Free postgraduate workshop featuring David Loades

I have just discovered a postgraduate workshop that is planned for June that I desperately want to attend. The key note speaker is Professor David Loades, the leading historian on Mary Tudor (who I would love to meet!). An interesting talk will be given by a PhD student at Warwick, entitled, 'To promote a woman to beare rule': The Queen of Heaven and Political Loyalty, 1553-1558. Examination of the Marian cult during Mary Tudor’s reign is a fascinating topic, and I look forward to reading the student’s final thesis. Some months back I read Elizabeth Ann Drey’s MA thesis, The portraits of Mary I, Queen of England (a copy of which can be found in the Courtauld Institute of Art’s library). Drey mentioned that during Mary’s reign there appeared material depicting Mary as the Virgin, suckling not the infant Christ but several Spaniards. This satirical, sacrilegious and hostile print, which fully intended to attack Anglo-Imperial relations, came to the attention of the authorities who made attempts to suppress the damaging material. Having previously come across comparisons made between Mary and her namesake, the Virgin, in works dating to the latter years of her father’s reign, and in pieces praising Mary’s accession in 1553 (particular Welsh material), I would be interested to learn more about how Mary and the regime employed such comparisons for political effect. And how, as the aforementioned print indicates, such comparisons could be severely subverted.


So I hope I can attend this workshop! For those interested, the workshop, The English Reformation: Religion and the World, will take place on the 2nd June at the University of Liverpool. It is free though you need to book in advance. Contact the history department for more details.