Claim: Elizabeth I of England reigned in England.

Mary I -LRB- 18 February 1516 -- 17 November 1558 -RRB- was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death . Her executions of Protestants led to the posthumous sobriquet `` Bloody Mary '' .   She was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive to adulthood . Her younger half-brother Edward VI -LRB- son of Henry and Jane Seymour -RRB- succeeded their father in 1547 .   When Edward became mortally ill in 1553 , he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because of religious differences . On his death their first cousin once removed , Lady Jane Grey , was proclaimed queen . Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane , who was ultimately beheaded . Mary was -- excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda -- the first queen regnant of England . In 1554 , Mary married Philip of Spain , becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556 .   Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after her half-brother 's short-lived Protestant reign . During her five-year reign , she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions . After her death in 1558 , her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor Elizabeth I , daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn .