Mary I (1553-1558) was the
only child from Henry VIII’s marriage with Catherine of Aragon. After her parents divorced, Anne Boleyn
became Mary I’s stepmother. Anne soon
gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Once
this occurred, Anne would no longer permit Mary to see her mother and forced
her to be servant to the new baby. She
also took away Mary’s title of princess and ordered her to enter a
convent. Mary refused to do this and
eventually Henry executed Anne and moved on to another wife who wasn’t as
interested in persecuting the young princess.
Mary had been forced to accept that the sovereign
of England was the head of the Church.
But when her brother Edward changed the mass to English, she continued
to hear the traditional mass in her private chapel. She intended to make England Catholic again
someday and, in private, resisted the changes being made to rituals that dated
back to the early Church. When Edward VI
died, she became Queen of England and had an opportunity to bring England back
to Catholicism. To initiate this plan, Mary intended to marry Felipe II, the
son of Carlos V and future King of Spain.
Many English noblemen had become very rich after stealing
lands from Catholic monasteries that had been shut down. They knew that, if England became Catholic
again, they would probably lose these lands and their newfound wealth. In 1554, when it was clear that Mary was serious
about marrying Felipe II, the Protestant noblemen rebelled and marched on London. Mary made an inspiring speech to the people
of London and they rose to defend her.
This army of common people defeated the professional soldiers of the
nobles and saved the Queen for a time.
Mary did marry Felipe II and restored the Catholic religion
in England. There was much resistance to
this and she fought her enemies ruthlessly.
She burned 300 Protestant heretics at the stake over the next
three years. For this, her enemies named
her Bloody Mary. Saddened by many fake
pregnancies and a failed war which lost Calais, the last English controlled
section of France, she died on November 17, 1558.
Upon her death, her half-sister Elizabeth, daughter of
Anne Boleyn, became Queen. Elizabeth’s
life had been a dangerous one while her father and siblings sat on the
throne. During the Mary’s reign,
Elizabeth had even been imprisoned for a time and feared for her life. Now she was free from fear and reigned over
England.
But her country was in poor shape. Internally, there was still much strife between
Catholic and Protestant and the treasury was nearly empty. Outside her borders, England was regarded as
a shrunken, Protestant country that lay off the coast of two great Catholic
powers, France and Spain. And Elizabeth was a young woman in a world ruled
mostly by men, who had spent much of her life as a virtual prisoner and had no
experience of ruling over anyone.
In 1559 she tried to settle the religious issue in her
country by passing the Act of Supremacy.
This decree enforced the Protestant Anglican Church as the state
church. Catholics were allowed to
remain Catholic, but they could not hold office in the government. Extreme Protestants, influenced by Calvinists
on the continent, agitated for more reforms and a complete destruction of the
mass and all rituals that appeared Catholic, but Elizabeth decided that she
would not take these reforms any farther.
Religious strife would trouble Elizabeth over the course
of her entire reign. In 1569, she used
savage military force to suppress an uprising by Catholic nobles in Northern
England. The following year, Pope Pius V excommunicated her. She became aware of international plots
against her life. She kept a distant
cousin from Scotland, Mary, in prison much of her reign. Elizabeth finally executed this relative in
1587 when it appeared that Mary was deeply involved in a conspiracy to
assassinate her.
Finally, in 1588, the greatest threat to her power came
when Felipe II, King of Spain, assembled and launched a vast armada to
invade England. Elizabeth’s navy
defeated Felipe’s fleet and forced them to flee. In turning back to Spain, the damaged armada
ran into terrible storms and was almost completely destroyed. For the remainder
of her reign, Elizabeth would have a certain amount of security as England
recuperated. The victory over the
Spanish would mark the beginning of England’s rise to world power as well as
her centuries’ long dominance of the sea.
Elizabeth’s reign is noted not only for it’s stalwart
defense of English independence, but also for the great literary flourishing
that accompanied her time on the throne.
During her reign, great playwrights and poets emerged from English
society: Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. These and others are referred to as Elizabethans
and the time period, 1558-1603, is known as the Elizabethan Age.
Elizabeth never married nor did she have any
children. When she died, King James VI
of Scotland was declared King James I of England.
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