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Mary I of England

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History
1500-1750; Monarchs of Great Britain

               Queen Mary I
              The Queen Mary
   Reign       19 July 1553 - 17 November 1558
   Born        18 February 1516
   Died        17 November 1558
   Predecessor Jane
   Successor   Elizabeth I
   Consort     Philip II
   Issue       None
   Royal House Tudor
   Father      Henry VIII
   Mother      Catherine of Aragon

          Mary Tudor is the name of both Mary I of England and her
          father's sister, Mary Tudor (queen consort of France).

   Queen Mary I of England ( 18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also
   known as Mary Tudor, was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 6
   July 1553 ( de jure) or 19 July 1553 ( de facto) until her death.

   Mary, the fourth and penultimate monarch of the Tudor dynasty, is
   remembered for returning England from Protestantism to Roman
   Catholicism. To this end, she had almost three hundred religious
   dissenters executed; as a consequence, she is often known as Bloody
   Mary. Her religious policies, however, were in many cases reversed by
   her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth I (1558 – 1603). Mary Tudor
   was a cousin, once removed, of Mary, Queen of Scots, with whom she is
   often confused.

Early life

         English Royalty
         House of Tudor
           Henry VIII
       Henry, Duke of Cornwall
      Mary I
      Elizabeth I
      Edward VI
             Mary I

   Mary was the second daughter and fifth child of Henry VIII and his
   first wife, Catherine of Aragon. A stillborn sister and three
   short-lived brothers, including the prince Henry, had preceded her.
   Through her mother, she was a granddaughter of King Ferdinand and Queen
   Isabella of Spain, famous for driving the Muslims from the Iberian
   Peninsula, uniting modern Spain, and funding Christopher Columbus's
   voyage to the New World.

   She was born at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London, on Monday
   18 February 1516. She was baptised on the following Thursday with
   Thomas Cardinal Wolsey standing as her godfather. The Princess Mary was
   a precocious but sickly child who had poor eyesight, sinus conditions
   and bad headaches.

   Some authors believe that her poor health was from congenital syphilis
   transferred to her from her mother, who presumably would have
   contracted the disease from Mary's father. Whether or not she had the
   disease is debated, however, as the story emerged long after his death.
   Henry VIII doted on his daughter and would boast in company "This girl
   never cries."

   Henry gave the Princess Mary her own court at Ludlow Castle and many of
   the Royal Prerogatives normally only given to a Prince of Wales, as she
   was acknowledged the Princess of Wales at the age of 9, even though he
   was deeply disappointed that her mother (failure to bear children was
   always blamed on the wife - Haldane's rule was not understood) had
   again failed to produce a healthy son; Catherine's sixth and last child
   was a stillborn daughter.

   In July 1521, when scarcely five and a half years old, she entertained
   some visitors with a performance on the virginals (a smaller
   harpsichord). A great part of the credit of her early education was
   undoubtedly due to her mother, who not only consulted the Spanish
   scholar Juan Luís Vives upon the subject, but was herself the Princess
   Mary's first teacher in Latin. She also studied Greek, science, and
   music.

   Even when she was a young child, the Princess Mary's marital future was
   being negotiated by her father. When she was but two years old, she was
   promised to the Dauphin Francis, son of Francis I, King of France.
   After three years, the contract was repudiated; in 1522, the Princess
   Mary was instead contracted to her first cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor
   Charles V, then 22, by the Treaty of Windsor. Within a few years,
   however, the engagement was broken off. In 1526, the Princess Mary was
   sent to Wales to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches.

   It was then suggested that the Princess Mary wed, not the Dauphin, but
   his father Francis I, who was eager for an alliance with England. A
   marriage treaty was signed; it provided that the Princess Mary should
   marry either Francis or his second son, Henry, Duke of Orléans.
   Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII's chief advisor, managed to secure an
   alliance without a marriage.

   Meanwhile, the marriage of the Princess Mary's parents was in jeopardy.
   Queen Catherine had failed to provide Henry the male heir he desired;
   consequently, the King attempted to have his marriage to her annulled,
   but, to Henry's disappointment, the Pope refused to all his requests
   for divorce, as Queen Catherine was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's
   aunt. In 1533, Henry secretly married another woman, Anne Boleyn.
   Shortly thereafter, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
   formally declared the marriage with Catherine void and the marriage
   with Anne valid.

