The popular English Reformation historian A.G. Dickens, explained four reasons why Mary's reign was a failure. First he states that Mary lacked missionary organization. Second, he accused Mary of restoring monasteries instead of building up seminaries. Third, Dickens writes, "Marian printed propaganda appears unimpressive." [61] Finally, and here lies the golden accusation of Mary's reign, Mary "failed to discover the counter-reformation." [62]
In reality, these four criticisms of Mary's reign are utterly false.
The aftermath of the Wyatt Rebellion allowed Cardinal legate Reginald Pole, "the invisible man of the Marian restoration," to point to the rebellion as an explicit example of the social disorder brought about by Protestants. [63] He used the Wyatt Rebellion and other disturbances to showcase the radicalism of the Protestant faith. Historian Eamon Duffy argues that Cardinal Pole was the real force behind the Marian restoration of Catholicism. Of the Wyatt Rebellion and Cardinal Pole's usage of the rebellion as a prime piece of propaganda, he writes, "Wyatt's rebellion had consolidated the case against the reformation as a dangerous social solvent, destroying loyalty and order, and Catholic apologists exploited this to the hilt, homing in on the socially disruptive dimensions of reformation polemic as proof of its diabolic origins." [64]
It seems that A.G. Dickens was completely unaware of the important role the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, actually played in subjugating the Protestant faith in England.
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The Real "Bloody Mary" ✓
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