Mary I: more bruised than bloody

Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn

- Geoffrey Munn

SOME works of art appear to have a supernatural life all of their own and the painting of Mary I by Hans Eworth is certainly one of them. This deeply psychological portrait, which hangs at the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House, London W1, is as close as one can get to meeting England’s first Queen Regnant, then aged about 38. One senses the loneliness and isolation that fuelled her unswerving adherence to the Catholic faith; even the persecution of protestants from which her overused epithet Bloody Mary derives.

Embattled from childhood, she had been a dis- appointment to her father Henry VIII, whose quest for a male heir led to her being named bastard in 1533 and, aged 17, she was stripped of her title of Princess of Wales. The stigma was finally eclipsed 20 years later when, on July 15, 1553, she was proclaimed Queen in her own right.