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This queen of England, which was given the nickname of
“Bloody Mary”, was born at Greenwich Palace, February
18, 1516. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and
Catharine of Aragon. She was carefully educated in Spain,
was an ardent Catholic, and became a proficient scholar in
Latin, so that Erasmus commends her letters in that
language.
Edward VI, her brother, died in 1553 and she was
proclaimed queen in July of that same year and crowned in
October. Upon her accession, she declared that she would
not persecute her Protestant subjects, but in the following
month, she restricted preaching, and in less than three
months the Protestant bishops were excluded from the
House of Lord and all the statutes of Edward VI regarding
the Protestant religion were repealed.
In July, 1554, she was married to Philip II of Spain, who
was eleven years younger than herself. He was not an
affectionate man, as his passion was ambition.
Mary renewed the laws against heretics of the Catholic
church and began to enforce them. The shocking scenes
which followed were horrifying. In three or four years, two
hundred and seventy-seven people were burned at the stake.
On February 4, 1555, John Rogers was burned at the stake;
Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley shared the same fate. The
ruin of England seemed impending, when in the summer of
1558, the queen became ill of a fever and she died at St.
James Palace, on November 17.
To her, no doubt, the propagators of heresy were
the enemies of mankind, and she had little cause to love
them. Yet perhaps she hardly realized the full horror of
what was done under her sanction. Tennyson calls her
“unhappiest of queens, and wives, and women.”
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