Was Mary I rightly titled 'Bloody'?


After the reign of Mary I 1553- 1558, the infamous queen was nicknamed: Bloody Mary. This is because, during her five year rule, she executed a rough recording of 280 'heretics'. A 'heretic' is a person that openly disagrees with the religion of a country and its ruler.  However, her father Henry VIII had a 38 year reign with an estimated 72, 000 people he executed, yet he is not remembered because of how many people he had put to death. 

If Queen Mary burnt 280 Protestants in her five year reign, then she executed roughly fifty- six people per year and about four people each month. Compare those statistics to King Henry who executed about 1, 894 people every year then about 157 people a month. Please remember that these are average statistics. Maybe people remember her as 'bloody' because of the short length of her reign?

Mary's beliefs of Catholicism at that time was that, after her younger brother Edward VI had England converted to Protestantism, every one of her subjects would burn in hell unless she had them converted. But the recorded amount of deaths were more than likely written after Mary's death by Protestant clergymen and clerks in the time of Protestant Queen Elizabeth I's rule. Whether Mary killed these people or not and if she did, the exact reasons why will remain a mystery.

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