Mary I: Naming the Sister She Had Imprisoned as Her Heir

Mary had imprisoned the sister who would inherit her throne. A child of her own could have changed that. No child came.

On 6 November 1558, Mary I acknowledged Elizabeth as her heir. Mary was forty-two, her younger half-sister twenty-five. The queen was gravely ill, and under the settlement their father had left, the crown would pass to the woman whose loyalty and religion she distrusted.

The two daughters had been set against one another before Elizabeth could speak. Mary was the child of Catherine of Aragon, whose marriage Henry VIII had overturned to marry Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was Anne's daughter. When the new baby became a princess, Mary lost that title. She was sent into her infant sister's household at Hatfield, expected to accept a place below a child seventeen years younger than herself.

The baby had arranged none of it. Their father had.

There had been tenderness between them afterwards. Two months after Anne's execution, Mary wrote to Henry that the motherless Elizabeth was "such a child toward, as I doubt not but your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming". Later she gave her younger sister presents. Their relationship had contained ordinary things: gifts, good reports to a father, the interest an older sister could take in a younger one. It had not begun and ended with a prison.

By the time Mary became queen in 1553, however, affection had become entangled with the question of who would rule next. Mary was Catholic. Elizabeth had been brought up Protestant. Henry had restored both daughters to the succession behind their brother Edward, and when Edward died Mary took the throne with Elizabeth next behind her. The younger sister was also a possible focus for everyone who wanted a different queen.

In 1554, Thomas Wyatt's rebellion against Mary's planned marriage to Philip of Spain brought that danger into the open. Elizabeth came under suspicion of involvement. Mary had her sent to the Tower of London, the place where Anne Boleyn had been held before her execution.

Before she was taken there, Elizabeth wrote to Mary. She held her to a promise, that she should "be not condemned without answer and due proof", and prayed that "evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other". Across the unused space on the paper she drew lines, so that no one could add words after she had finished. Even a plea to her own sister had to be protected against another person's pen.

The tide turned while she wrote, which bought her one more day. The letter did not keep her out of the Tower. Nor did the investigation produce the proof needed to convict her. After two months she was removed to Woodstock, still under guard. She had survived, but being allowed to live was a considerable distance from being trusted.

Mary married Philip that summer. Within months she believed she was pregnant, and in the spring of 1555 she went to Hampton Court to await the birth. Elizabeth was summoned there too, under close guard. The sister who had been imprisoned was now brought near the queen whose expected child would move her further from the crown.

A baby offered something no act of Parliament could supply. Mary would have a child of her own, and the Catholic monarchy she was rebuilding could continue through that child. Her husband could be the father of the next English sovereign. Elizabeth would remain her sister, but she would no longer stand immediately behind her in the succession.

Mary lived in seclusion while the court waited. She could be seen at her chamber window watching the courtiers go to Mass. The expected time for the birth passed. Still there was no child. By August she had left Hampton Court for Oatlands, and the confinement was over without the birth it had been arranged to await.

Elizabeth remained next in line.

Mary had restored Catholic worship and obedience to Rome, and her government burned Protestants who refused to recant. Elizabeth had conformed outwardly to Mary's religion, but Mary distrusted the sincerity of that conformity. Attendance at Mass could be required of a subject. What Elizabeth would do as queen was another matter.

The hope came back once more. On 30 March 1558 Mary signed a will "thinking myself to be with child in lawful marriage", and left the crown to the fruit of her own body. On 28 October, "feeling myself presently sick and weak in body", she added a codicil. "God hath hitherto sent me no fruit nor heir of my body," it said. It spoke only of "my next heir and successor, by the laws and statutes of this realm". It gave no name.

On 6 November, nine days later, she acknowledged whose name that was. The acknowledgement accepted Elizabeth's place in the succession; it could not bind her to preserve Mary's religious work. Mary could recognise the woman who would follow her. She could not govern the reign that would follow her own.

For years, Elizabeth's position had depended on whether Mary had a child, and whether suspicion would turn into a charge that could be proved. Now Mary was dying, and Elizabeth was still there.

Mary died at St James's Palace on 17 November 1558, eleven days after acknowledging her heir. She left no son or daughter to succeed her. The sister she had sent to the Tower became Queen of England.