Mary I was the queen of England from July 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation. During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake. Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister Elizabeth I.
About Mary I of England in brief
Mary I was the queen of England from July 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation. During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake. Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I. Mary was born on 18 February 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy. Her godparents included Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey, her great-aunt Catherine of York, Countess of Devon, and Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. Henry VIII doted on his daughter and boasted to the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustiniani that Mary never cried. Mary had a fair complexion with pale blue eyes and red or reddish-golden hair. She inherited a trait she inherited from her father, Henry was deeply disappointed that his marriage had produced no sons. By the time Mary was nine years old, it was apparent that Henry and Catherine would have no more children, leaving Henry without a legitimate male heir. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556. She never technically invested with her Princess of Wales title, although she appears to have spent three years in the Welsh Marches, before returning home in mid-1528.
Mary’s first engagement was broken off within a few years with Henry’s first cousin Charles V of France, but the contract was repudiated after three years. When she was only two years old she was promised to marry the infant son of King Francis I of France. She instead contracted to marry her 22-year-old cousin, Holy Emperor Charles V, but was instead engaged to Charles V’s first son, Charles II of England. Mary became a godmother herself when she was named as one of the sponsors of her cousin Frances Brandon. She entertained a visiting French delegation with a performance on the virginals in July 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old. Her mother commissioned the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives for advice and commissioned him to write De Institutione Feminae Christianae, a treatise on the education of girls. Sir John Hussey, later Lord Hussey,. was her chamberlain from 1530, and his wife, Lady Anne, daughter of George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent, was one of Mary’s attendants. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane Grey, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was— excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England, from 1520 to 1553. She had her own court based at Ludlow Castle and the royal prerogatives normally reserved for the Prince of Wales and others called the Marches.
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