Mary

Mary's succession saw the triumph of the conservative faction.
Stephen Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk were released from the Tower of London. William Paget was restored to the Privy Council.
Mary was aged 37, fervently Roman Catholic - stubborn, unintelligent and narrow-minded. She devoted her reign to the permanent restoration of England to the Roman Catholic fold.

Marriage

	In order to ensure that England remained Catholic beyond her own realm, Mary had to marry and bear an heir who (unlike her half-sister Elizabeth, the heir presumptive) would be committed to the Catholic cause.
	There was no suitable English candidate to be Mary's husband. Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, had royal blood, but no ability. Reginald Pole was firmly Roman Catholic and linked to the royal line (his mother Margaret was the niece of Edward IV and Richard III); but neither he nor Mary wanted to marry one another.

Philip II of Spain (1527-98)

Mary herself wanted to marry her cousin, Philip II. (Philip was the son of Charles V, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, whose daughter, Katherine was Mary's mother). Philip was eleven years Mary's junior and heir to the throne of Spain.

Mary's choice was opposed both in the Privy Council and in Parliament. In a patriarchal age, wives were expected to obey their husbands, and Spain was far more powerful and wealthy than England at this time. The English did not want their country to become a Spanish dependency.

Naturally, France (Spain's enemy) had their ambassador, Francois de Noailles lobby against the match.

Bishop Stephen Gardiner
Stephen Gardiner

Parliament petitioned Mary not to marry Philip, but she refused to listen to them or to Stephen Gardiner's advice.

Gardiner and Paget were often rivals, but they worked together to limit Philip's powers in England - although he was to be given the title of King, he would have no power to appoint Spaniards to English offices, to dictate foreign policy, or to retain any power after Mary's death.

Philip and Mary were married 25 July 1554.
Philip stayed in England for fourteen months, then went back to the Continent. (He returned briefly in 1557).
Despite her age (37), Mary announced in 1555 that she was pregnant. When it became clear that she was not, and indeed would never have a child, Mary became all the more determined to extirpate "heresy" from England before she died.

Religion

On Mary's succession, about 800 Protestants fled to the Continent. (Gardiner connived at this exodus, as he did not want to start Mary's reign with a large number of executions for heresy - but all he did was preserve a host of able propagandists who sniped at Mary from the safety of the Continent).
John Ponet took refuge in Strasburg; John Jewel in Zurich with Henry Bullinger.

Jean Calvin (1509-1564)
Jean Calvin

Anthony Gilby and Christopher Goodman went to Geneva, then controlled by Jean Calvin.

In 1554, John Knox became pastor of a congregation of British Protestants living in Frankfurt, but soon quarreled with many of his congregation and left for Geneva. The two parties to this quarrel formed the basis of the Anglican and Puritan parties that later disputed the proper form of the Church of England.

Prominent Protestants who remained faced imprisonment.

Mary's Privy Council was divided. William Paget and Mary's lay supporters wanted to return to the situation at the death of Henry VIII - a church Catholic in doctrine but independent of Rome, with the monastic lands firmly in the possession of English gentlemen.

Stephen Gardiner and the Bishops wanted to return to the days before the break with Rome.

Mary's first Parliament (1553) abolished all Edward VI's religious legislation, turning the clock back to 1547.
During 1554-55, Parliament undid most of the religious legislation of Henry VIII's reign and restored the papal supremacy. However, the MPs dug in their heels and refused to budge over the restoration of monastic lands, and only with great difficulty were persuaded to restore the payment of annates.

Late in 1554, Reginald Pole (his attainder reversed) arrived in England as papal legate and formally restored England to papal obedience. In 1555, he was appointed Cardinal, and 1556 became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Thomas Cranmer had been deprived of the office in December 1555. He was burnt as a heretic (March 1556), despite his recantation of Protestant beliefs on Mary's orders - a recantation he withdrew in the flames.

Cranmer was one of about 300 men and women burnt for heresy between 1555 and 1558. Others included John Rogers, John Hooper, Nicholas Ridley (Bishop of Rochester and then of London - after Bonner's deprivation - under Edward VI) and Hugh Latimer (who had been Bishop of Worcester). Latimer and Ridley burned together.

Gardiner played a key role in the burning of Bishops who had been his personal enemies, but (before his death in 1555) he opposed burning large numbers of ordinary people, believing that it would benefit the Protestant cause more than the Catholic. (The steadfast behavior of the "Protestant martyrs" proved his qualms true).

Most of the executions for heresy were of artisans in London and the south-east of England - under the energetic administration of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London.

The 300+ deaths in Mary's reign were not numerous in comparison with the violence that characterized the Reformation on the Continent. However, these were very high numbers by English standards, and all in a very short period (5 years). The people in general were hostile to the executions, and over the course of Mary's reign lay officials (sheriffs and Justices of the Peace) grew increasingly unwilling to participate.

