22. Why was Mary Tudor, Queen of England is usually referred to as Bloody Mary?
From Quiz Something About Mary
Answer:
She had hundreds of people sentenced to death
When she came to the throne in 1553, Mary I was determined to restore the Roman Catholic Church to its former pre-eminence in England. The business of finding the thirty-something Mary a husband occupied the first year of her five-year reign, and Philip II of Spain was ultimately persuaded to take her on. They were married in 1554, and Mary fell madly in love with her husband. She was devastated when, after 11 months of marriage, Philip upped stakes and returned to Spain. It seems that he found his older (she was seven years his senior) wife physically unattractive (if you've seen portraits of Philip, with the long Hapsburg chin and that jutting lower lip, you'll agree that he was no prize, either!) Disappointed in love, and unable to have a child, Mary spent the last three-and-a-half years of her reign in a bitter vendetta with England's Protestants, who resisted any effort to restore England to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome. She had 300 or so Protestants beheaded, hanged, or burned at the stake. It's interesting to note that poor old Mary, who had led a life of rejection - first by her father Henry VIII, then by her husband Philip II of Spain, and finally by her people - was ultimately betrayed by the Pope, who sided with France in a war against Spain, which brought about the loss of Calais, England's last foothold on continental Europe. While Mary earned the soubriquet of 'Bloody', her little brother Edward is remembered as 'The Boy King' (he was 16 when he died), yet he was guilty of allowing a rampant persecution of Roman Catholics during his reign, in which an equal number of Roman Catholics were sentenced to death! It took Edward's and Mary's sister Elizabeth to restore some sort of balance to matters religious in England. Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 and died in 1603. Mary and Elizabeth are interred side by side in the same tomb in Westminster Abbey. The tomb bears a plaque, affixed there during the reign of James I. It reads "Partners in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection." (The plaque's in Latin, and that's the English translation.)
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