Random Fatcs About Bloody Mary, Who Is Remembered As A Murderer, But Rest Of Her Family Was Far Worse (12 items)

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  (#1) Mary Tudor Grew Up In The Midst Of Her Father's Lady Troubles

  Mary Tudor was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She was a girl, which was a bit of a disappointment to her father, but she proved to be an intelligent and skilled child. At the age of 9, Henry VIII made her Princess of Wales and sent her to live along the Welsh border while he tried to find her a husband. She was baptized Catholic at birth and became a fervent believer which, after her father broke from the Church, put her in a difficult position both politically and religiously.
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  (#2) Mary Had To Compromise Her Beliefs To Be An Heir To The English Throne

  When Henry VIII declared his marriage to Catherine of Aragon null and void, Mary was officially deemed a bastard. After Anne Boleyn gave birth to her own daughter, Elizabeth, she had Mary declared illegitimate, knocking her out of the line of succession. This was just one of the many grievances Mary would bear towards her step-mother, reviling her long after she was executed by Henry. Once Anne was dramatically and violently removed from court and her father married Jane Seymour, he reinstated Mary but only after she acknowledged him as head of the Church of England. For Mary, as a devout Catholic, this was a bitter pill to swallow.
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  (#3) Mary Became Queen After Her Brother's Death And The Reign Of A Nine-Day Interloper

  Mary Tudor became queen after her brother, Edward VI, died in 1553. Edward VI became king when his father died in 1547 but he was only 10 years old. Regents ruled in his stead, and when he died, a religious power struggle broke out. Catholic factions favored Mary while Protestants called for Elizabeth to be queen. There was a brief interlude during which their royal cousin, Lady Jane Grey, was made queen by Edward VI's former regents, but after nine days, she was arrested - and later executed - and Mary took the throne.
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  (#4) The Public Enthusiastially Welcomed Mary To The Throne

  Englishmen and women welcomed Queen Mary with cheers and excitement. According to sources,

  "the number of caps that were thrown up at the proclamation are not to be told... Money was thrown out at windows for joy. The bonfires were without number... and ringing of bells... besides banquettings and singing in the streets for joy."

  Mary represented a return to order and, from Mary's perspective, a return to Catholicism.
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  (#5) Mary Took Her Popularity To Mean All Her Subjects Wanted To Be Catholic Like Her

  Despite everything that had happened to her, Mary was a staunch Catholic. During her father's and brother's reigns, Catholicism had been forced underground but Mary never stopped attending Mass and feeling as though she had committed religious treason by acknowledging them as the head of the Church of England. The enthusiasm that surrounded her accession to the throne was, to Mary, an endorsement of her desire to restore England to a Catholic country.

  Mary set out to do just that. She married the Catholic King of Spain, Philip II, in 1554, to strengthen her cause. This would also, hopefully, produce an heir, which would prevent her sister, the Protestant Elizabeth, from taking the throne. She repealed Henry VIII's and Edward VI's religious laws, passing her own, and in 1555, she passed heresy laws that forbade the practice of Protestantism in England.
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  (#6) Mary Was In Tight With The Spanish Which Wasn't Appreciated In England

  Mary's marriage to Philip II didn't go over well in England. The Spanish and the English were rivals at sea and in trade and there was fear about a foreigner being let into the British royal family. In 1554, 3,000 Englishmen, led by Thomas Wyatt, staged a protest against the marriage, marching from Rochester to London. The rebellion was short-lived and Wyatt's movement was put down by Royal troops. Wyatt was executed for treason but his actions reflected larger sentiments of the time.

  Philip had also convinced Mary to support the Spanish in their war with France. This led to the loss of Calais in 1558, the lone English possession on the Continent, an utter failure in foreign policy on Mary's part.
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  (#7) Mary's Laws Against Protestantism Led To Hundreds Of Executions

  Mary's religious policies reflected her desire to drive Protestantism out of England. Heretics were to be punished although, she pronounced that it should be done "without rashness, not leaving in the meantime to do justice such as by learning it would seem to deceive the simple, and the rest so to be used that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned without just occasion." She was advocating for education and re-teaching Catholicism, in theory, but there were hundreds of "just occasions" as well. 

  According to sources, 284 Protestants were burned at the stake during her reign, which created fear, outrage, and would ultimately earn her the nickname "Bloody Mary." The Protestants themselves, men like John Rogers, the first person to be burned at the stake during Mary's reign, became martyrs.
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  (#8) Mary Executed 300 People But Edward VI Killed Over 5,000

  What might be most shocking about the damage these executions did to Mary's reputation, the almost 300 people Mary killed in her efforts to stamp out Protestantism pale in comparison to the deaths that occurred during her brother's reign. During the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, for example, more than 5,500 people died after they were told to change their religious practice.

  The Prayer Book Rebellion resulted from Thomas Cranmer's issuance of The Book of Common Prayer, which included aspects of Catholic tradition and Protestant practice and was supposed to unify religious practice in England. It made both sides unhappy and served as a symbol of religious discontent in the country. There was discontent over taxation that added to the unrest and, in the end, over 8,000 royal troops were sent to Devon to suppress the rebellion. In the ensuing chaos thousands died, either in skirmishes or by execution.
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  (#9) Henry VIII Killed Thousands Of People, According To Some Sources

  Even more people died during Henry VIII's reign, including several of his wives. The estimates for executions while Henry VIII was king vary from 57,000 to 72,000 people but the exact number will never be known. There's no doubt that Henry VIII had his rivals and enemies - real or perceived - assassinated. Some of his closest advisors, including Thomas More, met their end because they opposed his royal supremacy while his heresy laws resulted in mass persecution as well.
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  (#10) Mary's Odd Behavior Didn't Help The Overall Perception Of Her Reign

  Mary promised the English people an heir over and over again. She announced a pregnancy in 1555 but was experiencing one of her many "phantom pregnancies." In 1557, she again thought she was pregnant but in reality was probably suffering from stomach cancer. She had been desperate to produce an heir and was never able to do so, ultimately having to acknowledge her sister as her successor in the days leading up to hear death. Her Spanish marriage and persecution of Catholics didn't produce the on-going Catholic England she had hoped for.
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  (#11) She Already Had The Nickname "Bloody Mary" By The 17th Century

  Mary was vilified by her contemporaries, notably John Knox in The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, which attacked female monarchs. According to Knox, "It is a thing most repugnant to nature that women rule and govern over men." Knox, a Protestant, had even more reason to dislike Mary, given her fervent support of Catholicism. He went further with Mary though, calling her "unworthy by reason of her bloody tyranny of the name of a woman."

  Overall, Queen Mary was portrayed as a bad queen, a failure in domestic and foreign policy, and, ultimately, unsuccessful in restoring Catholicism. Her efforts - resulting in the deaths of almost 300 people - were for naught. She's overshadowed by the reign of her sister, who came to the throne when Mary died in 1558, and is remembered for ushering in a Golden Age for England.
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  (#12) By The Numbers, Mary Looks Anything But Bloody

  If you do the math, Mary was pretty kind compared to her father and brother. Dividing the number of people killed by the years of the reigns, leads to Henry VIII killing an average of 1946 people during each of his 37 years. Edward VI's six-year reign had 917 deaths per year while Mary only had 58 during each of her five years. Out of the three of them she was certainly the least bloody.

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