"She is of low rather than of middling stature, but, although short, she has not personal defect in her limbs...at present, with the exception of some wrinkles, caused more by anxieties than by age, which makes her appear some years older, her aspect, for the rest, is very grave...she is very shortsighted...her voice is rough and loud, almost like a man's, so that when she speaks she is always heard a long way off... .being sudden and passionate, and close and miserly, rather moreso than would become a bountiful and generous queen, she in other respects has no notable imperfections...she is subject to a very deep melancholy...." Description of Mary in 1557 by G. Michieli, the Venetian Ambassador.

It is arguable that the unhappiest ruler in English history was Mary Tudor, forever known (due to her persecution and burning of Protestant martyrs) as "Bloody Mary." It is possible to feel pity and revulsion both at the miseries of her life and the implacable commitment she brought to the task of forcibly returning England to the Catholic church. Her efforts at foreign policy were inept and cost England its last foothold remaining from the great conquests of the Hundred Years War. Her ill-fated marriage to Philip II, prince of Spain, was an unqualified political disaster.

Yet Mary's life is also remarkable by its contrast to that of her detested half-sister, Elizabeth; where Mary failed, Elizabeth succeeded. The impact of Mary's personal and political choices on the younger Elizabeth cannot be overestimated. At the very least, Elizabeth learned several lessons from Mary's reign which were burned into her character and which governed her conduct as queen; never to identify her successor; never to marry; never to make religious intolerance a hallmark of her governance; and to avoid any permanent alliance with Spain.

The Princess Royal

Mary's life falls neatly into the "before" and "after" periods broken by the break of England from Catholicism engineered by her father, Henry VIII. Born on February 28, 1516, to the King and his longtime Spanish wife, Katherine of Aragon, Mary was the only surviving child of Katherine's numerous pregnancies since she married the king in 1509. Although a disappointment to her father because he longed for a male heir, she was also the first of his children who lived past early infancy (an illegitimate son, Henry, was born in 1519).

There is every indication that Henry treated the young Mary with dutiful affection and honor. As Princess Royal, she was educated with the flair of a Renaissance princess (she spoke Latin, French and Spanish fluently and understood Italian). She was considered as a prize marital catch from early childhood onwards; negotiations had continued to marry her to various foreign princes and kings since she was 2 years old. Her parents apparently had a stable, affectionate relationship apparently as permanent as the Catholic faith into which Mary was devoutly raised. The King had been dubbed by the Pope the "defender of the faith" in return for writings refuting the errors of the great heretic, Martin Luther. Mary's relationship with her serious, devout mother (who had lost so many earlier children, the last in 1518) was particularly close. Then came revolution.

Anne Boleyn, who had already served as a "fille d'honneur" for a decade at the European courts of the Archduchess Claude and Claude, Queen of France, came to the court of Katherine of Aragon in the same position in 1522 when she was probably in her early 20's She did not catch the eye of Henry VIII until 1526. Mary had been absent from Court since early 1524, when she was sent with her own court to Ludlow Castle in Wales (traditional territory for the heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales). She returned to court in 1527, aged 11, by which time the King's infatuation with Anne Boleyn was well underway.

The next 10 years of Mary's life were full of misery and danger. The eruption of what would become the Church of England began slowly. Henry had decided to obtain a divorce from Katherine based on the fact that she had briefly been married to his elder brother, Arthur, who died young. Oblique approaches to the Vatican began to be made in 1527 and 1528 to secure a divorce (in this period, divorces could only be granted by the Pope himself and usually only to kings or those with like influence). Unfortunately, the Pope was involved in a tense political struggle with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, and the nephew of Katherine of Aragon, who was pressuring the Pope to deny Henry's request.

Agonizing Adolescence

It is impossible to know just when Princess Mary became aware of the increasing estrangement between her parents and the king's infatuation with one of her mother's ladies in waiting, but it must have been obvious as she entered her teenage years. By 1529, the Pope's legate was holding a hearing into the requested divorce and Katherine, who appeared and eloquently rebutted Henry's allegations, was forced by the King to leave Court while Mary was required to remain. An official separation was declared in July, 1531, and the king never again saw his first wife, who was moved to quarters elsewhere. To pressure her to give in to his request for divorce, Henry treated Katherine with increasing brutality, moving her to ever more bare and uncomfortable lodgings. By late 1531 the Queen of England was living with a handful of servants in a dilapidated house in which she was convinced that spies were trying to poison her. Mary's household was removed to Richmond Palace where she lived apart from both her parents, communicating with them by letter. She was 15.

