All language subtitles for Lucy Worsley Investigates s02e04 - Bloody Mary (2025) 720p [SubRipper.com].en

London.

October 1st, 1553.

The next monarch of England
is preparing to be crowned.

For the first time, the country
will be ruled by a woman.

Mary I.

But this monarch will be remembered
not as a pioneer...

..but as a monster.

In her five-year reign, hundreds
are killed in the name of religion,

earning her the label Bloody Mary.

But does England's first queen
really deserve her reputation

as one of Britain's most evil
tyrants?

In this series, I'm reinvestigating

some of the most dramatic and brutal
chapters in British history.

Oh, yes. Here we go.

And now you're face-to-face
with William the Conqueror.

They know that sex sells
and that violence sells.

These stories form part
of our national mythology.

They harbour mysteries that have
intrigued us for centuries.

It turns very dark here.

It sounds like a network
of informers, doesn't it?

There's such graphic images
of religious violence.

But with the passage of time,

we have new ways to unlock
their secrets,

using scientific advances and
a modern perspective.

He was what we would now call
a foreign fighter.

I'm going to uncover forgotten
witnesses.

I'm going to re-examine old evidence
and follow new clues...

The human hand.

..to get closer to the truth.

It's like fake news.

You're questioning whether we can
actually take that seriously,

as a piece of evidence.

Hampton Court Palace.

Family home of England's original
Tudor queen.

Daughter of Henry VIII,

Mary I.

She walked these cloisters,
and lived in these rooms.

There are echoes of Mary's
presence here,

but the real Mary seems
lost in history.

Mary was England's first crowned
female monarch,

and this meant she had to create a
whole new role.

The role of queen regnant,
or ruling queen.

And Mary created a blueprint that
all the queens to come would follow.

From Elizabeth I to Victoria to
Elizabeth II.

I think of Mary as a female
trailblazer...

..but she's all too often remembered
as a bloody tyrant.

During Mary's five years in power,

more than 280 people were killed
for their faith.

Her reputation seems sealed.

But Mary lived in a divided time,

and as a historian,

I know there's always more than one
side to a story.

So I want to look at Mary afresh,
through different eyes.

Her supporters', her enemies',
and Mary's own.

To examine how she navigated
ruling as a woman,

and if Bloody Mary is really how
she deserves to be remembered.

I'm starting my investigation

with a very rare glimpse of Mary
as a child.

Special Collections.

In the stores at the National
Portrait Gallery,

I'm hoping to be able to come
face-to-face

with the young princess.

Here are some
exciting-looking little boxes.

I'm here to see what's thought to be
the earliest portrait miniature

produced in England.

The artform's intended to give
a sense of intimacy.

It's an image of Mary,
dating to 1522.

There she is. There she is.

Can I touch? Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

You're very welcome. Yeah.

It's Mary. Yeah.

Incredible level of details.

She's got really red hair,
hasn't she? Yes, she does.

Like you'd expect from Henry VIII's
daughter.

It's such a precious-feeling little
thing,

and it's 500 years old. Yes.

I'm interested in what this painting
reveals about Mary's status.

The gallery's state-of-the-art
microscope

might give me an even closer look.

It's just fantastic.

You can see the individual
flakes of the paint.

When this portrait was made, Mary
was a much-loved six-year-old.

This was painted for a special
reason,

and the clue to what that was...

There it is. It's down here.

You can see that on her dress,

she's wearing a brooch, a golden
brooch,

and it says on it, in tiny
letters, "The Emperor".

So this is one of the European
rulers.

It's the Emperor Charles V,

and the picture's been painted

because Mary's just been engaged
to him.

This is the fate of a princess.

She's like a little chess piece...

..that her father is using to play
the game of European politics.

The Mary I'm seeing here
had her whole future mapped out.

But then, in her teens, everything
changed.

Here we have Henry VIII...

..and he's married to Catherine
of Aragon,

from Spain.

A very devout Catholic.

Poor Catherine had a whole series
of miscarriages,

stillbirths, children who
died young.

Their daughter Mary was the only one
of their children to survive.

But Henry was desperate
for a male heir.

He and Catherine had not
had the all-important son,

so he wanted a divorce,
to marry Anne Boleyn.

In 1533, he got his way by splitting
from Rome and the Catholic Church,

opening the door to the English
Protestant Reformation,

and dividing the country.

Mary was now declared illegitimate.

At 17, she was stripped of her
royal title

and threatened with death
as a traitor for her beliefs.

She would come to define her life
by her Catholic faith

and her right to the throne.

