BLOODY MARY

Unknown to many of us, the term Bloody Mary and the rhyme Three Blind Mice actually have one thing in common-they refer to the same ruthless person. The farmer's wife depicted in this rhyme is Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII and the Catholic Queen, Catherine, who ruled England from 1553 to 1558.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

CIVIL WAR!!!

To study the history of the English Civil War we need to also understand the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I, a prelude to the reign of Charles I.

It's all about a matter of tolerance. When either one is not tolerating, there'll be no peace but war.

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,

And so my garden grows.

We all know that Henry broke from Rome and declared himself the head of the church, the Church of England. Soon after that he purged England of Catholics. Cathedrals and churches were burned to the ground, Catholics and their priests were executed, and all symbols of Catholicism (even the crucifix) were destroyed.

When Henry and then Edward died, Mary took the throne and, being a Catholic, she reversed what her father did. This time, Protestant cathedrals and churches were burned plus Protestants and their priests were killed (even burned alive). In fact, she did worse than what her father did and for that she earned the title of Bloody Mary.

Then Elizabeth took the throne and she, in turn, reversed what Mary did. This time Catholics were put to death and their houses of worship and symbols destroyed. They also passed a new law that prohibited Catholics from sitting on the throne of England.

Now, we come to the reign of Charles I.

Charles was not a Roman Catholic but he believed that the Church of England was more Catholic than the Church of Rome itself. And there were many Catholics within Charles’ own family — such as his mother, Anne of Denmark; his wife, Henrietta Maria; etc. In fact, later on, his eldest son Charles became a Roman Catholic on his deathbed while James II, who also became a Roman Catholic, lost his throne because of that.

Hence England takes this ‘No Catholic’ rule very seriously.

The problem with Charles was that he was surrounded by those suspected of being ‘closet’ Catholics plus known Catholics. Hence Parliament wanted Charles to remove his advisers whom many Members of Parliament suspected were misleading Charles and giving him the wrong advice in favour of Catholicism.

Parliament, in fact, even forced Charles to sign death warrants for some of his close friends and although at first Charles resisted, he later had no choice but to sign these documents while crying as he did so.

The quarrel between Charles and Parliament was about two issues. One was regarding money (Charles bypassed Parliament when he imposed new taxes: in fact, Charles suspended Parliament five times during his rule) and the other was regarding religion.

The Puritans wanted England cleansed of Catholics, who they regarded as deviant heretics who should be put to death. Among others they also wanted Christmas banned and shops ordered by law to stay open on 25th December. Parliament was also not happy that Mass was being said in the Royal Court since Mass or Eucharist is the central act of worship for the Roman Catholic Church.

Parliament suspected that there was a secret agenda to turn England into a Catholic state. Hence the Catholics needed to be destroyed and England retained as a Secular State with separation of State and Church. Charles, however, refused because he wanted to retain Episcopacy.

And with that the Civil War broke out with the Puritans on one side and the Royalists on the other. Later, after Charles was defeated, a bloody war broke out between Parliament and the Catholics in Ireland, so bloody and brutal that until today the Irish have never forgotten or forgiven the English.

Charles was eventually pronounced a traitor and executed. The English Catholic Church, however, has canonised Charles as a martyr, more or less confirming that Charles was Catholic ‘at heart’.

So you see, not all Christians regard Catholics as real Christians (just like not all Muslims regard Wahhabis and Shias as real Muslims). The Catholics even up to these modern times are viewed as deviant heretics who bring affront to the religion of Christ.

Base on such history of England (at least of 500 years ago) many in England viewed the Catholics as sesat (misguided) Christians.

Beauty Beauties on the Wall

Truly the Beauty 'ONE' to be SPAWN among 'EM All!!!