   As the Pope had previously denied him the annulment, Henry broke with
   the Roman Catholic Church. All appeals from the decisions of English
   ecclesiastical courts to the Pope were abolished. This is when Henry
   declared only himself, (until his death or abdication) head of the
   Church of England.

   Mary, meanwhile, was deemed illegitimate, as Henry claimed that his
   marriage to Catherine was officially null and void from the beginning.
   He claimed a biblical passage that pronounced his marriage as unclean
   and childless, as Catherine of Aragon (his wife) was once the child
   bride (at age 16) of his brother Arthur. She lost the dignity of being
   a Queen, being demoted to Princess Dowager of Wales. Mary's place in
   the line of succession was transferred to her half-sister, the Princess
   Elizabeth (daughter of Anne Boleyn). Also, Henry completely stripped
   Mary of the title "Princess", only ever referring Elizabeth as one.

   The Lady Mary was expelled from the Royal Court; her servants were
   dismissed from her service, and she was forced to serve as a
   lady-in-waiting under the Queen Anne's aunt, the Lady Shelton, to her
   own infant half-sister Elizabeth, then living in Hatfield. She was not
   permitted to see her mother Catherine, nor attend her funeral in 1536.
   Her treatment and the hatred Queen Anne had for her was perceived as
   unjust; all Europe, furthermore, regarded her as the only true heir and
   daughter of Henry VIII, although she was illegitimate under English
   law.

   Mary confidently expected her troubles to end when Queen Anne lost
   royal favour and was beheaded in 1536. The Princess Elizabeth was also
   degraded to a Lady and removed from the line of succession. Henry
   married Jane Seymour, who died shortly after giving birth to a son, the
   Prince Edward, the true Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. Edward
   was perfectly healthy as a child, despite the assumption often made by
   later historians; he died of what is thought to have been a tubercular
   complication of measles. While he lived, Mary could not have expected
   to inherit the crown, whether she was legitimate or not. Until the last
   six months of his life, everyone expected him to marry and have
   children of his own.

   The Lady Mary's privy purse expenses for nearly the whole of this
   period have been published, and show that Hatfield, Beaulieu or Newhall
   in Essex, Richmond and Hunsdon were among her principal places of
   residence.

   However, it quickly became apparent that Mary's father Henry, and not
   Anne alone, had been persecuting Mary. The only way he would grant her
   his favour was if she accepted humiliating attacks on her religion and
   royal position. The Lady Mary was tricked into reconciling with her
   father by submitting to him as head of the Church of England under
   Jesus, thus repudiating Papal authority, and acknowledging that the
   marriage between her mother and father was unlawful, thus making her
   illegitimate.

   She also became godmother to her half-brother Edward and was chief
   mourner at Queen Jane's funeral. In turn, Henry agreed to grant her a
   household, and the Lady Mary was permitted to reside in royal palaces.
   Henry's sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, was able to bring the
   family closer together, again improving the Lady Mary's position.

   There were several attempts to marry her off to European princes, but
   none of them succeeded. In 1544, Henry, through an Act of Parliament,
   returned the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth to the line of succession
   (after their half-brother, the Prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall). Both
   women, however, remained legally illegitimate. When Mary was in her
   thirties, she attended a reunion with her brother and sister for
   Christmas, when Edward was thirteen. The peace did not last, when
   Edward reduced her to tears in front of the entire court for "daring to
   ignore" his laws regarding worship.

   In 1547, Henry died, to be succeeded by Edward VI. Edward was England's
   first Protestant monarch; his Parliament's Act of Uniformity prescribed
   Protestant rites for church services, such as the use of Thomas
   Cranmer's new Book of Common Prayer. The Lady Mary, desirous of
   maintaining the old Roman Catholic form, asked to be allowed to worship
   in private in her own chapel. After she was ordered to stop her
   practices, she appealed to her cousin and former matrimonial prospect,
   the Emperor Charles V. Charles threatened war with England if the Lady
   Mary's religious liberty were infringed; consequently, the Protestants
   at court ceased to interfere with her private rituals.

