16th Century History

The reign of Mary Tudor has been remembered as an era of sterile repression, when a reactionary monarch launched a doomed attempt to reimpose Catholicism on an unwilling nation. Above all, the burning alive of more than 280 men and women for their religious beliefs seared the rule of 'Bloody Mary' into the protestant imagination, as an alien aberration in the onward and upward march of the English-speaking peoples.In this controversial reassessment, a leading reformation historian argues that Mary's regime was neither inept nor backward-looking. Led by the Queen's cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Mary's church dramatically reversed the religious revolution imposed under the child king Edward VI. Inspired by the values of the European Counter-Reformation, the cardinal and the queen reinstated...