56 Facts About Mary I

Mary I is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII.

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

Mary I was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England.

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

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

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

The following year, Mary I became a godmother herself when she was named as one of the sponsors of her cousin Frances Brandon.

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

Mary I had a fair complexion with pale blue eyes and red or reddish-golden hair.

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

Mary I 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 only two years old, Mary I 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 I marry the French king Francis I, who was eager for an alliance with England.

From 1531, Mary I 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 was not permitted to see her mother, whom Henry had sent to live away from court.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mary I 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 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.

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

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

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

Mary I attended a reunion with Edward and Elizabeth for Christmas 1550, where the 13-year-old Edward embarrassed Mary I, 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 repeatedly refused Edward's demands that she abandon Catholicism, and Edward persistently refused to drop his demands.

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

Mary I was accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth and a procession of over 800 nobles and gentlemen.

Mary I 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 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 turned her attention to finding a husband and producing an heir, which would prevent the Protestant Elizabeth from succeeding to the throne.

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

Mary I 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 was—excluding the brief, disputed reigns of the Empress Matilda and Lady Jane Grey—England's first queen regnant.

Under the terms of Queen Mary I's Marriage Act, Philip was to be styled "King of England", all official documents were to be dated with both their names, and Parliament was to be called under the joint authority of the couple, for Mary I's lifetime only.

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

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

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

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Mary I persevered with the policy, which continued until her death and exacerbated anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling among the English people.

Mary I 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.

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

Financially, Mary I's regime tried to reconcile a modern form of government—with correspondingly higher spending—with a medieval system of collecting taxation and dues.

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

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

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

Catholic historians, such as John Lingard, thought Mary I'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 I ascended the throne, she was proclaimed under the same official style as Henry VIII and Edward VI: "Mary I, 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 adopted "Truth, the Daughter of Time" as her personal motto.