Mary I of England and Philip II of Spain get one or more children

Actually, there are several possible scenarios:

1) They get one son
2) They get two or more sons and possibly some daughters as well
3) They get one son plus at least one daughter
4) They get one or more daughters

Qhat would be the consequences of this? I assume here that all the children were raised as Catholics (anything else would be highly unlikely). Would this lead to a successfull counterreformation in England?
 
Let us assume that she got a son with Philip. Would he inherit both England and Spain?

AFAIK that wasn't intended. One would get England and the Burgundian Inheritance, another would have got the Crowns of Castille and Aragon, the duchy of Milan and the Colonies.
 
Let us assume that she got a son with Philip. Would he inherit both England and Spain?

Yes, along with the holdings in the 'Low Countries/Burgundy' (I.E the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium) and Naples.

This would be the biggest land empire in Europe.
 
AFAIK that wasn't intended. One would get England and the Burgundian Inheritance, another would have got the Crowns of Castille and Aragon, the duchy of Milan and the Colonies.

If England had got control of the Netherlands, and if they had been able to keep it, this would have made England even more powerful than it became in OTL. However, if England returned to Catholicism, I assume that this would have led to rebellion against the English, as it did against Spain in OTL.
 
Elizabeth would be forced into a more Catholic existence, I think, but enjoy a very comfortable latter life as a trusted Regent either in England or the Low Countries.

Philip would most likely still remarry (Mary Queen of Scots seems like the obvious follow-up match) and attempt to negotiate some new agreement whereby children of the new marriage are given an inheritance (assuming Don Carlos is out of the way by then).

Altenratively, having his son as King of England delays peace talks with the French and thus prevents Philip's marriage to Elizabeth de Valois. He marries Mary as a counter to the Valois ambitions, with Elizabeth de Valois wedding Don Carlos in due time when peace is made.
 
Let us assume that she got a son with Philip. Would he inherit both England and Spain?

Ohh, yes! but on one condition.

by Wikipedia.en http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_for_the_Marriage_of_Queen_Mary_to_Philip_of_Spain

«The Act for the Marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain or Queen Mary's Marriage Act (1 Mar. Sess. 3 c. 2) was passed by the Parliament of England in April 1554 to regulate the future marriage and joint reign of Queen Mary I and Philip, then Prince of Asturias.

In reality, the Act seems to have served as a business contract between England and Spain; it specifies what Spain can expect from the union, while at the same time assuring the English that England would not become a satellite of Spain.

Under the terms of the marriage treaty between the widowed Prince of Asturias and the spinster Queen of England and Ireland, the Prince was to enjoy his wife's titles and honours as King of England and Ireland for as long as their marriage should last. All official documents, including Acts of Parliament, were to be dated with both their names (with Philip's preceding Mary's as deemed proper for husband and wife), and Parliament was to be called under the joint authority of the couple. The Act stated that King Philip would take part in governing Mary's realms while reserving most authority for Mary herself. Formally, King Philip was to co-reign with his wife according to the Act, which nevertheless ensured that the new king would not become too powerful by prohibiting him from appointing foreigners to any offices, taking his wife or any child that might be born to them outside her realm and claiming the crown for himself should he outlive his wife.

The Act presumed that the Queen would have children by the Prince and allowed full personal union between England and Ireland and all the realms Philip was to inherit from his father, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, or from his grandmother, Joanna, Queen of Spain, but only should Philip's son Charles die childless.

The Act was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1863»



by Wikipedia.en http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Act_1554

«The Treason Act 1554 (1 & 2 Ph & M c 10) was an Act of the Parliament of England.

Section 1 to 6 - Protection of King Philip.
The Act provided legal protection to King Philip, who had married Queen Mary I on 25 July 1554 and became co-monarch of England and Ireland. It became an offence to "compass or imagine to deprive the King's Majesty from the having with the Queen the style, honour and kingly name, or to destroy the King, or to levy war within this realm against the King or Queen," or to say that the King ought not to have his title. The penalty for a first offence was forfeiture of goods and "perpetual imprisonment." A second offence was high treason. However to "compass or imagine the death of the King" or to remove him from government was high treason on a first offence.

