LONDON, November 17, 1558 – The reign of Mary Tudor, England’s first crowned queen regnant, has ended in the early hours of this morning at St. James’s Palace, but the final chapter of her tumultuous life is only now being written through the extraordinary and heartbreaking document she left behind. The queen, aged 42, passed away after a protracted illness, yet the contents of her last will and testament, signed in March of this year, reveal a monarch gripped by a tragic delusion and burdened by a lifetime of familial strife.
The document, a stark reflection of her final hopes and fears, lays bare her conviction that she was pregnant with an heir, her complex and bitter feelings toward her own family, and her specific, yet ultimately ignored, demands for her mortal remains.
The will, a matter of public record now being scrutinized by court officials and historians alike, opens with a staggering list of titles that underscores the vast, if largely nominal, empire Mary claimed through her marriage to Philip of Spain. She is styled Queen of England, Spain, France, both Sicilies, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Burgundy, Milan, and Brabant, and Countess of Habsburg, Flanders, and Tyrol. This grand proclamation, however, quickly gives way to a far more personal and poignant preamble.
In it, the queen states her reason for drafting the will, writing that she believed herself to be “with child in lawful marriage between my said dearly beloved husband and lord.” This assertion, made just eight months before her death, confirms that she was still convinced she would produce an heir, a belief that tragically proved to be a phantom pregnancy.
The document’s preamble offers a chilling glimpse into Mary’s mindset, as she acknowledges the “great danger which by God’s ordinance remain to all women in their travel” of childbirth. She frames the will as a necessary precaution for the “discharge of my conscience and continuance of good order within my realms,” all while noting it was made with the “full consent agreement and good contentment of my said most dear lord and husband.” This subservient clause, while perhaps standard for a Catholic wife of the era, is striking for a queen who held sovereign power in her own right, revealing the deep-seated beliefs about gender and marriage that shaped her worldview, even on the throne.
Perhaps the most revealing and ultimately futile instructions concern the fate of her physical body. Mary explicitly requested to be buried “according to the rights of the catholic church” and ordered that within a month of her death, one thousand pounds be distributed as alms to poor prisoners and other destitute men. More significantly, she commanded that the remains of her beloved mother, Catherine of Aragon, be disinterred from their resting place at Peterborough Abbey and reburied alongside her own, with a suitable tomb erected over them.
This request speaks volumes about Mary’s lifelong devotion to her mother, a woman she saw as cruelly wronged by her father, Henry VIII. Yet, it also highlights a profound failure of her own reign, as she had five years as queen to honor her mother but never did, a task she left to her executors in death.
The request to be buried with her mother is made all the more poignant by the stark absence of any other family member in her final arrangements. There is no mention of her half-sister, Elizabeth, by name anywhere in the entire document. This omission is a deafening silence, a final testament to the deep rift and suspicion that had defined their relationship.
Mary, who had imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London on suspicion of plotting against her, could not even bring herself to name her as her successor in the original will, instead operating under the assumption that her unborn child would inherit the throne. The animosity was so profound that in the codicil added in late October, when she was forced to confront her childlessness, she refers to her heir only as “my next heir and successor according to the laws and statutes of this realm,” never uttering Elizabeth’s name.
This bitterness extends to the male figures who dominated her early life and caused her so much suffering. While her husband, Philip, and her mother, Catherine, are consistently referred to with flowery epithets of love and devotion, her father, Henry VIII, and her half-brother, Edward VI, are mentioned only in a fleeting and clinical manner. They are simply called “my father” and “my brother,” devoid of any warmth or praise.
In contrast, she shows more courtesy to her paternal grandfather, Henry VII, whom she never knew, calling him “my grandfather of most worthy memory.” This linguistic choice is a powerful indicator that Mary had not forgiven her father for the annulment of her parents’ marriage, his break with Rome, and the years of humiliation he subjected her to, nor her brother for his fervent Protestantism and attempts to force her to convert.
The will also serves as Mary’s final, desperate attempt to roll back the English Reformation. She left substantial sums to religious institutions, including 500 pounds each to the religious houses of Sheen and Sion, which had been dissolved under her father but which she and Philip had re-established. She asked that the monks and nuns there pray for her soul, for the soul of her husband, and for the soul of her mother, Queen Catherine.
