Mary I

Queen of England (r. 1553-1558)

• Born: February 18, 1516
• Birthplace: Greenwich, England
• Died: November 17, 1558
• Place of death: London, England

Mary I, the first woman to rule England in her own right and not simply as a consort to a king, also restored Catholicism to her country.

Early Life

Mary I was the first surviving child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon . Although Henry VIII wanted a male heir and although he could still hope a son would be born, Mary received more than the normal attention due a royal child. Catherine commissioned the Spanish Humanist Juan Vives to devise an educational program for Mary and employed Thomas Linacre as her daughter’s first tutor. Henry often proudly displayed the young princess to foreign ambassadors. She played the expected role in diplomacy as Henry tried to arrange marriages for her with the heir to the French throne as well as with her older cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. In 1524, Henry made her the first princess of Wales, with her own household and administrative staff at Ludlow.

The king’s “Great Matter,” Henry’s decision to end his marriage to Catherine in order to marry Anne Boleyn, reversed Mary’s fortunes in her teenage years. Henry had every reason to expect a favorable response from Rome, but just as he needed an annulment, the Papacy came under the control of Charles V, Catherine’s nephew.

Consequently the pope, Clement VII , was not free to dissolve the marriage. Henry was genuinely fond of Mary, so her position did not change immediately. Although she was seldom at court while the king and his council struggled to obtain the “divorce” from 1529 to 1533, Mary developed a hatred of Anne and a fierce loyalty to her mother. When the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage to Catherine void in the spring of 1533, Mary became illegitimate. After the birth of Elizabeth, on September 7, Mary’s material circumstances changed radically. To punish Mary for her loyalty to Catherine, Henry separated her from her mother, revoked her title, and placed her in the hostile atmosphere of Princess Elizabeth’s household. Despite intense pressure, she refused to accept the separation from Rome and the altered succession to the Crown; as a result of this psychological conflict, she suffered recurring physical ailments. She did not submit until after her mother’s death and Anne Boleyn’s execution in 1536. After that, her situation improved, but she never regained her former favored position. Mary lived quietly for the rest of Henry’s reign, but as a result of her previous experiences, she firmly identified herself with her mother’s memory and Catholicism.

The reign of her half brother Edward VI (r. 1547-1553) tested Mary’s religious conviction. Mary’s position became precarious as Protestantism grew, under the leadership of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, and then John Dudley, duke of Northumberland. Because she had become a symbol of the old religion, the council challenged her right to hear Mass in her household after the rebellious summer of 1549. Mary consistently resisted. Ultimately, her closest advisers and household servants were sent to the Tower of London, but she was not harmed. In the spring of 1553, as it became obvious that Edward would not live, the young king and the duke of Northumberland altered the established succession by replacing Mary with Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister Mary. When Edward died on July 6, Mary was warned in time to escape to Framlingham castle in Suffolk, from where she could either flee to the Continent or resist the new government. Lady Jane was proclaimed queen, but to the surprise of many, the East Anglian nobility and gentry responded to Mary’s call for aid. Within nine days, she had a council and an army strong enough to convince the officials in London to proclaim her queen on July 19, 1553.

As she ascended the throne at the age of thirty-seven, Mary’s attitudes were shaped by her past experiences. She remained devoted to her mother’s religion and continued to rely on the advice of Charles V, whose ambassadors had often been her only consistent support and comfort. Given her history, Mary could have been an embittered, vengeful woman, but she was not. She enjoyed the elegant clothes and jewels that she used to enhance her auburn hair and small stature. Although she loved to gamble, she appeared serious and pious, more like a kindly maiden aunt than a queen regnant.

Life’s Work

History has not treated Mary well. Her persecution of Protestants earned for her the epithet “Bloody Mary,” and her marriage to Philip II of Spain, the son of Charles V, was a serious mistake. At the beginning of her reign, Mary faced many problems. Her right to rule had been challenged, she had to form a government using the same officials who had supported Lady Jane, and she had to overcome the factionalism and economic distress of the previous reign. Initially, without advisers whom she could trust implicitly, Mary relied on the Spanish ambassador, Simon Renard. She energetically devoted her first months as queen to selecting her councillors, establishing her government, beginning to restore Catholicism, and choosing a husband.

Although she had been accepted as the legitimate ruler, most believed a woman was naturally too weak to rule alone, and she had a duty to produce a Catholic heir to the throne. During those first months, she made only one disastrous decision, rejecting the single viable English candidate for her hand, Edward Courtenay, the earl of Devon, and accepting Philip II of Spain. The choice was not popular from the beginning. It split her council and partially caused Wyatt’s Rebellion (January-February, 1554), the most serious insurrection of the reign. During the rebellion, Mary showed herself a true Tudor. She resisted Renard’s advice to flee. Her speech at the Guildhall, in London, rallied the city to her cause, and the rebellion failed.

The initial steps toward reunion with Rome were taken in 1553 by Mary’s first Parliament. It repealed all the religious legislation of Edward VI’s reign, but papal absolution was required to return England to the Catholic fold. Reginald Pole, Mary’s cousin, was sent as papal legate to end the schism in the fall of 1554. While he had gained a reputation for wisdom and learning during his twenty-year exile, Pole revealed his ignorance of English conditions by insisting that former monastic lands be returned to the Church. Mary, her councillors, and Charles V persuaded Pole to relent, and in December, he presided over the formal reconciliation.

