The Tudors Season 4 Episode 8, “As It Should Be,” dives deep into religious conflict at court, featuring Catherine Parr, Mary I of England, and Stephen Gardiner. But how accurate is its portrayal of Tudor religious tensions? From whether Catherine Parr really protected Protestants, to the truth about Mary I’s reputation as “Bloody Mary,” and the role of figures like Eustace Chapuys, this breakdown separates fact from fiction and explores what really happened in Tudor England.

• Was Mary I Really a Religious Fanatic?
• How Did the Wyatt Rebellion Influence Mary I’s Actions?
• Why Did Mary I Persecute Protestants?
• When Did Mary I Become Bloody Mary?
• How Many Heretics Were Executed in England?
• Did Mary Tudor Hate Catherine Parr?
• Did Catherine Parr Protect Protestants at Court?
• Robert Ascham: Elizabeth I’s Tutor
• How Accurate is Eustace Chapuys’s Portrayal in The Tudors?
• Minor Historical Inaccuracies

Episode 8: As It Should Be

Was Mary I Really a Religious Fanatic?

Upset that Chapuys is leaving, Mary has a meltdown in which she blames herself not being born a boy for the religious upheaval in England and says that if she ever becomes queen, “I swear to you on the holy gospels and on the soul of my mother, I will make England faithful again. I will burn as many heretics as I have to. I will spill as much blood as I have to, to make this unfaithful realm Catholic again!”

Which… both is and is not what happened.

To discuss the future after the death of a monarch before they died was treason, so Mary never did that in public. She was careful. She may have thought from time to time about what she might do as queen, but to mention it would put her at risk in an unstable environment. So, we don’t know how much or how little of a “religious fanatic” she was in the 1540s.

After Henry’s death, Mary continued to worship in her Catholic way. Her younger brother, Edward VI, had been aggressively raised pro-Protestant. He berated her for her beliefs in public, reducing her to tears, and refused her Latin Mass, calling it “heretical.” She refused to convert and defied him.

When she became queen in 1553, she initially promised religious tolerance, but also forbade anyone to teach Protestantism, restored the Latin Mass, and kicked out the married priests. Since most of the English had not truly converted, this was “fine” with the lower classes. She reinstated their beloved rituals and Churches, rang the church bells, yet did not forbid them from having the English Bible.

Mary wanted to restore England to Rome for the sake of its soul, but a combination of Protestant rebellions against her and her influencers (Roman Catholic advisors, archbishops, etc.) caused her to take on more aggressive tactics.

How Did the Wyatt Rebellion Influence Mary I’s Actions?

From the beginning, the English debated her choice of husband. A large faction wanted her to marry one of her cousins, Edward Courtenay, descended from King Edward IV. He had enough royal blood to satisfy the commoners, and would unite once again the houses of York and Landcaster. Mary believed she needed a political marriage to a Catholic country outside England to avoid a Protestant invasion. She agreed to marry Prince Philip of Spain, despite objections within her Cabinet, who feared England would become one of the Emperor’s territories.

After her announced proposed marriage came the Wyatt Rebellion, lead by a young hotheaded Thomas Wyatt (the son of the same Thomas Wyatt who wanted to marry Anne Boleyn). He recruited several other prominent Protestants (Sir James Croft, Sir Peter Carew, Henry Gray, the Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey, William Thomas, Edward Courtenay, and 750 others). These men intended to raise rebellion forces, converge on London, depose Mary, and place Elizabeth on the throne, who would marry Courtenay to secure the line of succession. Their ships would block Philip’s arrival from Spain.

Mary’s protectors found out about the plot; some men deserted, others fled to France, their gathered armies refused to fight, and Mary roused the common people with a speech claiming that she was “married to the people of England” and had only their welfare and protection in mind. They rose up in her defense. Wyatt came at her with 15,000 men against her 25,000 and lost.

The Wyatt rebellion had horrible consequences for everyone; Elizabeth fell under suspicion and was temporarily held in the Tower. Mary had been keeping Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, alive (her brother promoted Lady Jane to the succession ahead of her), but this rebellion showed her the risks involved in allowing Protestant claimants to the throne to live and they were executed. 140 of the 3,000 captured rebels were put to death.

The relatively small number of executions made the Spanish ambassador feel Mary was being too “soft” on the rebels and that it would be unsafe for Philip in England.

Why Did Mary I Persecute Protestants?

This was likely the catalyst for the fanatics that surrounded her to justify increasing attempts to get rid of “heretics,” because Protestantism became associated with treason. Stamping out Reformists would not only align England with the Pope, but reduce the chances of attempts on her life.