Accession

   As Edward VI did not want the Crown to go to either the Lady Mary or
   the Lady Elizabeth, he excluded them from the line of succession in his
   will. This exclusion was unlawful, as it was made by a minor and
   contradicted the Act of Succession passed in 1544 which had restored
   Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession. Under the guidance of
   John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI instead devised that
   he should be succeeded by Lady Jane Grey, a descendant of Henry VIII's
   younger sister.

   Thus, after Edward died on 6 July 1553, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed
   Queen. Jane's accession was met with popular disapproval, which was
   suppressed by the use of force; a young boy so bold as to hail "Queen
   Mary" had his ears cut off as punishment. Despite this, much of the
   country remained devoted to Mary and on 19 July, Jane's accession
   proclamation was deemed to have been made under coercion and was
   revoked; Mary was proclaimed Queen in her place. On 3 August 1553, with
   support for Lady Jane Grey evaporating, Mary rode into London
   triumphant and unchallenged, with her half-sister, the Lady Elizabeth,
   at her side.

   Since the Act of Succession passed in 1543 recognised only Mary as
   Edward's heir, and since Edward's will was never authorised by statute,
   Mary's de jure reign dates from 6 July 1553, the date of Edward's
   death. Her de facto reign, however, dates from 19 July 1553, when Jane
   was deposed. One of her first actions as monarch was to order the
   release of the Catholic Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Stephen
   Gardiner from imprisonment in the Tower of London.

   Mary was inclined to exercise clemency, and set Lady Jane Grey free,
   recognising that Grey was forced to take the Crown by her father-in-law
   and her father. Lady Jane's father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk,
   was also released. The Duke of Northumberland was the only conspirator
   immediately executed for high treason, and even that was after some
   hesitation on the Queen's part. Mary was left in a difficult position,
   as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the plot to
   put Jane on the throne. She could only rely on Gardiner, whom she
   appointed Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor. Gardiner performed
   Mary's coronation on 1 October 1553 because Mary did not wish to be
   crowned by the senior ecclesiastics, who were all Protestants.

Reign

   Mary's first act of Parliament retroactively validated Henry VIII's
   marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and legitimated the Queen.

   Now 37, Mary turned her attention to getting a husband, to father an
   heir in order to prevent her half-sister, Princess Elizabeth, from
   succeeding to the throne. Mary rejected Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of
   Devon, as a prospect when her first cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor
   Charles V, suggested she marry his only son, the Spanish prince Philip,
   later Philip II of Spain.

   The marriage, a purely political alliance for Philip, who admired her
   dignity but felt "no carnal love for her", was extremely unpopular with
   the English. Lord Chancellor Gardiner and the House of Commons
   petitioned her to consider marrying an Englishman, fearing that England
   would be relegated to a dependency of Spain. The fear of dependency was
   due in large part to the inexperience of having a queen regnant, as
   Mary was truly England's first (Lady Jane having only reigned nine
   days).

   Insurrections broke out across the country when she refused. The Duke
   of Suffolk once again proclaimed that his daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was
   Queen. The young Sir Thomas Wyatt led a force from Kent, and was not
   defeated until he had arrived at London's gates. After the rebellions
   were crushed, both the Duke of Suffolk and Lady Jane Grey were
   convicted of high treason and executed. As a result of another series
   of rebellions designed to put her on the throne, Princess Elizabeth was
   imprisoned in the Tower of London and then was put under house arrest
   in Woodstock Palace after two months.
   Mary and Philip appear on the above medal by Jacopo da Trezzo made
   circa 1555.
   Enlarge
   Mary and Philip appear on the above medal by Jacopo da Trezzo made
   circa 1555.

   Mary married Philip on 25 July 1554, at Winchester Cathedral. Under the
   terms of the marriage treaty, Philip was to be styled "King of
   England", all official documents (including Acts of Parliament) were to
   be dated with both their names and Parliament was to be called under
   the joint authority of the couple. Philip's powers, however, were
   extremely limited; he and Mary were not true joint Sovereigns.