This sounds like a woman
with immense self-confidence.

And I'm curious about her journey
from outcast to queen.

I'm heading to Framlingham,
in Suffolk,

where Mary would make
some crucial decisions,

six years after her father's death.

Mary had been Henry's eldest child.

Then came Elizabeth,

followed by Henry's longed-for
son, Edward.

On Henry's death, nine-year-old
Edward inherited the throne,

but he would die as a young
teenager.

Aged 37, Mary could now claim her
right to the crown.

Now, there'd never been a ruling
queen in England before.

There had been queens, but they'd
been the wives of kings.

Unlike some of the countries
of Europe, though, there was nothing

in English law to stop there
being a female ruler.

Technically, at least, Mary could go
right ahead and take the throne.

But King Edward had been influenced
by powerful Protestant nobles.

On his deathbed,

he bypassed Catholic Mary...

..and declared a distant cousin,

the Protestant Lady Jane Grey,
as his successor.

To win her crown, Mary would
need to fight,

and on 12th July 1553,

she came here, to her castle at
Framlingham,

to rally support for her cause.

The stakes couldn't have been higher
for Mary at this moment.

If her attempt to seize the
throne failed,

she'd either have to go into exile,

or, if they caught her,

she'd be executed as a traitor.

I'm meeting a specialist in Tudor
relationships,

who believes that applying modern
analysis to old evidence

might reveal Mary's tactics.

Melita, we're sitting on the spot
of what was once

the great hall of Framlingham
Castle.

Those are bits of Tudor
walls up there.

I think we can imagine Mary spending
some anxious hours in here,

thinking, "Who's on my side?"

Can you tell me a bit more about
your research into Mary's network?

Yes, I've been doing what's called
social network analysis.

So I've put together, and I'm still
working on it,

it's a massive database of all of
the connections that Mary

had to different people.

My goodness, it looks
like a Spirograph.

Yes.

Is that Mary, right in the middle?
It is Mary. Right in the centre.

So, Melita, are we looking at the
Tudor version of LinkedIn?

That's it. Absolutely, yes.

Now the different colours
of connection

represent different things. OK.

Green represents an award.

So it's a grant of office.

We've got also purple lines,

and that's gifts, in a more
tangible sense.

So jewellery or quite often
clothing or fruit.

We've got quite a lot of records
from her Privy Purse expenses

from the, in the 1530s and '40s.

She's given an awful lot of gifts,
hasn't she? Mary was very generous.

And is this how you build
up a following,

if you want to be a powerful Tudor
person? Exactly, yes.

Because the trick is you always
wanted them

to be slightly grateful to you.

Oh, there's a Framlingham filter
in the programme. Yes.

And we can see who supported
Mary immediately.

Now, two in there you can see
with little red spots.

They were actually members
of Edward's Privy Council,

and yet they were immediate
supporters of Mary.

And if you click on
Richards Southall, we can see...

That over a period of years he and
Mary have exchanged gifts.

Yes. And she's given him more than
he's given her. Oh, yes.

So she has kind of... Cultivated.
..cultivated him.

You've got a filter that's actually
called "Defected to Mary". Yes.

Brilliant. Look at it doing its
thing.

I know. It's amazing.

So one of the people who defected
to her was Henry Fitzalan,

Earl of Arundel.

His first wife had been one
of her ladies-in-waiting,

and of the men who support
her in 1553,

you can often see that there are
relationships through their wives

and their sisters.

So it's interesting that she's built
up friendships with the females

of this family, and they bring
over their male relatives. Yes.

I think we can definitely see
a connection between family pressure

through women's networks.

Was it presumably Catholics who were
the fastest in coming forward?

Catholics were definitely
amongst her core supporters,

but she also had Protestants,
because she was the legitimate heir.

The Mary you're talking about sounds
like she's friendly,

she's generous,
she's well-connected.

She's somebody who knows
how to build loyalty.

I think she had the gift
of friendship,

and Mary's a lot more fun than
people give her credit for. Really?

She loved to dance.

She loved to hunt.

She did archery.

She knew in her heart
that she was a queen,

and I think that was another
element,

her self-belief and her
determination.

She said, "I'm Queen and I'm going
to be Queen

"and I'm going to absolutely insist
on my rights."

She was a politician to the tips
of her royal fingers.

Absolutely.

It strikes me that Mary had no
hope of seizing the throne

without her quite considerable
emotional intelligence.

She needed to win hearts
and minds to her side.

There's no sign of the
cold-hearted tyrant Here.

This was a woman who was sociable.

She was generous.

This was a leader who people
wanted to follow.

