© Unknown Artist – The National Portrait Gallery
Mary I was born on 18 February 1516 at Greenwich, England, to her parents King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine of Aragon. By the time she was born, her mother had gone through at least four other pregnancies, including the birth of little Henry in 1511, who died less than two months later. When Mary was two, Katherine delivered a stillborn daughter and that would prove to be her last pregnancy. With each loss, Henry VIII grew impatient and became increasingly more cruel to his wife, who was already devastated and found refugee within her faith. He did dote on his daughter from time to time, even referring to her as “the King’s Pearl”. However, Henry only saw England’s future under a male ruler, and having only one daughter was not enough for him.
Henry VIII’s long run towards a son paid off when his third wife, Jane Seymour, fulfilled her role and gave birth to little Edward on 12 October 1537. Even though Jane wouldn’t live to see it, Edward VI would reign after his father’s death in 1547. Fate would do its thing and during January 1553 the fifteen year-old King fell ill with fevers and difficulty to breath, which led to his eventual death on 6 July that same year.
Henry VIII had left a carefully planned out map of succession, stating that in the event of Edward’s death without any heirs, the crown would go to Mary, his oldest daughter, but Edward wasn’t happy with that choice. His father had changed history by breaking off with Rome and becoming Head of the Church of England, leaving behind Catholicism and moving towards Protestantism in order to marry Anne Boleyn and sire an heir from her. Jane Seymour was a devout Catholic but her son had been raised in the new faith. Mary, who was the granddaughter of Isabel and Fernando of Castile, worldly known as the Catholics, had closely followed her Spanish roots and kept their faith alive. Were she to ascend to the throne, she’d surely undo the hard work he had done to maintain their father’s religious reforms and probably marry some Spanish noble, putting England’s sovereignty at risk. Consequently, he decided to leave both of his sisters (Mary I and Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth) out of his will, alluding to their illegitimacy, and name Lady Jane Grey (Henry VIII’s youngest sister Mary Tudor’s granddaughter) as his successor.
Mary immediately claimed the throne for herself and Jane was deposed from her position on 19 July, going down in history as “The Nine Days’ Queen”. Now what?
Well, first of all, Mary’s accession to the throne made her the first English Queen to rule by her own right. No marriage, no regency, nothing besides her birthright and her people’s support against Jane. This was such an unprecedented situation that there wasn’t even a proper protocol for her coronation and it had to be a mixture of a King and Queen consort’s ceremony. She would inadvertently pave the way for her half sister Elizabeth to become the second Queen on her own right immediately after her death.
One of her first decisions after getting the crown was to take Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Stephen Gardiner and Edward Courtenay out from the Tower of London, where they were incarcerated due to their faith under Edward VI’s reign. It was Gardiner who would crown Mary on 1st of October 1553.
Then she turned to the more pressing issue. She was in her late thirties, trying to get England back to Rome’s sanctity and find a way to avoid her heretic half sister Elizabeth to rule after her passing. She needed an heir and she needed a husband that could help her undo the religious reforms that were condemning the population to eternal flames. The Spanish King and Mary’s former fiancée suggested for her to marry his only legitimate son and future King of Spain, Felipe. That would aid her on her fights against Protestantism and maybe provide offspring for both of their kingdoms. This caused a big outroar in England, as it would make England vulnerable, ready to be annexed to Felipe’s territories.
Thomas Wyatt the Younger led a solid rebellion from Kent to depose Mary in favour of Elizabeth, as part of a conspiracy known as Wyatt's rebellion, which happened to involve the Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane's father. Lady Jane Grey had been at the tower until that moment due to Mary being unwilling to kill her, knowing well enough that she had taken the throne influenced by Northumberland. Now, though, Mary understood that as long as she lived, Protestants had a claimant to hang onto and she was forced to make the difficult decision of executing her just as Elizabeth would find herself in the same pitiful position years later with Mary Queen of Scots. Wyatt, Lady Jane, and her husband Guildford Dudley were all executed.
Mary went on to restore Papal supremacy and rebuked the title of Supreme Head of the Church, saving many monasteries from destruction and condemning many heretics to be burned at the stake to save their souls in spite of having issued a proclamation that promising she wouldn’t compel any of her subjects to follow her religion.
Economically, English colonists were settled in the Irish Midlands, setting up a plantation at Counties Laois and Offaly during Mary and Felipe’s reign. Felipe also persuaded his wife to take part in his war against France, which would lead to England losing Calais, even though England didn’t see any of the profits of Spain’s New World.
Mary did commission a world atlas and sent numerous adventurers down south to create new commercial links in Africa that could help the country get over the famine and the decline of the Antwerp cloth trade. She also made plans to aid the debasing of the coin that had been going on since her father’s reign and had not stopped during her half brother’s.
Sadly, her time was cut short after her already fragile health began to decline. She remained childless and had to accept that Elizabeth would become Queen and surely destroy all her efforts at making England Catholic again like in times of her mother.
Mary I died at 42 years old on 17 November 1558. Protestants all over the world would remember her reign and nickname her Bloody Mary while Catholics remember her with fondness and say she just didn’t have long enough time to properly establish herself as Queen and was given a country bastly different to the one she grew up in.
She was important, above everything, for being the first ruling Queen of England using her own right, in a time when women were told to be meek and obedient, and thought to be unable to withhold power and rule amongst men. We may or may not agree with some of her decisions but at the end of the day, she widened the road to power to all the women who existed after her, including Queen Elizabeth I.
And that should be her best legacy.
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