Chapter 216- The Dutch Daredevil Atop St. Paul’s… (1553-1554)

The story returns after a brief hiatus with the opening months of the reign of Queen Mary Tudor… and we examine how and why London had gone from the place that exploded in joy at her proclamation as Queen… to hundreds of armed Londoners joining an armed rebellion against her. It’s a few months where we watch the trappings of regime change as London would have seen it, of fiery pamphlets filling the streets, of suicidal judges, of the fraught relationship between the Queen and her half-sister, and the causes of a rebellion down in Kent (its always Kent). More than that, it’s about the pageantry and splendour of when a new monarch takes the throne, and the moment when a Dutch daredevil climbed to the very top of old St. Paul’s cathedral… Cover includes detail of St. Paul’s in 1540 by Van der Wyngarde.