Queen Mary I | |
---|---|
The Queen Mary | |
Reign | 19 July1553 - 17 November1558 |
Predecessor | Jane |
Successor | Elizabeth I |
Issue | None |
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).
Mary I (18 February, 1516 – 17 November, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 6 July1553 (de jure) or 19 July 1558 (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 by those unfamiliar with British history.
Accession
Edward VI did not desire that the Crown go to either the Lady Mary or the Lady Elizabeth; consequently, he excluded them from the line of succession in his will, which was unlawful, because it contradicted an Act of Parliament passed in 1544 restoring the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth to the line of succession, and because it was made by a minor. Under the guidance of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI instead devised the Crown to the Lady Jane Grey, a descendant of Henry VIII's younger sister.
Thus, after Edward died on 6 July 1553, the 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" was punished by having his ears cut off. Still, the country remained devoted to Mary. On 19 July, Jane's accession proclamation was deemed to have been made under coercion and was revoked; instead, Mary was proclaimed Queen.
All support for the Lady Jane vanished and Mary rode into London triumphantly and unchallenged, with her half-sister, the Lady Elizabeth, at her side, on 3 August, 1553.
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 to 6 July 1553, the date of Edward's death. Her de facto reign, however, dates to 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.
Originally, Mary was inclined to exercise clemency, and initially set the Lady Jane Grey free, recognising that the young girl was forced to take the Crown by her father-in-law and her father. The 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 this was after hesitation on the Queen's part.
She was left in a difficult position, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the plot to put the Lady Jane Grey on the throne. She could only rely on Stephen 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 procuring a husband to father an heir in order to prevent her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth, from succeeding to the throne. She rejected Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, as a prospect when her first cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, suggested that 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 had only reigned nine days).
Insurrections broke out across the country when she refused. The Duke of Suffolk once again proclaimed that his daughter, the 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 the Lady Jane Grey were convicted of high treason and executed.
Since another series of rebellions were designed to put her on the throne, Princess Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower of London, but 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 also 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 wished to revert 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), who would become an adviser Mary very heavily depended upon, became Archbishop of Canterbury, after Mary had his predecessor Thomas Cranmer executed.
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 three and three-quarter 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 in the Italian Wars. Meanwhile, England was full of faction, and seditious pamphlets of Protestant origin inflamed the people with hatred against the Spaniards.
But perhaps the strangest thing about the situation was that 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 Edward and Henry before her. But it took several years to persuade Parliament to go all the way. And to get their agreement, she had to make a major concession: tens of thousands of acres of monastery lands confiscated under Henry were not returned to the monasteries. The new group of landowners that had been set up by this distribution remained very influential.
Mary also set in motion currency reform to counteract the dramatic devaluation of the currency overseen by Thomas Gresham that characterized the last few years of Henry VIII's reign and the reign of Edward VI. These measures, however, were largely unsuccessful. Mary's deep religious convictions also inspired her to institute social reforms, although these were unsuccessful as well.
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 sister, Elizabeth.
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. Many English viewed the marriage as a breach of English independence; they felt that it would make England a mere dependency of Spain. 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.[1] 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 a book entitled "The Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, Epeciallye in this Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now present," commonly called "The Book of Martyrs." It is said that the Spanish ambassadors were aghast at how the English people reviled her and at the jubilation and celebration of the people upon her death. Many historians believe, however, that 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". Mary would dress up in a certain country's dress when meeting that country's ambassador. And all 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, identifying the "cockle shells", for example, with the symbol of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Spain and the "pretty maids all in a row" with nuns. Another tradition has it that the rhyme was based on the life of Mary's cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. There is however no proof that the rhyme was known before the 18th century: see its article for more information.
Portrayal
Mary has appeared several times in Tudor-related movies. Ann Tyrrell made a cameo appearance as Mary in the movie Young Bess (1953). Nicola Pagett played Mary 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 British Broadcasting Corporation 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. The character, played by Alison Frazer, reappeared in the third part, Jane Seymour, and in the sixth part, Catherine Parr. In the blockbuster sequel, Elizabeth R, the middle-aged Mary was played by Daphne Slater.
The 1985 movie Lady Jane had Mary played by Jane Lapotaire. In 1998, Mary was portrayed by Kathy Burke in the lavish costume drama Elizabeth. In 2003, Lara Belmont played Mary in the British television drama Henry VIII.
Mary 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, Mary's 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 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.
References
- ^ Tarrago, Rafael E. (Rafael Emilio) 1951- Bloody Bess: The Persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England; http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/logos/v007/7.1tarrago.html
See also
Further reading
Non-fiction
- Mary Tudor: A Life by David M. Loades (March 1992) ISBN 0-631-18449-X
- Mary Tudor: The Spanish Tudor by H. F. M. Prescott (October 2003) ISBN 1-84212-625-3
- Queen in Waiting: A Life of "Bloody Mary" Tudor by Georgess McHarque (June 2004) ISBN 0-595-31254-3
- Bloody Mary: The Life of Mary Tudor by Carolly Erickson (June 1993) ISBN 0-688-11641-8
- Mary Tudor: A Drama by Victor Hugo ISBN 1-58963-478-0
- The Lady Mary: a biography of Mary Tudor, 1516-1558 by Milton Waldman (1972) ISBN 0-00-211486-0
- The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government & Religion in England, 1553-58 by David M. Loades (May 1991) ISBN 0-582-05759-0
- Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England's Terror by Jasper Ridley (July 2002) ISBN 0-7867-0986-3
- Bloody Mary (History's Villains) by Louise Chipley Slavicek (July 2005) ISBN 1-4103-0581-3
Fiction
- Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer (April 2001) ISBN 0-15-216456-1 (Juvenille Fiction, ages 11 and up)
- I Am Mary Tudor ISBN 0-446-78017-0, Mary the Queen ISBN 0-09-116030-8, and Bloody Mary (1973), a trilogy by Hilda Lewis
- Daughter of Henry VIII by Rosemary Churchill (May 1978) ISBN 0-523-40325-9
- In the Shadow of the Crown: The Tudor Queens by Jean Plaidy (May 2004) ISBN 0-609-81019-7
- Queen's Lady by Patricia Parkes (May 1981) ISBN 0-312-66008-1
- In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker (December 2005) ISBN 0-7653-1457-6 (listed as science fiction, as it involves time travel)
- Kissed by Shadows by Jane Feather (February 2003) ISBN 0-553-58308-5
- In the Time of the Poisoned Queen by Ann Dukthas (February 1998) ISBN 0-312-18030-6
The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory
References
- Eakins, L. E. (2004). "Mary I"
- "Mary I". (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
- "Mary Tudor" (1910). The Catholic Encyclopedia (Volume IX). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Williamson, D. (1998). The Kings and Queens of England New York: National Portrait Gallery.
- Weir, Alison. "The Children of Henry VIII".
External links
- [1] "Bloody Mary: Further Intrigue in the Tudor Court", Stevens, Garry, 2004.
- [2] Mirror Game of Bloody Mary - '70's Urban Legend.