“Bloody Mary” Tudor

Mary Tudor was the first surviving legitimate daughter of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon born in 1516. She was raised a catholic and was very well educated. By 1533 Mary was stripped as her title of princess, was declared a bastard child, and was to be renamed “The Lady Mary’. She was very bitter towards Boleyn, and resented her greatly because she was the cause of all of Mary and her mothers suffering. She never recognized Boleyn as Queen of England. When Elizabeth was born, Mary became a lady in waiting to her young half sister. When Henry married Jane Seymour, Mary was allowed back into court, and Jane urged her husband to acknowledge his daughter. However Jane died soon after the birth of her son, Edward, and Marys title of princess was not restored until Katherine Parr came along. After the King had died, Edward was first in line to be king, but died shortly after becoming king. Mary was crowed Queen of England in 1553. Her first act of Queen was restoring her mothers name and taking away all of the silly laws her half-brother passed in his short reign. Mary got the nickname “Bloody Mary” for prosecuting protestants. Since she was a Roman Catholic, she believed England should only be Catholic, and murdered 300 protestants by burning them at the stake. Her erratic, unstable behavior and false pregnancies were the death of Mary. She died in 1558 and left the throne to her sister, Elizabeth.