British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 6: Edward VI, Bloody Mary, and the Virgin Queen

As we learned in Part 5, Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome and disposed of his first two wives (divorced, beheaded) in his quest to father a male heir to the English throne. His third wife, Jane Seymour, delivered the goods, and promptly died, leaving a vacancy for wife number four. 

The "goods" was the future Edward VI, who became king in 1547, on Henry's death. He did not prove to be the strong monarch Henry had hoped for. He was only nine years old, and sickly. This left him under the influence of the powerful men around him. 

[Image: Edward VI, aged 13]

They favored moving the new Church of England in a more Protestant direction and penalising Catholics. Under their influence, Edward became a little bigot. His brief reign was marked by riot, rebellion, and war with Scotland. 

Edward VI died at age 15, probably of tuberculosis. According to Henry's will, his eldest daughter Mary was next in line. Unlike Edward, Mary was raised a devout Catholic. 

The Protestant nobles who had dominated the country under Edward knew that Mary would remove them, or worse. They ignored Henry VIII's final will and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as Queen. She was a teenager they believed they could manipulate. [Image: Lady Jane Grey, Streatham Portrait]

Lady Jane was descended from Henry VII, and thus of royal lineage, but many influential people believed Mary was the rightful heir. Within little over a week, Lady Jane's support evaporated, and Mary's forces prevailed. 

Lady Jane was never crowned, so one can debate whether she was ever monarch. But neither was Edward V, who is counted as a king. A tough call. It was a tough end for Jane as well. The "Nine Days Queen" was beheaded at the Tower of London, along with her husband and father-in-law.

Mary Tudor has gone down in history as "Bloody Mary." That's awful, but how many monarchs have a popular cocktail named after them? Even "Ivan the Terrible" has only got a vodka. 

[Image: Mary I]

Mary earned her nasty epithet because of her violent campaign to restore Catholicism in England. During her brief reign (1553-1558) her government executed hundreds of Protestants, mostly by burning at the stake. [Image: Protestants being burned at Smithfield Market in London, from an 18th century edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs]

The persecutions did not achieve their result, perhaps because Mary died too soon. Their main result was to make her and her Church infamous in England for centuries. 

Something else hurt her popularity. She married a foreign monarch, the most powerful in Europe at the time, Philip II of Spain. We all know the English love to hate foreigners. He came to England, married Mary, gamely tried to impregnate her, and left for home soon after. I think he knew the game was up. He later sent the Spanish Armada in revenge.

Mary believed she had gotten pregnant. It turned out to be a false pregnancy. She died in 1558 with her two great tasks unfinished. Catholicism was not firmly restored, and there was no Catholic heir. 

With Mary gone, one child of Henry VIII remained: Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth I lasted 45 years and brought some needed stability. [Image: Elizabeth I, the Armada Portrait]

The "Virgin Queen" was the last of her line. Whether she really died a virgin or not, the fact that Elizabeth never married meant the end of the Tudor dynasty. 

Her options for marriage were certainly unappealing: an English nobleman or a foreign prince, most likely a Catholic. Neither was likely to be a popular choice, and any man she chose, she knew, would try to rule her and the country. 

Elizabeth was an effective monarch for her time but it wasn't an especially pleasant time. Many historians have proclaimed the "Elizabethan Age" as a Golden Age for England. That may have been true for some people, but it was a tough world for most of them. Savage laws against beggars and vagrants were the main means of dealing with the rising numbers of poor.  

England famously defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was a critical victory, but the Spanish plan had serious flaws from the start. It is hard to see how it could have succeeded. 

Under Elizabeth, England became safe for Protestantism of a sort. Her religious settlement, her Church of England, compromised between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. But crucially, it remained independent of Rome with the monarch as its titular head. 

Radical Protestants disliked the Elizabeth's Anglican Church as too "Romish" and pushed to "purify" it. Devout Catholics tried to destroy it. Yet enough people supported it to ensure its survival to this day. 

Elizabeth is usually compared favorably to her sister Mary and portrayed as more tolerant and moderate. Up to a point, the distinction is valid, but only up to a point. Elizabeth did not send hundreds to the stake, but she did have many a Catholic priest hanged.

Historians have praised Elizabeth for creating a church that sought compromise between Catholic and Protestant doctrines and her distaste for religious persecution. "I would not make windows into men's souls," she is alleged to have said when becoming Queen. 

By this, she meant that as long as people conformed to her version of the church outwardly, she did not care what they thought. The truth is, she had to care. Thought, when sincere, can lead to action. 

Violence and rebellion connected to religious causes was never far below the surface in Elizabethan England. The pope declared Elizabeth a heretic who could be deposed or killed and Catholic plots against her were common. 