Notably, she does not request specific prayers for her father or brother, suggesting she believed their souls, tainted by heresy, were beyond the help of prayer or that she simply did not care to intercede for them. This was her last chance to try and secure the Catholic faith in England, a mission that defined her reign and earned her the moniker “Bloody Mary” for the hundreds of Protestants she had burned at the stake.
Beyond the religious and familial stipulations, the will makes detailed provisions for her personal effects and servants. King Philip is left two table diamonds, one given to her by his father, Charles V, and another sent by Philip himself, along with a collar of gold set with nine diamonds and a gold ring set with a ruby. These bequests are a final, tangible expression of her deep affection for a man who married her for dynastic reasons and reportedly felt only a “reasonable regret” at her death.
For her household servants, she left two thousand pounds to be distributed among them, with preference given to those who had served her longest and would have the least hope of finding new employment. She also set aside a further 3,400 pounds for specific individuals, including 200 pounds for her confessor, Dr. Mallet, to pray for her soul.
The political heart of the will, however, lies in its provisions for the succession and the governance of England. Mary, believing she was pregnant, anticipated a long minority for her child and expected her husband, Philip, to play a leading role as regent. She praised his desire to return England to the Catholic Church and expressed no doubt that he would act for the good of the realm.
This vision of a Spanish-influenced, Catholic England under a Hapsburg regency was a fantasy that died with her. The codicil, signed on October 28th with only three weeks to live, is a somber and reluctant admission of this failure. In it, she acknowledges she has had no child and that her kingdom will pass to her Protestant sister, effectively undoing everything she had fought for.
In this final addendum, Mary begs Philip to act as a father and brother to her successor and to England, a plea that seems almost naive given the political realities. She expresses hope that Elizabeth and the English people will reciprocate with goodwill, a sentiment that history would prove to be profoundly misplaced. The codicil also names her executors, a list of her most loyal Catholic councillors, including Cardinal Pole, who died a mere twelve hours after the queen, and Nicholas Heath, the Archbishop of York.
They were tasked with carrying out her final wishes, but their authority was immediately superseded by the new queen, Elizabeth I, who had her own agenda and little reason to honor the requests of her predecessor and sister.
The ultimate fate of Mary’s body is perhaps the cruelest irony of her final wishes. Elizabeth, who had been imprisoned and threatened by Mary, chose to ignore her sister’s request to be buried with their mother. Instead, Mary was interred in Westminster Abbey on December 14th, 1558.
In a twist that would have horrified her, she was laid to rest in the same vault as Elizabeth, the sister she had refused to name. Decades later, their joint cousin, James I, erected a grand monument over their grave, but it is almost entirely dedicated to the glorification of Elizabeth, the Protestant queen who ruled for 45 years. Mary is relegated to a brief Latin inscription, a mere footnote in her own tomb, forever overshadowed by the sister she loathed.
The monument’s inscription reads, “Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary,” a final indignity for a queen who spent her life trying to separate herself from her Protestant sibling. To add further insult, in 1977, a memorial to the “Martyrs of the Reformation” was placed near their tomb, commemorating the Protestants Mary had executed for their faith. It is impossible to imagine that Mary, who saw these individuals as heretics, would have wanted their memory honored beside her final resting place.
The document she left behind, intended to secure her legacy and her soul’s salvation, has instead become a testament to her failures, her delusions, and the deep, unhealed wounds of her family’s history.
As the new queen begins her reign, the contents of Mary’s will serve as a stark reminder of the religious and political divisions that have torn the country apart. Mary’s final orders, from the charitable bequests to the pleas for her husband, were largely ignored or rendered moot by her death. The personal gifts to her servants were likely paid, and her funeral was conducted with Catholic rites, but her two great goals—to have a child and to keep England under papal authority—died with her.
The queen who had fought so hard for her crown and her faith was ultimately defeated by her own body and the unstoppable tide of history, leaving behind a legacy defined not by her own wishes, but by the sister who succeeded her.