And follow Mary they did.

In July 1553, Mary gathered hundreds
of her supporters here,

ready and willing to fight for the
throne.

In the end, no battle was needed.

The tide of support had turned
in Mary's favour,

so the Protestant nobles
conceded defeat.

Mary had thrown off years of bitter
persecution,

and rallied a country behind her to
win the throne,

but she would now have to deal
with the rituals of royalty,

which were,
until this moment, made for men.

BELLS PEAL

Nearly 500 years ago, on
1st October 1553,

Mary walked down this very aisle
in Westminster Abbey

to be crowned.

Mary was at the front of this whole
long procession of her knights

and her counsellors and her dukes.

She did have some ladies with her,

but the focus was all on Mary
herself.

For the first time at a coronation,
a woman was leading the men.

But a coronation designed for kings

presented some problems for the
first queen.

When there was a new monarch, there
was normally the creation

of some new Knights of the Bath,

and these knights had to go through
a ritual purification

that involved them going naked into
a bath of water,

before kissing the shoulder
of the king.

Now, this wasn't quite right
for Mary,

so she had one of her earls stand in
for her during the naked part.

Mary had to reinvent the rules
in other ways, too.

Her coronation regalia included
the spurs of a knight,

but unlike kings before her,
Mary didn't put them on.

She did receive the sword,

a symbol that she was now
Defender of the Realm.

It seems to me that Mary had a very
difficult line to tread here.

She almost had to blur the genders.

She had to portray herself as a king
for legitimacy and authority,

but she also had to tear up
the rule book,

and make the ritual suitable
for a woman.

And what she did would set
the pattern for all the

female monarchs who followed.

This area up here is off-limits,

because that mosaic
is over 750 years old.

It's much too fragile to be
walked on,

but that's the exact spot
where Mary was crowned,

and it's still the exact spot

where monarchs are crowned
to this day.

At the actual moment of crowning,

Mary was on the coronation chair

that was placed on a platform

and the Crown Imperial was put
onto her head.

The coronation service was a full
Catholic Mass.

Mary couldn't officially restore
the Catholic faith

until Parliament reconvened...

..so she was crowned
Supreme Head of the Protestant

Church of England.

The country celebrated,

and there were parties in the
streets of London.

But within just five years,

hundreds of ordinary people
would be killed in Mary's name.

The new Queen's Catholic beliefs

would make her rule hugely
polarising.

Naturally, as a historian,

I want to interrogate this period
from different angles.

So I wonder what I can learn from
the experience of someone living

on the other side
of the religious divide.

This is a copy of a page
from Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

It's an account of Mary's reign
by a strongly Protestant critic.

It's very one-sided.

I've got to be wary of that.

But it does give the story
of a Protestant woman

who found Mary's rule horrifyingly
harsh.

She's referred to here as
"Driver's wyfe",

meaning the wife of a man called
Driver.

She's presented very much
as his property.

She was about the age of 30
years,

and she dwelt at
Grundisburgh, in Suffolk.

It says that her husband
did use husbandry,

which means a subsistence farmer.

Then we get quite a lot
more detail about

what happened to her.

And then here, her name was Alice.

Alice Driver.

This young farmer's wife
lived just ten miles

from Framlingham Castle,

the site of Mary's triumph.

But under the new regime, her faith
put her at risk of execution.

To get a sense of why a woman
like Alice might become a threat

to the Queen of England,

I've come to Grundisburgh,
in Suffolk, where Alice lived.

Here's a piece of 16th-century
evidence

that I think might give
an insight into Alice's life here.

This is Fitzherbert's Book
of Husbandry, from 1523,

and here's a section called
The Duties of Wives.

Presumably this is the sort of thing
that Alice was expected to do.

"It is a wife's occupation
to winnow all manner of corn."

"In time of need, to help her
husband to fill the muck wayne."

The muck wayne being the dung cart.

And she also has to drive
the plough,

which sounds quite masculine,
actually -

a bit surprised about that.

And she also has to go to the market
to sell the butter, the cheese,

the milk, the eggs, the chickens,
the hens, the pigs.

That sounds like a pretty hard life
with a lot of hard labour in it.

Long hours, I guess.

At the heart of village life
when Alice lived here

was the church.

And Alice would likely have
worshipped in this very building,

nearly 500 years ago.

Look at these amazing angels
on the roof, with their big wings.

Now, Alice, extraordinarily,
would have been here in the service

with them up above her.

This church building would have been
a constant in Alice's life.

But the religion practised here
varied.