Burning heretics had been the law for 150+ years. Before Archbishop Cranmer died in her flames, he was planning the same fate for Catholics during her brother’s reign. Everyone in that period agreed that the punishment for heresy should be death; they just took different sides of the debate on what qualified as heresy.

Heresy was treasonous because it questioned their monarch’s religious policies and challenged their “divine authority.” Mary and her advisors hoped the burnings would scare people into Catholicism, and that the threat of dying in such a painful way would make them renounce their beliefs and convert, and underestimated how many were willing to die for their religious convictions.

Her government interrogated and burned 280 “heretics.” At first, they were the rich and powerful, with influence at court. AKA, her political enemies and those whom Bishop Gardiner and Archbishop Reginald Pole disliked. Then came teachers and priests who defied her rules about preaching Protestant beliefs, or refused to hold Latin Masses, or published Protestant tracts. This caused some grumbling. But the commoners only started resenting her when laypeople off the street, nobodies who just happened to be Protestants, were being killed.

When Did Mary I Become Bloody Mary?

Most of our information about this period, and the martyrdoms of these people, came from John Foxe, a biased source who published his Book of Martyrs five years after Mary’s death, to reinforce public hatred for Catholicism during the reign of Elizabeth I, a Protestant. Reformist. It was common for that time period for reigning monarchs to do their best to besmirch the reputation of the previous monarchy, to create a sense of public “appreciation” for their better reign. Thus, the rumors about Richard III wanting to sleep with his own niece that Henry VII allowed to float around the court. It’s not a stretch to think the records could have been doctored in terms of how the public felt about Mary’s reign, to make her seem more unpopular than she was, and to make Elizabeth a benevolent queen by comparison.

How much of what Fox wrote is true, versus what political propaganda was popular and served his purpose, we will never know.

Eamon Duffy’s book on the subject (Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor) proposes that the heresy campaign was not only well-planned and executed (ha, ha), it was achieving its intended goal, was winding down, and had Mary lived longer, the burnings would have ceased altogether. It’s not entirely convincing, since it’s hard to justify such a brutal execution method over religious differences, but worth a read anyway. (And I write more about Mary I in this post.)

How Many Heretics Were Executed in England?

The burning of heretics became legal in 1401. The first martyr was William Sawtry, a Lollard priest, in that same year. The Lollards were a religious movement that wanted to translate the Bible into English and held early Protestant beliefs. It’s hard to find out how many were burned at the stake, but it’s between 50 and 100.

Executed Heretics Under…

• Henry VII: 10.
• Henry VIII: 81 (plus 200-400 executed for holding onto their Catholic faith).
• Edward VI: 2.
• Mary I: 283.
• Elizabeth I: 5 (plus 183-190 Catholics hanged, drawn, and quartered).
• James I: 2 (the last heretic was burned in 1612).

Executions Related to Religious Rebellions

• Henry VIII: 200-250 executions after the Pilgrimage of Grace
• Edward VI: 4,000-5,000 after the Prayer Book Rebellion
• Mary I: 140 after the Wyatt Rebellion.
• Elizabeth I: 450-700 after the Northern Rebellion

Edward racked up the most executions, despite being a kid.

Did Mary Tudor Hate Catherine Parr?

For drama’s sake, Mary’s relationship with Catherine Parr is disintegrating because Mary has found out her former bestie is a Reformist. Mary tries to convert her to Catholicism, is firmly shut down, and starts down a “she’s a heretic” path.

Which… did not happen.

Catherine and Mary remained friends throughout Henry’s life. Catherine was very proud of Mary translating Erasmus’s Gospel of St. John. Mary also did not give that present to Catherine as subtle emotional manipulation, but out of pride in her efforts. Translating scriptures, philosophy, and prayer books was a way for aristocratic women to show their scholarly pursuits and intelligence, and to practice their Latin. The best way to memorize or to learn something is to rewrite it in your own hand, so it let them study scripture in an “allowed” way per the Catholic limitations of the time.

Mary and Catherine’s relationship only fell apart when Catherine married Sir Thomas Seymour in secret a few months after the king’s death. This was a huge breach of protocol because it ignored the traditional mourning period. To marry someone so far beneath the king was scandalous for his widow. She received no royal permission from the King’s Privy Council, and others saw it as an attempt by the Seymours to gain control over Princess Elizabeth.

Young King Edward VI, who loved both Seymour and Catherine, approved of it and agreed to keep their sister, but Princess Mary had a violent reaction to the news. She disliked that Thomas Seymour dared to “raise himself so high” (above his station) and that Catherine had moved on from her father in so short a time. She did not want Elizabeth living with the woman who “shamelessly dishonored” the king’s memory. Mary’s diminished respect for Catherine Parr had nothing to do with her personal religious beliefs, and everything to do with her behavior and with Mary’s classism. (You should marry no one above or below your station.)

