AHC:Bloody Mary Restores Catholicism

How could Bloody Mary be able to reverse the English Reformation and restore Catholicism as the dominant faith in England? Could it be done if Edward VI became King or does he need to be butterflied away for Catholicism to suceed in England? What if? (I have seen the thread on No Edward VI)
 
So you know that this thread is pretty much pointless then. :rolleyes:

OK summing up the main parts: Mary could restore Catholicism. The problem was her OTL Heiress Elizabeth. Elizabeth was protestant either form personal belief or by political views. If Mary I has a son (which would in my opinion involve her not having Uterine cancer) then the throne is secure with a Catholic. Having a secure Catholic regency would be a necessity as well. Or even better butterfly away Edward VI (either have him never be born or die before coming to the throne) that way there is no push and pull between the Catholics and radical Protestants. With no established "religious opposition" restringing Catholicism or rather restoring the Pope as head of the Church, is much easier.
 
Actually it will be kind of difficult since her reign of terror is partially what drove England to be protestant. I'll have to dig out the book, but a text for a class I had explained it quite nicely.
 
Actually it will be kind of difficult since her reign of terror is partially what drove England to be protestant. I'll have to dig out the book, but a text for a class I had explained it quite nicely.

Her "reign of terror" only started after her first phantom pregnancy and Philip's departure. In my opinion she felt that God was punishing her country's protestantism by denying her a child. So give her a child and she probably wouldn't be as extreme as she was OTL.
 
ASB.

The Tudor line was dying out due to inbreeding. (1) Too many male Yorkists-Lancastrians-Tudors (starting with Henry V's generation) were dying with no male issue, or no issue at all. Those who had issue, were often only having/issuing surviving females that were barren, with the males dying young.

1) I've noticed that word seems to be very unwelcome to some:confused::confused::confused:, but genetics is not a social science.:(
 
ASB.

The Tudor line was dying out due to inbreeding. (1) Too many male Yorkists-Lancastrians-Tudors (starting with Henry V's generation) were dying with no male issue, or no issue at all. Those who had issue, were often only having/issuing surviving females that were barren, with the males dying young.

1) I've noticed that word seems to be very unwelcome to some:confused::confused::confused:, but genetics is not a social science.:(

NO not ASB. Look at other royal Dynasties. Take the Spanish Habsburgs, for instance. It took them, what three generations of Uncle-niece marriages two first-cousin marriages and about 200 years too make them go extinct. And even then Carlos II's sister managed to produce a child.
And speaking of inbreading, look at the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. They lasted for almost 300 years and most of their children came from brother-sister marriages! Brother sister and they still successfully produced children!

In all honest the Tudors weren't any more inbred then the other Royal dynasties of the time. Saying that their Dynasty continuing is ASB is a bit ridiculous.:rolleyes:
 
You could have Mary be like a Catholic Elizabeth, in that she restores Catholicism in England, but she's also a realist and understands for some of her subjects, the break with Rome is permanent, and that on some levels the Anglicans have legitimate grievences with the Church. I'm not sure how you get her to think this way though, short ASB handwavium and a personality transplant.
 
ASB.

The Tudor line was dying out due to inbreeding. (1) Too many male Yorkists-Lancastrians-Tudors (starting with Henry V's generation) were dying with no male issue, or no issue at all. Those who had issue, were often only having/issuing surviving females that were barren, with the males dying young.

1) I've noticed that word seems to be very unwelcome to some:confused::confused::confused:, but genetics is not a social science.:(

This really isn't true in any sense of the word. Both Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth's genes were donated by 16 unique great-grandparents. There was minimal risk of genetic collapse.

However, I do like the horrible irony of Mary I delivering a heir, only for it to be severely malformed and mentally disabled. That would be cruel.
 
You could have Mary be like a Catholic Elizabeth, in that she restores Catholicism in England, but she's also a realist and understands for some of her subjects, the break with Rome is permanent, and that on some levels the Anglicans have legitimate grievences with the Church. I'm not sure how you get her to think this way though, short ASB handwavium and a personality transplant.

I can see a Mary who directly succeeds her father being more willing to adres some of the legitimate grievances her subject have, besides the Pope being the head of the Church. From what I understand, Mary took more and more solace and refuge in Religion during her brothers reign. So without being forced into radicalism by Edward VI's reforms she might be willing to address the problems. After all, in OTL she never tried to force the Nobles to return the land they got from the suppression of the monasteries to the Church. That in itself show's that she wasn't a mindless religious nut job.
 
Mary was a devout Roman Catholic throughout her life - she was a teenager with fully formed opinions by the time of her father's split from Rome.
The rest of her time under her father's reign was a constant pull between devotion and obedience to him and that which she owed her church.
It troubled her conscience at times and probably laid the stones for her attitude once she succeeded.
Succeeding in 1547 might have caused her even more problems - dealing with a devoutly protestant step-mother who had custody of Elizabeth being one of them.

