Mary Tudor I, Queen of England ¹

  General Notes:

Mary I (18 February 1516 \endash 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was the queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. She restored to the Church some of the property taken from it in the previous two reigns. She was not able to legislate to force those who, at that time, held property which had been plundered from the Catholic Church and the monasteries. During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions, which led to her denunciation as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents.

Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had begun during his reign. On his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was\emdash excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda\emdash the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.

After Mary's death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I.

Mary married Phillip II, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of England and Ireland on 25 Jul 1554 in Winchester Cathedral Priory, Winchester, Kingdom of England. (Phillip II, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of England and Ireland was born on 21 May 1527 in Palacio de Pimentel, Valladolid, Castile, Spain and died on 13 Sep 1598 in El Escorial, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Castile, Spain.)