She was just five when Henry VIII
turns this from a Catholic church

to Church of England.

Alice grew up in the
Protestant faith,

but 20 years later,
it would change back again.

It was maybe here at the church
that Alice learned

that Queen Mary had come
to the throne,

and that this church would once
again become Catholic.

Mary's restoration of Catholicism

meant Alice would no longer be
allowed to worship in here

as a Protestant.

She would now need to convert
or risk getting into trouble.

Mary herself had experienced
pressure to convert.

She had fought hard
for her Catholic faith.

Now, as Queen, her drive to make
the whole country Catholic

set her on a collision course
with Protestants across England.

But those who supported Mary

must have had a very different view
of her reign.

So I've come to Cambridge University
Library in search of a source

that should offer a much less
familiar take on "Bloody Mary" -

a Spanish one.

Mary was half Spanish
on her mother's side.

I've enlisted a Spanish historian

to help me decipher
this perspective.

This is quite exciting, isn't it?

Oh, look how dinky it is.

It's like a little toy book.

So there's his name,

which I fear I'm going to make a
terrible job of pronouncing.

Will you say it for me?

His name is Pedro de Ribadeneira.

And he was a Spaniard who came
to England? Yes, he did.

He came to England in 1558.

He was a Catholic priest

and he stayed in the kingdom
for a few months.

I am reading this,

I think it says,
"the virtues of the Queen..."

So, "de las virtudes de la Reina
Dona Maria", is,

as you very well said
"on the virtues of Queen Mary."

What are they? What are the virtues?
Take me through it.

Well, Ribadeneira thinks
that Mary is a good Catholic

who is leading her kingdom
towards salvation.

She respects the primacy
of the Pope.

She cares for her people.

May I just say, he would say that,
though, wouldn't he,

with his Catholic perspective.

Of course he is going to be
seeing her in such a good light,

which contrasts a lot with
what other, Protestant, historians

were writing about Mary
in the 16th century.

Did the author of the book
actually meet Mary?

He did meet the Queen in person
and was in the same room with her.

An eyewitness, then.

There is a description of Mary.

"Queen Mary was grave,
she was measured.

"And when young they say
that she was beautiful,

"but with all the mistreatments
in her life, she lost that beauty."

He says specifically that she looks
older than her age.

And it then says she had
"a rough voice,

"more like that of a man
than that of a woman."

I imagine that might be quite useful
if you have to command men

to do things, which she does.

She's very good at making herself
listened, understood, and obeyed.

That's quite interesting,

because even today it's hard
for women to get themselves heard.

And does he give any comment
about her performance

once she's in the role as Queen?

Yes, he does indeed.

The economic situation that Mary
inherits is not an easy one,

but from the very beginning
of her reign,

she decides that she's going to make
changes and reforms.

According to Ribadeneira, she
reforms the court of the Exchequer

and she creates a new book of rates
that increases the Crown's income.

So she cuts taxes,
she reforms bureaucracy

and she increases Crown revenues.

She's doing a great job.
She is indeed.

We usually tend to see the beginning
of Elizabeth's reign,

and the prosperity, as something
that is achieved by Elizabeth.

It was achieved by Mary!
But she is the one achieving it.

She is the one that is setting
the base for that future prosperity.

And how does she go about
restoring Catholicism?

How does she actually
do that in practice?

Now, she's cautious at the beginning

in the sense that she doesn't want
to force people.

She understands that there
has been a lot of upheaval,

and she is very pragmatic.

On this page, she is talking
about how those who had acquired

church land during the
dissolution of the monasteries

of her father's reign are being
allowed to keep that land.

And over here we see that
she allowed all marriages

that had taken place through the
Protestant rite to remain valid.

You're talking as if Bloody Mary,
the tyrant,

was actually quite reasonable
and sensible and pragmatic.

Compared to other rulers
of her time, I would say absolutely.

Wasn't that fascinating, to get
a Spanish perspective on Mary,

one that sees her as a pretty
effective ruler?

Now, I do concede that Ribadeneira
is a partial witness.

He's very pro-Catholic, pro-Mary,

but he does admit
that she has some flaws.

There's a bit of balance there,

almost as if Mary wasn't entirely
good or entirely bad.

Almost as if she was a human being.

According to this side of the story,

at the start of her reign,
Mary wanted to restore Catholicism

but didn't want to use force.

Protestants like Alice Driver
were left in peace for now.

So if this is true, why
did Mary change direction?

In the summer of 1554, about nine
months into her reign,

Mary got married.

She needed a husband
because she needed an heir.

Hi, there. Hello, madam.

