Bloody Mary: The Mary Tudor Trilogy: Book Three

Splendid in its completion of the story of a tragic Queen begun in I am Mary Tudor and continued in Mary the Queen, this final volume in the trilogy by Hilda Lewis is also an intensely human story.

In the folk memory of England, Mary is remembered yet as a scarlet legend of evil and cruelty symbolised by the flames which rose about the Protestant martyrs. Yet Hilda Lewis, who has traced the story of the shy, proud girl who grew to a warmhearted woman, shows what creative insight how Mary Tudor was indeed a ‘merciful prince’. Events that she could not control, the climate of the time that she was powerless to change, drove against the grain of our true nature. And beyond all was her personal tragedy of a marriage bed seldom shared with Philip, the king-consort as cruel as he was handsome and the heir that she longed for never to be granted by the God who seemed to have turned from her. Even that was not enough, and the rising star of Elizabeth, most brilliant of all the Tudor dynasty, cast Mary into shadow even while the throne was still hers. Elizabeth came between Mary and her people, between Mary and her husband, and the duel of jealousy between the half-sisters, both true daughters of Henry VIII in their strength of passion, flames through the closing chapters of the book.

In the roll of history it is the sins of Mary that are remembered. If ever the balance is to be restored it will be by such a sympathetic interpretation as Hilda Lewis here gives for the woman who came to be known as “Bloody Mary”.