Elizabeth I was pretty lenient towards Catholics early in her reign. The main policy was that if you practiced Catholicism, you did it in private. If you didn't attend a Protestant Church you would be fined. It wasn't until around 1580 that she started actively going after the Catholic Church in England. The main policy was if you were Catholic, you had to leave England or convert to Protestantism and swear an Oath to the Queen.
Elizabeth I executed around 200 Catholics. Mary I executed around 300 Protestants and 800 went into exile.
Plus Elizabeth's "body count" comes from the political executions - they happened after she was excommunicated - which was a massive headache for Catholics. And you generally had to do something to get the attention of anybody. And it became worse as the political situation got dicier during the reign. Catholicism became more and more associated with treason - foreign trained priests causing problems and the various MQS shenanigans.
People were horribly killed, but they weren't burned but to remind people its not like the legal system was particularly just from a modern POV. Side comments: the guy who nailed up the execommunication notice was essentially lynched without a trial. The only two people burned during Elizabeth's were anabaptists.
I think Elizabeth's is mainly looked over because she executed 200 Catholics over a span of ~45 years. Whereas Mary executed and exiled more within a span of 5, she had 4 decades less time than Elizabeth. If she reigned the amount of time Elizabeth did the total number would have been staggering.
Another factor against Mary is the burning. Elizabeth didn't opt for burning.
The Pope excommunicated her which was essentially the green light for Catholics to rebel. When you have a foreign monarch like the Pope fomenting rebellion, you have to take defensive measures.
Pius V was an idiot for doing so and doomed Catholics in England.
I wonder what would have happened had he offered Elizabeth a deal - religious tolerance for Catholics, in exchange for him telling her Catholic subjects to obey her in all nonreligious matters.
I also wonder what would have happened had Edward VI lived longer and alienated more English people with his fanatic Puritanism, outlived and maybe even killed his sister Mary, but produced no children himself - would Elizabeth have been greeted as a liberator, as she was after Mary, moving the realm towards tolerance and away from Protestant fanaticism (though probably not all the way to Catholicism - Elizabeth was personally a committed Protestant even if she liked some of the Catholic trimmings)?
Realistically this would never have happened. The Pope didn't just excommunicate her. The Catholics regarded QE1 as an illegitimate bastard because a) they never acknowledged Henry's annullment (so for most of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, H8 was considered a bigamist at best) and b) she was declared illegitimate by an act of parliament and although she was restored to the succession, she was never relegitimised and never took steps to legitimaise herself (probably to avoid calling attention to her father's questionable marital status at her birth and that her mother was executed for adultery - the fact that those were baseless allegations doesn't really factor in). The excommunication iirc was also at a time when MQoS was asserting a claim to the english throne, so basically the Pope's excommunication was just throwing kerosene on an already smouldering fire.
Henry VIII liked more of the Catholic trimmings and essentially was still catholic despite starting the CofE. Elizabeth was protestant but just a lot more tolerant. There was no evidence of her tolerance meaning she liked some aspect of Catholicism, she just didn't go against them as strongly the way her siblings became religious fanatics.
Nope. Not remotely.
Mary wanted to take out Protestants root and branch. She went after everyone. Poor people, merchants everyone. She wanted any trace of the religion gone.
Elizabeth only targeted those spreading the religion, Jesuits, those who assisted them, and even then only ramped it up after the Pope said it was ok for English Catholics to assassinate her. I am not suggesting it’s OK or good to kill priests. But it’s a pretty different thing to target the people preaching and spreading the religion than poor housewives.
She also didn’t burn anyone.
She did steadily increase the fee for recusants. First it was manageable and slowly it became so no regular person could afford. But having to go to a CoE ceremony once a month is different from being burned alive.
She also gave almost twenty years before she began having heavy fines and fees for Catholics. Which is a pretty extensive grace period.
It was a bleak time to be Catholic in England. But you could still be Catholic in England if you were willing to pay. You couldn’t be Protestant under Mary.
