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The Reign Of Queen Elizabeth I

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Mary Tudor was the queen of England from 1553 until her death in 1558, and was the only daughter who survived until adulthood of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She was preceded by Lady Jane Grey, her first cousin once removed, and was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth I. She married only once to Philip II of Spain and was a stubborn Roman Catholic, and her one of the goals of her reign was to restore her country to Roman Catholicism. Her life story has been disputed about for many years by historians who have had many differing views on her, and a notable historian has been Anna Whitelock who has also written a book on her reign. Whitelock claims that Mary ‘achieved much of what she set out to do’. This statement can be proven true …show more content…

A modern historian, Christopher Haigh, notes that her ‘reconstruction of Catholicism was a success’ which thus cements the fact that she achieved her goal. Whitelock also claims that she ‘won her rightful throne’. I find this extremely true, as Mary was forced to be classified as illegitimate by her father and was removed from the line of succession; her place was instead taken by her new-born half-sister, Elizabeth I, and she was demoted to ‘The Lady Mary’. Her situation seemed hopeless. However, she still stubbornly (and rightfully) believed that she was meant to be included in the line of succession and refused to acknowledge Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth as their titles. This worsened her and her father’s relationship until he beheaded Anne Boleyn and removed Elizabeth from the line of …show more content…

Although Mary had a great number of supporters, the Protestants struggled against her rule and their executions did not bode well with many people. They made her even more unpopular with the Protestants and even some of her fellow Catholics believed the burnings to be harsh. Mary’s reign boasted 283 burnings of heretics which was several times more than any rulers whose reigns were chronologically close to hers. Her persecution of these Protestants was described as a ‘bloody rage’ by John Foxe, a Protestant historian at that time who strongly opposed the burnings and was sympathetic towards the convicted heretics. He recorded many of the burnings in his book ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, and one of them was the burning of John Rogers, the first to be executed. He is described to have ‘washed his hands in the flame as though it had been in cold water’. He was also described as a ‘happy martyr’ – this was practically the opposite of what Mary wanted, as she wanted the burnings to scare people into converting to Catholicism; if the first victim ‘yielded up his spirit into the hands of his heavenly Father’ happily then it would encourage the heretics and lead them to believe that being a Protestant was a good act. However, this recording of the burning by Foxe is probably not accurate. He was a devout Protestant who was strongly opposed against

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