I'll be burned at the stake.

I was seven years old, going on eight, when the Headmistress at Greenbank Infants' School in Bristol, U.K. called us all into the assembly hall on February 6th 1952.

She told us that the King (George VI) had died.

I cried.  Not because of the King's death.  But because I knew that we now had a Queen, and that was scary.

For the only other Queen I could think of was Mary I, and I knew that she had "burned all the Protestants".

I thought that now that we had another Queen, I, as a little Protestant, would be burned at the stake.

( Of course Mary Tudor [Queen Mary I] didn't burn all the Protestants -  but that's what I thought at that young age)

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