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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "chunk_id": "1911:mary i:1b6374acfb7c",
    "title": "MARY I.",
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    "verified_text": "mary i., queen of england (1516-1558), unpleasantly remembered as \"the bloody mary\" on account of the religious persecutions which prevailed during her reign, was the daughter of henry viii. and catherine of aragon, born in the earlier years of their married life, when as yet no cloud had darkened the prospect of henry's reign. her birth occurred at greenwich, on monday, the 18th february 1516, and she was baptized on the following wednesday, cardinal wolsey standing as her godfather. she seems to have been a singularly precocious child, and is reported in july 1520, when scarcely four and a half years old, as entertaining some visitors by a performance on the virginals. when she was little over nine she was addressed in a complimentary latin oration by commissioners sent over from flanders on commercial matters, and replied to them in the same language \"with as much assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years old\" (gayangos, iii. pt. 1, 82). her father was proud of her achievements. about the same time that she replied to the commissioners in latin he was arranging that she should learn spanish, italian and french. a great part, however, of the credit of her early education was undoubtedly due to her mother, who not only consulted the spanish scholar vives upon the subject, but was herself mary's first teacher in latin. she was also well instructed in music, and among her principal recreations as she grew up was that of playing on the virginals and lute. it was a misfortune that she shared with high-born ladies generally in those days that her prospects in life were made a matter of sordid bargaining from the first. mary was little more than two years old when she was proposed in marriage to the dauphin, son of francis i. three years afterwards the french alliance was broken off, and in 1522 she was affianced to her cousin the young emperor charles v. by the treaty of windsor. no one, perhaps, seriously expected either of these arrangements to endure; and, though we read in grave state papers of some curious compliments and love tokens (really the mere counters of diplomacy) professedly sent by the girl of nine to her powerful cousin, not many years passed away before charles released himself from this engagement and made a more convenient match. in 1526 a rearrangement was made of the royal household, and it was thought right to give mary an establishment of her own along with a council on the borders of wales, for the better government of the marches. for some years she accordingly kept her court at ludlow, while new arrangements were made for the disposal of her hand. she was now proposed as a wife, not for the dauphin as before, but for his father francis i., who had just been redeemed from captivity at madrid, and who was only too glad of an alliance with england to mitigate the severe conditions imposed on him by the emperor. wolsey, however, on this occasion, only made use of the princess as a bait to enhance the terms of the compact, and left francis free in the end to marry the emperor's sister. it was during this negotiation, as henry afterwards pretended, that the question was first raised whether henry's own marriage with catherine was a lawful one. grammont, bishop of tarbes, who was one of the ambassadors sent over by francis to ask the princess in marriage, had, it was said, started an objection that she might possibly be considered illegitimate on account of her mother having been once the wife of her father's brother. the statement was a mere pretence to shield the king when the unpopularity of the divorce became apparent. it is proved to be untrue by the strongest evidence, for we have pretty full contemporary records of the whole negotiation. on the contrary, it is quite clear that henry, who had already for some time conceived the project of a divorce, kept the matter a dead secret, and was particularly anxious that the french ambassadors should not know it, while he used his daughter's hand as a bait for a new alliance. the alliance itself, however, was actually concluded by a treaty dated westminster, the 30th of april 1527, in which it was provided, as regards the princess mary, that she should be married either to francis himself or to his second son henry duke of orleans. but the real object was only to lay the foundation of a perfect mutual understanding between the two kings, which wolsey soon after went into france to confirm. during the next nine years the life of mary, as well as that of her mother, was rendered miserable by the conduct of henry viii. in seeking a divorce. during most of that period mother and daughter seem to have been kept apart. possibly queen catherine had the harder trial; but mary's was scarcely less severe. removed from court and treated as a bastard, she was, on the birth of anne boleyn's daughter, required to give up the dignity of princess and acknowledge the illegitimacy of her own birth. on her refusal her household was broken up, and she was sent to hatfield to act as lady-in-waiting to her own infant half-sister. nor was even this the worst of her trials; her very life was in danger from the hatred of anne boleyn. her health, moreover, was indifferent, and even when she was seriously ill, although henry sent his own physician, dr buttes, to attend her, he declined to let her mother visit her. so also at her mother's death, in january 1536, she was forbidden to take a last farewell of her. but in may following another change occurred. anne boleyn, the real cause of all her miseries, fell under the king's displeasure and was put to death. mary was then urged to make a humble submission to her father as the means of recovering his favour, and after a good deal of correspondence with the king's secretary, cromwell, she actually did so. the terms exacted of her were bitter in the extreme, but there was no chance of making life tolerable otherwise, if indeed she was permitted to live at all; and the poor friendless girl, absolutely at the mercy of a father who could brook no contradiction, at length subscribed an act of submission, acknowledging the king as \"supreme head of the church of england under christ,\" repudiating the pope's authority, and confessing that the marriage between her father and mother \"was by god's law and man's law incestuous and unlawful.