The ebb and flow of freedom continued through the 1540's...and into the 1550's. After King Henry VIII, King Edward VI took the throne, and after his death, the reign of Queen “Bloody” Mary was the next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English. She was possessed in her quest to return England to the Roman Church. In 1555, John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers and Thomas Cranmer were both burned at the stake. Mary went on to burn reformers at the stake by the hundreds for the "crime" of being a Protestant. This era was known as the Marian Exile, and the refugees fled from England with little hope of ever seeing their home or friends again. During their exile, they produced the famous 1560 Geneva Bible which was "The Bible of the Protestant Reformation", from which many home-schooled their children.

The Early Years of Queen Mary I Queen Mary I was alienated from her father, King Henry VIII, during his divorce (it was not a divorce in the modern sense, but an annulment) from her mother. As her parents' marriage was deemed null and void, Mary was then deemed illegitimate and thus deprived for a time of her status as an heir to the throne. This fueled her rage regarding her father’s break from the Roman Catholic Church, which had previously instructed him that he could not divorce from her mother. Mary felt that if her father, King Henry VIII, had obeyed the Roman Catholic Church, she would not be seen as “illegitimate, and her right to the throne would not have been questioned. This is the foundation upon which her loyalty to Rome was laid. By the time of King Henry VIII’s death, however, she had been restored as second in line to the throne, after her half-brother Edward, who was physically weak.

Queen Mary I Takes the Throne of England It was not until 1553 that Edward died, however, by which time Protestantism had gained such ground that a rival claimant to the throne was put forward, Mary's cousin Lady Jane Grey. Public sympathy remained with Mary, and she soon overcame resistance to her accession. By July 19 Jane Grey had been deposed and Mary was the undisputed Queen. Her official coronation came on November 30, 1553 . Mary first began to earn her unofficial title of “Bloody Mary” when she had her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, executed to prevent any possible power struggle. It is generally believed that Mary might have spared Jane's life if it had not been for the intervention of the Spanish diplomats who conditioned Mary's marriage to their king on her executing Jane.

“Bloody Mary”… Relentless Papist and Mass-Murderer Mary had always rejected and resented the break with Rome that her father had instituted and his subsequent establishment of the Anglican Church that had flowed from her half-brother's protestantism, and now she tried to turn England back to Roman Catholicism. This effort was carried out by force, and hundreds of Protestant leaders were executed. The first was John Rogers (a.k.a. “Thomas Matthews”), the printer of the “Matthews-Tyndale Bible”. His execution was followed by the execution of former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who was primarily responsible for the printing of the “Great Bible”. Hundreds more would follow in Mary’s bloody reign of terror. This earned the queen the title of “Bloody Mary”. Her restoration of Catholicism was remarkable in some ways: Where only one bishop, John Fisher of Rochester, had resisted King Henry VIII’s rejection of Roman catholicism to the point that Henry had him executed; most of Mary's bishops were more loyal and refused to conform to the restored Protestantism under Elizabeth I, and they died under house arrest.

Mary’s Failure and Death Mary's allegiance to Roman Catholicism inspired her to institute social reforms, but these were largely unsuccessful. Her marriage to Philip II of Spain, in 1554, was unpopular even with her Catholic subjects. Philip spent very little time with Mary, once he realized that she was not able to bear a child. Mary died at the age of 42 from uterine or ovarian cancer. She was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I, who quickly undid many of Mary's changes, and returned England to its former Protestant-friendly environment. This enabled the English refugees who had fled England to ever-neutral Geneva, Switzerland to print the “Geneva Bible”, to eventually come home and begin printing the Protestant Geneva Bible in England.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary… Mary I of England is often confused with her cousin “Mary, Queen of Scots”, who lived at the same time. Many scholars trace the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, quite contrary… how does your garden grow… with silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row" to Mary’s unpopular attempts to bring Roman Catholicism back to England, identifying the "cockle shells", for example, with the symbol of pilgrimage to the Catholic Shrine of St. James in Spain and the "pretty maids all in a row" with Catholic nuns.

HUNGER FOR POWER

The Christians of that period believed that the monarch is anointed by God so to question the monarch means you are questioning God. Hence this would become a crime of sedition. And the punishment was you were either executed or your ears were cut off. In the 1500s, Catholics who question or criticise the Church of England would face a charge of sedition. And during ‘Bloody’ Mary’s reign, non-Catholics who question Catholicism would suffer the same fate.

