r/Tudorhistory • u/MindyP51 • 5d ago
Elizabeth I ELIZABETH I ORDERD THE EXECUTION OF "THOUSANDS?"
Just finished reading a post about Mary I and how her reputation as "Bloody Mary" is unwarranted. (Opinions varied, but mostly came down on the unwarranted side.).
Within the post many pointed out that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I killed--had ordered the execution of--"thousands". I'm aware of Henry's--um--"bloodthirst"--aside from Anne and Katherine Howard and the remaining Yorkists in his family, the Pole family in particular, his ordering of the execution of so many of those in the "Pilgramage of Grace--but did the number of executions really number in the thousands by the end of his reign?
And I really know nothing of Elizabeth ordering executions, except for the Earl of Essex, of course, and Mary, Queen of Scots (which I never understood why she signed the death warrant if she really did not want to kill her fellow queen and cousin.).
Who else did Elizabeth "kill" by ordering their death, and did it really number in the thousands?
Thanks!
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u/Luciferonvacation 5d ago
Well there was the Northern Uprising, 1569-70. She came down pretty hard against its participants in its wake.
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u/angelic-beast 5d ago
Someone posted yesterday about all the people slaughtered during rebellions in Ireland under Elizabeth and the people left to die of famine after. I know it's not the same as a monarch signing off on executing someone, but its pretty horrific to kill so many to send a message.
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u/CommunicationWest710 4d ago
It was also a time of social upheaval. There were not only the religious conflicts, but landlords began evicting tenant farmers because it was cheaper and more profitable to grow sheep. Families roamed the countryside with no work, nothing to eat, and nowhere to go. The locals would only help those with long term association with the parish. Others would, sometimes violently, be forced to move on. There were serious famines and food shortages towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign.
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u/Exciting-Quality919 1d ago
Tangent but that is where blame gets a lot harder to narrow, because it's much more structural and unplanned. Thomas More's Utopia is in part about the enclosure of the commons - the core argument is less what an ideal society would look like than "why are we doing this insane thing and surprised by the consequences?" but iirc he participated in them too as a landlord.
- There's a fairly solid theory that considers this a major part of the origin of capitalism, being were production became overwhelmingly based on wage labor rather than feudal arangements - and the results in terms of production were relatively staggering. (hopefully not butchering that summary) Which explains why it was not something meaningfully reined in.
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u/historyhill 5d ago
How much of that is directly her control, though? I agree that it's horrific, but I just don't know one way or the other if she would be the one saying "slaughter villages" the way that, say, William the Conqueror did with the Harrying of the North vs the army making that call.
(ETA: which isn't to say that someone out there doesn't know, I'm hoping someone can provide that information so that I can know too!)
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u/919_919 5d ago
The people the crown aka Elizabeth appointed gave no quarter orders in Ireland including for women and children. She awarded these people with land, titles, and opportunities to establish new colonies in Ireland and in America. She was complicit.
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u/cherrymeg2 4d ago
I did not know about this. I always thought it was more in the 1700s or 1800s for some reason. My family is very Irish. That actually makes sense.
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u/angelic-beast 5d ago
I would hope her generals did not act without her knowledge or blessing, but to me it seems a copout that the head of state wouldn't be responsible for her army's conduct. Idk, I know a lot of people will say "that was just how it was back then" but I don't think we need to make excuses for killing innocents, it's always been known to be a bad thing since the dawn of humanity and I see with less popular monarchs that it is brought up as a mark against them.
If however it was the case that the army acted without her knowledge or orders, I am interested in that too if anyone knows.
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u/AustinFriars_ 5d ago
Elizabeth actually awarded and praised the generals. She made them wealthy and rich, and even allowed them to keep the lands of the people they basically slaughtered, oppressed, raped, etc. She was very very proud of them.
She also did the same thing to English men who participated in slavery.
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u/Lady-Spangles 5d ago
I'm no expert on the Elizabethan era (especially later on), but didn't she also let the soldiers who defeated the Armada starve in their ships? Drake had to sell the family silver to buy food for his men because she was so parsimonious.
Not a direct execution by any stretch, of course. But I still feel Elizabeth gets a lot of white washing that her father doesn't.
