February 18, 1516 - Bloody Mary
Her reign marked one of the most sustained episodes of religiously motivated state violence in English history, as she pursued the restoration of Catholicism through the burning of nearly 300 Protestants — executions that earned her the enduring epithet "Bloody Mary." What distinguishes her place in this catalog is less the scale of violence by European standards of the era than its concentration and deliberate institutional character, carried out through the courts and the church working in concert. She came to power against significant opposition and proved a capable political actor in securing the throne, which makes the use to which she put that power all the more historically significant.
From Wikipedia
Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558) was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She made vigorous attempts to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament but, during her five-year reign, more than 280 religious dissenters were burned at the stake, in what became known as the Marian persecutions, leading later commentators to label her "Bloody Mary".
Mary was the only surviving child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She was declared illegitimate and barred from the line of succession following the annulment of her parents' marriage in 1533, but was restored via the Third Succession Act 1543. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became terminally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary as heir to the throne because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had taken place during his reign. Upon his death, leading politicians proclaimed their Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as queen instead. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane.
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