66 Facts About Mary I of England

Mary I of England made vigorous attempts to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII.

Mary I of England was declared illegitimate and barred from the line of succession following the annulment of her parents' marriage in 1533, but was restored via the Third Succession Act 1543.

Mary I of England speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was eventually beheaded.

Mary I of England was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive infancy.

Mary I of England was baptised into the Catholic faith at the Church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich three days after her birth.

Mary I of England's godparents included Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey; her great-aunt Catherine, Countess of Devon; and Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk.

Mary I of England studied French, Spanish, music, dance, and perhaps Greek.

Mary I of England had a fair complexion with pale blue eyes and red or reddish-golden hair, traits very similar to those of her parents.

Mary I of England was ruddy-cheeked, a trait she inherited from her father.

Mary I of England was given her own court based at Ludlow Castle and many of the royal prerogatives normally reserved for a Prince of Wales.

When she was two years old, Mary I of England was promised to Francis, Dauphin of France, the infant son of King Francis I, but the contract was repudiated after three years.

Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief adviser, then resumed marriage negotiations with the French, and Henry suggested that Mary marry the French king Francis I, who was eager for an alliance with England.

In 1528, Wolsey's agent Thomas Magnus discussed the idea of Mary I of England marrying her cousin James V of Scotland with the Scottish diplomat Adam Otterburn.

From 1531, Mary I of England was often sick with irregular menstruation and depression, although it is not clear whether this was caused by stress, puberty, or a more deep-seated disease.

Mary I of England was not permitted to see her mother, whom Henry had sent to live away from court.

Catherine was demoted to Dowager Princess of Wales, and Mary I of England was deemed illegitimate.

Mary I of England was styled "The Lady Mary" rather than Princess, and her place in the line of succession was transferred to Henry and Anne's newborn daughter, Elizabeth.

Mary I of England determinedly refused to acknowledge that Anne was the queen or that Elizabeth was a princess, enraging King Henry.

Under strain and with her movements restricted, Mary I of England was frequently ill, which the royal physician attributed to her "ill treatment".

Catherine was interred in Peterborough Cathedral, while Mary I of England grieved in semi-seclusion at Hunsdon in Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth, like Mary I of England, was declared illegitimate and stripped of her succession rights.

Henry insisted that Mary recognise him as head of the Church of England, repudiate papal authority, acknowledge that the marriage between her parents was unlawful, and accept her own illegitimacy.

Mary I of England attempted to reconcile with Henry by submitting to his authority as far as "God and my conscience" permitted, but was bullied into signing a document agreeing to all of Henry's demands.

Mary I of England's expenses included fine clothes and gambling at cards, one of her favourite pastimes.

Rebels in the North of England, including Lord Hussey, Mary's former chamberlain, campaigned against Henry's religious reforms, and one of their demands was that Mary be made legitimate.

Mary I of England was made godmother to her half-brother and acted as chief mourner at the Queen's funeral.

Mary I of England was courted by Philip, Duke of Bavaria, from late 1539, but he was Lutheran and his suit for her hand was unsuccessful.

Suggestions that Mary I of England marry William I, Duke of Cleves, who was the same age, came to nothing, but a match between Henry and the Duke's sister Anne was agreed.

Mary I of England's executioner was "a wretched and blundering youth" who "literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces".

At court, while her father was between marriages and thus without a consort, Mary I of England acted as hostess.

Mary I of England remained faithful to Roman Catholicism and defiantly heard traditional Mass in her own chapel.

Mary I of England appealed to her cousin Emperor Charles V to apply diplomatic pressure demanding that she be allowed to practise her religion.

For most of Edward's reign, Mary I of England remained on her own estates and rarely attended court.

Mary I of England attended a reunion with Edward and Elizabeth for Christmas 1550, where the 13-year-old Edward embarrassed Mary I of England, then 34, and reduced both her and himself to tears in front of the court, by publicly reproving her for ignoring his laws regarding worship.