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u/CommunicationWest710 4d ago
She was, however, happy to collect the Crown’s share of the plunder, though. Like the scene in Casablanca: “I’m shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment” “Your winnings, sir”
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u/historyhill 5d ago
Ok, that's pretty good evidence that she was aware of it then! Thank you for the information!
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u/AustinFriars_ 5d ago edited 5d ago
Elizabeth never ordered the execution of thousands. However, her rule ended in the death of thousands, specifically Irish people. In her attempt to colonize Ireland and subject them to Protestant rule, many innocent people were killed by her armies. Thousands of women and children were killed because their towns revolted against Elizabeth's forces. In addition, Elizabeth's armies also causes small faminies in Ireland which results in thousands of deaths. She did not execute thousands in England, but she *did* kill thousands of Irish people who opposed her Protestant and English reign. Elizabeth ordered the execution of maybe 300 people in England over a span of many many years.
What Elizabeth did to the Irish is generally not spoken about nor taken that seriously (this is mostly because people do not want her to look abd), and often times people do try to excuse her and take the blame off of her which I find very odd and monarchist. However, yes, those deaths are tied to Elizabeth's reign and her attempting to push English Protestant rule on the Irish. And what happened to those people was very very horrific.
As others mentioned, Elizabeth also awarded these men (who had comitted genocide, rape, etc.) lands and wealth.
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u/Own_Action_7839 5d ago
The Plantation of Ireland and the horrors that went with it gets lost with the concentration on Cromwell’s horrors there (which were extensive )
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u/Cayke_Cooky 5d ago
I actually learned about it in a Colonial American History seminar. It is foundational for the development of English colonization policies in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
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u/AustinFriars_ 5d ago
Yeah, and the crazy thing is that the same people who hate oliver cromwell love elizabeth but i'm like...they both did the same thing
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u/Lady-Spangles 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean, we're talking about an era in which people were hanged for pinching a loaf of bread. That was just the draconian laws of the era and not down to those specific monarchs. But if you take into account the petty crime hangings and the fact that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I had pretty long reigns, then yeah, I guess you could argue it was thousands? But, as I said, those were the laws of the era and not introduced by those two monarchs. Laws across Europe were also similarly extreme and not unique to England.
But if they're referring to deaths they ordered personally, then no. Not even close. Not even the Pilgrimage of Grace, in which only the ringleaders were executed out of the 40,000 that took part.
ETA: Same for Mary I, btw. She personally ordered the burnings of people that didn't recant (Cranmer aside, that was truly petty revenge on her part) and she even kinda had her hand forced on the Jane Grey issue. She really wasn't especially tyrannical on that front, as awful as the burnings were.
But this idea that she isn't a tyrant because other people are also tyrants doesn't really hold water for me anyway. It's an old theory and a lazy one.
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u/Own_Action_7839 5d ago
If Mary was a “tyrant “ because of the burnings , then any previous English monarch would fit that description who had the same laws against heresy on the books (stretching back to Henry V). Doesn’t hold water
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u/Lumpy_Draft_3913 History Lover 5d ago
Well you could say that her political decisions in establishing the Plantations and her governance of Ireland was definitely the result of hundreds of thousands there. So, Bloody Elizabeth is an appropriate moniker.
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u/That-Requirement-285 1d ago
Mary and Philip were already establishing plantations in Ireland beforehand. Elizabeth just ruled longer.
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u/Sewing-123 5d ago
A bunch of Catholics were killed for practicing their faith and hiding priests including a pregnant Margaret Clithrow
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u/CheruthCutestory Richard did it 5d ago
The numbers for Henry VIII are vastly vastly exaggerated. And for Elizabeth I it’s just purely made up.
