much as Mary was.

What you get is a finger pointing excerise and poorly written at that. May as well just find a copy of Foxes "Book Of Martyrs" and be done with it.

Bloody Mary's executions of Protestants created a deep seated hatred of Catholics in the English soul and cast a long shadow. Understanding what happened in this period of English history is essential to understanding the next 400 years. However this book is primarily a distillation of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and provides little more than a list of martyrs with only a limited attempt at understanding the forces at play.

Ridley details the martyrdom of 283 people whom were mostly burned at the stake during Mary Tudor's reign as Queen of England. Over a period of 45 months she and her minions burned these so called heretics for things like refusing to attend mass, refusing to agree that Christ's real presence was in the elements and refusing allegiance to the Pope. More people were burned and martyred during her short reign that in the previous 150 years in England. It was a sad time in history.

True to the title, Mr. Ridley's account is a listing and play by play of the many men and women who were subjected to the ritual "burning at the stake" for alleged "heretical" behaviour. Ridley seems to delight in the particulars of each event. Some were roasted singularly, and others were grouped together... The author does paint a grisly picture... especially when the wind changes.... As I read the accounts, I could not help but wonder what about the psychological makeup of Mary. I would have been equally interested in Ridley's assessment, based on historical evidence, of her state of mind. I wonder if there have been other accounts that deal with her pathological state of mind rather than the historical tail of her rein...

Mary's rounding up of Protestant revolutionaries, while deplorable, pales in comparison to the crimes of her father King Henry VIII and her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I.

Prior to Henry and Elizabeth, Catholicism was woven into the fabric of English society. You can still find echoes of it today in everything from patterns of speech (the omnipresent adjective "bloody" is a truncation of the oath "By Our Lady") to place names (Blackfriars refers to a Dominican priory).

That is why it was necessary for Henry and then Elizabeth to turn England into a virtual police state to effect the former's violent, imposed Anglican revolution. Elizabeth executed more than 800 Englishmen in the first year alone of her forty-year reign.

Much as Protestants imitated and countered Catholic books on authentic martyrs once they grew in popularity (through the so-called "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" upon which this volume is based), so too does this book merely attempt to undo the growing recognition by scholars that the anti-Catholic "Whig interpretation" of history that held sway for centuries was and is nothing more than state propaganda.