One of those famously involved was her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In 1567, Protestant nobles deposed Catholic Mary from the Scottish throne. She fled to England and put herself under Elizabeth's protection. [Image: Mary, Queen of Scots]

Mary was the granddaughter of a sister of Henry VIII. As such, she was Elizabeth's closest heir. She became a focus of Catholic plots to replace Elizabeth with her after the pope declared Elizabeth a heretic. 

Elizabeth kept Mary in comfortable captivity for 19 years before bowing to the demands of her male advisors and ordering her cousin's execution. (Contrary to certain "historical" films, the pair never met face to face). 

Catholic priests in England, especially Jesuits, sometimes met a similar fate. They were declared agents of foreign powers aiming at Elizabeth's assassination, and therefore guilty of treason. Catholics in Ireland also suffered for their faith and opposition to English rule. The subjugation of the Emerald Isle was completed toward the end of her reign. 

Elizabeth died soon after, in 1603. She never publicly named her successor. Her chief minister, Robert Cecil, arranged the business. The son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England, Wales, and Ireland, the first monarch to rule all of the British Isles. 

England was wealthier and more populous than Scotland and the weather was a little better. James viewed England as the Land of Milk and Honey. He and his dynasty, the Stuart monarchs, would discover another reality.

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A Curious Walk along the Thames: Rotherhithe, Deptford, and Greenwich

On yet another beautiful day, I resumed my walk on the Thames Path, along the South Bank of the river. I started where I had ended the previous walk, at the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe, just past the Mayflower Pub. I soon came to the curious statue below, at Cumberland Wharf. From right about here, the ship Mayflower left for the New World in 1620. 

The statue, put up in the 1990s, is of a Pilgrim of the 1620s and a young Londoner of the 1930s. The lad is reading a popular boy's magazine called the Sunbeam Weekly. the sculptor, Peter Maclean, has spelled it "Weakly." Was this a joke or just a mistake? 

Other curiosities: the Pilgrim has a lobster claw in his pocket, a crucifix, and a London A-Z Street guide dated 1620! The dog, by the way, is a Staffordshire Terrier, a popular breed around here.

Walking on, I soon found myself opposite the Isle of Dogs (no connection to the statue). The Isle was once home to the vast East India Docks, opened in 1802. They closed for good in 1980. The triumph of mammoth container ships rendered them and other London docks obsolete. Today, the area is home to the financial center known as Canary Wharf.    

Resuming my trek on the South Bank, I passed the Docklands Hilton and arrived at the Surrey Docks Farm, a charming urban oasis of green, complete with farm animals, including pigs and goats. One can buy produce and enjoy a snack or meal in the farm's Cafe.

Just beyond the farm I came to Greenland Dock, now a marina for boats of all shapes and sizes, mainly pleasure craft, canal boats, and houseboats.

Greenland Dock is in Deptford. It is near here that Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake upon his return from circumnavigating the globe in his ship The Golden Hinde. A replica of the ship can be visited upriver in Bankside, at St Mary Overie Dock.  

Things got curiouser and curiouser. After Greenland Dock, I had to take a short detour away from the riverfront. The detour took me through Sayes Court Park, where I encountered an ancient fenced mulberry tree with signs around it informing me that it was Evelyn's Mulberry, that it was entered in the contest for the UK's tree of the Year, and that I should vote for it.

Legend has it that Tsar Peter the Great of Russia planted the tree during a visit to England in 1698. He planted it, so the story goes, to placate his landlord, the famous diarist John Evelyn, after doing some damage to the gardens during a drunken escapade. Other tales argue that the tree is older, perhaps planted during the reign of James I (1603-1624). Whatever the tree's origins, calling it Evelyn's Mulberry is justified. Evelyn owned the land it sits upon, and he wrote one of the first books on trees in 1664. 

After leaving Sayes Court Park, I quickly returned to the riverside and ran into Peter the Great again, memorialized in another curious statue. Peter had come to London mainly because he wanted to study British shipbuilding. He wanted to establish a western style navy in Russia. The statue itself is quite recent, a gift from Russia to commemorate Peter's visit. The little man to Peter's right is said to be one of his dwarf court jesters. Peter himself was extremely tall, 6'6" (2.03m).

From the vantage point of Peter's statue, I had a good view of my final destination for the day, Greenwich, dominated by the masts of the clipper Cutty Sark and the cupolas of the Old Royal Naval College. Both are now museums, in a place full of museums. There are also the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory, where one can stand on the Prime Meridian.

I had visited all these attractions on other occasions. The day was getting late, and I was getting thirsty, thus I wisely limited my time in Greenwich to a stop at the Trafalgar Tavern, guarded by yet another statue, this one of Britain's greatest admiral, Horatio Nelson. Compared to the Mayflower and Peter the Great statues, that of Nelson seemed rather prosaic!