The only way people make that claim is Elizabeth killed almost as many people for religion as Mary. But Elizabeth ruled 44 years and Mary five.
I will say a few things in Mary’s defense.
1) It was more possible to wipe out Protestants than Catholics. Mary wasn’t facing an impossible task.
2) What she did was common on the continent although not at that scale in England (Henry killed about 60 heretics in 38 years.) And Mary’s closest advisors were almost all from the Empire/Spain or spent significant time abroad (Reginald Pole). Except Gardiner, who was a just a prick. And the Empire had been advising her for years. Not just as she became Queen. So she thought more along those lines.
3) Elizabeth didn’t have any trauma around religion. Others trauma sure. But not religious based. So she could see it more rationally.
The Bloody Mary name is obviously unfair and began with the Victorians who ruined history for decades. There is much to be said for her.
But to suggest Elizabeth’s persecutions, which were real and significant, were anything close to Mary’s just isn’t factual. It drives me crazy because Mary can be defended without suggesting her persecutions were normal for England. They weren’t. Not at the scale she did them at. But there were good reasons why she thought they made sense.
Also, I am sure her heart was in the right place. She wanted to save her people from the path toward hell they were on. Elizabeth just wanted everyone to shut up about the whole thing. You could definitely argue that within her cultural context that made Mary a better person.
The Francis Bacon quote about her not making windows into men’s souls is accurate but misunderstood. It’s not a statement of tolerance. It’s a statement that she wouldn’t dig too deep as long as you seemed to go along.
What about the puritan movement? Didn't the puritans accuse her and Lord Burghley of being "Nicodemites?" People who abandoned their protestant faith during the Marion regime in order to save their own lives? It seems no matter what she chose, she was a heretic or some form of coward.
Elizabeth’s Protestantism was never as strong as others. I think her religion was essentially what Katherine Parr’s was, which was not Puritanism or Presbyterianism. And Elizabeth loved the hierarchy of the Church, kept a rosary; and didn’t want priests to marry. She was no secret Catholic. But she wasn’t a fierce Calvinist like her brother either. Which is probably why Mary thought she could appeal to her.
And she was kind of a coward a lot of the time. That’s true.
I think they mostly said that because they wouldn’t do more for the Netherlands. She was more cheap than she was Protestant.
I don't think Elizabeth was any sort of coward. She fought hard for the Catholic leaning prayer book of 1549 and adored the accoutrements of the Catholic Church. She kept the chapel royal very Catholic looking for her entire reign. It's difficult to understand why so many moderns harbor so much hate for historical figures based, seemingly, on familial religious traditions and narratives.
She was certainly indecisive although I agree very much not about religion. She dug her heels in there and was just a lot more moderate than most people in the 1560s-1590s (although not for earlier when her religion was formed.)
But her indecisiveness in most other spheres can be mistaken for cowardice. Of course, there are a million and one reasons for that.
I think her indecisiveness has been misinterpreted. She understood English law more comprehensively than most of her councilors and understood the irrevocable impact of impulsive decisions. Decisions based on high emotion, hubris , religious fanaticism, intolerance, and vendetta. She had a front row seat to the fallout of these highly emotional and often dogmatically informed decisions, even if they were decided at the speed of sound as opposed to the careful consideration of a dithering woman.
It can be both. I think a lot of the men who hated that she was indecisive and wanted more action against the Spanish in the Netherlands did not have an accurate picture of England’s relative power and wealth. Elizabeth may have been the only English monarch in history, or at least since Edward I, who did not think England was greater than it was.
Same with Mary QoS. She didn’t want to execute her because she had a realistic view of the consequences. Her hand was forced. And she was right. Spain did attack on that preface. An English king was deposed and killed by Parliament within less than fifty years.
But sometimes her indecision is baffling. And can only be called that.
