Great King Henry the Eighth is on his deathbed when his daughter the Princess Mary is summoned to court. Catholic Bishops have told her it is to pronounce her Queen that she has been summoned, being the first born of Henry's three legitimate children. Instead the girl is denounced in favour of Edward by her father and runs in terror of a court and a country that has persecuted Catholics since Queen Anne's time. Her life is now in its greatest peril for there are influential men who believe the only way to rid the country of the spectre of possible Popish rule is to rid the country of the only Princess to whom England's Catholics can rally and cause rebellion in her Royal name. She is sent from court into a life of exile, fear and waiting. Many times Edward's Protestant Council will summon her to trial and attempt to force her under threat of imprisonment in the Tower, torture and death if she will not deny her Catholic faith and conform to the religion of the realm, Protestantism.
Katharine Parr, the King's sixth and final wife, outlived Henry the Eighth and is now named Queen Dowager and has permission to marry the love of her life, the Lord High Admiral - Thomas Seymour, brother of the Lord High Protector of England; both are uncles and guardians of the next King of England - the child, Edward the Forth. The Seymour's are the most powerful family in England and untouchable because of their status as Edward's uncles. Princess Mary is in her early twenties and with a pre-teen Princess Elizabeth, they watch their sickly little brother Edward have his coronation and is proclaimed King Edward the Forth of England. Edward was raised in the Protestant religion so he is a Protestant King ruling a Protestant Kingdom but mostly he is a scared child surrounded by commanding and controlling Protestant men of the realm whom he cannot rule over and it's these men who govern in the boys' stead. The ambitious Seymour brothers climb high and incur the hatred of other dominant men in the Kingdom, some of them, Catholics.
Even as Edward grows into adolescence he still has little control over the persuasive men of his Privy Counsel who have grown used to reigning in the teenage Kings' position. Now the counsel goes after the Lady Mary, so named because she is not considered to be the true daughter of the Great Henry and because she is a practicing Catholic in a Protestant country. Thus far, this has been tolerated but the tug of war between Catholics and Protestants is becoming more vicious as every Catholic in England is rallying to Princess Mary. Since they have made her their focus, they have also put her life in great danger, for now the Counsel sees her as a very real threat and would either force her to submit or have her head on Tower Green in the fearsome Tower of London. The Counsel does bring her to court and to trial but she is steadfast and denounces them; they dare not take action against her without the King's express command. Over the next few years she is harried and hounded by these great and powerful Protestants but she remains ever faithful to her late mothers' religion. Edward is a sickly King and she is next in line of succession.
Years pass and the King takes on more affairs of State, his word is the Law of England, then Edward's condition worsens and the unthinkable happens. There is hope for all Catholics and fear for all Protestants in the Country. The Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour had planned to abduct the King and marry him to his cousin, the Lady Jane Grey while he himself planned to marry the Lady Elizabeth but before the King dies, this plot is discovered. The King orders Thomas Seymour into the Tower and his dealings will his half sister Elizabeth investigated. So begins the trials Elizabeth must endure and survive if she is to become Queen of the realm. The Lord High Admiral does not repent his actions so both he and his brother, the Lord Protector go to the block and the servants of Lady Elizabeth's household are arrested and taken to the Tower for questioning as to both her and Thomas Seymour's plans to marry. For it is treason for a Princess to marry without the permission of the Counsel and the Lord Protector. Then the King dies and the bastard Mary is Queen or so she thinks. The powerful Dudley family and the Duke of Northumberland have been conspiring and having forced Northumberland's daughter, Lady Jane Grey [cousin to the late King and thereby having a weak claim to the throne] to marry Guilford Dudley, youngest son of the Earl, they have placed her on the throne and named her Queen of England, thus sealing the teenage girl's fate. It took ten days for Mary to rally the country and take back her throne. Upon taking the throne, Princess Mary orders the traitors arrested and lodged in the Tower; while all imprisoned Catholics under Edward's rule are released.
Mary pardons the traitors; she does not wish to start her reign with bloodshed. This proves to be a mistake as the Duke of Northumberland rallies and attempts to retake the throne for his daughter, Queen Jane. When the attempt fails he is caught, imprisoned and executed as is Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley along with Guilford's father. Sir Robert Dudley, son of the executed Lord Dudley, is imprisoned in the Tower for most of Mary's sovereignty. So begins the reign of Queen Mary.
The entire Country rallies and celebrates as her coronation takes place; Mary formally becomes Queen of England and the Spanish Ambassador is the first to become her closest friend. Her Privy Council is made up of good strong Catholics who immediately advise Mary to find a husband. When Mary came to the throne she was in her thirties and although she was not past her child baring years, she was of an age where it was considered dangerous to her health and life to attempt to bare children safely. During her father's reign, King Henry had betrothed her many times at a very young age but after twenty years of marriage to her mother, Queen Catherine of Aragon, produced no living sons Henry divorced her and named Mary bastard; thereafter, no Prince in Europe would have her and she spent all her youth as unwanted, unloved and a burden on a Protestant Country, hence unsuitable for marriage. Even her title as Princess had been denied her. Now, as Queen, she came to the throne old. England was a great prize but it required a Prince to marry the Queen, if England was to be ruled and added to another country's domain. Worse still, the English had a horror of being ruled by a foreign power and Queen Mary's Counsel encouraged her to marry within the realm.
The last time Mary had known love was from her mother and when she fell from her father's favour, Henry cruelly separated mother and daughter in an effort to force the divorce. Queen Catherine died denying her husband's claim that he had divorced her, even after Henry had married Anne Boleyn and made her Queen, Catherine stubbornly proclaimed herself the only Queen of the realm. This greatly angered Henry and he punished them both by denying them the right to see each other. Moving the former Queen from one rundown Castle to another until she frequently fell ill and it wore on her health so much that she died. Mary never recovered from her mother's death and her father's cruelty, nor from the abuse she suffered at the hands of Queen Anne and the Counsel's efforts to force her to deny her Catholic faith. She held true to her mother's memory by resisting all efforts, no matter what the cost, to force her to deny her faith. Her mother had been a devote Catholic and so was Mary. She needed to honour her mother's memory by remaining a Catholic and by marrying a Prince from the country her mother had been born in: Spain.
I am an agent for a Mortgage Company out of Edmonton Alberta that uses a mortgage accelerator to reduce the mortgage payments of my clients. I am a successful investor who has a talent for finding safe, secure and profitable online investments that work. I write completely original articles in my leisure time about my interests and subjects that I believe my readers would be interested in.
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