\" no act, perhaps, in the whole of henry's reign gives us a more painful idea of his revolting despotism. mary was a high-spirited girl, and undoubtedly popular. all europe looked upon her at that time as the only legitimate child of her father, but her father himself compelled her to disown the title and pass an unjust stigma on her own birth and her mother's good name. nevertheless henry was now reconciled to her, and gave her a household in some degree suitable to her rank. during the rest of the reign we hear little about her except in connexion with a number of new marriage projects taken up and abandoned successively, one of which, to the count palatine philip, duke of bavaria, was specially repugnant to her in the matter of religion. her privy purse expenses for nearly the whole of this period have been published, and show that hatfield, beaulieu or newhall in essex, richmond and hunsdon were among her principal places of residence. although she was still treated as of illegitimate birth, it was believed that the king, having obtained from parliament the extraordinary power to dispose of the crown by will, would restore her to her place in the succession, and three years before his death she was so restored by statute, but still under conditions to be regulated by her father's will. under the reign of her brother, edward vi. she was again subjected to severe trials, which at one time made her seriously meditate taking flight and escaping abroad. edward himself indeed seems to have been personally not unkind to her, but the religious revolution in his reign assumed proportions such as it had not done before, and mary, who had done sufficient violence to her own convictions in submitting to a despotic father, was not disposed to yield an equally tame obedience to authority exercised by a factious council in the name of a younger brother not yet come to years of discretion. besides, the cause of the pope was naturally her own. in spite of the forced declaration formerly wrung from herself, no one really regarded her as a bastard, and the full recognition of her rights depended on the recognition of the pope as head of the church. hence, when edward's parliament passed an act of uniformity enjoining services in english and communion in both kinds, the law appeared to her totally void of authority, and she insisted on having mass in her own private chapel under the old form. when ordered to desist, she appealed for protection to the emperor charles v., who, being her cousin, intervened for some time not ineffectually, threatening war with england if her religious liberty was interfered with. but edward's court was composed of factions of which the most violent eventually carried the day. lord seymour, the admiral, was attainted of treason and beheaded in 1549. his brother, the protector somerset, met with the same fate in 1552. dudley, duke of northumberland, then became paramount in the privy council, and easily obtained the sanction of the young king to those schemes for altering the succession which led immediately after his death to the usurpation of lady jane grey. dudley had, in fact, overawed all the rest of the privy council, and when the event occurred he took such energetic measures to give effect to the scheme that lady jane was actually recognized as queen for some days, and mary had even to fly from hunsdon into norfolk. but the country was really devoted to her cause, as indeed her right in law was unquestionable, and before many days she was royally received in london, and took up her abode within the tower. her first acts at the beginning of her reign displayed a character very different from that which she still holds in popular estimation. her clemency towards those who had taken up arms against her was altogether remarkable. she released from prison lady jane's father, suffolk, and had difficulty even in signing the warrant for the execution of northumberland. lady jane herself she fully meant to spare, and did spare till after wyatt's formidable insurrection. her conduct, indeed, was in every respect conciliatory and pacific, and so far as they depended on her personal character the prospects of the new reign might have appeared altogether favourable. but unfortunately her position was one of peculiar difficulty, and the policy on which she determined was far from judicious. inexperienced in the art of governing, she had no trusty councillor but gardiner; every other member of the council had been more or less implicated in the conspiracy against her. and though she valued gardiner's advice she was naturally led to rely even more on that of her cousin, the emperor, who had been her mother's friend in adversity, and had done such material service to herself in the preceding reign. following the emperor's guidance she determined almost from the first to make his son philip her husband, though she was eleven years his senior. she was also strongly desirous of restoring the old religion and wiping out the stigma of illegitimacy upon her birth, so that she might not seem to reign by virtue of a mere parliamentary settlement. each of these different objects was attended by difficulties or objections peculiar to itself; but the marriage was the most unpopular of all. a restoration of the old religion threatened to deprive the new owners of abbey lands