During a host gathering earlier this year, when Mary, Queen of Scots appeared as a trivia answer and a fellow host said "Bloody Mary" as an aside, I went into full “hyper-fixation rant” mode. Tudor history has fascinated me since I was 10 and held my first copy of a “Royal Diaries” book, “Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor.” I might be the only person out there who would die of happiness if we ran a Tudor History theme night, and I’ve accepted that. A belated apology to my fellow hosts who had to listen to me explain the differences between the major British Isle Marys of the 1500s.
Apropos of this era — and the British crown's entire history, really — it’s complicated by multiple people named the same thing around the same time. In the 16th century, there were multiple reigning monarchs named Mary. Both of them were Catholic, but only one was nicknamed Bloody Mary due to her political and religious legacy. While two of those three qualifications do match Mary, Queen of Scots, the third one only applies to Mary Tudor, aka Mary I of England.
She was the first woman crowned queen in her own right in English history and ruled for five years, though Mary was not wasteful with her time — in the words of Tina Fey, bitches get stuff done. But to understand why Mary I became Bloody Mary, you have to look back at the 37 years preceding her reign. Spoiler alert: They were not great, Bob.
“You mean my son is a girl?”
Princess Mary was born in 1516 to King Henry VIII and his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon. Catherine was the youngest surviving child of Queen Isabella of Castile (who has her own “Royal Diaries” book, thank you very much) and King Ferdinand of Aragon, a true European power couple. Catherine was previously married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, who died shortly into their teenage marriage; a papal dispensation was granted to allow Henry to marry his brother’s widow as Catherine testified that she and Arthur had never consummated the marriage.
Henry and Catherine had no living children prior to Princess Mary’s birth; most of their pregnancies had ended in miscarriage, stillbirth, or death within a few hours. One earlier pregnancy — a boy named Henry — was successful, but he died suddenly at seven weeks old. Catherine’s last pregnancy after Mary also ended in stillbirth. A normal parent would consider Mary a miracle and a gift to be treasured, but anyone who knows even a little bit about English history knows that Henry VIII was no normal parent.
Henry wasn’t entirely without precedent in his patriarchal obsession. The only other time in England’s history when a king attempted to pass the crown to a daughter, civil war broke out for over a decade. On top of that, Henry VIII’s entire reign was based on his own father’s right of conquest in the Battle of Bosworth, which much of the public today considers to be the end of The War of the Roses. But this is where any credit I will give to the serial husband ends.
“The King’s Great Matter”
Henry’s quest for a legitimate male heir made him effectively ignore Mary’s future. He spent the second half of Mary’s childhood trying to have his marriage to her mother declared illegitimate (on the basis of her having married his older brother — conveniently ignoring the prior papal dispensation) so he could marry Anne Boleyn*.
While Mary’s future marriage was arranged heavily through her early years, it was on the back burner in favor of her father’s top priority: siring a legitimate son. From 1531 until her mother’s death five years later, she and Catherine were forcibly separated, and never saw one another again. I cannot imagine the agony Catherine of Aragon went through as she died from what we now understand was likely cancer without her daughter by her side. In 1533, her father married Anne Boleyn, separated from the Catholic Church, established himself as the head of the Church of England, and his Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared the marriage between Mary’s parents to be void and Henry and Anne’s marriage to be valid. Mary was then styled “The Lady Mary” and her household was dissolved. By the end of the year, she was sent to join Princess Elizabeth’s household.
But you have to give Mary credit: Amidst all this heartache, she stubbornly refused to acknowledge her stepmother as queen or her half-sister as princess. This of course enraged the prone-to-anger king, and they didn’t speak for three years. In 1536, after Catherine’s death, Anne Boleyn miscarried her final pregnancy, which was the first domino in her eventual execution later that year. Henry very quickly married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who would eventually birth the desired son, the later Edward VI, before dying.
Jane attempted to reconcile the father and daughter, but Mary was a devout Catholic and in direct conflict with Henry’s religious position. He didn’t want to stop running the church just because his marriage to Anne didn’t produce a son — religion was a moneymaker, baby! At first, Mary would only agree to submit to his authority as “God and my conscience permitted,” not wanting to recognize her father as the head of the Church of England. Henry, as ever, was a bully and eventually forced her to sign a document agreeing to his terms. By this time, she was 21.
The pesky little half-brother
These first 21 years are the foundation on which Mary’s worldview and eventual reign are built. They deeply inform her decisions as queen, and it’s important to see this whole timeline to understand why she acted the way she did. But the 16 years between Mary being welcomed back into the fold and ascending as England’s first coronated queen weren’t without action.
Near the end of his life, Henry VIII wrote Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth back into the succession. If his son Edward died without heirs, Mary would succeed him. If Mary also died without heirs, Elizabeth would ascend to the throne next. Leaving the throne to Elizabeth was a very real possibility, as Mary’s marriage prospects continued to be a low priority for her father. There were some attempts to marry her to other Protestant European leaders, but none of them materialized.