Her relationship with her siblings was pretty good until Edward's accession - when it was their divergent religious views that separated them.
A more moderate Mary might have been able to emulate her father's half-hearted reformation (an almost Roman Catholic church in style and practice but with the monarch not the Pope at its head) just as a more moderate Edward might have avoided the more radical elements of reform that offended many - but moderate Catholicism like moderate Protestantism at the time just didn't really exist - to both Edward and Mary the other was in error and needed correcting in order to save their soul.
On her accession Mary's principal desire and aim was to return England to Rome's embrace - she had failed to really comprehend the changes wrought in the two decades since England's split from Rome.
English nationalism had always existed but under the Tudor's it grew at a considerable pace and that fed into reaction against her foreign marriage.
Her growing obsession with irradicating heresy was tied into her desire for an heir to displace the suspected heretic Elizabeth and even Philip was aware of the damage she was doing to her reputation and to catholicism and warned her against it.
It would be Elizabeth, far more pragmatic than either of her siblings, who would deliver a church of england closer to that of her father but still protestant in nature. However in doing that she laid the foundations for the protestant dissent that would trouble her Stuart successors so much.
 
Actually when she officially brought the country back to the Pope most people pretty much went back to Catholicism. There was certainly a large segment who stayed Protestant, but they were a minority, simply put the English people didn't really care enough. The burnings didn't help the cause, however it wasn't the generally stereotyped 'All England against Mary', it was more 'a fair whack of England against Mary'.
 
Actually when she officially brought the country back to the Pope most people pretty much went back to Catholicism. There was certainly a large segment who stayed Protestant, but they were a minority, simply put the English people didn't really care enough. The burnings didn't help the cause, however it wasn't the generally stereotyped 'All England against Mary', it was more 'a fair whack of England against Mary'.

Exactly. Much of Mary's horrible reputation came from the Protestants who were opposed to her or from some of Elizabeth's government no doubt. The Protestants only grew in power during Edward VI's reign. So again if Mary was to directly succeed her father then the Protestants would have grown that larger or powerful.
 
Henrician church reform might have retained numerous elements of Catholicism but the English schism did allow more open debate of religion and the issues raised by continental reformers however much an increasingly conservative Henry might have tried to put the genie back in the bottle.
It would be wrong to state that the only real difference in religion in the England of 1547 compared to that of 1529 was the Royal Supremacy and the break with Rome.
In fact Henry's insistance in the later few years of his reign (from 1539 onwards) on more traditional Catholic practices being enforced on pain of death and the restriction of the reading of the Bible in English all suggest that reform out of court circles was growing at some pace and that Henry like many other conservatives were trying to lock the stable door after the horse had bolted.
Had Mary succeeded in 1547 with things such as the Six Articles still on the Statute Book (and none of the more overtly Protestant reforms of Edward VI's reign around) then her chances of a smoother return to Rome certainly improve and to be fair even in her short OTL reign there is evidence that most ordinary people accepted the change (having had little truck with the more extreme Protestantism of the previous reign) and for many it was a return to the familar church of their childhood.
The protestants also lost ground in the 1550s in part by the site of former Protestant church men willingly recanting to remain in post (with the exception of Crammer who Mary honestly wanted dead) but they had the trump card in Mary's reputedly protestant heir - an earlier Mary might deprive them of that hope.
Just like Catholics under Elizabeth (at least in her early reign) devout and committed Protestants under Mary (whether in 1547 or 1553) are facing the difficult choice of loyalty to their sovereign or their church.
For some a return to Rome was going to be deeply difficult and as in OTL will mean in some cases rebellion.
In 1547 with no Edward, Henry will leave a divided country and council and no clear legal heir - assuming he names Mary at all which I think is debateable and whether she succeeds in gaining the throne in those circumstances.
Even Mary's loyalist supporters such as Cardinal Pole believed bringing England wholeheartedly back to Rome would take considerable time.

There were numerous devout and strongly Protestant voices in Henry's Council in his last few years and all will be strongly against Mary and what action these by enlarge wealthy men will take in a timeline with no male heir to Henry would be interesting.
 
Actually it will be kind of difficult since her reign of terror is partially what drove England to be protestant. I'll have to dig out the book, but a text for a class I had explained it quite nicely.

No, having a 45 year long determinedly Protestant reign after Mary's very premature death, reinforced by a nationalistic war with Europe's premier Catholic power, is what drove England to be Protestant.
 
I can see a Mary who directly succeeds her father being more willing to adres some of the legitimate grievances her subject have, besides the Pope being the head of the Church. From what I understand, Mary took more and more solace and refuge in Religion during her brothers reign. So without being forced into radicalism by Edward VI's reforms she might be willing to address the problems. After all, in OTL she never tried to force the Nobles to return the land they got from the suppression of the monasteries to the Church. That in itself show's that she wasn't a mindless religious nut job.

That's an interesting twist - butterfly away Edward VI, and have Mary take the throne in 1547.

That not only might temper her religious policy - the Edwardian reformation would be butterflied away, and with it a larger, hardened core of Protestant resistance - but also the tenor of her religious faith under his rule.

Also, by giving her at minimum another five years to reign during prime child bearing years, it would increase the chances that she might produce an heir.
 
A more moderate Mary might have been able to emulate her father's half-hearted reformation (an almost Roman Catholic church in style and practice but with the monarch not the Pope at its head) just as a more moderate Edward might have avoided the more radical elements of reform that offended many - but moderate Catholicism like moderate Protestantism at the time just didn't really exist - to both Edward and Mary the other was in error and needed correcting in order to save their soul.

At no point in Mary's life would she have abandoned Roman primacy.

Her religious policy might have been more moderate in certain respects had she acceded in 1547 rather than 1553. But it still would have been Roman Catholic, not Anglican.
 
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