The Act also declared that if Mary died and her heir was not yet 18 if male, or was under 15 and unmarried if female, then Philip would govern the realm until the heir to the throne came of age (or was married, if female). In that event, it would be treason to "compass, attempt, and go about to destroy the person of the King, or to remove his Highness from the government"».

see also http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/H111_doc_marriageofqueenmary.html

PhilipMaryBerger-273x300.jpg

PhilipMaryBerger-273x300.jpg
 
Ohh, yes! but on one condition.

by Wikipedia.en http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_for_the_Marriage_of_Queen_Mary_to_Philip_of_Spain

«The Act for the Marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain or Queen Mary's Marriage Act (1 Mar. Sess. 3 c. 2) was passed by the Parliament of England in April 1554 to regulate the future marriage and joint reign of Queen Mary I and Philip, then Prince of Asturias.

In reality, the Act seems to have served as a business contract between England and Spain; it specifies what Spain can expect from the union, while at the same time assuring the English that England would not become a satellite of Spain.

Under the terms of the marriage treaty between the widowed Prince of Asturias and the spinster Queen of England and Ireland, the Prince was to enjoy his wife's titles and honours as King of England and Ireland for as long as their marriage should last. All official documents, including Acts of Parliament, were to be dated with both their names (with Philip's preceding Mary's as deemed proper for husband and wife), and Parliament was to be called under the joint authority of the couple. The Act stated that King Philip would take part in governing Mary's realms while reserving most authority for Mary herself. Formally, King Philip was to co-reign with his wife according to the Act, which nevertheless ensured that the new king would not become too powerful by prohibiting him from appointing foreigners to any offices, taking his wife or any child that might be born to them outside her realm and claiming the crown for himself should he outlive his wife.

The Act presumed that the Queen would have children by the Prince and allowed full personal union between England and Ireland and all the realms Philip was to inherit from his father, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, or from his grandmother, Joanna, Queen of Spain, but only should Philip's son Charles die childless.

Since Charles died in 1568 at age twenty three lets play with this idea...


Philip and Mary get married as per RL July 25, 1554, then in September of that year Mary displays the usual symptoms of pregnancy but unlike RL, she actually is pregnant, and on May 1, 1555 bears her first and only child, her son Joseph, named after the Saint who's feast day it was.

With her healthy baby boy and heir, Mary contemplates what to do with her sister, but ultimately decided to marry her off to the very Catholic (and more importantly distant) Charles, Archduke of Austria, the future Charles II of Austria.

That settled, Mary's reign would mostly play out the same due to the bad weather which meant that crops wouldn't grow so there'd be famine and starvation, but her persecution of the Protestants might not have been as savage, since she wouldn't be thinking that they were some how cursing her into infertility. Though it's a coin toss if Lady Jane Grey would have been executed or not.

Then in 1558 Mary dies from a tumor that she initially thought was a second pregnancy. Leaving Philip as Regent of England for their only son, Joseph, who is being raised in England due to the terms of the marriage contract between Mary and Philip.

Philip as Regent finds himself as a lightning rod for Anti-Spanish feeling in England, even the English Catholics become uncomfortable under their 'alien ruler', though with Joseph being raised English, the 'Infant King' is forgiven the sin of being Half-Spanish.

Then in 1568, the mentally deranged Carlos, Prince of Asturias dies in the captivity that his father placed him in. The circumstances of this paint a shadow on Philip who is accused of killing his own son, but in more practical terms this means that the now 13 year old Joseph of England is now the heir of ALL of Philip's domains in Europe.
 
I'm pretty sure Philip would have remarried, after Mary passed away.

Yes, but with his 'English son' legally his eldest living heir at that point it would be very difficult to go back and alter things after it's been set in stone for over a decade.
 
Yes, but with his 'English son' legally his eldest living heir at that point it would be very difficult to go back and alter things after it's been set in stone for over a decade.

