Mary was born in February 1516 and ruled from July 1553 until her death on 19th November 1558. She took the throne back from the nine-day-queen, Lady Jane Grey and later had her executed, and she was extremely popular when she first came to the throne. However, she became less and less popular due to her relentless execution of Protestants. This earned her the name “Bloody Mary”. In fact, anyone who refused to be a Catholic was burnt at the stake, beheaded with an axe or locked up.

Mary had been raised as a devout Catholic and even during her brother Edward's Protectant reign she had refused to convert and had defiantly continued to celebrate Mass.

Mary undid all that her father, Henry VIII, had done by renewing England’s friendship with the Roman Catholic Church. She tried to put everything back to how it had been before her father had divorced Catherine of Aragon, her mother, by passing a law that you could not be Protestant and you had to be Catholic. She also passed an act declaring that the marriage of her parents had been legal after all.

But her unpopularity had made her lots of enemies. Mary even had her own Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth, locked up as a precaution because she thought that Elizabeth and her followers were plotting to overthrow her and put Elizabeth on the throne.

Queen Mary married King Philip II of Spain in Winchester Cathedral on 25th July, 1554. They joined forces to fight against France, but even then their forces were not strong enough to keep any French land – Mary lost Calais, the last French province (a large area of land containing cities) owned by England.

Philip was given the title of King of England, but he still hated everything about England – the weather, the food, and the people living there. He left after about a year, and Mary only saw him afterwards for a few weeks in 1557. This could be one reason why Mary and Philip never had any children together. Despite several false alarms, Mary never produced an heir to the throne.

By the end of Mary’s reign, almost three hundred people had been burnt at the stake, including sixty women. Mary died of dropsy in 1558 at the age of 42.