During her time in power, the queen faced a series of challenges – some caused by outside forces, some by her own actions
WORDS: NIGE TASSELL
MARRIAGE
Once Mary became queen, after the exceedingly short (and disputed) reign of Lady Jane Grey, a high priority for the new monarch was to find a husband and produce an heir. To Mary, the alternative was inconceivable. The 1544 Act of Succession, the legislation that had overlooked Mary’s supposed illegitimacy and placed her on the throne should Edward VI die without issue, would on Mary’s death do exactly the same for her younger half-sister, Elizabeth. If that were so, any recalibration of England along Catholic lines under Mary’s rule would be unstitched by Elizabeth’s keenness for the country to revert back to Protestantism as its official religion.
At the age of 37, Mary had to move swiftly. A suitable husband was speedily identified when her politically savvy cousin (and former fiancé), Charles V of Spain, offered his widowed son Philip, who had already fathered a son of his own with his first wife, Maria Manuela of Portugal. While the subsequent marriage did intimately reconnect England with one of the Catholic powerhouses of Europe – especially when Philip acceded to the Spanish throne in 1556, making Mary the queen of Spain, too – the union didn’t produce any children. On Mary’s death in 1558 at the age of 42, Elizabeth took power and Protestantism returned to England.
WYATT’S REBELLION
When news of Mary’s impending marriage circulated, there was disquiet across England. Not only was there concern the country’s power would wane as a result of a union with Spain, but there was also a deep-seated fear among those who had approved of Henry VIII’s split from Rome and the reforming zeal of his successor, his teenage son, Edward VI.
This outcry truly found its voice in what became known as Wyatt’s Rebellion, an uprising that sought to remove Mary from power and place her half-sister Elizabeth on the throne. It bore the name of Sir Thomas Wyatt, a headstrong man who had form when it came to uprisings, having previously served a month’s imprisonment in the Tower of London for his role in a street riot. While Wyatt hadn’t been entirely unsupportive of Mary
