On this day in Tudor history, 20th January 1558, in the final year of Queen Mary I’s reign, there was the state opening of Mary’s fifth Parliament.
Now, by this point in her reign, Queen Mary I was a shadow of the woman who had once been hailed as the rightful queen of England, riding into London triumphantly in 1553 to take the throne back from Queen Jane, or Lady Jane Grey.

Mary’s reign had been difficult from the start, but by 1558, things were particularly bleak. England was embroiled in a war with France—a war that wasn’t even Mary’s to begin with. It was Philip of Spain’s war, and England had been dragged into it because of Mary’s marriage to him. Something that those opposed to the marriage had feared.

The war with France had been disastrous. In early January 1558, England lost Calais, its last foothold on the Continent. It was a humiliating and devastating blow as Calais had been held by England for over 200 years and was an important port for English wool exports. A bereft Mary reportedly said, “When I am dead and opened, you shall find ‘Philip’ and ‘Calais’ lying in my heart.”

On this day in Tudor history, 1st October, scholar, royal tutor and administrator John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, died at Wisbech Castle; and Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey…

On this day in Tudor history, 7th July, Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary, heard of her half-brother Edward VI’s death; Henry Peckham and John Danyell were hanged, drawn and quartered for their involvement in the Dudley Conspiracy; and William Turner, “father of English botany and of ornithology”, died…

On this day in Tudor history, 6th February, the remains of two famous reformers were burned with their books, a poet who wrote a slanderous play and poem was baptised, and a law reporter died…

On this day in Tudor history, 20th January, Mary I’s gentlemen pensioners mustered before the queen, Mary I’s fifth parliament opened, and Bible translator Miles Coverdale died after giving his best ever sermon…

On this day in Tudor history, 5th October 1553, the first Parliament of Mary I’s reign met.

This Parliament repealed the “treason act” of Mary’s half brother Edward VI’s reign, passed an act declaring Mary’s legitimacy, repealed the religious legislation of Edward’s reign, and reinstated the Mass in Latin, celibacy of the clergy and ritual worship. It was as if the reformation of Edward VI’s reign had never happened.

On this day in Tudor history, 7th July 1553, the day after the death of King Edward VI, his half-sister, Mary, received news of his death.

Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had left Hunsdon on 3rd July after hearing that Edward was dying and that there was a plot against her. She set off for her estates in East Anglia, where she had support.

On this day in Tudor history, 8 June 1536, Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary, wrote to her father in hope of a reconciliation now that her stepmother, Anne Boleyn, was dead.

Mary had been out of favour due to her refusal to accept the annulment of her parents’ marriage, her father’s supremacy and her status as illegitimate. She believed that Anne Boleyn was solely to blame for her troubles, writing that she understood that the king had “forgiven all her offences and withdrawn his displeasure”.

On this day in Tudor history, 20th January 1558, in the final year of Queen Mary I’s reign, there was the state opening of Mary’s fifth Parliament.

As Cedric Ward points out in his article “The House of Commons and the Marian Reaction”, by this time, due to Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain, England was allied with Spain in its war against France so Parliamentary business focused on financial and military items.

On this day in Tudor history, 14th December 1558, in the reign of her half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Mary I was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Mary had died just under a month earlier, on 17th November 1558. She’d left instructions for her burial, requesting that Catherine of Aragon’s remains be exhumed and brought from Peterborough to London so that mother and daughter could rest in peace together.

Did this happen?

On this day in Tudor history, 13th October 1553, Queen Mary I wrote an interesting letter to Simon Renard, imperial ambassador.

In the letter, the queen asked Renard to meet with her secretly. She’d asked him to do this before, and to come in disguise.

But why? Why would Mary I want to meet with an imperial ambassador in secret? And why would she be putting more trust in the emperor and his ambassadors than her own council?

On this day in Tudor history, 31st August 1555, in the reign of Queen Mary I, the queen who has gone down in history as “Bloody Mary”, Robert Samuel, a former minister, was burnt at the stake in Ipswich, Suffolk.

Robert Samuel was burnt as a heretic, a Protestant martyr. He had continued to minister privately, after being deprived of his living, and he had refused to leave his wife. He stayed firm to his Protestant faith and became one of the Ipswich Martyrs as a result.