Did Catherine Parr Protect Protestants at Court?

In a cool outmaneuver, Catherine Parr declines Bishop Gardiner’s invitation to arrest a bunch of Reformists in the court as heretics and foils his plot to probably later complain to Henry that she “overstepped her reach” by saying she is reluctant to arrest anyone in the king’s household without his consent. Smart girl.

Historically, she was even smarter. She and her servant, Fulke, stayed on top of whomever was falling beneath Gardiner’s suspicions and intervened frequently to foil their arrests. Fulke warned people, waylaid the trial reports, and told their allies in the King’s Council to seize the proposed indictments and arrest warrants and present them to the Council for debate, instead of them being carried out in secret. Finding out that secret arrests were happening ticked off Henry and the Council, particularly when those closet to him were being targeted.

Catherine Parr protected the Protestants at court for several years from Bishop Gardiner’s discreet attempts to cull them from the palace. It made sense why he wanted her investigated later; if he could get rid of her, he might get to arrest a lot of other people too and eradicate all those pesky Reformists from power.

Robert Ascham: Elizabeth I’s Tutor

The Tudors has Catherine Parr secretly meeting with Princess Elizabeth to discuss how she will be brought up in her dead mother’s faith, and saying her new tutor will be Robert Ascham. While a nice way to establish how progressive Catherine Parr was at court, this isn’t what happened.

First, this conversation happens in 1544, whereas Ascham did not serve Elizabeth until 1548, a year after Henry VIII’s death. Elizabeth was living with Catherine Parr-Seymour and at only fourteen years old, had been ‘entrusted’ to Catherine’s care. After Elizabeth’s tutor died, Catherine wanted to appoint Francis Goldsmith. We know little about him, except that he served as a lawyer to the Parr family. The strong-willed Princess Elizabeth wanted Roger Ascham instead. It provoked a quarrel, with Ascham feeling uncomfortable at causing a “disagreement” between them. He thought it would be better for her to accept Goldsmith and urged her to do so, but Elizabeth insisted on having him.

Robert Ascham was a renowned scholar and philosopher who prioritized literature, art, poetry, and progressive views on education. It’s unclear how he met the princess, but it was some time in the 1540s, possibly through Catherine Parr. They started corresponding with each other, and he sent her small gifts. Under his influence, her linguistic skills expanded; she learned Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and Greek. She wrote poems and translated books. He praised her intellect, her thirst for knowledge, and her penmanship.

How Accurate is Chapuys’s Portrayal in The Tudors?

Chapuys comes to say farewell to the king, since his debilitating gout has made it impossible for him to serve as their ambassador any longer. Henry yells at him for the feckless behavior of Emperor Charles (as usual) for signing a treaty Henry did not know about until just now. Historically, this meeting did not go poorly. Henry knew about the treaty before he came home from France and spent most of their meeting boasting about defeating the French.

Queen Catherine came downstairs ahead of Chapuys’s meeting to speak with him and thank him, then left him to talk to Mary. The queen was worried about his poor health and did not want him to have to stand up too long. Little did Chapuys know that while Catherine Parr was smiling to his face and thanking him for his long service, her Reformist friends were working hard to build a new Protestant League behind the emperor’s back. You know, the usual shenanigans.

So, what happened to Eustace Chapuys?

He moved to Belgium as a rich man, given his pension as an ambassador, his inheritances, and salaries. He was a prudent investor, and his dividends paid off. One of the first things he did in retirement was to set up a college for promising students from Savoy, his birthplace, and to found a grammar school. He served as an advisor to Charles V, and one of his last reports is an analysis of the political situation as Henry VIII lay dying. They consulted him about a proposed marriage between Mary I and Philip of Spain. He died in 1556, at an uncertain age (his upper 60s).

Minor Historical Inaccuracies:

• This episode has thousands of soldiers (about 5,000) dying of dysentery and starving in Henry’s camp; this was not true for his siege of Boulogne, but was true for his armies further inland, where it was more difficult to find food.
• Charles Brandon has an affair with a French woman. Never happened.
• Not a mistake, but a cool thing to know: giving someone the literal keys to the city in Tudor times meant turning over the keys to the armory. Wen a mayor or prince or lord asked for “safe passage” for the city’s occupants, he was really requesting they not be killed or raped as they left. (Which usually happened out of sight of the city anyway.) Around 50,000 French civilians died thanks to this invasion, some from starvation or exposure.

Curious what personality types feature in The Tudors? Check out my analysis here!

This article is part of my Historical Accuracy in Historical TV Shows & Movies series, where I break down the real history behind popular historical dramas.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.