The Better to Eat You With Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland
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Title: Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland Notes: Mary I was born on February 18, 1516, and later reigned as Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death on November 17, 1558. She was the only surviving child of the difficult marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, which ended in divorce and her mother’s estrangement from her. Catherine of Aragon was a staunch Catholic and Mary followed in her footsteps. Her younger half-‐brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547. But by 1553, Edward was mortally ill and because of religious differences between them, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession by naming their cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his successor. On his death in 1553, Lady Grey became the de facto monarch of England from July 10 until July 19, hence creating the sobriquet of The Nine Days’ Queen. To secure the line of succession, Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and successfully deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary married Philip of Spain in 1554 and thus became queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556. As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after the short-‐lived Protestant reign of her half-‐brother. During her five-‐year reign, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions. This led to her Protestant political opponents endowing her with the nickname "Bloody Mary." Her re-‐establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed after her death in 1558 by her successor and younger half-‐sister, Elizabeth I.