   Nonetheless, Philip was the only man to take the crown matrimonial upon
   his marriage to a reigning Queen of England; William III became jointly
   sovereign with his wife, Mary II, pursuant to Act of Parliament, rather
   than matrimonial right. Coins were to show the head of both Mary and
   Philip. The marriage treaty further provided that England would not be
   obliged to provide military support to Philip's father, the Holy Roman
   Emperor, in any war.

   Mary fell in love with Philip and, thinking she was pregnant, had
   thanksgiving services at the diocese of London in November 1554. But
   Philip found his queen, who was eleven years his senior, to be
   physically unattractive and after only fourteen months left for Spain
   under a false excuse. Mary suffered a false pregnancy; Philip released
   the Princess Elizabeth from house arrest, probably so that he could be
   viewed favourably by her in case Mary died during childbirth.

   Mary then turned her attention to religious issues. She had always
   rejected the break with Rome instituted by her father. Her
   half-brother, Edward, had established Protestantism; Mary wanted to
   revert the country to Roman Catholicism. England was reconciled with
   Rome, and Reginald Cardinal Pole, once considered as her suitor and son
   of her own governess the Countess of Salisbury, became Archbishop of
   Canterbury, after Mary had had his predecessor Thomas Cranmer executed.
   Pole would become an adviser Mary very heavily depended upon.

   Edward's religious laws were abolished by Mary's first Parliament and
   numerous Protestant leaders were executed in the so-called Marian
   Persecutions. The first to die were John Rogers ( 4 February 1555),
   Laurence Saunders ( 8 February 1555), Rowland Taylor ( 9 February
   1555), and John Hooper, the Bishop of Gloucester ( 9 February 1555).
   The persecution lasted for almost four years.

   Having inherited the throne of Spain upon his father's abdication,
   Philip returned to England from March to July 1557 to persuade Mary to
   join with Spain in a war against France - the Italian Wars. Meanwhile,
   England was full of faction, and seditious pamphlets of Protestant
   origin inflamed the country against the Spaniards. Pope Paul IV sided
   with France against Spain. English forces fared badly in the conflict,
   and as a result the Kingdom lost Calais, its last remaining continental
   possession. Mary later lamented that when she lay dead the words
   "Philip" and "Calais" would be found inscribed on her heart.

   Mary persuaded Parliament to repeal the Protestant religious laws
   passed by Henry VIII before her. To get their agreement took several
   years, and she had to make a major concession: tens of thousands of
   acres of monastery lands confiscated under Henry were not to be
   returned to the monasteries; the new landowners created by this
   distribution remained very influential.

   Mary also started currency reform to counteract the dramatic
   devaluation overseen by Thomas Gresham that had characterized the last
   few years of Henry's reign and the reign of Edward VI. These measures,
   however, were largely unsuccessful. Mary's deep religious convictions
   inspired her to institute social reforms, although these were also
   unsuccessful.

   Under her reign, in another of the Plantations of Ireland, English
   colonists were settled in the Irish midlands to reduce the attacks on
   the Pale (the colony around Dublin). Two counties were created in
   Ireland and, in her honour, were named Queens County (now Laois) and,
   for Philip, Kings County (now Offaly). The county town of Queens County
   was called Maryborough (now Portlaoise).

Death

   During her reign, Mary's weak health led her to suffer two false
   pregnancies. After such a delusion in 1558, Mary decreed in her will
   that her husband Philip should be the regent during the minority of her
   child. No child, however, was born, and Mary died at the age of 42,
   most probably of ovarian cancer at St. James's Palace on 17 November
   1558. She was succeeded by her half-sister, who became Elizabeth I.
   Mary was interred in Westminster Abbey on 14 December, in a tomb she
   would eventually share with her half-sister. The Latin inscription on a
   marble plaque on their tomb (affixed there during the reign of James I)
   translates to "Partners both in Throne and grave, here rest we two
   sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection".

Legacy

   Although Mary enjoyed tremendous popular support and sympathy for her
   mistreatment during the earliest parts of her reign, she lost almost
   all of it after marrying Philip. The marriage treaty clearly specified
   that England was not to be drawn into any Spanish wars, but this
   guarantee proved meaningless. Philip spent most of his time governing
   his Spanish and European territories, and little of it with his wife in
   England. After Mary's death, Philip became a suitor for Elizabeth's
   hand, but Elizabeth refused him.