Mary's agony in being torn between the two parents (she still had value to Henry as a possible pawn in dynastic marriage) was increased when, in 1533, Anne Boleyn became pregnant. The English Church had been forcing through increasingly radical laws since 1531 which were removing the English Church from the authority of Rome's Pope. As soon as Boleyn became pregnant, these efforts were speeded up. Henry married Anne in a ceremony sanctioned by the (new) Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, in January, 1533. In September, Elizabeth was born. Henry had personally forbidden Mary to write to her mother in the spring of 1533, in spite of Mary's frantic protests. After Elizabeth's birth, he and his counselors began to downgrade Mary, whose title was now reduced from Princess to Lady Mary. When she wrote Henry in protest, she was advised she was "usurping" the title of Princess, which belonged only to her baby sister. Mary, however, had inherited stubbornness from both parents. She insisted that she was the only princess in England and denied the validity of the new Queen's title, an attitude that allegedly drove Anne Boleyn to utter threats of violence and her father to declare she needed a good beating. Anne apparently became almost obsessed with the need to break Mary's independent spirit and was heard to declare that she would be Anne's death, or Anne, hers.

Mary was forcibly moved to Hatfield House as a member of the household of her half-sister, the new Princess Elizabeth. Her personal servants were removed, her jewels were taken and given to the baby, and her father remained deaf to her written pleas. In addition, she was increasingly pressured to take the Oath of Supremacy to her father as head of the new Church of England. This, to a devout Catholic, was intolerable. She was also to swear that she support the Act of Succession of 1533, which declare that Henry's marriage to Katherine was unlawful and Mary, hence was illegitimate. One oath would damn her, the other declare her a bastard. Mary became seriously ill in 1534 and nearly died; her state of mind may only be imagined. Through what few contacts remained to her, Mary learned that her mother was increasingly ill and, in January, 1536, Catherine died. Only five months later, Anne Boleyn was arrested for adultery and confined to the Tower; she was executed by Henry's order in May 19.

However, Henry had sent the Duke of Norfolk and other councilors to browbeat Mary into signing both the Oaths and she was mentally abused and physically threatened with remarkable severity. She finally broke down and signed both documents. The Princess Elizabeth was declared illegitimate, although Mary was not reinstated. In late 1536, Mary, now aged 20, was recalled to Court where the King's new wife, Jane Seymour, apparently treated her with some kindness and where she saw her father, who treated her amicably for the first time in five years.

The agonies of her teenage years had ruined Mary's digestion, spoiled her youthful good looks, and tormented her mind and spirit in ways she would carry to the grave. In particular, she was haunted by having signed the documents demanded by the King; always devout, her Catholic faith had alone sustained her during these horrible years, and she had denied it, as she had denied her own mother's marriage and her legitimacy. Mary would never recover her emotional equanimity from what she saw as her betrayals.

When Edward VI (the longed-for male heir) was born to Jane Seymour on October 12, 1537, Mary had regained some of the official dignities she had lost and - as she was willing to recognize Edward as the heir, her own mother now being dead - was permitted to be his godmother. Mary also had contact with her other half-sibling, Elizabeth, who was now four years old. By all accounts, Mary was kind to both the infant children, including after Jane Seymour's death following childbirth. In the next ten years, Mary would grow from a disappointed young to a disappointed middle-aged spinster and watch her husband go through another three wives while his mismatched younger children grew. Various marriages were proposed during these years, but since Mary was still legally illegitimate and was now frequently ill. Her father remained suspicious that, if she married a foreign prince, he might try to claim the crown in her name. Nothing came of the proposals.

Mary had become friends with Anne of Cleves, Henry's brief fourth marriage, who remained in England after the divorce. She was less friendly with the next wife, Catherine Howard, who was five years younger than Mary and who, in the event, was executed for adultery in 1542. However, when Henry married his final wife, Katherine Parr, in late 1542, the new Queen determined to bring all the king's assorted children together under one roof, including Mary. The Queen was only five years older than her stepdaughter, but her kindness and tolerance won Mary over.

