A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Mary I., Queen of England
MARY I., QUEEN OF ENGLAND,
Eldest daughter of Henry the Eighth, by his first wife Catharine, of Spain, was born at Greenwich, in February, 1517. Her mother was very careful of her education, and provided her with proper tutors. Her first preceptor was the famous Linacre; and after his death, Lewis Vires, a learned Spaniard, became her tutor. She acquired, under these learned men, a thorough knowledge of the Latin; so that Erasmus commends her epistles in that language.
Towards the end of her father's reign, at the earnest request of Queen Catharine Parr, she undertook to translate Erasmus' Paraphrase on the Gospel of St. John; but, being taken ill soon after she commenced it, she left it to be finished by her chaplain. It was published; but on Mary's accession to the throne, she issued a proclamation suppressing it; and it is supposed that the sickness that seized her while translating this work was affected.
Edward the Sixth, her brother, dying July 6th., 1553, she was proclaimed queen the same month, and crowned in October, Upon her accession, she declared in her speech to the council that she would not persecute her Protestant subjects; but, in the following month, she prohibited preaching without a special license, and in less than three months the Protestant bishops were excluded the house of Lords, and all the statutes of Edward the Sixth respecting the Protestant religion were repealed.
In July, 1554, she was married to Prince Philip of Spain, who was eleven years younger than herself, and by temper little disposed to act the lover. His ruling passion was ambition, which his fond consort was resolved to gratify. She was, however, less successful in this point, than in her favourite wish of reconciling the kingdom to the pope, which was effected in form, by the legate. Cardinal Pole. The sanguinary laws against heretics were renewed, and put into execution. The shocking scenes which followed this determination have indelibly fixed upon the sovereign the epithet of "bloody Queen Mary." A disappointment in a supposed pregnancy, her husband's coldness and unkindness, and the discontent of her subjects, aggravated her natural fretfulness. Although Pole disapproved of the severity of persecution, the arguments of Gardiner and others in its favour suited the queen's disposition so well, that in three or four years two hundred and seventy-seven persons were committed to the flames, including prelates, gentlemen, laymen, women, and even children. The sincerity of Mary's zeal could not be doubted, for she sacrificed the revenues of the crown in restitution of the goods of the church; and to remonstrances on this head, she replied "that she preferred the salvation of her soul to ten such kingdoms as England." She had, indeed, no scruple in indemnifying herself by arbitrary exactions on the property of her subjects; and her whole reign shewed a marked tendency to despotism.
Some have supposed that the queen was compassionate, and that most of these barbarities were committed by her bishops without her knowledge. But among numberless proofs of the falsity of this opinion, we need only mention her treatment of Archbishop Cranmer, who had saved her life, when her father, Henry the Eighth, irritated by her firm adherence to her mother, and her obstinacy in refusing to submit to him, had resolved to put her openly to death. Cranmer alone ventured to urge King Henry against such an act; and, by his argument, succeeded in saving her. In return for this, he was condemned and burnt by Mary for heresy. She died November 7th., 1558, at the age of forty-three, of an epidemic fever. The loss of Calais, just before her death, so affected her, that she remarked to her attendants that they would find Calais written on her heart.
Styrpe preserved three pieces of her writing; a prayer against the assaults of vice, a meditation touching adversity, and a prayer to be read at the hour of death. In "Fox's Acts and Monuments" are printed eight of her letters to King Edward and the lords of council; and in the "Syllogæ Epistolorum" are several more of her letters.
Miss Strickland, in her history of the "Queens of England," has collected many facts which serve to soften the dark picture of Mary's reign.