   The persecution of Protestants earned Mary the appellation "Bloody
   Mary", although her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth, more than
   balanced the number killed under Mary with Catholic persecution, both
   in total and frequency. During Mary's five-year reign, 283 individuals
   were burnt at the stake, twice as many as had suffered the same fate
   during the previous century-and-a-half of English history, and at a
   greater rate than under the contemporary Spanish Inquisition. Several
   notable clerics were executed; among them were the former Archbishop of
   Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the former Bishop of London Nicholas Ridley
   and the reformist Hugh Latimer. John Foxe vilified her in his Book of
   Martyrs. Spanish ambassadors were apparently aghast at how the English
   reviled her and at the jubilation and celebration of the people upon
   her death. Many historians believe Mary does not deserve all the blame
   that has been cast upon her.

   Mary did not have many successes; she was, however, known for her
   "common touch". She would wear a country's national dress when meeting
   its ambassador, and many of those who waited upon her personally later
   expressed great love and loyalty to her.

   One popular tradition traces the nursery rhyme Mary, Mary, Quite
   Contrary to Mary's attempts to bring Roman Catholicism back to England.

Portrayal

   She has appeared several times in films and televison series portraying
   the Tudor period. Ann Tyrrell made a cameo appearance as Mary in the
   movie Young Bess (1953). Nicola Pagett played her in the 1969 film Anne
   of the Thousand Days; Pagett's brief appearance was in a fictitious
   scene depicting Mary at Catherine of Aragon's deathbed. (Historically,
   Mary was not present at the time.) In 1971, the BBC broadcast the
   six-part television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII. In the first
   part, Catherine of Aragon, the young Princess Mary was portrayed by
   Verina Greenlaw. She reappeared, played by Alison Frazer, in the third
   part, Jane Seymour, and in the sixth, Catherine Parr. In the
   blockbuster sequel, Elizabeth R, the middle-aged Mary was played by
   Daphne Slater. The 1985 movie Lady Jane had Jane Lapotaire in the role.
   In 1998, she was portrayed by Kathy Burke in the lavish costume drama
   Elizabeth. In 2003, Lara Belmont played her in the British television
   drama Henry VIII.

   She is the subject of the novel, The Shadow of the Crown by Jean
   Plaidy. Mary also appears in Philippa Gregory's novel, The Queen's Fool
   and in Margaret Irwin's trilogy of Queen Elizabeth's youth: Young Bess;
   Elizabeth, Captive Princess; and Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain. For
   younger readers, her story is told in Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn
   Meyer.

Style and arms

   Like Henry VIII and Edward VI, Mary used the style "Majesty", as well
   as "Highness" and "Grace". "Majesty", which Henry VIII first used on a
   consistent basis, did not become exclusive until the reign of Elizabeth
   I's successor, James I.

   When Mary ascended the throne, she was proclaimed under the same
   official style as Henry VIII and Edward VI: "Mary, by the Grace of God,
   Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the
   Church of England and also of Ireland in Earth Supreme Head". The
   "supremacy phrase" at the end of the style was repugnant to Mary's
   Roman Catholic faith; from 1554 onwards, she omitted the phrase without
   statutory authority, which was not retroactively granted by Parliament
   until 1555.

   Under Mary's marriage treaty with Philip II of Spain, the couple were
   jointly styled King and Queen. The official joint style reflected not
   only Mary's but also Philip's dominions and claims; it was "Philip and
   Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of England, France, Naples,
   Jerusalem, Chile and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain
   and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant,
   Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol". This style, which had been in
   use since 1554, was replaced when Philip inherited the Spanish Crown in
   1556 with "Philip and Mary, by the Grace of God King and Queen of
   England, Spain, France, Jerusalem, both the Sicilies and Ireland,
   Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan
   and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol".

   Mary I's arms were the same as those used by her predecessors since
   Henry IV: Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France) and
   Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England). Sometimes,
   Mary's arms were impaled (depicted side-by-side) with those of her
   husband.

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