Danger Under Edward

On January 28, 1547, the great Henry died. Mary now entered yet another dangerous period with the accession of her half-brother, Edward VI. Edward being only 9 years old, a Lord Protector (Edward Seymour, Earl of Somerset) and a Council was appointed to guide the realm during his minority. Extreme Protestants almost to a man, they introduced further reforms which were far from the centrist near-Catholicism of Henry's Church, including a new bible and Prayer Book in English. Mary had grudgingly been permitted to worship in private Catholic mass during Henry's life. Almost immediately after he died, her brother's government tried to force her, as the country's most visible Catholic, to accept his new Church of England.

Mary left the Court and retired to her country estates in Essex and Hertfordshire. As Head of the Church in England, as an an increasingly intolerant Protestant, Edward's company was no longer pleasant. In addition, the Act of Uniformity of 1549 (which made it a state offense to use anything but the Anglican service) led to increased Catholic agitation and occasional rebellion. Mary would visit court infrequently in the next five years; when she did, her baby brother lectured her on her errors of faith and her half-sister Elizabeth (strongly Protestant) was received with appreciably greater warmth by the king than Mary herself. Thus as her half-siblings began to grow up, Mary grew increasingly alienated from each of them, although the polite exchange of letters and occasional ceremonial gifts continued. Both children were strongly, and Edward fanatically, Protestant.

Mary, now in her early '30's while Elizabeth and Edward were still in their teens. She was still unmarried. All around her she saw the new, detested Anglican English state in which Catholicism was now not only a spiritual fault but a crime against the state. She withdrew ever more to her small Catholic household in the country, her small vices of gambling and cardplaying with her women, her regular charities, reading and music. Mary loved lavish clothes and kept many pets. She was invariably kind and generous to her household and to the poor and children in her neighborhoods. The prettiness she had exhibited as a child was gone, worn away by the miseries of her youth. She was short and thin (probably between 5'0 and 5'2 tall), frequently ill with painful menstrual complaints, toothaches, palpitations, depressions, and headaches. She was naive and innocent minded - in her '20's, she did not know the meaning of words such as "whore" and was frequently teased. She wrote compulsively to her cousin, Charles V of Spain, and his ambassadors and they were able to put pressure on Edward's Council when, in 1551 and 1552, some of Mary's servants were imprisoned as well as her chaplains, charged with performing Catholic rites. Eventually, she was left in peace.

The Catholic Queen

From 1552 until his death in June, 1553, Edward's health deteriorated. Mary last visited him at court in February, 1553, and must have been award of his illness. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had been the chief of the King's counselors since 1549. Dudley was (in public) a rabid Protestant, but he was also (in private) planning how he could advance his own family's fortunes if the young king died and the only heir was the Catholic Mary. Next to Mary and Elizabeth, the next closest blood heir was the Protestant family of Lady Jane Grey. Dudley married his son, Guildford, to Jane in May 25, 1553, some six weeks before the young king died. He also persuaded Edward to cut both Mary and Elizabeth out of the Succession (although both still declared illegitimate, Henry had reinstated them in the Succession by his Will of 1544). Dudley argued that Mary had to be removed because she was Catholic, and Elizabeth similarly removed because to remove one sister, required removing both.

Edward died on July 7, but the death was hidden until, on July 9, Dudley had Jane Grey proclaimed Queen in London. Some days earlier, he had sent for both Mary and Elizabeth, conveying a request to come to the dying king to make their farewells.

Dudley's attempted coup d'etat collapsed within a week as men throughout southern England rallied to Mary's presence and proclaimed her Queen of England. By late July, it was all over; Dudley was arrested by the suddenly-loyal remnants of Edward's Council and beheaded on August 23, 1553. On July 31, Mary and her supporters entered London, where she was met by her grown half-sister, whom she had not seen since their father's death five years before. Although the two sisters made every effort to present a united, amicable front, it was quickly obvious that dangerous emotional undercurrents made it impossible for Mary to trust the adult daughter of Anne Boleyn.