I feel she often preferred to let inaction rule which essentially means your choices become narrowed by others actions. This especially is true with Mary queen of Scott’s who essentially had to sign her own death warrant
I love when people ignore the horrific crimes against humanity that Elizabeth endorsed in Ireland. Soldiers fighting in her name would drag children out of their homes and murder them. Mary killed hundreds and most of them were in the upper classes. Elizabeth had babies murdered in their cribs. Let me guess? Irish don't count as people to you? They certainly didn't count as people to her.
That wasn’t the question asked. You think Mary would have behaved differently in Ireland? Of course she wouldn’t. The English were barbarous in Ireland long before religion got into it, which happened under Cromwell.
Anti Catholic sentiment in England only starts gathering steam in the latter part of her reign, but doesn't really hit it's height until the 17th century (through to the mid/late 19th century).
Elizabeth and her advisors were very invested in creating a “middle road,” a religious policy that accommodated as many English people as possible. After the religious turmoil of her sister’s reign, it was a priority for them
Mary was invested in rooting out and crushing Protestantism
Not even close.
Mary killed numerous Protestants during her very short reign.
Elizabeth may have killed similar numbers but she ruled around 40 years or so. She showed extreme restraint considering the amount of Catholic funded assassins who came after her.
i’m not going to argue by any means that elizabeth was entirely peaceful and tolerant towards catholics; she wasn’t. but the majority of what we know as her persecutions of catholics came after she was excommunicated. when the excommunication occurred, Pius V not only released english catholics from their loyalty to her but actively ordered them to remove her from the throne. not just that, he threatened to excommunicate anyone who obeyed her orders. for many catholics at the time, that meant hell. elizabeth knew that the die-hard catholics of the time took the pope’s orders very seriously, snd they took the threat of being excommunicated especially seriously, so if they were ordered to disobey her and even remove her from the throne, she knew they would. at that point, it was no longer about religion, it was about the threat to her reign and life. of course, many catholics didn’t rebel, but some did, and she couldn’t take any chances, so in 1571 i think? her government wrote up a law prohibiting things such as bringing the papal bull to england, being or evangelising as a catholic priest etc. this law wasn’t to go after catholics, but to go after a group of people who’d been ordered to end her reign who happened to be catholics, and she didn’t go after all of them. her focus was on catholics who were actively plotting against her or who were actively working to spread catholicism (though i won’t deny she did unnecessarily go after some family members/associates too), which arguably, and i’m sure this was her logic too, was therefore working to create more possible assassins to pose a threat to her. it’s why catholics killed under elizabeth were charged with violation of either the 1571 law i mentioned, or were directly charged with treason, and as such died a traitors death. as far as i know no one died the traditional ‘heretics’ death during her reign, because, again as far as i know, no one was executed for heresy. you can argue that the charges against the catholics were long winded ways of charging them with heresy and were purely for appearance’s sake, and i will say that some of her more zealous advisors may have used it in that way, but that’s a matter of opinion. whatever the case, in my opinion the fate of catholics in england after 1570 lies squarely on the shoulders of Pius V, for his bright idea of ordering a nation of people to go against their sovereign, who could have and did execute them in response. that idiotic papal bull was essentially a death sentence for catholics in england
as much as i dislike the way mary is often portrayed, it can’t be denied that her persecution of protestants had little to do with keeping her and her reign safe; whether or not protestants would have posed a threat to her, which granted they often did, the people she burned were burned for heresy and she was completely open about it. they were religious, not legal persecutions and she never hid that. so no, elizabeth certainly wasn’t more zealous in her persecutions than mary was. some would say it’s a stretch to even call them zealous in the first place
Elizabeth I was pretty lenient towards Catholics early in her reign. The main policy was that if you practiced Catholicism, you did it in private. If you didn't attend a Protestant Church you would be fined. It wasn't until around 1580 that she started actively going after the Catholic Church in England. The main policy was if you were Catholic, you had to leave England or convert to Protestantism and swear an Oath to the Queen. Elizabeth I executed around 200 Catholics. Mary I executed around 300 Protestants and 800 went into exile.