He can partition his lands if he wants to. He was ready to give the Netherlands to his daughter's line as soon as one of her children reached adulthood, male precedence be damned (of course none did, thanks to Habsburg inbreeding).

Not to mention the guy married his son's bride to get himself a spare IOTL, and sent him definitively over the edge as a result.
 
Man a United England, Spain and Portugal.

That would make the Valois shiver.

Imagine that big empire in the hands of a single man.
 
It is possible that he marry Elisabeth? I heard that he was actually personal very intersted in her.

Hmm... Well in my proposed scenario, Mary I just had her married off to a distant Habsburg, but if Philip suggested sending Elizabeth to Spain to 'better educate her in the One True Faith' and Mary agreed to it, then a smart Philip would have made Elizabeth's stay in Madrid very comfortable, especially since she was more of a looker than Mary. Then when Mary bites it they just wait a year or two before tying the knot.
 
Man a United England, Spain and Portugal.

That would make the Valois shiver.

Imagine that big empire in the hands of a single man.

It'd decentralize or collapse. There's a reason Charles V split his domains between his son and brother.

Now, the how of the split is gonna be important, but that the realm is too big seems almost a given.
 
I wonder where the son would rule from primarily. Presumably the gap before Don Carlos was taken out of the picture would give him a primarily English identity and connection.

I don't see Elizabeth being married off to a distant Archduke. In this scenario, she's nothing but a bastard, one whose worth as a marriage pawn has plummeted and whose religion is uncertain.
 
It is possible that he marry Elisabeth? I heard that he was actually personal very intersted in her.
Marrying a deceased wife's sister was certainly illegal in England later on (on the theological grounds that as marriage makes husband & wife "one flesh" it makes the wife's sister a sister of the husband too, and his later marriage to her therefore incestuous...), and although I'm unsure about the situation in Tudor times I suspect that the same rule would have applied back then... although possibly, if & when the country was still legally Roman Catholic, a papal dispensation might have allowed such a match.

*<checks>*

Legally iffy, but sometimes managed, prior to 1835; completely illegal [except for tolerances of such marriages that had already occurred] 1835-1907; legal from the passage of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act in 1907... but the article that I read only mentions the Anglican rules, not the Roman Catholic ones.
 
It is possible that he marry Elisabeth? I heard that he was actually personal very intersted in her.

Wouldn´t her religion be a problem? Spain was fiercely anti-protestant and there is no way Elisabeth would become a Catholic, as that would mean that she would declare herself an illegitimate daughter of Henry 8.
 
Philip and Mary get married as per RL July 25, 1554, then in September of that year Mary displays the usual symptoms of pregnancy but unlike RL, she actually is pregnant, and on May 1, 1555 bears her first and only child, her son Joseph, named after the Saint who's feast day it was.

The name "Joseph" did not belong to onomastics neither the House of Austria neither of the Tudors. I am convinced that they would have used names such as "Henry" or "Charles", the grandparents of the baby. The name "Henry" had also the advantage of indicating a dynastic continuity with Tudor and with a figure certainly important as Henry VIII, while the name "Charles" was already taken by the eldest son of Philip II.
I also have the suggestion that they could opt for the name "Arthur", for the same reasons for which the name was used by Henry VII for his firstborn: recall to memory the legendary King Arthur. Arthur's birth was seen by the humanists as the start of a "Golden Age". The young Arthur was viewed as "a living symbol" of the pacification of the country, the great hope of the consolidation of the reigning house.
They could have used "Joseph" as middle name


With her healthy baby boy and heir, Mary contemplates what to do with her sister, but ultimately decided to marry her off to the very Catholic (and more importantly distant) Charles, Archduke of Austria, the future Charles II of Austria.