of their easy and comfortable acquisitions; and it was only with an express reservation of their interests that the thing was actually accomplished. a declaration of her own legitimacy necessarily cast a slur on that of her sister elizabeth, and cut her off from the succession. but the marriage promised to throw england into the arms of spain and place the resources of the kingdom at the command of the emperor's son. the commons sent her a deputation to entreat that she would not marry a foreigner, and when her resolution was known insurrections broke out in different parts of the country. suffolk, whose first rebellion had been pardoned, proclaimed lady jane grey again in leicestershire, while young wyatt raised the county of kent and, though denied access by london bridge, led his men round by kingston to the very gates of london before he was repulsed. in the midst of the danger mary showed great intrepidity, and the rebellion was presently quelled; after which, unhappily, she got leave to pursue her own course unchecked. she married philip, restored the old religion, and got cardinal pole to come over and absolve the kingdom from its past disobedience to the holy see. it was a more than questionable policy thus to ally england with spain--a power then actually at war with france. by the treaty, indeed, england was to remain neutral; but the force of events, in the end, compelled her, as might have been expected, to take part in the quarrel. meanwhile the country was full of faction, and seditious pamphlets of protestant origin inflamed the people with hatred against the spaniards. philip's spanish followers met with positive ill-usage everywhere, and violent outbreaks occurred. a year after his marriage philip went over to brussels to receive from his father the government of the low countries and afterwards the kingdom of spain. much to mary's distress, his absence was prolonged for a year and a half, and when he returned in march 1557 it was only to commit england completely to the war; after which he went back to brussels in july, to return no more to england. hostilities with france were inevitable, because france had encouraged disaffection among mary's subjects, even during the brief truce of vaucelles. conspiracies had been hatched by english refugees in paris, and an attempt to seize scarborough had been made with the aid of vessels from the seine. but perhaps the strangest thing about the situation was that the pope took part with france against spain; and so the very marriage which mary had contracted to bring england back to the holy see made her the wife of the pope's enemy. it was, moreover, this war with france that occasioned the final calamity of the loss of calais, which sank so deeply into mary's heart some time before she died. the cruel persecution of the protestants, which has cast so much infamy upon her reign, was not due, as commonly supposed, to inhumanity on her part. when the kingdom was reconciled to rome and absolved by cardinal pole, it followed, almost as a matter of necessity, that the old heresy laws should be revived, as they were then by act of parliament. they had been abolished by the protector somerset for the express purpose of promoting changes of doctrine which did violence to what was still the prevailing religious sentiment; and now the old religion required to be protected from insult and fanatical outrages. doubts were felt as to the result even from the first; but the law having been once passed could not be relaxed merely because the victims were so numerous; for that would only have encouraged the irreverence which it was intended to check. no doubt there were milder men among the heretics, but as a class their stern fanaticism and ill-will to the old religion made them dangerous, even to the public peace. rogers, the first of the martyrs, was burnt on the 4th of february 1555. hooper, bishop of gloucester, had been condemned six days before, and suffered the same fate upon the 9th. from this time the persecution went on uninterrupted for three years and three quarters, numbering among its victims ridley, latimer and cranmer. it came to an end at last on the death of mary. it seems to have been more severe in the eastern and southern parts of england, and the largest number of sufferers was naturally in the diocese of bonner, bishop of london. from first to last nearly three hundred victims are known to have perished at the stake; and their fate certainly created a revulsion against rome that nothing else was likely to have effected. mary was of weak constitution and subject to frequent illnesses, both before and after her accession. one special infirmity caused her to believe a few months after her marriage that she was with child, and thanksgiving services were ordered throughout the diocese of london in november 1554. the same delusion recurred in march 1558, when though she did not make her expectation public, she drew up a will in anticipation of the dangers of childbirth, constituting her husband regent during the minority of her prospective heir. to this she added a codicil on the 28th of october following, when the illness that was to be her last had set in, showing that she had ceased to have much expectation of maternity, and earnestly entreating her \"next heir and successor by the laws\" (whom she did not name) to allow execution of the instrument. she died on the 17th of november. her name deserved better treatment than it has generally met with; for she was far from cruel. her kindness to poor people is undoubted, and the severe execution of her laws seemed only a necessity. even in this matter, moreover, she was alive to the injustice with which the law was usually strained in behalf of the prerogative; and in appointing sir richard morgan chief justice of the common pleas she charged him \"not to sit in judgment otherwise for her highness than for her subjects,\" and to avoid the old error of refusing to