What has mary tudor done for history?
Very little that was positive, I fear. She was a very unfortunate, unhappy victim of her father’s actions. His break with the Church of Rome as part of his effort to divorce* Mary’s mother made Mary a strong, even fanatic, Catholic in reaction. When she came to the throne, at the age of thirty-seven, Mary tried to do what she was convinced was the right thing: to return England to the Catholic Church. So she allowed the burning of large numbers of Protestants, including Thomas Cranmer, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury under her father and her brother Edward VI, along with a few other bishops. Her marriage to Prince (later King) Philip of Spain was unpopular, and when her first hopes that she was pregnant proved wrong, Philip, who had returned to Spain, couldn’t even be persuaded to come back to England to try again. On her deathbed, at the age of forty-two, she heard her courtiers riding past her window to ingratiate themselves with her heir, her sister Elizabeth. So what did Mary
