Bloody Mary.

Audio   •    4     •          Bloody Mary.

Audio  • Season 1 • Episode 4  • Bloody Mary.

Artwork   •      Portrait of Mary by Antonis Mor. c.1554

Music    •      The Lord is my light and my salvation (Psalm: 27) Anglican chant.

After Edward's death, Lady Jane was proclaimed Queen on 10 July 1553 and was held safe in the Tower of London chambers awaiting coronation.

After hearing about Edward's death, Mary Tudor, fearing for her safety, escaped to East Anglia where she held ownership of several estates.

Stephen Gardiner, an English Catholic bishop, crowned Mary Tudor as Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland, at Westminster Abbey on 1 October 1553.

Mary was the first Queen to rule England in her own right.

She was known as "Bloody Mary" for her persecution and executions of Protestants.

Most controversially, over her reign she ordered 280 Protestants to be burned at the stake as heretics, in a vain attempt to restore Catholicism in England.

Her reign led to a clandestine Protestant church in London as a reaction to her enforcement of Catholicism as England's official religion.

It was on waste ground beyond that ditch, now the site of Broad Street, that the three Protestant Martyrs of Oxford  Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were burnt at the stake.

The trial of Thomas Cranmer began on 12 September 1555, held under papal jurisdiction, with the final verdict decided upon by Rome.

The first Vestments controversy, or Vestarian Controversy, arose during the English Reformation concerning the wearing of vestments and clerical dress

It was the first significant attack in the Puritans' campaign for reform.