Can we go to the Spanish Embassy,
please? Certainly.

Belgrave Square. Thanks.

But a man at her side

could potentially undermine
Mary's position as Queen.

Her new husband
was a devout Catholic,

and a cousin on her mother's side -
Philip of Spain.

Mary and Philip married
in July 1554.

Philip was the son of the
Emperor Charles V,

ironically, the very man Mary had

been betrothed to as a child.

Philip was heir
to the Spanish throne

and an enormous
European empire.

Even before the wedding took place,

a group of Protestants mounted
a rebellion

to try to stop the marriage
and overthrow the Queen.

So how does a married woman rule
with authority

in a traditional society
where men dominate?

To find out, I'm meeting an expert
in 16th-century marriage treaties.

Alexander, we've got a completely
unprecedented situation here.

We've got Mary, a female ruler,
with a male consort.

And he's a foreigner as well!

Yes. How are they going to rule
in practice?

How is she going to make sure
that he doesn't boss her about?

Well, one of the key, key
ways of doing that

is through the stipulations
that they have

in their marriage contract.

And here we have the copy
from the National Archives

of the English draft that formed
the basis of the document

that they both eventually
went on to sign.

So this is like a prenup?
Exactly. Yes.

Setting out all of the kind of
legal limitations on his power

and also settling her position
constitutionally.

This is one of my favourite clauses,
down the bottom -

"That the said noble prince
shall nothing do

"whereby anything be innovate
in the state and right public."

So he's not allowed to make
new laws or anything like that.

He's not allowed to make new laws
or to change anything, effectively,

constitutionally, particularly.
Stay in your lane, Philip.

So I think we can see
that in this first clause here

that he shall "not promote, admit
or receive to any office,

"administration or benefice
in the said realm of England

"anyone who is not a natural-born
subject of the Queen of England."

So he's not going to be allowed
to put any of his own people

into English jobs
and positions and offices.

Exactly that. He is excluded,
specifically, powers of patronage,

taking them away from Philip,
ensuring that Mary retains

complete control of who is in
the key offices of state.

There were people who saw the
Spanish marriage as very dangerous.

People in England did not want
England to become a satellite state

of this broader Hispanic monarchy,
or this broader European empire.

For Mary, it's obviously
really important that her subjects

and Parliament know that power
will be not given away

to Philip too much. Yeah, yeah.
How does she circulate that news?

She has the terms declared
and proclaimed

to all of the people of England.

And in addition to this, the English
Parliament passes, in 1554,

the Act for the Queen's Regal Power,

which essentially settles,
constitutionally,

her right to rule in her own right.

And so the name of "king" and
"queen" are kind of made equivalent,

so that all legislation which refers
to kings now applies to queens.

And in fact, it's the constitutional
basis for Elizabeth's authority

in the Elizabethan period, which
follows on straight from this one.

On paper, Mary had successfully
managed the power dynamic

with Philip, but I've got proof
that she still had something

of a PR problem.

For the first time
in the English coinage,

we've got two people on the money.

There's Philip, there's Mary,

and a little floating crown
to show that they rule together.

But you can also see the scale
of the problem that she had,

because the person on the left
in a double portrait

is the person who's more dominant,

and in this case,
that person is Philip.

A craftsman who would earn
a shilling as his day's wages

would get this in his hand,
and he'd think,

"Oh, yes, Philip and Mary -
they are our rulers now.

"Our Queen has given away
her power."

Mary's marriage had reignited
anti-Catholic feeling,

and for me, Mary's marriage
raises questions

about her persecution
of Protestants.

Did her husband influence her
to take a harder line?

Or did she feel she had to assert
her authority

in the face of religious division?

Either way, she tightened her grip.

In December 1554,
Mary reintroduced heresy laws.

Protestant beliefs were now
punishable by death.

It was an act that would come
to define her reign,

in large part because of a book

which claims to tell us
what happened next...

..Foxe's Book of Martyrs -

the book where I found the story
of the farmer's wife, Alice Driver.

Thank you.

Oh, it's heavy.

I wonder if seeing an original copy
at Trinity College, Cambridge,

can help me understand
this book's power.

This is Foxe's Book of Martyrs,

and it's a history of the church

going from the first century
right up until the reign of Mary I.

But this is a history book
with a clear bias,

because John Foxe
was a prominent Protestant.

What John Foxe doesn't like about
Mary is her Catholicism.

And at the start of her reign,

he and his family went
to live in exile.

He was out of England
when he was writing this.

Let's go to the part of the book
where Mary appears.

