When Edward VI died in 1553, Mary became queen only after a faction of Protestant nobles tried to put Lady Jane Gre on the throne.  When Mary  ascended the throne, England was irreconcilably divided on religion. During the final years of Henry VIII's reign and even more under the Edward VII's, nearly all of the Catholic churches had been de­faced or destroyed, convents and monasteries confiscated, and the practice of Catholicism forbidden.

Although Mary worked towards reestablishing Catholicism in England, her first official announcement when she became queen was to leave her subjects free to worship as they chose. Mary's attempts to bring about gradual changes were often thwarted by the council and her marriage to Phillip of Spain caused many of her subjects to hate her violently. Phillip had lived most of his life in a country that was notorious for the sadism of the Inquisition and where the extermination of heresy was a pious responsibility.

Because the initial Protestant rebellion was both religious and political, the most vocal of the rebels were arrested and charged with heresy. The general European penalty for heresy was burning at the stake. Mary and her council, under the influence of Reginald Pole, the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, eventually approved burning as the punishment for heresy. The standard European method for this form of execution was to tie a bag of gunpowder to the victim's waist so that when the fire reached that point, the explosion would end their agony. The wood was often too green and/or damp and the fire burned for hours before the victims finally died.  The condemned were never gagged so their screams and prayers echoed throughout the crowds attracted to the grisly proceedings.

Queen Mary I