What he needed to Elizabeth was not a warder, but a husband with an iron fist. None of the English candidates was suitable.
Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon (c. 1527 – 18 September 1556), first cousin of Henry VIII, supporter of Northumberland's plot to crown Lady Jane Grey, and opposer of Mary's marriage with the Spanish prince. The plan to arrange a marriage between Courtenay and Elizabeth (dangerous because it could see, in the future, the risk to place on the throne as secure Protestants), was cut short by Courtenay's sudden death at Padua, in 1556. The exact circumstances of his death are not known. Peter Vannes, representative of Queen Mary I to the Republic of Venice, wrote her a report; but he was not a direct witness or a physician. According to his account, Courtenay was engaged in falconry for recreational reasons. He and his falcons were in the countryside and away from any building when caught in a violent storm. He failed to protect himself from the elements and refused to change his wet clothing even after returning home. Several days later, Courtenay was burning in a fever, which lasted to his final hours.
If Elizabeth had married the young Lord Maltravers [Henry FitzAlan (1538–1556), son of Henry FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel (1512-1580) and Katherine Grey, aunt of Lady Jane Grey], now would be a widow, perhaps with a child.
between foreign candidates there had been the son of the king of Denmark, the future king Frederick III, or Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (1529 - 1595), son of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, and first cousin of Philip.
Elizabeth resided at Woodstock during the time which Mary's marriage to Philip was celebrated and consummated and a child confidently expected. Cardinal Reginald Pole arrived to complete England's reconciliation to Rome. Suddenly Elizabeth was summoned to Hampton Court by her sister to witness the birth of the prince who would make her politically irrelevant. This reconciliation was encouraged by Philip. At last she was admitted to Mary's presence at Hampton Court, and to an uneasy meeting on 21 May, intended to achieve reconciliation. The pregnancy was false, and her husband, who now in effect deserted her, distracted by many other imperial designs, began to see in Elizabeth, now almost beyond question the heir to the throne, a means of keeping the succession out of the hands of Mary, queen of Scots [betrothed to the Dauphin François de France, later King François II]. Paradoxically, Philip from now on kept Elizabeth, and her hopes of succeeding to the throne, alive. In October 1555 Elizabeth settled back at Hatfield, but soon she was at the centre of fresh plots, the Dudley's conspiracy of 1556, which once again involved Devon, and in which she may have been more actively involved than in 1554. However, it was Philip, now in Brussels, who gave explicit instructions, with which Mary complied, that Elizabeth's probable guilt should not be investigated further. As a precaution, Sir Thomas Pope, a privy councillor, was installed at Hatfield to make sure that she behaved herself. Now the best way to control Elizabeth would be marriage to some foreign prince. The candidate chosen was Philip's cousin, Emmanuel Philibert, prince of Piedmont and duke of Savoy, a diplomatic pawn squeezed between the Habsburg and Valois monarchs and from Philip's point of view a perfect consort. Elizabeth's title to succeed would be recognized, England would remain a Habsburg dependency, and Emmanuel Philibert (who was not Spanish) would be handsomely compensated for the loss of his ancestral lands. However, these calculations left out of account Elizabeth's determination not to be coerced into an unwelcome marriage by Philip's threats, which he pressed in person on his return to England in March 1557. She took advice from the French ambassador, who dissuaded her from an impulse to flee into exile. Everything would fall into her lap if she would only be patient.
But, most likely, after the birth of the royal baby, Elizabeth would meet the death from a fall from a horse or by means of poison.

I'm pretty sure Philip would have remarried, after Mary passed away.

It is possible that he marry Elisabeth? I heard that he was actually personal very intersted in her.

Then in 1568, the mentally deranged Carlos, Prince of Asturias dies in the captivity that his father placed him in. The circumstances of this paint a shadow on Philip who is accused of killing his own son, but in more practical terms this means that the now 13 year old Joseph of England is now the heir of ALL of Philip's domains in Europe.

The Infante Don Carlos was delicate and deformed. Many of his physical and psychological afflictions may have stemmed from the inbreeding common to the House of Habsburg and the royal houses of Portugal and Spain. Carlos had only four great-grandparents instead of eight, and his parents had the same coefficient of coancestry as if they were half siblings. He had only six great-great-grandparents, instead of sixteen; his maternal grandmother and his paternal grandfather were siblings, his maternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother were also siblings, and his two great-grandmothers were sisters.
Don Carlos grew up in the company of her aunts and close family because his father was not in Spain from 1548 to 1551 and from 1554 to 1559. According to the courtier Gramiz, the prince grew up spoiled and had exaggerated behaviors. He grew up proud and willful and, as a young adult, began to show signs of mental instability.