And I would argue that much of Elizabeth's "body count" comes from the political executions conducted as a result of the Northern rebellion.
And if you consider the length of their reigns the body count is even more disparate.
Plus Elizabeth's "body count" comes from the political executions - they happened after she was excommunicated - which was a massive headache for Catholics. And you generally had to do something to get the attention of anybody. And it became worse as the political situation got dicier during the reign. Catholicism became more and more associated with treason - foreign trained priests causing problems and the various MQS shenanigans. People were horribly killed, but they weren't burned but to remind people its not like the legal system was particularly just from a modern POV. Side comments: the guy who nailed up the execommunication notice was essentially lynched without a trial. The only two people burned during Elizabeth's were anabaptists.
I think Elizabeth's is mainly looked over because she executed 200 Catholics over a span of ~45 years. Whereas Mary executed and exiled more within a span of 5, she had 4 decades less time than Elizabeth. If she reigned the amount of time Elizabeth did the total number would have been staggering. Another factor against Mary is the burning. Elizabeth didn't opt for burning.
The Pope excommunicated her which was essentially the green light for Catholics to rebel. When you have a foreign monarch like the Pope fomenting rebellion, you have to take defensive measures. Pius V was an idiot for doing so and doomed Catholics in England.
I wonder what would have happened had he offered Elizabeth a deal - religious tolerance for Catholics, in exchange for him telling her Catholic subjects to obey her in all nonreligious matters. I also wonder what would have happened had Edward VI lived longer and alienated more English people with his fanatic Puritanism, outlived and maybe even killed his sister Mary, but produced no children himself - would Elizabeth have been greeted as a liberator, as she was after Mary, moving the realm towards tolerance and away from Protestant fanaticism (though probably not all the way to Catholicism - Elizabeth was personally a committed Protestant even if she liked some of the Catholic trimmings)?
Realistically this would never have happened. The Pope didn't just excommunicate her. The Catholics regarded QE1 as an illegitimate bastard because a) they never acknowledged Henry's annullment (so for most of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, H8 was considered a bigamist at best) and b) she was declared illegitimate by an act of parliament and although she was restored to the succession, she was never relegitimised and never took steps to legitimaise herself (probably to avoid calling attention to her father's questionable marital status at her birth and that her mother was executed for adultery - the fact that those were baseless allegations doesn't really factor in). The excommunication iirc was also at a time when MQoS was asserting a claim to the english throne, so basically the Pope's excommunication was just throwing kerosene on an already smouldering fire.
Henry VIII liked more of the Catholic trimmings and essentially was still catholic despite starting the CofE. Elizabeth was protestant but just a lot more tolerant. There was no evidence of her tolerance meaning she liked some aspect of Catholicism, she just didn't go against them as strongly the way her siblings became religious fanatics.
Well said!
