About Mary I Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 19 July 1553 until her death. She was the eldest daughter of Henry VIII and only surviving child of Catherine of Aragon. As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, she is remembered for restoring England to Roman Catholicism after succeeding her short-lived half brother, Edward VI, to the English throne. In the process, she had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions, earning her the sobriquet of "Bloody Mary". Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth I.