While Elizabeth was brought to Court, Mary immediately sought two of the wishes of her heart; a reconciliation with the Pope and an alliance with Spain, preferably through marriage. Charles V responded to Mary's requests for aid by sending her Simon Renard, the new Spanish ambassador, who more than any single man would help set the tone for Mary's reign and Elizabeth's place within it. Mary's sole mission in her reign appeared to be a pathetic determination to turn the English clock back to its place in the last years in which she had known security and happiness, in the late 1520's - before the arrival of Anne Boleyn, The Divorce, and the English Reformation.

Queen at Last

Mary was 37. For almost sixteen years she had lived largely retired from Court in a Catholic household, surrounded by Catholic and Spanish advisers. Her mind and character had been forged in the searing miseries of her teenage years, making her a religious hysteric, an ailing, melancholy, emotionally starved woman. Forced once to deny her faith under political pressure, she now sought forgiveness by increased devotion to her religion. She was also frequently ill from both physical and psychosomatic reasons. She turned, as she had always turned, to her mother's family for help and counsel. Throughout her reign, Mary would trust Spain with the simplicity of a child. Every wrong turn she made was made in the hopes of pleasing the Spanish and the Pope, to whom the restoration of England to the hegemony of Rome was all-important.

From the first weeks of Mary's accession in the fall of 1553, Renard sought to distance the Queen from her English advisors and from her half-sister. As marriage negotiations continued, pressure was brought to bear upon Elizabeth to conform to the rejuvenated Catholicism of Mary's court. The housecleaning began immediately. By September, Protestant ministers were fleeing oversees while Catholic bishops were released from imprisonment and reinstated in the highest clerical positions in England. The Archbishop of Canterbury was imprisoned along with other notable Protestant ministers. By October, only three months into her reign, Parliament passed an Act of Repeal that essentially emasculated the Edwardian Reformation: Catholic mass was reinstated. Mary refused her father's vaunted title of Supreme Head of the Church in England. At the same time, urged on by Renard, her innate suspicion of Elizabeth's motives and her halfhearted commitment to active participation in the Court's Catholic mass led to increased tensions between them, particularly after Mary forced through Parliament the repeal of her parent's divorce (with Elizabeth's resulting bastardization). Mary was heard to remark that Elizabeth was not her half-sister, but rather the illegitimate offspring of Anne Boleyn and Mark Smeaton, the court musician who was accused of and executed for adultery with her. Elizabeth sought, and was finally granted, permission to retire from Court. Meanwhile, the arrangements for the marriage between Philip II of Spain (son of Charles V) and Mary continued.

Mary was apparently torn by doubts, not about the necessity for an alliance with Spain, but about the fear of marriage itself. Not unnaturally at her age, she both longed for and feared its physical intimacies as well as the joys and dangers of bearing children. Philip was 28 years old, nearly a decade younger than Mary. She must have realized that she might disappoint him. Renard's letters during the first months of her reign often remark upon her insecurities and doubts which he made every effort to assuage. In addition, there were urgent queries on whether the queen could still bear children, necessary to validate the Spanish alliance. Mary had suffered from menstrual difficulties and irregularities since her horrific teenage years. There is every reason to believe that there were physical as well as emotional factors making her fertility problematic.

The marriage was extraordinarily unpopular with the English people both for the notion of a foreign prince becoming king as for his Catholicism. Negotiators arrived from Spain in January, 1554, to draw up the formal marriage contract. In that month, rebellions flared up in several areas of England, cumulatively known as the Wyatt Rebellion, all determined to force the Queen to give up the Spanish marriage and alliance. The inept plotters were summarily captured and beheaded.

Mary's conduct was calm and courageous during the Wyatt Rebellion, and English popular opinion (largely opposed to the unpopular Spanish marriage) briefly swung to her again in renewed loyalty. As she said to cheering supporters at the Guildhall,

Renard used the rebellion to threaten Mary; if she did not remove all traitors (including Lady Jane Gray and Elizabeth), Phillip would find it too dangerous to come to England for his wedding. Jane Grey went to the scaffold ion February 12. In face of rebellion within six months of Mary's accession, the strongest measures were taken to make England safe for Prince Phillip's arrival. Elizabeth was sent to the Tower under suspicion of treason on March 17, 1554.

