Mary I Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, ruled England from 1553 to 1558. Catholic, as intransigent as her mother, she was called Bloody Mary on account of her savage attacks on her father’s reformed church and its followers. In the five years of her reign she sent to the gallows and the stake more than two hundred and eighty, among them Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mary was born on 18 February 1516 in the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, sole offspring of the couple to survive infancy. She has fair skin, pale-blue eyes, her mother’s mahogany-brown hair and her father’s ruddy complexion.

A precocious child, at four she entertains a French delegation by playing the virginal with panache, at seven reads Cicero, Horace, Seneca, Plutarch, Plato, Erasmus, St Jerome, St Augustine, learning by heart extracts which she must recite in the evening before going to bed. At nine she writes in Latin, with the best tutors she studies French, Spanish, Greek, music, dance.

In 1525 her father sends her to Wales with her own court, as is tradition with heirs to the English throne. She resides in Ludlow Castle for three years, is styled Princess of Wales, while negotiations proceed for her future marriage, firstly with the Dauphin of France Franҫois, then with the twenty-two-year-old Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, her cousin on her mother’s side.

In the meantime, however, her parents’ marriage is in danger: disappointed at not having a male heir, eager to marry a woman younger than Catherine, the seductive Anne Boleyn, Henry asks for a divorce that Catherine will never grant him. Pope Clement VII threatens him with excommunication, he responds by breaking with the Church of Rome. It is the years of the ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’, Thomas Cromwell’s ruffians sack the churches, taking away furnishings, chalices, precious candelabra, clean their boots with the illuminated manuscripts kept in the libraries, the nights are lit by abbeys and monasteries in flames, monks and nuns burn as human torches.

In January 1533 Henry marries Anne Boleyn, in the September Elizabeth is born: Henry pronounces her heir to the throne, putting aside Mary: from being Princess of Wales she becomes simply Lady Mary. She is sent to the newborn’s court, where she is insulted and abused. Henry banishes his first wife Catherine from the court in London to increasingly decrepit castles, forbidding her from seeing her daughter.

Inflexible, as intransigent as her mother, the girl refuses to recognize her father’s new church, his new marriage, his new queen. She is often ill. Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, stays close her and intercedes for her at court, but without success. Although Henry knows that Catherine’s life is drawing to an end in the desolate castle of Kinmbolton, he will not allow Mary to visit her. Catherine – who is now fifty – dies there in January 1536. Henry does not allow their daughter to attend the funeral.

May 1536: after a sham trial and accusations both slanderous and untrue – adultery and incest – Henry sends Anne Boleyn to the scaffold so as to be able to marry a few days later one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. At the same time he declares Elizabeth illegitimate too and deprives her of her designation as heir to the throne.

But Jane is a kind woman, strives to repair Henry’s relationship with his daughters, manages to reconcile Mary with her father, who reappoints her to her titles. She and Jane become friends, it is Mary who takes care of her when she dies of puerperal fever in October 1537, after having given Henry his much-desired son, Edward.

Henry VIII dies in 1547; his son, Edward VI, who has ruled through his counsellors for sixteen years, dies in 1553-probably of tuberculosis. Having suppressed a number of plots and sent to the scaffold various conspirators, including her cousin Lady Jane Grey, Mary is crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey by Stephen Gardiner. She appoints him Lord Chancellor and Bishop of Winchester.

Mary is now thirty-seven and must think of marriage, also because in the absence of an heir the throne will pass to her step-sister Elizabeth, daughter of the detested Anne Boleyn, who was the cause of her mother Catherine’s ruin.

Several names are suggested from among the English nobility, among them Edward Courtenay and Reginald Pole, but her cousin Charles V proposes his own son, Prince Philip of Spain. Gardiner and Parliament implore her to refuse as the country, jure uxoris, would become subject to the Hapsburgs. Nor do the English people favour such a marriage: there are conspiracies and the plotters are put to death. Elizabeth, while protesting her innocence, is imprisoned in the Tower of London.

But Mary falls immediately in love with the handsome Spanish prince, and the two marry on 25 July 1554 in Winchester Cathedral. Philip’s official title is ‘King of England during Mary’s lifetime’, all documents must be signed by both, he cannot offer assistance to his father in any war, nor act officially without her consent.

In September 1554 Mary believes herself pregnant: morning sickness, weight gain. The court doctors think so too. Parliament issues a decree that nominates Philip regent if she should die in childbirth. But in a letter to his brother-in-law, Philip casts doubts this supposed pregnancy. In fact for his part the marriage has been a matter of interest, he does not love her, avoids her company, and is rarely in England.

The months pass – May, June: nothing happens. Now the excuse of delay borders on the ridiculous. In July her swollen abdomen deflates, she declares that the false pregnancy has been a punishment from God “for having been too tolerant of the heretics in my kingdom.” More executions, more Protestants to the stake. Risking their own lives, some of the executioners kindly tie round their necks a collar holding a bag of gunpowder: they will die more quickly and will suffer less.

Philip again leaves her by herself: when he departs for Flanders to command an army against France, she is devastated. But he returns in 1557 to persuade her to support Spain in a new war against France. Even though her counsellors oppose this, Mary is in favour. The English forces win some battles, but in the end through a lack of troops lose even Calais, the last English possession on the Continent.

Mat 1558: Mary is ill, weak, in great pain. It is probably a uterine cancer which will cause her death on 17 November 1558. Elizabeth will succeed her. They will be buried side by side in Westminster Abbey. The inscription (in Latin) reads:

"Companions of throne and grave, here we sleep Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection".