CurseHidden
Bloody Mary's Viper
A queen's longed-for heir, remembered as a snake.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Twelfth-century castle walls with thirteen towers
- Legend from
- Tudor, recorded Victorian
- Tone
- Curious
Framlingham Castle. Mary Tudor rallied her army here. Old Suffolk folk said something far stranger happened to her within these walls.
Framlingham Castle is where Mary Tudor gathered her supporters in 1553 before claiming the throne. A strange local saying, recorded in Victorian Suffolk and printed by Lady Gurdon, held that 'Bloody Mary' had been brought to bed of a viper at Framlingham. It reflects how the Protestant county remembered the queen who burned heretics, turning her longed-for but failed pregnancy into a monstrous birth. The tale has no basis in fact: Mary's 'pregnancy' came later in London and produced no child. It survives only as a folk saying, but it shows how quickly memory can turn history into a curse.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.