Upon the death of Mary Tudor, Philip was also considering a Valois alliance.
Having had a child by Mary, now legitimate sovereign of England, Philip hardly have married Elizabeth Tudor: she would already providentially died falling from a horse or by means of poison.
In 1559 Don Carlos was betrothed to Elizabeth of Valois, eldest daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici.
Most likely the two were married, while Philip would marry in 1561 with the dowager Queen of France, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
: in the eyes of many Catholics, as the senior descendant of Henry VIII's elder sister, she had a claim to the crown of England.
Philip saw this as a way to bring together all the kingdoms of the British Isles.

Don Carlos was recognized in 1560 as the heir-apparent to the Castilian throne, and three years later as heir-apparent to the Crown of Aragon as well.

Elizabeth of Valois reached puberty in August 1561, and she nearly died in each pregnancy or miscarriage (Geoffrey Parker, Philip II). Don Carlos' health was sickly, with persistent fevers, which in 1561 led doctors to recommend to take up residence in Alcalá de Henares, away from the unhealthy air of Madrid. But, between a bout of "fiebres cuartanas" and the other, he can copulate with his wife.

Probably Elizabeth, with Don Carlos, would have had the same children that in reality:
1. a son, named Don FERNANDO FELIPE ENRIQUE [Fernando for his godfather was the Emperor Ferdinand I, Felipe and Enrique for his grandfathers] was born in Alcalá de Henares on 4 December 1562 [In June 1562 Elizabeth was pregnant, Geoffrey Parker, Philip II], called "el niño del milagro" (the child of the miracle), because on the night of 19 April 1562, he was groping around in the dark after a night spent with some ladies when he fell down a flight of stairs and landed on his head. There he was found the next morning, unconscious and partially paralyzed. He later became blind, developed a high fever and his head swelled to an enormous size. After trying many different treatments, including going to the healer Pinterete and put into his bed the mummy of friar Diego de Alcalá [In a moment of lucidity, Don Carlos asked that he wanted to make a personal petition to the Venerable Diego de Alcalá. The friar's mummy was brought to his chambers. The prior of the convent placed one of Carlos' hands upon the chest of the Venerable Diego de Alcalá, whereupon the prince fell into a deep and peaceful sleep. Six hours later, he awoke and related that in a dream, he saw the saint telling him that he would not die]. The life of Don Carlos was saved by a trepanation of the skull, performed by the eminent anatomist Andreas Vesalius. After his recovery, Carlos became wild and unpredictable in his behavior, his cruelty and his eccentricities was increased.
2. a miscarriage on 5/9 August 1564 [In July 1564 Elizabeth was pregnant, Geoffrey Parker, Philip II. Wikipedia.en says that Elisabeth's second pregnancy ended with a miscarriage of twin girls, but does not report any reference. Geoffrey Parker and other sources speak only of a miscarriage due to a hemorrhage and subsequent treatment through bloodletting.
3. a daughter, named ISABEL CLARA EUGENIA [Isabel for her mother, Clara for the saint of the day, Santa Clara (is celebrated in the Roman rite on 12 August before the liturgical reform), and Eugenia «por devoción a S. Eugenio cuyo cuerpo había el rey trasladado el año antes desde San Dionisio de París a Toledo, a cuyo logro contribuyó mucho la interposición de nuestra reina (Isabel de Valois) como hermana que era del rey de Francia» (friar Enrique Flórez O.S.A.)], was born in the Palacio del Bosque de Valsaín, city of Segovia, on 12 August 1566.
4. a daughter, named CATALINA MICAELA [Catalina for her grandmother Catherine de' Medici, and Micaela for Saint Michael Archangel, because she was born in the eighth dedicated to this saint], was born in Madrid on 10 October 1567.
5. a miscarried daughter on 3 October 1568


Probably Philip and the dowager Queen of France, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, have had children.