The legal restoration of Catholicism and the attacks on Protestants did nothing to promote Catholic commitment. Mary was able to appoint as Bishops men who deeply believed in Catholic doctrine and the papal supremacy, but her reign was far too short to allow for the recruitment and training of a new English Catholic priesthood, or to re-educate the population at large.

English society and economy

In theory the marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain should have increased English access to the wealth of Spanish America, but this never happened in practice.

Mary's reign did see a continuation of attempts to open new trade routes.

Sir Hugh Wiloughby

Both Richard Chancellor and Sir Hugh Wiloughby tried to find a North-East sea passage to the Indies.
Wiloughby froze to death in Lapland.
Chancellor reached Russia, and in 1555 the government gave a royal charter to the Muscovy Company.

Mary's government also encouraged trade with Morocco (English cloth for African sugar and saltpeter) and the Guinea coast (cloth for gold).

Later map of Guinea

By fostering good relations with merchants, Mary's government was able to increase customs rates and to add commodities in a new Book of Rates. (Since this was only introduced in 1558, it was Elizabeth who benefited rather than Mary).

Elizabeth was also the one to benefit from the reforms of the coinage drawn up in 1557 and implemented in 1560-61. The debased coins of Henry's and Edward's reign were withdrawn from circulation and replaced with real silver coins.

1555 and 1556 saw extremely poor harvests and were followed by a serious influenza epidemic which killed thousands (perhaps 6% of the population).

Despite these economic difficulties, there was no renewal of peasant rebellion, but there was one dangerous revolt.

Wyatt's rebellion

In January 1554, Sir Thomas Wyatt raised a rebellion in Kent. The rebels marched on London intending to capture Mary and prevent her marrying Philip of Spain.

As part of a plot hatched by the French ambassador, Francois de Noailles, the rebels aimed to provoke other uprisings in Devon and Hertfordshire, and place Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon on the throne as the husband of Elizabeth.

The government discovered the plot, and exiled Courtenay, after forcing to him to confess what he knew. The risings in Devon and Hertfordshire never materialized but the Kentish gentleman, Sir Thomas Wyatt (son of the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder) did act.

Wyatt's rebellion	Wyatt started the rebellion in Maidstone (25 January) and soon moved to Rochester where he gained the support of c. 3,000 followers.

Wyatt's hand was strengthened when many of the Government troops led by Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (now 80 years old) deserted to Wyatt. The combined force advanced to Southwark but could go no further because London Bridge was strongly held. Wyatt marched his force to Kingston and crossed the Thames there, and after resting at Knightsbridge, advanced on London (7 February). Despite some confusion on the part of the the defenders, Wyatt and his followers were repulsed after only slight fighting. About sixty men died in the rebellion. About 100 more (including Wyatt) were executed over the next few months.

Mary was suspicious that Elizabeth was complicit in the uprising but could find no hard evidence against her.

Mary's government played down the importance of the rebels' Reforming sympathies, but both nationalist xenophobia and Protestant anti-papalism were probably significant.

Foreign policy

From 1556, Philip tried to overcome the resistance of the Privy Council and involve England in war with France.
Philip's cause was helped by the abortive invasion of Thomas Stafford - a Protestant exile in France. In April 1557, he landed at Scarborough, was almost immediately defeated and was executed in May. Although Henry II of France denied initiating the raid, England declared war on France.
The English navy lent Spain important support at sea. Nevertheless, the war was regarded as disastrous because in January 1558, England lost Calais - the last English territorial possession in France, held by England since 1347.

Mary is famously supposed to have said:
"When I am dead, you will find Calais engraved upon my heart".

Calais actually cost more to maintain than it was worth economically or militarily but Mary and the English regarded its loss as a massive humiliation. English prestige abroad also suffered because it was evident that English resources were not adequate to mount a serious attempt to regain the lost territory.

Administration

In 1553, Mary expelled Northumberland's followers from the Privy Council, but retained many of Edward VI's experienced administrators. She also restored Gardiner and others, and so the Privy Council increased in size to about fifty members. (Only about twenty sat regularly).

The continued presence of men such as William Paulet, marquess of Winchester and Thomas Paget meant that there was considerable continuity back to Henry VIII's later years. The administrative reforms devised in 1552 (such as the amalgamation in the Exchequer) were carried out in 1554 as planned.

Mary, however, often took advice from outsiders - such as Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard - and this tended to reduce the importance of the Privy Council in policy matters.

Simon Renard

Mary's reign also saw the English navy reorganized and re-equipped. The main aim was to help Philip in his war against the French, but the improvements were important in helping Elizabeth to defeat Philip's own Armada thirty years later.