Mary I

Mary I
Portrait by Antonis Mor, 1554
Queen of England and Ireland (more...)
Reign	July 1553 – 17 November 1558
Coronation	1 October 1553
Predecessor	Jane (disputed) or Edward VI
Successor	Elizabeth I
Co-monarch	Philip
Queen consort of Spain
Tenure	16 January 1556 – 17 November 1558
Born	(1516-02-18)18 February 1516 Palace of Placentia, Greenwich
Died	17 November 1558(1558-11-17) (aged 42) St James's Palace, London
Burial	14 December 1558 Westminster Abbey, London
Spouse	Philip II of Spain
House	Tudor
Father	Henry VIII of England
Mother	Catherine of Aragon
Religion	Roman Catholic
Signature

Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558) was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.

She was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he opposed her Catholicism. On his death, leading politicians tried to proclaim Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556, but she never visited Spain.

Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after her half-brother's short-lived Protestant reign. During her five-year reign, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. After her death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. Mary's efforts to restore Catholicism to England led Protestants to denounce her as "Bloody Mary" but in recent decades her reputation among historians has improved somewhat.