admit witnesses against the crown (holinshed iii. 1112). her conduct as queen was certainly governed by the best possible intentions; and it is evident that her very zeal for goodness caused most of the trouble she brought upon herself. her subjects were entirely released, even by papal authority, from any obligation to restore the confiscated lands of the church. but she herself made it an object, at her own expense, to restore several of the monasteries; and courtiers who did not like to follow her example, encouraged the fanatics to spread an alarm that it would even yet be made compulsory. so the worldly minded joined hands with the godly heretics in stirring up enmity against her. (j. ga.) mary ii. (1662-1694), queen of england and wife of king william iii., elder daughter of james, duke of york, afterwards king james ii., by his first wife, anne, daughter of edward hyde, 1st earl of clarendon, was born in london on the 30th of april 1662. she was educated as a protestant, and as it was probable that she would succeed to the english throne after the deaths of her uncle, charles ii., and her father, the choice of a husband for her was a political event of high importance. about 1672 the name of william, prince of orange, was mentioned in this connexion; and after some hesitation on both sides caused by the condition of european politics, the betrothal of william and mary took place in october 1677, and was quickly followed by their marriage in london on the 4th of november. mary's married life in holland does not appear to have been a happy one. although she soon became popular among the dutch, she remained childless, while william treated her with neglect and even with insult; and her troubles were not diminished after her father became king of england in 1685. james had treated his daughter very shabbily in money matters; and it was increasingly difficult for her to remain loyal to both father and husband when they were so divergent in character and policy. although mary never entirely lost her affection for her father the wife prevailed over the daughter; and after the birth of her half-brother, the prince of wales, in 1688, she regarded the dethronement of james as inevitable. it cannot be said, however, that william merited this confidence. possibly he was jealous of his wife as the heiress of the english throne, contrasting her future position with his own; but according to burnet, who was then staying at the hague, this cause of difference was removed by the tactful interference of burnet himself. the latter asserts that having divined the reason of the prince's jealousy he mentioned the matter to the princess, who in her ignorance of statecraft had never considered the relative positions of herself and her husband with regard to the english throne; and that mary, by telling the prince \"she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him king for life\" (burnet, _supplement_, ed. foxcroft, p. 309), probably mollified her husband's jealousy. on the other hand macaulay's statement that henceforward there was \"entire friendship and confidence\" between them must be taken with some reserve. mary shared heartily in the events which immediately preceded william's expedition to england in 1688. after the success of the undertaking she arrived in london in february 1689; and by her faithful adherence to her promise made a satisfactory settlement of the english crown possible. william and mary were together proclaimed king and queen of england, and afterwards of scotland, and were crowned on the 11th of april 1689. during the king's absence from england the queen, assisted by a committee of the privy council, was entrusted with the duties of government, duties which she performed faithfully, but which she gladly laid down on william's return. in these times of danger, however, she acted when necessary with courage and promptitude, as when in 1690 she directed the arrest of her uncle henry hyde, 2nd earl of clarendon; but she was constantly anxious for william's safety, and unable to trust many of her advisers. she was further distressed by a quarrel with her sister anne in 1692 following the dismissal of marlborough, and this event somewhat diminished her popularity, which had hitherto been one of the mainstays of the throne. weak in body and troubled in mind, the queen died at kensington palace from small-pox on the 28th of december 1694, and was buried in westminster abbey. mary was a woman of a remarkably modest and retiring disposition, whose outstanding virtue was perhaps her unswerving loyalty to william. burnet has passed a remarkable panegyric upon her character. she was extremely pious and charitable; her blameless private life was in marked contrast with her surroundings, both in england and holland; without bigotry she was greatly attached to the protestant faith and to the church of england; and she was always eager to improve the tone of public morals, and to secure a better observance of sunday. greenwich hospital for seamen was founded in her honour. for the political events of mary's life see william iii. for her private life see sir john dalrymple, _memoirs of great britain and ireland_ (london, 1790); countess bentinck, _lettres et memoires de marie, reine d'angleterre_ (the hague, 1880); _memoires and letters of mary queen of england_ (ed. by r. doebner, leipzig, 1886); f. j. l. kramer, maria ii. stuart (utrecht, 1890); agnes strickland, _lives of the queens of england_, vols. x. and xi. (london, 1847); g. burnet, _history of my own time_ (oxford, 1833); and o. klopp, _der fall des hauses stuart_ (vienna, 1875-1888). mary queen of scots[1] (1542-1587), daughter of king james v. and his wife mary of lorraine, was born in december 1542, a few days before the death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at solway moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative on the occasion was an unpopular favourite appointed general