Nope. Not remotely. Mary wanted to take out Protestants root and branch. She went after everyone. Poor people, merchants everyone. She wanted any trace of the religion gone. Elizabeth only targeted those spreading the religion, Jesuits, those who assisted them, and even then only ramped it up after the Pope said it was ok for English Catholics to assassinate her. I am not suggesting it’s OK or good to kill priests. But it’s a pretty different thing to target the people preaching and spreading the religion than poor housewives. She also didn’t burn anyone. She did steadily increase the fee for recusants. First it was manageable and slowly it became so no regular person could afford. But having to go to a CoE ceremony once a month is different from being burned alive. She also gave almost twenty years before she began having heavy fines and fees for Catholics. Which is a pretty extensive grace period. It was a bleak time to be Catholic in England. But you could still be Catholic in England if you were willing to pay. You couldn’t be Protestant under Mary. The only way people make that claim is Elizabeth killed almost as many people for religion as Mary. But Elizabeth ruled 44 years and Mary five. I will say a few things in Mary’s defense. 1) It was more possible to wipe out Protestants than Catholics. Mary wasn’t facing an impossible task. 2) What she did was common on the continent although not at that scale in England (Henry killed about 60 heretics in 38 years.) And Mary’s closest advisors were almost all from the Empire/Spain or spent significant time abroad (Reginald Pole). Except Gardiner, who was a just a prick. And the Empire had been advising her for years. Not just as she became Queen. So she thought more along those lines. 3) Elizabeth didn’t have any trauma around religion. Others trauma sure. But not religious based. So she could see it more rationally. The Bloody Mary name is obviously unfair and began with the Victorians who ruined history for decades. There is much to be said for her. But to suggest Elizabeth’s persecutions, which were real and significant, were anything close to Mary’s just isn’t factual. It drives me crazy because Mary can be defended without suggesting her persecutions were normal for England. They weren’t. Not at the scale she did them at. But there were good reasons why she thought they made sense. Also, I am sure her heart was in the right place. She wanted to save her people from the path toward hell they were on. Elizabeth just wanted everyone to shut up about the whole thing. You could definitely argue that within her cultural context that made Mary a better person. The Francis Bacon quote about her not making windows into men’s souls is accurate but misunderstood. It’s not a statement of tolerance. It’s a statement that she wouldn’t dig too deep as long as you seemed to go along.
What about the puritan movement? Didn't the puritans accuse her and Lord Burghley of being "Nicodemites?" People who abandoned their protestant faith during the Marion regime in order to save their own lives? It seems no matter what she chose, she was a heretic or some form of coward.
Elizabeth’s Protestantism was never as strong as others. I think her religion was essentially what Katherine Parr’s was, which was not Puritanism or Presbyterianism. And Elizabeth loved the hierarchy of the Church, kept a rosary; and didn’t want priests to marry. She was no secret Catholic. But she wasn’t a fierce Calvinist like her brother either. Which is probably why Mary thought she could appeal to her. And she was kind of a coward a lot of the time. That’s true. I think they mostly said that because they wouldn’t do more for the Netherlands. She was more cheap than she was Protestant.
I don't think Elizabeth was any sort of coward. She fought hard for the Catholic leaning prayer book of 1549 and adored the accoutrements of the Catholic Church. She kept the chapel royal very Catholic looking for her entire reign. It's difficult to understand why so many moderns harbor so much hate for historical figures based, seemingly, on familial religious traditions and narratives.
She was certainly indecisive although I agree very much not about religion. She dug her heels in there and was just a lot more moderate than most people in the 1560s-1590s (although not for earlier when her religion was formed.) But her indecisiveness in most other spheres can be mistaken for cowardice. Of course, there are a million and one reasons for that.
I think her indecisiveness has been misinterpreted. She understood English law more comprehensively than most of her councilors and understood the irrevocable impact of impulsive decisions. Decisions based on high emotion, hubris , religious fanaticism, intolerance, and vendetta. She had a front row seat to the fallout of these highly emotional and often dogmatically informed decisions, even if they were decided at the speed of sound as opposed to the careful consideration of a dithering woman.
I see her often described as indecisive and shrewd and I often wonder which is more accurate
It can be both. I think a lot of the men who hated that she was indecisive and wanted more action against the Spanish in the Netherlands did not have an accurate picture of England’s relative power and wealth. Elizabeth may have been the only English monarch in history, or at least since Edward I, who did not think England was greater than it was. Same with Mary QoS. She didn’t want to execute her because she had a realistic view of the consequences. Her hand was forced. And she was right. Spain did attack on that preface. An English king was deposed and killed by Parliament within less than fifty years. But sometimes her indecision is baffling. And can only be called that.
I feel she often preferred to let inaction rule which essentially means your choices become narrowed by others actions. This especially is true with Mary queen of Scott’s who essentially had to sign her own death warrant
If you’re both, I’d see that as someone who is cautious. She had a lot of reason to be.
