Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast.

I'm your host, Heather Tesco.

It's July 5th as I'm recording this, and I hope everyone in the U.S. is having a fantastic Independence Day weekend. I'm currently living in Spain for a year, and we spent yesterday going to Gibraltar, which is now an English territory. So I find it kind of ironic that on Independence Day, I went to what is effectively an English colony in Spain.

Anyway, this episode is in response to the listener who thought I was too lenient on Mary the first

and her burnings of Protestants in the episode I did back in December.

While I'm not sure that Mary and I would ever actually be friends,

I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for her,

and I explained that in my podcast that I did that was the biography of her.

One listener thought that I overlooked the burnings and how she got her nickname of Bloody Mary,

and I still maintain that her reign was so short and was so easily eclipsed by that of

her half-sister, who reigned for so long and with such military successes like the Spanish

Armada, and also had the propaganda machine

of George Fox and his Book of Martyrs. Mary's burnings of 280 Protestants were intense

and publicized, but the tables were turned during Elizabeth's reign when the oppression of Catholics

lasted longer, and while

it didn't involve the same level of public burnings, it did make the decisions that the Catholics

made about whether they would attend their parish church, not just one of faith, but also one of

loyalty to the state and to the crown, which was enforced through the formation of

the first modern spy network that was headed up by Francis Walsingham. But before I get started,

just a couple of housekeeping reminders. First, I'm going to be partnering with a friend of

mine who runs a tour company and putting together some tours

of the UK next year, focusing specifically on the history and music of the 16th century.

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