Queen Mary I of England reigned as Queen of England for a short five years (r.
1553-1558), the first reigning queen since the disputed Mathilda in the 12th
Century. Most historians consider her reign to be unfruitful in that she never
was able to fulfill her dream of returning England to the Roman Catholic
Church. She also never had any children of her own to continue her dynasty in
England. Her foreign policies met with failure as well.
Born in 1516 to England's King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Mary lived
quiet life as a royal princess until about 1527 when the king began to seek
annulment of his marriage to her mother. Since Catherine had not produced a
male heir, Henry feared that if Mary inherited the throne civil war might
result. Since the pope refused to grant an annulment, in 1533 Henry's bishops
dissolved the marriage and allowed Henry to marry Anne Boleyn, who soon gave
birth to Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth. In all, England thus broke away from
the Roman Catholic Church and began to follow Anglicanism. After Catherine's
death, Henry in turn executed Anne Boleyn on a trumped-up charges of adultery
conspiracy. His next wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to his long-desired heir,
Edward, so both Mary and Elizabeth were treated as royal bastards.
Edward VI followed his father as king in 1547, but died already in 1553. Mary
became queen only after a faction of Protestant nobles tried to put Lady Jane
Grey, or the "nine day queen," on the throne. Mary's overwhelming support by
the powerful averted a serious civil war. Only a handful of executions
followed, including Lady Jane.
Mary immediately went to work bringing the Roman Catholic faith back to England
. She initially did this by rescinding the religious proclamations of Edward
VI, and replacing them with old English laws enforcing heresy against the
Church. In carrying out the last action, Mary earned her nickname, "Bloody
Mary," because during her reign, she had more than 300 persons burned at the
stake for heresy. Among them was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer
. Chiefly because of her support of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church,
she was never really able to gain the support of nobles and most of her
countrymen.
In her drive to find an heir to the English throne, at the age of 37 Mary wed
prince Philip II of Spain. This made her subjects even more apprehensive about
her, because many viewed Spain as an archenemy of England. Twice during her
reign she believed that she was with child, and even showed the symptoms of
pregnancy. It seems that she had a "hysterical pregnancy" -- she had convinced
herself so that her body responded as if she were pregnant. It has also been
supposed that she might have had an ovarian cyst that not only prevented her
from conceiving a child, but could have contributed to her early death in 1558
.
Mary's foreign affairs had also met failure as well. Encouraged to ally with
Spain by Philip in a war against France, Mary lost Calais, the only English
held possession in France. Sadly, in 1558, deserted by her husband who went
back to Spain to claim the Spanish throne, Mary realized that she would not be
able to provide an heir, and was forced to recognize her sister, Elizabeth,
an Anglican Protestant, as the next ruler of England. Although at several
points Mary threatened and put pressure on on her sister to convert to Roman
Catholicism, she successfully resisted, survived, and became Queen Elizabeth I
.
http://www.kings.edu/
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