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Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII
Mary Tudor (not to be confused with Mary Tudor, sister to Henry VIII) was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and later became Mary I, known as "Bloody Mary", after the death of Henry VIII.
Mary was born on February 18, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. Being the granddaughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, her mother Catherine decided to educate Mary with the help of Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives. As a child, Mary could read and write Latin at nine years old, and studied Greek and music. She was able to play a type of harpsichord, called the virginals, at four years old. In 1525, at the age of nine, she was sent to live near the border of Wales, and to preside in name over the Council of Wales and the Marches. Although she was never formally titled the Princess of Wales, Mary was given many of the Royal Prerogatives that traditionally accompany the title of Prince of Wales, and she had her own court at Ludlow Castle.
As a teenager, Mary suffered from depression, and was sick often. This was likely due to the emotional stress of her father's plans to dissolve his marriage to her mother, and to her father's decree that she was not to see Catherine, even when she died. The annulment was completed in 1533, when Mary was 17, and she was thereafter declared illegitimate, expelled form the court, and was stripped of her title as Princess, as well as her household.
Though Mary became lady-in-waiting to her younger half-sister Elizabeth, she refused to acknowledge Elizabeth as princess, nor her mother Anne Boleyn as queen. In 1536, after the beheading of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was also removed from the line of succession. Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife, urged her husband to make peace with his daughters and return them to the line of succession, but he refused. When Jane died in 1537, Mary was brought back into Court, accorded a household again, and permitted royal residence, but neither her nor her sister were able to succeed as royalty. This was changed in 1544, when Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, convinced her husband to bring his daughters back into the line of succession. Both girls were still considered legally illegitimate.
When Mary was 23 years old, Thomas Cromwell tried to negotiate a marriage between her and the Duke of Cleves in order to form an alliance; her father married the Duke's sister Anne instead.
After her father's death, Mary distanced herself from court for the majority of the reign of her half-brother, Edward VI. She objected to his plan to exclude her from the line of succession, which involved placing the granddaughter of Henry's sister Mary, Jane Grey, on the throne. On the day that Jane Grey was declared Queen, Mary, by a letter and a gathering of force, disputed the proclamation, and nine days later, Jane Grey was deposed.
On October 1, 1553 Mary was crowned Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland, at Westminster Abbey as the fourth Tudor monarch. Mary was the first undisputed Queen Regnant of England, which set the precedent for her sister Elizabeth to also rule as Queen Regnant.
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