As Machiavelli knew well, nothing succeeds like success. ‘Good King Harry’; ‘Good Queen Bess’; ‘Bloody Mary’: until very recently the smoke from the burning of Protestants in Mary Tudor’s brief reign has coloured not only common tags but the vision of most Tudor historians, who have regarded her five years on the throne as a cruel, incompetent and futile attempt to halt the progress of England towards Elizabeth I’s Protestant nation-state.
Eamon Duffy, particularly in The Stripping of the Altars (1992), has done more than anyone to dispel the conventional view of traditional Catholic life — better lost than saved — in England before the Reformation. Now, in a short, evidence-packed book, exceptionally well provided with illustrations and maps, he has shone a just and equal light on the English church in Mary’s reign.
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