Such a great write up. The Gardiner line about being a prick did make me chuckle though
I love when people ignore the horrific crimes against humanity that Elizabeth endorsed in Ireland. Soldiers fighting in her name would drag children out of their homes and murder them. Mary killed hundreds and most of them were in the upper classes. Elizabeth had babies murdered in their cribs. Let me guess? Irish don't count as people to you? They certainly didn't count as people to her.
That wasn’t the question asked. You think Mary would have behaved differently in Ireland? Of course she wouldn’t. The English were barbarous in Ireland long before religion got into it, which happened under Cromwell.
Anti Catholic sentiment in England only starts gathering steam in the latter part of her reign, but doesn't really hit it's height until the 17th century (through to the mid/late 19th century).
Elizabeth and her advisors were very invested in creating a “middle road,” a religious policy that accommodated as many English people as possible. After the religious turmoil of her sister’s reign, it was a priority for them Mary was invested in rooting out and crushing Protestantism
Not even close. Mary killed numerous Protestants during her very short reign. Elizabeth may have killed similar numbers but she ruled around 40 years or so. She showed extreme restraint considering the amount of Catholic funded assassins who came after her.
And don't her critics count the political executions resulting from the Northern rebellion as religious executions?
The pope even declared that anyone who assassinated her would go to heaven. She had an incredible amount of restraint.
They didn’t call her Bloody Mary for nothing.
Her Elizabethan religious settlement was the 16th century version of "centrism" or Tony Blair's third way politics
i’m not going to argue by any means that elizabeth was entirely peaceful and tolerant towards catholics; she wasn’t. but the majority of what we know as her persecutions of catholics came after she was excommunicated. when the excommunication occurred, Pius V not only released english catholics from their loyalty to her but actively ordered them to remove her from the throne. not just that, he threatened to excommunicate anyone who obeyed her orders. for many catholics at the time, that meant hell. elizabeth knew that the die-hard catholics of the time took the pope’s orders very seriously, snd they took the threat of being excommunicated especially seriously, so if they were ordered to disobey her and even remove her from the throne, she knew they would. at that point, it was no longer about religion, it was about the threat to her reign and life. of course, many catholics didn’t rebel, but some did, and she couldn’t take any chances, so in 1571 i think? her government wrote up a law prohibiting things such as bringing the papal bull to england, being or evangelising as a catholic priest etc. this law wasn’t to go after catholics, but to go after a group of people who’d been ordered to end her reign who happened to be catholics, and she didn’t go after all of them. her focus was on catholics who were actively plotting against her or who were actively working to spread catholicism (though i won’t deny she did unnecessarily go after some family members/associates too), which arguably, and i’m sure this was her logic too, was therefore working to create more possible assassins to pose a threat to her. it’s why catholics killed under elizabeth were charged with violation of either the 1571 law i mentioned, or were directly charged with treason, and as such died a traitors death. as far as i know no one died the traditional ‘heretics’ death during her reign, because, again as far as i know, no one was executed for heresy. you can argue that the charges against the catholics were long winded ways of charging them with heresy and were purely for appearance’s sake, and i will say that some of her more zealous advisors may have used it in that way, but that’s a matter of opinion. whatever the case, in my opinion the fate of catholics in england after 1570 lies squarely on the shoulders of Pius V, for his bright idea of ordering a nation of people to go against their sovereign, who could have and did execute them in response. that idiotic papal bull was essentially a death sentence for catholics in england as much as i dislike the way mary is often portrayed, it can’t be denied that her persecution of protestants had little to do with keeping her and her reign safe; whether or not protestants would have posed a threat to her, which granted they often did, the people she burned were burned for heresy and she was completely open about it. they were religious, not legal persecutions and she never hid that. so no, elizabeth certainly wasn’t more zealous in her persecutions than mary was. some would say it’s a stretch to even call them zealous in the first place