Opinion of Queen Mary I of England

[Cassius]

The greatest Queen in English history. The definition of FF.

[Cassius]

The greatest Queen in English history. The definition of FF.

Only you could have mistaken greatness with horrid incompetency.

I wasn't really being particularly serious, although I would say that she was more a victim of bad luck and circumstance than incompetency per se. After all, how would she be viewed if she'd lived to the same age as Elizabeth? We can never know, but I suspect that she would have been better looked upon by posterity. Anyway, Mary is just one of those figures that I have an inordinate level of admiration for that far outstrips the merits of said figure, a la Gaius Cassius Longinus (obviously), Warwick the 'Kingmaker', Richard Rich and Pope Pius VII.

[Cassius]

No excuses can be made for this deranged woman who had innocent people burned at the stake.

No, but if she were a Protestant burning Catholics at the stake, I doubt you would made this poll.

Now that has got to rank as one of the silliest statements I have ever read on this forum, and there have been countless stupid statements made on this forum.

Nobody, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever, has any right to burn anybody else at the stake because of their religious beliefs.

That behavior is inhuman, revolting and abhorrent.

The depraved Mary Tudor well deserves her place as one of the most hated and reviled monarchs in the entire history of England, and England has a long history.

Yeah, because the other Tudors were paragons of religious tolerance

The other Tudors is a whole other story.

Without getting into the history of all of them, I will say that Henry VIII was a tyrant and a monster.  His murders and other assorted crimes are too numerous to mention.

The thing is, Mary's actions against Protestants, while indisputably abhorrent, were somewhat magnified by historiography, while her Protestant counterparts, whose prosecution of Catholics was of no lesser degree by any means, are getting a free pass. I mean, nobody calls Elizabeth I "Bloody Elizabeth".

I guess there are three main reasons for that. Due to Protestantism victory in England, Mary was on the "losing side". Second, she reigned for just 5 years, so it's easier to associate it primarily with religious persecution. Third, well, unlike Henry or Elizabeth, both quite outstanding political figures, she was just a pitiful monarch. Cassius is right she had a very bad luck, but that doesn't change the fact she was just not fit to rule. Period. Bad luck or not.

Sad thing is, her "crimes" weren't so special. Almost the entire Europe was ruled by an organized religious persecution with a very few exceptions such as, I'm quite happy to say, Poland-Lithuania (we were even called "A State without Stakes").

I object to the view that she was unfit to rule. Sure, she had some quirks, and her desire for a match with Philip II is a little bizarre in hindsight (although if you take into account her background, perhaps not), but she wasn't stupid, and she did make attempt to make strides towards reform in certain areas (trade and the currency being examples of this). Furthermore, whilst the loss of Calais is often made out to be one of the great disasters of her reign, the truth is that Calais was pretty useless by the 1550's, and was more of a burden to the exchequer than anything else. A symbolic loss? Sure, but in practical terms it was rather like having a gangrenous limb amputated.

I'd also argue that Henry VIII was not really an outstanding political figure; his reign was pretty sub-par in fact. His financial policies were a disaster, his military campaigns were costly and vainglorious and he managed near-isolate England as a power in Europe. The chief reasons for his being remembered as a 'great monarch' are because of his lengthy reign, his larger than life personality and intellect and, of course, the break with Rome and the growth of Parliamentary importance during his reign, something which later historians tended to interpret as being part of the long-process of England's evolution into a Protestant, constitutional monarchy. Which of course they thought was objectively a good thing.