Mary I of England

Was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.

She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547.

By 1553, Edward was mortally ill and because of religious differences between them, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession. On his death, their cousin Lady Jane Grey was at first proclaimed queen. Mary assembled a force in East Anglia, and successfully deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, and as a result became queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.

As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after the short-lived Protestant reign of her brother. During her five year reign, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions. Her Protestant opponents gave her the sobriquet of "Bloody Mary". Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed after her death in 1558 by her successor and younger half-sister, Elizabeth I.