Mary I

The only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, Mary I was the first woman to be crowned queen regnant of England. She was born at Greenwich in February 1516, and through her mother she was a granddaughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, placing her within the Spanish house of Trastámara and making the Habsburg emperor Charles V her first cousin. Her early years were spent as heir presumptive, and a series of foreign betrothals, including to Charles V himself, were negotiated and abandoned.

The annulment of her parents' marriage in 1533 declared Mary illegitimate, separated her from her mother, and reduced her status at court. She refused for years to acknowledge the royal supremacy or her own bastardy, submitting only under heavy pressure in 1536. The Third Succession Act of 1544 restored her to the line of succession after her half-brother Edward, though without reversing the annulment. Throughout Edward VI's Protestant reign she maintained the Catholic mass in her household despite official disapproval.

When Edward died in 1553 having willed the crown to Lady Jane Grey, Mary rallied support in East Anglia, and within days the regime of the Duke of Northumberland collapsed; she entered London in triumph in August 1553. In 1554 she married Philip of Spain, son of Charles V, who became king of Spain in 1556, an alliance with the house of Habsburg that proved unpopular in England and helped provoke Wyatt's rebellion early that year. The marriage produced no children, despite at least one announced pregnancy that proved false.

Mary's central policy was the restoration of Catholicism. Papal authority was formally re-established in 1554 under the legate Reginald Pole, and the revived heresy laws led to the burning of close to three hundred Protestants, including Archbishop Cranmer, a persecution that lastingly damaged her reputation. Drawn by the Spanish alliance into war with France, England lost Calais, its last continental possession, in January 1558. Mary died at St James's Palace on 17 November 1558 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The crown passed to her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I.