Here it is -
"The coming in of Queen Mary,"

and the whole of the rest of it -
700 pages here -

are basically about the
terrible things done to Protestants

in her name.

What makes the book so powerful,
I think, are the images,

the woodcuts.

They're such graphic images
of religious violence.

This one shows a man
being burnt alive at the stake.

The most horrible, long-drawn-out,
painful death imaginable.

And you can tell he's alive,

although the flames are all
around him

because he's saying,
"Lord, receive my spirit."

And there's a crowd. And the crowd
are visibly distressed.

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

Looking at Foxe's account,

it's easy to believe that Mary
was a queen on the rampage.

But I think it's time for more
of Mary's side of the story.

There's an intriguing source
from 1555

that gives some insight
into her thinking at the time.

This is a report
to the church authorities

recording the "opinion
of the Queen of England,"

which she has written out
"with her own hand."

So it's a record of Mary's
actual words.

And she says that "touching
the punishment of heretics..."

By punishment, she does mean
burnings and executions.

She says, "it would be well
to inflict punishment

"without much cruelty or passion."

So she's emphasising moderation.

She says that she wants to target

the people who "deceive the simple,"

by which I think she means
clever preachers

who are out there actively spreading
the Protestant message.

And the punishments are to be

"an example to the whole
of this kingdom."

So they're supposed
to be a deterrent.

So that's quite surprising.

When it comes to the burning
of Protestants,

Mary seems to want quite
a targeted approach.

If this is to be believed,

Mary was aiming to make an example
of the leaders of the faith

in the hope the rest would submit.

But Alice Driver
wasn't a powerful leader,

just a Suffolk farmer's wife.

Why would an ordinary woman
become a target?

I'm meeting a historian
who might have evidence

of how the crackdown on Protestants
was carried out at a local level.

So I've got something here
to show you,

which is an 18th-century book,
with a letter

sent to the Justices of the Peace
in 1555,

sent to every county in England,
from Philip and Mary.

And it describes really well

what the monarchy wants
from the Justices of the Peace,

who are the enforcers of local order
at this point.

Can I take a look? Yeah.

So it says here preachers
are to be sent into the counties

to preach the Catholic doctrine
to the people.

Literal indoctrination.

And if you don't come to church

to "travail soberly with them."

What does that mean?
To "travail soberly with them"?

It doesn't sound good.
Massage their minds, I think.

Kind of help them think better. Wow.

Deal, deal harshly with them.

I guess that the Protestants,

because they're not officially
allowed to exist,

are meeting-up in secret, are they?

Certainly, for those people
who are active and committed

and resistant Protestants,

it does seem to become something
like an underground movement.

They're having to practise secretly,
meet secretly.

And in a village like this,
how do you keep a secret?

Presumably everybody knows
everybody else's business.

Early modern society is very, um...

Nosy? Very nosy.

The way that the legal system,
right back from the medieval period

has worked, is it totally depends on
people knowing each other's business

and wanting to know each
other's business.

So if there's a big
religious change,

and one religion becomes outlawed,
it's like everybody in the community

becomes a member
of the thought police, really.

Every parish would have to make
their own decision

about what they're going
to complain about

and what they're going to ignore.

Laura, this is terrible.

"One or more men in every parish
to be secretly instructed

"to give information on the
behaviour of the inhabitants."

It sounds like a network
of informers, doesn't it?

It sounds just like
the secret police in East Germany.

Neighbours shopping neighbours.
Mm, mm, yeah, yeah. Oof!

And the Justices are to meet
at least once a month

to check-up on how progress is.

I suppose what you want
to think about is,

it is neighbours shopping
neighbours, but it's heresy.

You have got to... Some of... These
people will be convinced

that you have to root heresy out.

Actually, to these people then,
this was...

It's an impurity in your community
that you have to remove.

Hmm.

We don't know who betrayed Alice...

..but Foxe's Book of Martyrs,
our main source on Alice,

tells us that she and another
Protestant were hiding

from the authorities
when they got caught.

Alice was taken to the local town

and imprisoned, to await trial
and her fate.

From the summer of 1555,

the number of burnings across
the country were ramping up.

Records show they more than doubled

between the first half of the year
and the second.

I want to understand how Mary
was feeling at this point.

I suspect it's not a coincidence
that this was happening

during a moment of personal
upheaval.

In the spring of 1555,

Mary withdrew to her private
chambers at Hampton Court.

She believed she was pregnant.

This child would secure Mary's line
of succession

and the future of Catholicism
in England.

These are copies of ambassadors'
letters from court.

This lot are in French.