Religion was considered the cement of society in the sixteenth century, so religious diversity could not be tolerated: It would subvert a spiritually healthy commonwealth and an orderly government. In that spirit, Parliament revived the medieval heresy laws. The passage of laws could not ensure a Catholic revival, and Pole’s plan for a progressive, reformed English Catholicism did not have time to work. As a result, Mary’s reign is remembered for heresy trials and the fires of Smithfield. About 293 heretics were burned at the stake after February, 1555. To varying degrees, Bishop Edmund Bonner of London, Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, the lord chancellor, and Cardinal Pole supported the persecution, but the chief responsibility belongs to Mary. She acted, not out of cruelty, but out of a deep concern for the spiritual health of her realm. Still, her firm conviction, which would have been better tempered with a dose of political consideration as Philip advised, led to failure. Far from eliminating heresy, the persecution of the Protestants elevated them as martyrs associated with courage and national pride.

The marriage to Philip failed to produce an heir. Worse, Philip drew Mary into his foreign entanglements. Ironically, in 1557, Mary agreed to aid Philip against the Papacy and France. The following January, England lost Calais, her last outpost on the Continent and a symbol of England’s past military glory. The loss was more symbolic than real. Although Mary has been criticized for entering the war and thus straining her financial resources, it had positive results. The navy was overhauled. A new administrative structure and new men produced a naval policy that defeated Philip’s armada in 1588. Mary’s death in 1558 was welcomed and celebrated by many of her subjects.

Significance

Accounts of Queen Mary I’s reign are still clouded by the liberal Whig vision of history, because England took a more modern direction under Elizabeth I. Mary’s accomplishments are often overlooked, and she is unfairly compared to Elizabeth, who ruled forty-five years, not five. In the important area of government finance, the revenue courts were consolidated, austerity measures were employed, and a new book of rates (customs duties) began to increase royal revenue. England’s trade position improved when the government recognized that England had been too dependent on trade through Antwerp (now in Belgium). Mary and her advisers supported exploration by the Merchant Adventurers and encouraged northern trade though the Muscovy Company. These initiatives outweighed the loss of Calais.

Mary’s council has traditionally been criticized for being inefficient and factional because of its size. An informal inner ring that functioned with energy and discretion directed policy, and genuine discussion of opposing views on important questions such as religion and her marriage should not be mistaken for factionalism. Parliament showed little organized opposition to the return to Catholicism. Members were more concerned with preserving their monastic lands than with religious issues, and a spirit of compromise and flexibility marked Mary’s relationship with them.

Mary faced economic and social crises which were a true test of her skill as a ruler, and her solutions compare favorably with Elizabeth’s handling of a similar crisis at the end of her reign. After harvest failures in 1555 and 1556, followed by a flu epidemic the next year, the government worked to stimulate the economy. The establishment of London’s charitable and welfare institutions, which Mary encouraged, served as a model for the whole country. Many of Mary’s initiatives bore fruit in Elizabeth’s reign. Although personally the most attractive of the Tudors by modern standards, and perhaps the most merciful toward her political enemies, Mary lacked the redeeming political skill of the other Tudors, who instinctively understood and shared the hopes, prejudices, and desires of their subjects. She proved that a woman could rule, if not entirely wisely in terms of policy, at least competently.

Bibliography

Erickson, Carolly. Bloody Mary. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978. A colorfully written, popular biography that takes a traditional approach and relies on standard sources.

Harbison, E. Harris. Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. A classic study of the important role played by the French and Spanish ambassadors in Mary’s reign.

Loach, Jennifer. Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. The only study of Mary’s reign from the standpoint of this very important institution of Tudor governance. This study rejects the traditional interpretation of conflict between Crown and Parliament, and Catholics and Protestants, in her reign.

Loades, David. Chronicles of the Tudor Queens. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2002. A study and comparison of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, including the period of transition from the former to the latter. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Loades, David. The Oxford Martyrs. New York: Stein and Day, 1970. A scholarly account of the Marian persecution of Protestants.

Loades, David. The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government, and Religion in England, 1553-58. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 1991. The most original, scholarly, and complete account of Mary’s reign. It does not include much biographical material, but it does thoroughly analyze the events of the reign.

Loades, David. Two Tudor Conspiracies. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1965. An account of Wyatt’s Rebellion in 1554 and the Dudley Conspiracy in 1555. Some points in the discussion of Wyatt’s Rebellion have been disputed, but the book gives invaluable information about some of the discontented.

Prescott, H. M. F. Mary Tudor. New York: Macmillan, 1962. While some aspects of the political and administrative treatment need revision in the light of subsequent scholarship, this is the standard biography.

Ridley, Jasper. Bloody Mary’s Martyrs: The Story of England’s Terror. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001. Somewhat sensationalistic account of Mary’s terror and the horrors perpetrated at her command or in her name. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Tittler, Robert. The Reign of Mary Tudor. New York: Longmans, Green, 1983. Designed for college students, Tittler’s work presents both positive and negative aspects of Mary’s reign through a short commentary and documents.

Weikel, Ann. “The Marian Council Revisited.” In The Mid-Tudor Polity: c. 1540-1563, edited by Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler. London: Macmillan, 1980. Contests the traditional view of Marian government through an examination of her council.

Weir, Alison. The Children of Henry VIII. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Study of Henry VIII’s descendants and of the intrigues for the throne in the years following his death. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.