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English contemporaries
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Henry VIII , King of England 1509-1547
Edward VI , King of England 1547-1553 Mary Tudor , Queen of England 1553-1558 |
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Edward VI , King of England 1547-1553
on coins Henry VIII was finally give a male heir in his third marriage with Jane Seymour. Edward VI, born in 1537, succeeded to the throne when he was only ten years old and died of tuberculosis in 1553. He supported the reformation and confirmed his regent's decision to bar his half-sister Mary from the throne because she was an ardent catholic.
medal 1547, unknown artist
 , exposed at the coin cabinet Munich. |
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Mary Tudor, Queen of England 1553-1558
on coins Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was born in 1516. When her father divorced, she was separated from her mother and humilated by the new queen Anne Boleyn (mother of Elizabeth I). After Anne's execution, the next queen Jane Seymour (mother of Edward VI) achieved Mary's reconciliation with her father: Mary, an orthodox catholic, had to acknowledge her father as head of the Church of England and admit the "incestuous illegality" of his marriage to her mother. When Mary's half-brother Edward succeeded to the throne, pressure on Mary and the catholic opposition increased. Mary had to flee when Edward died, but soon after she was able to enforce her right to the throne.
Charles V, Mary's cousin, had once been her fiancee but had then changed his mind. Mary's father discouraged other applicants to her hand for political reasons. So Mary was 37 and still unmarried when she became queen in 1553. A year later she married Philip II, 11 years younger than herself, and the son of Charles V, who had suggested this marriage. However, the marriage remained childless, and as Philip was not well liked in England, he soon returned to the Netherlands. Some years later, Mary entered into an alliance with Philip, who was by then king of Spain, and in doing so she lost Calais, England's last property on the Continent. Under Mary's reign a fierce persecution of protestants set in, although far fewer piles burned in "Bloody" Mary's England than in the Spanish Netherlands. Mary's endeavours to re-catholise the country came to an end with her half-sister Elisabeth I who she had appointed heir apparent to the throne. Elisabeth ultimately established the English national church and in defeating Philip II's Spanish Armada brought about England's rise to naval supremacy.
Compare Philip's mezzo ducato, n.d.(1554-6)
from Naples with a similar reverse side.
Note the central dot on both sides of the coin. Compare the effigy of Mary on the above coin and on the following medal.
Lit.: : S.K. Scher (Ed.), The Currency of Fame, Portrait medals of the Rennaissance, 1994.
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