And the hot topic
is the Queen's pregnancy.

He's talking about the size
of her stomach

and the hardening
of her..."mammels".

He must mean her breasts.

And they are "distilling" a liquid.

I guess that might mean lactating.

Poor Mary.

These are really intimate
details being shared.

Seems completely inappropriate.

But I guess it's her job.

She's supposed to produce
the heir to the throne,

so her body is public property.

Documents from this time
that Mary herself had a hand in

add to the sense of joyful
anticipation.

These cards, pre-prepared,

ready to be sent out to dignitaries
across Europe,

announcing the birth,
when it happens.

They've been signed
by Mary, the Queen.

And they announce the birth
of a prince at Hampton Court.

And then a gap has been left
blank here

just for the date to be popped in,
when it actually happens.

The reason they're still blank

is that nine months went past,
and no baby came.

Mary was actually experiencing
a phantom pregnancy.

To delve into this
mysterious condition

and the impact it would
have had on Mary,

I'm hoping a psychiatrist can give
me a modern medical perspective.

Mary I has had a phantom pregnancy.

Can you tell me what that actually
is in medical terms?

Phantom pregnancy means
false pregnancy - pseudocyesis.

So it means you think
you're pregnant

because you see the signs and
symptoms, but actually you're not.

Do you ever see this today
in your practice?

It doesn't seem like
it's a very common condition.

In Western medicine, you wouldn't
typically get a case

of phantom pregnancy, because if you
think you're pregnant,

you will have a urine test
to check your pregnancy,

you will have a Doppler scan -
ultrasound scan - and blood test.

So automatically,
right at the start,

you would know you're not pregnant.
I've got something to show you.

This is a medical paper
from America in 1951

of a variety of cases
of pseudocyesis.

Ooh!

"A Psychosomatic Study
In Gynaecology."

And there are breast changes -
enlargement,

tenderness, secretion of milky
or cloudy fluid.

They've mentioned here a case study

where there were 27 patients
who presented as pregnant.

And this was confirmed in nine
of the cases by doctors.

The doctors were taken in!

So in relatively recent times,

people were still having
phantom pregnancies. 1951. Mm.

And what causes it?

If we like to categorise, we might
think psychological or hormonal.

So the psychological side,
there's a variety of risk factors.

So if someone has had
emotional abuse,

if someone's longing
to be pregnant,

if someone's had difficulty
getting pregnant,

there's a variety of reasons.

There's quite a few things that you
just listed that do apply to Mary.

She did have a difficult childhood -
she wasn't taken care of,

people threatened her with death.

And a huge, huge, huge amount
of pressure to bear a child.

Is it possible for you to speculate
as to what might have happened

to her after the phantom pregnancy
was over, then?

I imagine a great deal of distress.

It must be quite frightening,
actually,

because she would have had a
distended abdomen

and she would have had these
bodily changes,

but no understanding
why that's happening.

And I suppose she's lost
a whole imagined future.

I mean, if we think, you know,
you're longing for a child,

you've created a bond,
and that's suddenly taken away.

So I can imagine she must
have felt very anxious,

very low in mood, and emotionally,
psychologically,

it must have been absolutely
dreadful to go through it.

Mary must have felt like her body
had failed her.

And she was 39 years old,

which, in 16th-century terms, meant
that her chances of getting pregnant

again were diminishing very fast.

As a woman, this would have been
a huge personal trauma,

but as a queen, it was a crisis.

With no heir, the future of Catholic
England hung in the balance.

Tensions were rising.

Troops were brought into London
to maintain order.

By 1556, a major plot against
the Queen was uncovered,

an attempt to replace her with her
Protestant sister, Elizabeth.

Mary was now living in fear.

She was sleeping only three hours
a night.

Mary was clearly struggling
on a personal level

with her mental health,
her physical health.

And I'm left wondering what that
might have meant for her as a ruler.

Was her authority still intact?

Was she really able still to govern
the country in the same way?

In places like rural Suffolk,

it was local authorities
who wielded the power.

THEY could decide how to enforce
religious policies.

The Protestant source,
Foxe's Book of Martyrs,

contains a detailed account of how
Alice Driver's trial unfolded.

Alice is brought to her trial
at Ipswich.

She would have been quite likely
the only woman present.

Then a lengthy theological
debate begins,

and during it Alice shows
that she's more than capable

of standing up for herself,
intellectually.

As she says here to the courtroom -

it's amazing this.

She just goes off onto this speech
of her own.

She says, "I was an honest,
poor-man's daughter,

"never brought up in the university,
as you have been..."