After Henry’s death in 1547, 9-year-old Edward VI ascended. His six-and-a-half-year reign marked another era of Catholic defiance for Mary. She refused to stop celebrating Mass in her own chapel, despite the continued Protestant reforms enacted by the king’s regency and the king’s own religious views; she even solicited the diplomatic interference of her cousin, Emperor Charles V. It is said that in Christmas 1550, 13-year-old Edward and 34-year-old Mary brought each other to tears over Mary ignoring his Protestant laws. She continued to refuse to follow his laws, and he refused to drop the topic.
This continued until the young king’s death at age 15, and it is the catalyst for Mary’s less-than-smooth ascension. Edward and his council were concerned Mary would bring the country back to Catholicism and did not want her to inherit the throne. However, because of the clear recognition of both Mary and Elizabeth as legitimate heirs by their father, Edward could not cleanly pass over Mary in favor of Elizabeth; he had to choose honoring his father’s will regarding them both, or push them both off to the side. He chose the latter. Anyone with older sisters will tell you why this was a doomed mission.
Edward named Lady Jane Grey his successor. Jane was the first cousin once-removed of Henry’s children, as she was his younger sister’s granddaughter. This may cause some head-tilting, since Henry ignored the line of heirs from Margaret Tudor, his older sister. But those heirs were Catholic too — and wouldn’t you know it, Jane’s father-in-law was the Regent at the time of Edward’s death! So convenient!
This plan to shut out Mary and Elizabeth was very, very unsuccessful. Jane was “queen” for nine days before the massive military support behind Mary caused the Protestant faction to yield. Nearly a month after her brother’s death, Mary rode into London as England’s first legitimate queen, while accompanied by Elizabeth (a very temporary show of sister solidarity) and a large retinue.
Eldest daughters, unite
At this point in the story, Mary had survived 37 years of being pushed aside, being insufficiently loved by the men in her family, and constantly having her religious beliefs squashed. While this in no way justifies the actions that would follow, is it any wonder why her religious policy turned out to be so extreme?
The newly coronated Mary I released all imprisoned Catholics, appointed what Catholics she could to positions of importance, declared her parents’ marriage valid, abolished all of Edward’s religious laws, and married a fellow Catholic: her first cousin once-removed on her mother’s side, Philip of Spain. That final decision led to insurrections, including an attempt to depose Mary in favor of Elizabeth, led by Thomas Wyatt the Younger. Elizabeth was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London and then moved to house arrest for a year; Mary chose to release Elizabeth from the Tower of London on the 18th anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s beheading.
While Mary issued a proclamation early in her reign that stated she would not compel any subjects to follow Catholicism, she quickly imprisoned many prominent Protestant churchmen and her husband Philip persuaded parliament to repeal Henry VIII’s religious laws. After a year of negotiations, the pope approved a deal to have England brought back into Catholic jurisdiction and effectively reinstated the Heresy Acts.
Anyone who hadn’t fled England and continued to publicly practice Protestantism became targets of these laws, with executions by burning at the stake commencing soon thereafter. By then, Cranmer (remember that guy? The one who declared her parents’ marriage invalid?) was imprisoned and recanted his Protestant beliefs. Under the law, he should have been absolved — but was this traumatized woman inclined to free the man she held responsible for her being disinherited? Would you be? He dramatically recanted his earlier recantation before being burned at the stake. He was one of the estimated 283 people executed in this manner for this reason.
History is written by the victors
This continued throughout the five years of Mary’s reign, despite her initial intention to have the first burnings be a “short, sharp shock.” Even prominent Catholics noted that the punishments were especially cruel. It led to significant anti-Catholic resentment. But as we all know, England did not reunite with Catholicism for long. Despite false pregnancies that were likely the result of ovarian cysts or uterine cancer — she had exhibited extreme menstrual pain in her youth — Mary did not birth any heirs and she was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth. In many ways, this had to have been the worst blow of all. Her young, Protestant half-sister, the progeny of the marriage at the center of Mary’s trauma, would take over and reinstate everything her father and half-brother built.
So there you have it: the reason we know Mary Tudor as the bloody figure she is today. She may have executed more people than her sister, but she didn’t have nearly as much blood on her hands as her father — though who is to say what she could have done with Henry’s 37 years instead of Mary’s half-a-decade? Either way, I hope it lends a little bit of understanding to this historical figure, even if it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) excuse her.
*I have to add a footnote admitting that because I read “Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor” first, which follows Anne’s only child and paints Princess Mary in a purposefully awful light, I have always been a big fan of Anne Boleyn. She was a mouthy woman for her time period, and I was a mouthy kid! It’s an entirely separate Friday Know-It-All to discuss how Anne’s death was the catalyst for Elizabeth I’s own traumatic reactions during her reign. If you want an interesting (albeit inflammatory and not always well-written) take on Anne’s possible motivations, “Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies” is a good library pickup. As a still-mouthy adult, I can recognize that while Mary has her flaws, those flaws came from a lot of pain inflicted upon her as a child. And I like almost all of Henry VIII’s wives more than I could ever like him.
