Mary I of England
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500-1750; Monarchs of Great Britain
| Queen Mary I | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| 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 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.