Mary I of England (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558) was a member of England's royal House of Tudor and ruled as Queen of England from 1553 to 1558. A staunch Catholic, she restored Catholicism as the state religion of England after her father, Henry VIII, and younger brother, Edward VI, had made England a Protestant country. Her reign was marked by bloody persecutions of Protestants and members of her Parliament. England also lost the colony of Calais in a brief war with France.
Her husband was King Philip II of Spain, a marriage which produced no children. Marrying into the House of Hapsburg led to her being crowned Queen of Naples and Queen of Jerusalem, though the latter title was purely formal, as the Kingdom of Jerusalem had fallen to the Ottoman Empire more than two centuries earlier.
Upon her death in 1558, Mary was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, a Protestant whom Mary had imprisoned in the Tower of London. Elizabeth restored that faith to state religion status and persecuted Catholics, though usually not as violently as Mary had persecuted Protestants.
In 1588, 30 years after her death, Mary's widower, King Philip II, sent an Armada to England. The invading Spanish successfully captured Queen Elizabeth and removed her from power. Philip installed his daughter Isabella, as Queen of England.[1]
Mary's violent suppressions of political and religious dissent led to her nickname "Bloody Mary," a name which was not openly used by the English during Isabella's reign for fear of betraying Protestant and Elizabethan sentiments.[2]
Mary succeeded her father Henry VIII as monarch of England after he died of the Wasting. Mary was the first and last queen regnant of England; as part of the response to the Wasting, England (along with the rest of Europe) imposed strict limits on the lives of females upon entering puberty, removing them from most aspects of public life.[4]
