Mary Tudor by Anna Whitelock Read Free Book Online

Latter and Perillous Dayes
, John Foxe, the most infamous returning exile, celebrated the passing of Mary’s reign. “We shall never find any reign of any Prince in this land or any other,” he wrote, “which ever shows in it (for the proportion of time) so many great arguments of God’s wrath and displeasure.” His detailed account of the lives of the Protestant martyrs graphically portrayed “the horrible and bloody time of Queen Mary.” 7
    Coinciding with the rise of the Accession Day festivities was the promulgation of an order that a copy of Foxe’s
Actes and Monuments
be installed in every “cathedral church.” 8 By 1600, Catholicism was firmly understood to be an “un-English” creed and Protestantism an entrenched part of England’s national identity.
    Foxe’s account would shape the popular narrative of Mary’s reign for the next four hundred and fifty years. Generations of schoolchildren would grow up knowing the first queen of England only as “Bloody Mary,” a Catholic tyrant who sent nearly three hundred Protestants to their deaths, a point made satirically in W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s 1930s parody
1066 and All That. 9
Mary’s presence in a recent survey of the most evil men and women in history is testament to Foxe’s enduring legacy. 10
    But there is, of course, a different Mary: a woman marked by suffering, devout in her faith and exceptional in her courage. From a childhood in which she was adored and feted and then violently rejected, a fighter was born. Her resolve almost cost her her life as her father, and then her brother, sought to subjugate her to their wills. Yet Mary maintained her faith and self-belief. Despite repeated attempts to deprive her of her life and right to the throne, the warrior princess turned victor and became the warrior queen.
    The boldness and scale of her achievement are often overlooked. The campaign that Mary led in the summer of 1553 would prove to be the only successful revolt against central government in sixteenth-century England. She, like her grandfather Henry VII and grandmother Isabella of Castile, had to fight for her throne. In the moment of crisis she proved decisive, courageous, and “Herculean”—and won the support of the English people as the legitimate Tudor heir.
    Mary was a conscientious, hardworking queen who was determined to be closely involved in government business and policy making. She would rise “at daybreak when, after saying her prayers and hearing mass in private,” she would “transact business incessantly until after midnight.” 11 As rebels threatened the capital in January 1554 and she was urged to flee, Mary stood firm and successfully rallied Londoners to her defense. She was also a woman who lived by her conscience and was prepared to die for her faith. And she expected the same of others.
    Her religious defiance was matched by a personal infatuation with Philip, her Spanish husband. Her love for him and dependence on her “true father,” the emperor Charles V, was unwavering. Her determination to honor her husband’s will led England into an unpopular war with France and the loss of Calais. There was no fruit of the union, and so at her premature death there was no Catholic heir. Her own phantom pregnancies, together with epidemics and harvest failures across the country, left her undermined and unpopular. Her life, always one of tragic contrast, ended in personal tragedy as Philip abandoned her, never to return, even as his queen lay dying.
    In many ways Mary failed as a woman but triumphed as a queen. She ruled with the full measure of royal majesty and achieved much of what she set out to do. She won her rightful throne, married her Spanish prince, and restored the country to Roman Catholicism. TheSpanish marriage was a match with the most powerful ruling house in Europe, and the highly favorable marriage treaty ultimately won the support of the English government. She had defeated rebels and