..but I have driven the plough
before my father many a time,

and I thank God.

In defence of God's truth and in the
cause of my master, Christ,

by His grace I would set my foot
against the foot of any of you.

She's standing up for herself,
answering back.

She will set her foot against
the foot of any of these men

sitting in trial upon her.

It's an extraordinary moment
of courage.

Alice staunchly defended herself
and her faith.

She was found guilty of heresy.

What strikes me reading this

is that Alice and Mary
weren't so very different.

They were both of them
women who broke the rules.

They were women who did things
that women weren't supposed to do.

And they also had such a deep
religious faith

that they defended it
at enormous personal cost.

Which is why it's so very painful

that it's now in Mary's name
that Alice is condemned to die.

There's no paper trail linking Mary
to Alice's fate.

It was the church authorities

who chose how extreme
the punishment should be.

On the 4th of November 1558,

Alice Driver was burnt alive
at the stake.

She was one of the last people
to be killed under Mary's regime...

..because, only two weeks later,
on the 17th of November,

Queen Mary herself died.

She'd been struggling
with ill health

ever since her phantom pregnancy.

The likely cause of death
was cancer.

She was 42 years old.

Now her Protestant sister,
Elizabeth I,

would succeed to the throne.

And I believe Mary would become
the victim of a smear campaign.

There's no denying the brutal
religious persecutions

of Mary's reign.

Those Protestant accounts
are based on real deaths.

But at this time,
Europe was bitterly divided

between Catholic and Protestant,
with mass killings on both sides.

Henry VIII had thousands put

to death in the name of religion.

In Edward's reign
around 900 were killed,

and an estimated 600 under
Elizabeth.

Approximately 284 deaths
are attributed to Mary.

Obviously her reign was shorter,

but the numbers are pretty
comparable.

But it's Mary who has been vilified
and dubbed a bloody tyrant,

and I believe that's thanks
to her enemies.

This pamphlet was published in 1558.

This little book by John Knox
is called

The First Blast Of The Trumpet

Against The Monstrous Regiment
Of Women.

John Knox really makes me see
a kind of red mist

because he's so massively
misogynistic.

He says that women - queens
like Mary - are unfit to rule,

made to serve and obey man,
not to rule and command him.

And he thinks that women are weak,
frail, impatient,

feeble, foolish and cruel.

Now, this isn't
just about Mary's gender.

John Knox was a very fiery
Protestant.

He was against Mary
as a Catholic queen.

And the way Knox sees
the burning of Protestants

is as a punishment to everybody

for having put Mary - a woman -
on the throne in the first place.

This Protestant pamphlet
was a catalyst

for more vicious attacks on the
reputation of the Catholic Queen.

It was soon after that Foxe's Book
of Martyrs was published.

In 1571, it was ordered that copies
be put in every cathedral and church

in the country, alongside the Bible.

Foxe's graphic imagery
and unflinching, one-sided stories

of what he called
"the bloody time of Queen Mary"

now came to be seen
as the gospel truth,

the definitive history
of the period.

I wouldn't describe him
as a historian.

I would describe him
as a propagandist,

and an incredibly good one.

It's this book that has given Mary
her reputation as a bloody tyrant.

The long reign of Elizabeth I

firmly established England
as a Protestant country.

And it surely suited Elizabeth

that her sister be remembered
as a Catholic monster.

I think the smear campaign
against Mary

has clouded out all that was
achieved by our first queen.

As well as having to navigate
all the problems

of being a female leader
in a world made for men,

she was also ruling at a time
of brutal religious division,

and she had physical health problems

and such traumatic experiences
of her own to overcome.

I'm just left astounded
by Mary's courage

and her completely underestimated
political skills.

She really redefined what it means
to be a monarch.

There's one final telling
footnote to Mary's story...

..here at Westminster Abbey.

This is Mary's Tomb,

but it's shared with her sister,
Elizabeth.

And it's Elizabeth whose effigy
is on top

and whose initials adorn
the monument.

There's an inscription
right down here...

..like a footnote, and it says
that there are two queens here -

Elizabeth and Mary - "et Maria".

But this tiny reference is the only
mention of Mary on the whole tomb.

I think the tomb says a lot
about how we remember Mary today.

Here, she's literally overshadowed
by her sister,

the mighty Elizabeth I.

But I think that Elizabeth
was mighty,

not least because of what she
learned from her big sister, Mary.

For too long, Mary has been
misunderstood, overlooked, vilified.

I think it's time we restored
England's first ruling queen

to her rightful place in history

as a female trailblazer.