Mary I of England repeatedly refused Edward's demands that she abandon Catholicism, and Edward persistently refused to drop his demands.

Mary I of England did not want the crown to go to Mary because he feared she would restore Catholicism and undo his and their father's reforms, and so he planned to exclude her from the line of succession.

Mary I of England's advisers told him that he could not disinherit only one of his half-sisters: he would have to disinherit Elizabeth as well, even though she was a Protestant.

Just before Edward's death, Mary I of England was summoned to London to visit her dying brother, but was warned that the summons was a pretext on which to capture her and thereby facilitate Jane's accession to the throne.

Therefore, instead of going to London from her residence at Hunsdon, Mary I of England fled to East Anglia, where she owned extensive estates and Northumberland had ruthlessly put down Kett's Rebellion.

Mary I of England understood that the young Lady Jane was essentially a pawn in Northumberland's scheme, and Northumberland was the only conspirator of rank executed for high treason in the immediate aftermath of the attempted coup.

Mary I of England was left in a difficult position, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the plot to put Lady Jane on the throne.

Now aged 37, Mary I of England turned her attention to finding a husband and producing an heir, which would prevent Elizabeth from succeeding to the throne.

Mary was convinced that the safety of England required her to form a closer relationship with Charles's family, the Habsburgs, and she decided to marry Philip.

Lord Chancellor Gardiner and the English House of Commons unsuccessfully petitioned Mary to consider marrying an Englishman, fearing that England would be relegated to a dependency of the Habsburgs.

Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador to Mary I of England, "threatened war and began immediate intrigues with any malcontents he could find".

Mary I of England declared publicly that she would summon Parliament to discuss the marriage and if Parliament decided that the marriage was not to the kingdom's advantage, she would refrain from pursuing it.

Mary I of England was not obliged to provide military support to Philip's father in any war, and Philip could not act without his wife's consent or appoint foreigners to office in Mary I of England.

Mary I of England thus became queen of Naples and titular queen of Jerusalem upon marriage.

Mary I of England gained weight, and felt nauseated in the mornings.

Mary I of England rejected the break with Rome instituted by her father and the establishment of Protestantism by her brother's regents.

Mary I of England recanted, repudiated Protestant theology, and rejoined the Catholic faith.

Under the normal process of the law, he should have been absolved as a repentant, but Mary I of England refused to reprieve him.

Mary I of England persevered with the policy, which continued for the rest of her reign and exacerbated anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling among the English people.

The plot, known as the Dudley conspiracy, was betrayed, and the conspirators in Mary I of England were rounded up.

Mary was in favour of declaring war, but her councillors opposed it because French trade would be jeopardised, it contravened the foreign war provisions of the marriage treaty, and a bad economic legacy from Edward VI's reign and a series of poor harvests meant England lacked supplies and finances.

The weather during the years of Mary I of England's reign was consistently wet.

Mary I of England granted a royal charter to the Muscovy Company under governor Sebastian Cabot, and commissioned a world atlas from Diogo Homem.

Mary I of England retained the Edwardian appointee William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, as Lord High Treasurer and assigned him to oversee the revenue collection system.

Mary I of England drafted plans for currency reform but they were not implemented until after her death.

Mary I of England decreed in her will that her husband would be the regent during their child's minority.

Mary I of England was a queen, and by the same title a king.

Prescott attempted to redress the tradition that Mary I of England was intolerant and authoritarian, and scholarship since then has tended to view the older, simpler assessments of Mary I of England with increasing reservations.

Catholic historians such as John Lingard thought Mary I of England's policies failed not because they were wrong but because she had too short a reign to establish them and because of natural disasters beyond her control.

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 of Ireland on Earth Supreme Head".

Mary I's coat of arms was the same as those used by all her predecessors since Henry IV: Quarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or [for France] and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or.

Mary I of England adopted "Truth, the Daughter of Time" as her personal motto.