The Queen's Tragedy

By Robert Hugh Benson Queen Mary I is determined to undo the destruction wrought by her father, King Henry VIII: the despoilment of the Roman Catholic Church in England, the divisions sewn amongst the English people, the desertion from Papal authority for supreme independence. Her reign, Mary avers, will see the right order restored. Only then will peace and unity again be found in England. Peace and unity: beautiful ends so often sought by brutal means, by sword and by scheme, by force and by fire—means which are frustratingly unsuccessful even as her marriage with Philip of Spain proves barren and her kingdom remains divided against itself. Instead of triumph, the reign of Tudor Mary yields tragedy: her own devotion and desire to follow the will of God her sole comforts as death draws near Saint James’s Palace. It is easy to laugh at the miserable. (Plautus) Anticipating the historiographical reconsiderations of “Bloody Mary” by such authors as H. F. M. Prescott and Christopher Hai