Distrust Between Mary And Jane

Another important factor in determining whether people supported Mary or Jane, albeit lesser to religion, is distrust of the nobility. Because of Lady Jane’s marriage into the Duke of Northumberland's dynasty and so being legally bound to this prominent figure in court- this must have alerted the public that Lady Jane was most likely a political puppet to strengthen and secure Northumberland’s egomaniacal grip on power. This would determine Queen Mary as the more preferable ruler, because she was unaffiliated with any English courtier and with more freedom of autonomy- she was more likely to govern with (expected) fairness and justice; compared to Lady Jane who was absolutely certain to govern with corruption and systematic terror, being

ruled through her “cruel” uncle. This is an important assumption because where religion was used in creating legislation, it was the practise of these laws which affected people most, and their treatment by those in power was more likely to affect the decision in supporting Lady Mary or Jane. For example as Source A quotes “the malice that the people bore to the Duke of Northumberland for the death of Somerset and his other cruelty” this immediately tells that the death of the former Lord Protector (Somerset) was strongly interpreted as an overwhelming injustice on Somerset’s behalf and an obvious indicator of corruption and tyranny, therefore was not tolerated by the people. This attitude is extremely important because the huge, nation-wide antagonism towards Somerset’s series of failures, where tensions reached a destructive climax in 1549 is apparently overshadowed by the emotional response in 1553 to a single act by Northumberland.

This benefits Lady Mary’s claim for support because with a huge emotionally-charged response to a figure in her rival’s household, comes the determined aversion to any ruler who is connected or would be influenced by Northumberland- Lady Jane being the prime example. To stress this distrust further, as an important factor in determining whether people supported Lady Mary or Jane as their future Queen, in 1549 the Lord Protector was solely blamed for the financial disaster (one of many failures) by the entirety of the Regency Council, which involved the silver coinage system being debased further from the severe level during Henry VIII’s reign, in newly- minted coins containing a lower-amount of silver resulting in extreme hyperinflation, (coupled with failing harvests between 1547-49 and the instability of the Antwerp cloth market, meaning that both the domestic and foreign trade was at a

minimum). This adds a depth to the quote in Source A, where to the original reader, which assumedly is an educated crowd, would understand the significance behind Somerset’s name- as a cultural symbol for corruption by the nobility, to further exaggerate Northumberland as a worse party- and effectively further reduce Lady Jane to be seen as an opportunity for more and greater corruption by Northumberland.

However given the anonymity of the source, it is hard to distinguish between this piece being a private journalistic entry or an intended piece of publication, if a personal audience was intended, this would reduce the reliability of this source, as there would be too great a risk of subjective exaggeration in events. Yet as Foxe, who used this source in his written criticism, ‘Acts and Monuments’, towards the Catholic church and the Marian-movement in England, has not credited an original author, the message of this source and the literal text would have easily been changed to ‘fit in’ with Foxe’s argument, which biasedly exonerated protestant martyrs as ‘virtuous’ and catholic believers as

‘sinful’. In this ‘filter’ Lady Jane Grey also conforms to this label as a martyr, following her execution as ordered by Mary, and Foxe implies that the nation ought to have supported her, and the decision made to support Mary was based on ‘foolish’ and ‘naive’ factors. Therefore, given the more unreliable provenance of this source, this ironically adds to the importance of distrust of the nobility compared to religion as a decision-making factor, because the source is used to personally ‘attack’ Queen Mary as a sole ‘corrupter’ of her ‘virtuous’ English subject's, this means that the decision made to support Mary was genuine and based on very pressing matters at the time- in other words, Mary’s religious belief was very publically known as was the ‘virtuous’ Jane Grey, yet her following from “the majority of commons and some nobles” contradicts Foxe’s argument; the people decided to support Mary because the desperate need for a (more-likely) fair leadership outmatched the need to fulfil religious preference. This therefore is an important factor in the decision making process for the people, because the current conditions of political, economic and social instability, with Northumberland controlling through Lady Jane Grey would most likely be worsened- and as the people did not have the ability to accurately foresee future events, with ‘Bloody Mary’s’ tyrannous persecution as described in Foxe’s retrospect written midst 1550’s, in 1553 Lady Mary Tudor possessed the reputation of a promising fairer leadership- which is what the decisions to support her would have been based upon.