Mary Mary quite contrary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row.

The Mary in this verse, the scholarly books read, refers to Mary Tudor: Queen Mary I of England (b 1516). For those not completely up to speed on their Tudor history, Mary was the only surviving child born to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Henry, ever the SNAG, became impatient with his lack of male heir and decided that he’d like the marriage annulled so that he could try and produce the next King with another woman (he, of course, had his eye on Anne Boleyn).

At that time, England was a Catholic country and required the permission of the Pope for any marriage to be deemed invalid. Pope Clement VII - by all reports, a rather fearsome bloke – denied Henry this request, which royally upset the King and set in place the events that would lead to England breaking away from Rome, and the formation of the Church of England.

Henry the VIII’s first wife was Catherine of Aragon, who was initially betrothed to Henry’s brother, Arthur, when she was three and he two. In 1501, when Catherine was almost 16, she and Arthur were married in the St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Unfortunately, however, six months later, Arthur died, making Catherine a widow.

Now, why was Arthur ‘married off’ to Catherine when he was two and she's three? Well, it was because Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and Henry the VII, Arthur’s father, wanted to cement an alliance with Spain. Hence the children were promised to each other or betrothed at 2 and 3 years old respectively.

Furthermore, Henry the VII also needed money because England was on the verge of bankruptcy. By marrying Arthur off to Catherine, England would receive 200,000 pounds, 100,000 in advance and 100,000 after the wedding, a lot of money in those days.

Arthur’s death merely six months after the wedding posed a problem for Henry the VII. He would not only be unable to collect the second payment of 100,000 pounds but he would also have to return the advance payment of 100,000. And England did not have the money to do this.

Hence Henry the VII proposed that the widow Catherine be married off to Arthur’s younger brother, Henry Junior or Henry the VIII. However, such things were never done — a brother marrying his brother’s widow — so permission would first be required from the Pope in Rome. The Pope, somehow, gave his permission, for whatever reason we do not know, and Catherine was wedded to Henry the VIII, her late husband’s brother. And Henry the VII not only managed to collect the balance 100,000 pounds but he did not need to refund the advance payment of 100,000 pounds as well.

Under normal circumstances, the marriage of Catherine and Henry the VIII would not be legal. However, since the Pope is God’s representative on earth and since the Pope speaks on behalf of God, whatever the Pope decrees is as good as God decreeing it. Hence marrying your brother’s widow is legal if the Pope says so.

Soon after their marriage, Catherine got pregnant. But the first child was stillborn, the second died after 52 days, the third was a miscarriage, and the fourth also died soon after being born. In February 1516, she gave birth to a daughter named Mary, and this was the only living child of Catherine and Henry the VIII. Two more pregnancies after that also ended in disasters and Henry the VIII realised that Catherine was not going to leave him a male heir.

On 25th January 1533, Henry the VIII married his second wife, Anne Boleyn. But he could not divorce Catherine, who died three years later in 1536, as the church did not allow divorces. Hence he had to get his marriage to Catherine declared tak sah (null and void) on grounds that you cannot marry your brother’s widow even if the Pope says you can and gave you ‘special exemption’ to do so.

But the Pope would not declare Henry the VIII’s marriage to Catherine as illegal, which would mean that the marriage would automatically be nullified. So Henry the VIII’s advisors came out with an idea to split from Rome. Furthermore, the church owned 20% of the land in England, which they collected tithes on. This huge sum of money was being sent to Rome whereas if the King confiscated all the church lands the money would go to the crown instead.

So it made sense to split from Rome. Not only could Henry the VIII get his marriage to Catherine nullified, he could also grab the wealth of the church and solve England’s financial problem. Soon after that England became one of the richest states in Europe.

So, for reasons of declaring his first marriage illegal, whereby Henry the VIII could then marry Anne and get a male heir, plus to be able to stop all that money from going to Rome, England split from Rome and the Church of England was created with the King the head of the church and the new representative of God on earth who would then speak on behalf of God.

