MARY I: Bloody Mary

Thus begins out discussion of Queens that actually ruled as opposed to just being married to the King.

Mary I was born of the union between Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.  She was raised to be very Catholic because she was born and educated before Henry's split with the Rome by creating the Church of England.  Thus, she, like her mother, was very strongly tied to the Pope and Catholicism.  She was the only child to survive from Henry's first marriage.  During the reign of her Protestant father and brother, Mary was often disregarded.  Following her brother's death, she embarked on a terrible reign of reinstating Catholicism in England.  It was, however, abortive because she was only on the throne for five years.  In that time, she had roughly 500 protestants burned at the stake, and she garnered the nickname "Bloody Mary."  It is interesting to think someone that got the nickname "Bloody Mary" was the first woman to ascend to the throne of England.

She was married to Philip, the heir to the Spanish throne, and he was strongly in support of her Catholic view.  She intended to have children that would continue the fight to reinstate Catholicism.  Unfortunately, the pregnancy that she had been hoping for turned out to be a cancerous tumor, and her hopes were dashed.  Thus, she was forced to name her sister, Elizabeth, as her successor.  Elizabeth was a Protestant, and Mary died without doing much damage to the hold that Protestantism had on England.

The reign of Mary I is truly one of the most tragic in history.  She had high hopes of reinstating Catholicism, and had the support of much of the country.  However, she failed in her endeavor to do what she saw as religiously right.  Also, she desperately wanted to have a child to continue her religious endeavor, but she was fooled by a cyst that looked much like a pregnancy (but disappeared without a baby).  Thus, she was forced to give the throne to someone that she knew would undo everything that she had done and had set out to do.

Her Wikipedia Page

Her Tudor History Page

Next time we will discuss...