in defiance of their ill-will. on the 9th of september following the ceremony of coronation was duly performed upon the infant. a scheme for her betrothal to edward, prince of wales, was defeated by the grasping greed of his father, whose obvious ambition to annex the crown of scotland at once to that of england aroused instantly the general suspicion and indignation of scottish patriotism. in 1548 the queen of six years old was betrothed to the dauphin francis, and set sail for france, where she arrived on the 15th of august. the society in which the child was thenceforward reared is known to readers of brantome as well as that of imperial rome at its worst is known to readers of suetonius or petronius as well as that of papal rome at its worst is known to readers of the diary kept by the domestic chaplain of pope alexander vi. only in their pages can a parallel be found to the gay and easy record which reveals without sign of shame or suspicion of offence the daily life of a court compared to which the court of king charles ii. is as the court of queen victoria to the society described by grammont. debauchery of all kinds, and murder in all forms, were the daily matter of excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around queen catherine de' medici. after ten years' training under the tutelage of the woman whose main instrument of policy was the corruption of her own children, the queen of scots, aged fifteen years and five months, was married to the eldest and feeblest of the brood on the 24th of april 1558. on the 17th of november elizabeth became queen of england, and the princes of lorraine--francis the great duke of guise, and his brother the cardinal--induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to the arms of france and scotland, the arms of a country over which they asserted the right of mary stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of mary tudor. civil strife broke out in scotland between john knox and the queen-dowager--between the self-styled \"congregation of the lord\" and the adherents of the regent, whose french troops repelled the combined forces of the scotch and their english allies from the beleaguered walls of leith, little more than a month before the death of their mistress in the castle of edinburgh, on the 10th of june 1560. on the 25th of august protestantism was proclaimed and catholicism suppressed in scotland by a convention of states assembled without the assent of the absent queen. on the 5th of december francis ii. died; in august 1561 his widow left france for scotland, having been refused a safe-conduct by elizabeth on the ground of her own previous refusal to ratify the treaty made with england by her commissioners in the same month of the preceding year. she arrived nevertheless in safety at leith, escorted by three of her uncles of the house of lorraine, and bringing in her train her future biographer, brantome, and chastelard, the first of all her voluntary victims. on the 21st of august she first met the only man able to withstand her; and their first passage of arms left, as he has recorded, upon the mind of john knox an ineffaceable impression of her \"proud mind, crafty wit and indurate heart against god and his truth.\" and yet her acts of concession and conciliation were such as no fanatic on the opposite side could have approved. she assented, not only to the undisturbed maintenance of the new creed, but even to a scheme for the endowment of the protestant ministry out of the confiscated lands of the church. her half-brother, lord james stuart, shared the duties of her chief counsellor with william maitland of lethington, the keenest and most liberal thinker in the country. by the influence of lord james, in spite of the earnest opposition of knox, permission was obtained for her to hear mass celebrated in her private chapel--a licence to which, said the reformer, he would have preferred the invasion of ten thousand frenchmen. through all the first troubles of her reign the young queen steered her skilful and dauntless way with the tact of a woman and the courage of a man. an insurrection in the north, headed by the earl of huntly under pretext of rescuing from justice the life which his son had forfeited by his share in a homicidal brawl, was crushed at a blow by the lord james against whose life, as well as against his sister's liberty, the conspiracy of the gordons had been aimed, and on whom, after the father had fallen in fight and the son had expiated his double offence on the scaffold, the leading rebel's earldom of murray was conferred by the gratitude of the queen. exactly four months after the battle of corrichie, and the subsequent execution of a criminal whom she is said to have \"loved entirely,\" had put an end to the first insurrection raised against her, pierre de boscosel de chastelard, who had returned to france with the other companions of her arrival, and in november 1562 had revisited scotland, expiated with his head the offence or the misfortune of a second detection at night in her bedchamber. in the same month, twenty-five years afterwards, the execution of his mistress, according to the verdict of her contemporaries in france, avenged the blood of a lover who had died without uttering a word to realize the apprehension which (according to knox) had before his trial impelled her to desire her brother \"that, as he loved her, he would slay chastelard, and let him never speak word.\" and in the same month, two years from the date of chastelard's execution, her first step was unconsciously taken on the road to fotheringhay, when she gave her heart at first sight to her kinsman henry, lord darnley, son of matthew stuart, earl of lennox, who had suffered an exile of twenty years in expiation of his intrigues with england, and had married the niece of king henry viii., daughter of his sister margaret, the widow of james",
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