Of course, there were still many papists amongst the English people (plus in Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well) and there was resistance to this move. For example, York broke away from England and chose to remain loyal to Rome. Hence they had to pass a sedition law, the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to speak against the government or the King. Henry the VIII then invaded York and hanged all the rebel leaders. He also burned all the Catholic churches and put to death those still propagating the ‘old’ religion of Rome.

But Anne also did not leave Henry the VIII with any male heirs. Her only living child was a girl, Elizabeth. So in 1536, when his first wife, Catherine, died, Henry the VIII executed Anne and married his third wife, Jane Seymour. A year later, Jane got pregnant and gave birth to a son, Edward, but Jane died two weeks later.

Henry the VIII”s had three living children,

i. Mary from Catherine of Aragon,

ii. Elizabeth from Anne Boleyn, and

iii. Edward from Jane Seymour.

Before Henry the VIII died, he prepared a will that said in the event of his death, Edward was to become his successor and if Edward died then Mary would take over and if Mary died then Elizabeth was to inherit the throne.

Henry the VIII died on 28th January 1547 and, in accordance to his will, Edward was made King. But he was only nine years old so England was actually ruled by a Council until Edward came of age. However, before that could happen, Edward died, at the age of 15.

Now, according to Henry the VIII’s will, if Edward died, then Mary was supposed to take over. But Mary was a devout Catholic while England was now Protestant. So the Council tried to block Mary’s succession to the throne by appointing Lady Jane Grey as Queen. Lady Jane Grey managed to rule as Queen for only nine days after which she was ousted and Mary took over as Mary I.

Mary realised that England was Protestant and this posed a serious threat to her position. Hence she tried to purge England of Protestantism and many Protestants were sent to their deaths, burned alive at the stake. The Protestants were really made to suffer, whereby earning Mary I the nickname ‘Bloody Mary’.

Mary, however, ruled for only five years and when she died Elizabeth took over as Elizabeth I and ruled for almost 45 years. And when Elizabeth took over she purged England of the Catholics, just like what Mary did to the Protestants before that, and many papists were arrested and executed.

The Catholics, however, plotted against Elizabeth and tried to put her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, onto the throne. However the plot fails and Elizabeth arrested Mary instead and after almost 19 years under detention she was eventually executed in 1587. Elizabeth continued to rule until her death in 1603.

Now, what is the whole purpose of this long story? Simple, you need to understand history to understand the implications of what happened and why things are what they are today. For example, by law, a Catholic cannot sit on the throne of England or become its Prime Minister. And this is because of the challenge by the Catholics to Elizabeth’s rule. So they had to pass a law to make it illegal to put a Catholic onto the throne of England.

They also passed the Sedition Act. This was to stop the English from criticising Henry the VIII for declaring the marriage to his first wife as null and void on grounds that the Pope had no power to legalise what was illegal even if he is considered God’s representative on earth.

500 years ago, the English were not allowed to challenge or criticise the ‘wayward religious ideology’ of the Pope in Rome or the Monarchs of England. Those who did were put to death. Hence laws could be made or changed to suit the whims of those in the corridors of power.

Henry the VII needed money, so he manipulated the system to get this money. Henry the VIII needed a male heir, so he too manipulated the system to get a new wife who could give him a son. Mary I or ‘Bloody Mary’ needed to defend her throne against the Protestants, so she manipulated the system to exterminate the Protestants. Elizabeth I or ‘the Virgin Queen’ needed to defend her throne against the Catholics, so she manipulated the system to exterminate the Catholics.

Basically, it was just one big manipulation game. And religion plus the name of God were used to legitimise this manipulation game. The people and their religious beliefs were played for suckers and those who resisted were arrested, imprisoned or put to death.

The government decided what was correct religious belief and what was wrong religious belief. Books were banned and anyone having in their possession books that were banned were arrested and burned alive as heretics. Both sides did this, the Catholics as well as the Protestants. Action would be taken against anyone who believed in what the government considered as ‘the wrong thing’.