Summary: this (final) seminar will explore the attempts of Mary I’s government to repress Protestantism, in particular the campaign of burning of heretics beginning in 1555. We will consider both the motivations behind this policy and the reactions to it. We will also discuss the potential for a permanent and successful Catholic restoration, and why historians have been so divided over this question.

Seminar and essay questions:

a) How ‘counter-productive’ were the Marian burnings?

b) Was the persecution of Mary’s reign good for English Protestantism?

 

E Duffy, Fire of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor (2009), chs 2-8

------- and D Loades (eds), The Church of Mary Tudor (2006), ch 11

P. Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (2017), ch 13

S Doran and T Freeman (eds), Mary Tudor: Old and New Perspectives (2011), Freeman’s chapter on the burnings

C Haigh, English Reformations - chs 13

AG Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd ed - ch 12 (a)

-------------, ‘The Marian Reaction in the Diocese of York’ in Dickens, Reformation

Studies & in St Anthony’s Hall Publications (pamphlets) 11 & 12 (1957)

W Monter, ‘Heresy executions in Reformation Europe 1520-1565’, in OP Grell & B Scribner (eds), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation– puts Marian persecution in international context.

J Edwards, Archbishop Pole (2014), chs 6-9

DM Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor, 2nd ed – ch 8

------------, Politics, Censorship and the English Reformation - article on Enforcement of Reaction (also in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 1965) (a)

A Pettegree, Marian Protestantism, esp. intro., ch 4, conc.

D Loades, The Oxford Martyrs (2nd ed 1992) , esp. chs 8-9 (a)

J Richards, Mary Tudor (2008), ch 10

G Alexander, ‘Bonner and the Marian Persecutions’, History (1975) and in Haigh, English Reformation Revised. (a)

J. W. Martin, ‘The Protestant Underground Congregations of Mary’s Reign’, in Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (1989)

T. Freeman, ‘Dissenters from a dissenting Church: the Challenge of the Freewillers 1550-1558’, in Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (2002) (b)

J Wright, ‘Marian Exiles and the Legitimacy of Flight from Persecution’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52 (2001) (b)

Brett Usher, ‘“In a Time of Persecution”: New Light on the Secret Protestant Congregation in Marian London’, in David Loades, ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 1997) (b)