Philip II apparently urged caution on Mary in dealing with her popular younger sibling. He made it clear that he did not agree with those who urged Mary to execute Elizabeth as well. Elizabeth was very popular. Philip foresaw the reaction if Mary should execute her Protestant sister simultaneously with the Spanish marriage and her efforts to make England Catholic again. Mary was persuaded to release Elizabeth from the Tower in May and place her under house arrest in Woodstock, far from court. On the very day Elizabeth was taken from the Tower in secrecy, Philip espoused Mary. They were formally married that July.

The Making of "Bloody Mary"

Mary had continued her religious efforts during the tense spring of 1554. Catholic ceremonies were reinstated, heretical actions were reversed, and laws against heresy were promulgated. By November, 1554, the sentence of excommunication issued by the Pope was removed and the kingdom was officially welcomed back into the Catholic faith. By the end of the year, almost every significant act passed by either Henry VIII or Edward VI had been nullified. The burning of the Protestant martyrs would begin in early 1555.

IThe person most determined on the death of the Protestant martyrs was Mary herself. Philip II and many of her ministers repeatedly advised her against the policy, well aware of the popular backlash it would cause. Many of those burned at the stake were poor, obscure, and increasingly pitied by the people. Mary was implacable, supported by some of her bishops, including Bishop Gardiner. Mary's course had nothing to do with a desire for cruelty; by all accounts, she was a gentle and tenderhearted woman except in matters of religion. She believed with her whole heart that the Protestants were damned and their influence had to be weeded from England's faithful. Elizabeth would later infrequently torture and execute Catholics for political purposes, but never appears to have taken the personal interest in it Mary did. In her 45-year reign, Elizabeth executed fewer than the 300 men and women Mary consigned to the flames between 1555 and 1558. Mary's actions, like so many well-meaning and sincere decisions of her reign, resonated to her own detriment.

From May, 1554 until April, 1555, Elizabeth had remained at Woodstock under close supervision. Finally, largely through the soothing efforts of Philip II, Mary agreed to recall Elizabeth to court where an uneasy pseudo-reconciliation between the sisters was effected. The queen, at 39, believed herself pregnant. Even if Mary refused to see Elizabeth as her heir, the prosaic Philip could not ignore the fact that, if Mary died in childbirth, Elizabeth would become the next queen.

Now began one of the most pathetic episodes of Mary's sad life. Mary had believed herself close to her delivery when she reconciled with Elizabeth in April, 1555. In fact, erroneously, word reached London in late April that she was delivered of a son and London rejoiced. The pregnancy was a delusion. Mary's own menstrual irregularities and a possible stomach tumor, combined with her obsessive desire for motherhood, had created a false or "hysterical" pregnancy in which most signs of pregnancy appeared except a birth. Month after month, she remained in seclusion, awaiting the child that never came. After every possible excuse for miscalculation was used up to account for the delay, all of Europe seemed fascinated with the picture of a woman so desperate for a child she could not admit that she was barren. Finally, in August, the Queen and Philip moved from Hampton Court to another palace and tacitly admitted there was no child. During the same period, bad harvests and increasing unrest over the escalating execution of Protestant heretics created a poisonous atmosphere.

Once the charade of the pregnancy was exploded, Philip returned to his continental territories in the Netherlands, to the vast grief of the Queen. In so doing, he pointedly asked her to safeguard Elizabeth on several occasions, making it clear that Mary's mistreatment of Elizabeth (now even more obviously the only heir) would personally displease him. Elizabeth's safety, in Mary's rage and anguish, hung on her obsessive desire to obtain her husband's love. It was enough to keep Elizabeth alive for the next three years.

Although Phillip returned to England in 1557 and the Queen would once more think herself pregnant, she was increasingly ill. He persuaded Mary to support Spain's efforts against France. In the disastrous campaign that followed, initial Spanish successes were beaten back by the capture of England's port at Calais by the French, last vestige of England's great conquests in France. Phillip remained in Europe on his continental possessions. Mary's religious policies had created bitter resentment with many of her subjects and the costs of supporting Spain in its wars had strained the economy severely. The loss of Calais and its trade was a disaster.

By the fall of 1558, the Queen was dying but refused to name Elizabeth as her heir. She was finally convinced to do so before she died on November 17, 1558. Her beloved cousin, Reginald Pole, the first Papal Legate to England in 20 years and later Archbishop of Canterbury, died within hours of her - as did her hopes for a Catholic England under Elizabeth.

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