There will be no ‘Mary I and her People’ exhibitions to match that of Elizabeth I currently showing at the National Gallery. While Elizabeth I is regularly voted our most popular ever monarch her Catholic elder half sister remains associated with her late seventeenth century sobriquet, ‘Bloody Mary’. It is assumed she was hated in her lifetime. In fact she was a popular queen, and one from whom Elizabeth learned much. Mary’s accession to the throne in 1553 was not a smooth one. Her half brother, Edward VI, was a passionate Protestant, and when, aged fifteen, he fell gravely ill...