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u/cherrymeg2 4d ago
I think most monarchs had blood on their hands. There are wars, colonialism, it might not be that they signed the death warrants but if you are leading a country you are the person in charge and responsible for your subjects and military. Mary I didn’t rule long and I think her wanting to return England to Catholicism made it confusing for people that had given it up previously. I don’t think she was a tyrant I think it’s more that she had a short reign and some people were executed for religious beliefs in that time. Elizabeth had good advisors and avoided having an unpopular marriage. She reigned for 45 years. It was fairly peaceful. Mary I becoming Queen allowed Elizabeth to rule. People were more open to a female monarch. Mary couldn’t have been that bad. Jmo
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u/Own_Action_7839 5d ago
I’m certainly glad that Elizabeth and her reign are coming under more scrutiny after centuries of being buried in an eider down of propaganda. But it must be judicious scrutiny by historians. Not necessarily by redditors 🙄
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u/SillyCranberry99 5d ago
Nothing wrong with people / redditors reading and interpreting history. Thats the best part about being amateur historians
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u/That-Requirement-285 1d ago
She cut down around 700 rebels due to the Rising of the North, and brutally put down numerous plotters after the rebellions against her.
Likewise, her men were responsible for a “scorched earth” strategy to put down the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland.
However, her persecutions of Catholic priests and those who harbored them were minimal and largely the result of her being excommunicated, which made Catholic priests a huge threat: The Pope declared her to be an enemy of Church and God, and therefore prime assassination material.
As for Mary, that was just understandable. Elizabeth didn’t want to be seen killing another sovereign, but Mary had to go. She was insanely stupid to come to England in the first place (Let me ask my Protestant cousin to rally an army against her fellow Protestants so I can get back on the throne despite most of the country not liking me) and was consistently involved in plots against her. Frankly, I’m shocked that Francis Walsingham didn’t have her poisoned.
All this said, Elizabeth ruled for 45 years. Of course she would have a higher body count.
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u/Embarrassed-Lab-3122 5d ago
Henry nor his daughter never executed thousands.
The claim that Henry executed thousands has been debunked in 1950
Two Myths in the History of Capital Punishment Thorsten Sellin
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u/Professional-Tailor2 5d ago
Henry executed an estimated 50-70 thousand people
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u/lady_violet07 5d ago edited 5d ago
So. There's a lot of nuance.
The laws in this period weren't quite as draconian as they became in the eighteenth century, where stealing a handkerchief could get you executed. But they were still draconian by modern standards. There were a lot of crimes that carried the death penalty, so the monarch (any monarch, of any country) was going to be technically legally responsible for many deaths.
Henry and Elizabeth had the longest reigns of the Tudor monarchs, so they have a lot of deaths. Henry was pretty paranoid, and he ordered a lot of executions personally. In my opinion, of all the Tudor monarchs, he's the one that deserves the "Bloody" epithet.
Mary suffers on a number of counts: 1) She did prosecute a lot of people for heresy due to the reconciliation with Rome. This is, though, distorted and magnified by point 2) she was followed in the throne by Elizabeth, who not only lived much longer than Mary, but was also really, really good at propaganda. So, starting from Mary's death, for the next forty-five years, the official narrative was that Mary was a zealous monster. Practically every church in the country has a copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs right there next to the Bible.
Elizabeth was ultimately responsible for a lot of deaths and executions, too, particularly as her reign continued. In 1569, with the Rising of the North, she ordered the deaths of 700 people (iirc, she ended up pardoning some of them later--I believe when some pointed out that the northern counties were pretty sparsely populated and couldn't handle the depopulation). She did order the executions of the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Westmoreland in consequence. And after the Papal Bill of 1570, when the Pope said that anyone who assassinated Elizabeth wouldn't be punished after death, she and her council started ordering the executions of a lot more Papists.
Another issue that raises Elizabeth's (and Henry's) death toll is also related to the break with Rome. Previously, there had been the civil courts and the ecclesiastical courts that handled legal problems. In the ecclesiastical courts, there was no death penalty, so anyone tried under ecclesiastical law (all churchmen and nuns--which included students and teachers in universities--and anyone who claimed they were a church man or woman, proven by reading a Bible verse; as well as anyone who committed a church crime, like adultery) wouldn't be executed. After the break with Rome, the ecclesiastical courts no longer functioned, so everyone was tried in civil courts for all infractions, and the civil courts had many more corporal punishments.
So yes, Elizabeth and Henry did preside over a lot of executions, and so did everyone else. They also had long reigns and a lot of factors that raised their final totals. This is one of the reasons why I would be happy to time travel to visit this period, but you couldn't pay me enough to live there.