The roughly three hundred Protestants burned at…

The roughly three hundred Protestants burned at the stake for their beliefs in the past three years have earned the queen the epithet “Bloody Mary.” Hundreds of other Protestants have spent the later years of her reign in exile on the Continent.

When Mary dies at forty-two on November 17, 1558, probably of ovarian cancer, her twenty-five-year-old half-sister, who has lived quietly, awaiting her opportunity to succeed, ascends the throne without incident.