Man a United England, Spain and Portugal.
It'd decentralize or collapse. There's a reason Charles V split his domains between his son and brother. Now, the how of the split is gonna be important, but that the realm is too big seems almost a given.

Charles V would have therefore desired that his son succeed him as Holy Roman Emperor, but met the opposition of his brother, Ferdinand, elected King of the Romans in 1531.
In 1550, the emperor officially handed over to the son the regency of the Spanish domains from which depended domains Italian Southern Italy and the colonies. In 1551, to solve disagreements with his brother Ferdinand, the emperor was forced to a compromise: Ferdinand would become Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany and King of Italy, but after his death, Philip would get the titles giving at the son of Ferdinand, Maximilian, the crown of King of the Romans and the government of Germany. Even such an agreement, however, failed because of the aspiration of Ferdinand to create a dynasty autonomous and so in 1555, Philip renounced his claim to the imperial throne.
In 1554 Philip's father arranged his marriage to 37-year old Queen Mary I of England. In order to elevate Philip to Mary's rank, on 25 July his father abdicated the crowns of Sicily and Naples, both fiefs of the Papacy, and the Duchy of Milan. Philip was invested 2 October by Pope Julius III with the kingdom of Naples and Sicily and the claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Imperial Idea of Charles V, sometimes described as universal monarchy, has been subject to very different interpretations, over its medievality or modernity. Charles received a humanist and Christian education. The fact that he has received through successive inheritances a vast set of territories, has configuring, with the intervention of several directors, an idea of how and why the benefit of using this immense power, straddling providentialism and reason of state.
His dream of Universal Empire under the Habsburg leadership was failed. He was beginning to become aware that Europe was heading to be governed by new princes which, for maintain their states, had no intention in any way alter the balance of political and religious within each of them.
He himself, although they profess the first and most fervent defender of the Catholic Church, had not been able to prevent the emergence of the lutheran doctrine. On 25 September 1555 he signed, with the protestant princes, the Peace of Augsburg,in order to come to the religious pacification in Germany, with the entry into force of the principle "cuius regio, eius religio", which is stipulated that the subjects of a region had to profess the religion choice from their sovreign. It was the official recognition of the new lutheran doctrine.
These events led the new Pope Paul IV to forge a solid alliance with the King of France in function anti-imperial: the Holy Roman Emperor was no longer the bulwark of the Catholic Church against attacks coming from the new lutheran doctrine!

The Charles' choices in the most famous—and public—abdications took place in Bruxelles, were appropriate. Despite being also a German archduke from the House of Habsburg, Philip was seen as a foreigner in the Holy Roman Empire. The feeling was mutual. Philip felt himself to be culturally Spanish; he had been born in Spain and raised in the Castilian court, his native tongue was Spanish, and he preferred to live in Spain. This would ultimately impede his reign on the imperial throne. Ferdinand, instead, was familiar with, and to, the other princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Although he too had been born in Spain, he had administered his brother's affairs in the Empire since 1531.

The son of Philip and Mary Tudor would be the heir to England, Ireland [the title of King of Ireland was recognised by a papal bull of Pope Paul IV in 1555] and the ancient English claims to the French throne, and most probably the Netherlands/Low Countries and Burgundy/Franche-Comté (more easily defensible and governable from neighboring England that from distant Spain, and where, for the sake of harmony, order, and prosperity, Charles V had not blocked the Reformation, and had tolerated a high level of local autonomy).

the eldest son of Philip, Prince of Asturias Don Carlos, was the heir to the Spanish kingdoms and empire, and the Italians possessions.


Marrying a deceased wife's sister was certainly illegal in England later on (on the theological grounds that as marriage makes husband & wife "one flesh" it makes the wife's sister a sister of the husband too, and his later marriage to her therefore incestuous...), and although I'm unsure about the situation in Tudor times I suspect that the same rule would have applied back then... although possibly, if & when the country was still legally Roman Catholic, a papal dispensation might have allowed such a match.
*<checks>*
Legally iffy, but sometimes managed, prior to 1835; completely illegal [except for tolerances of such marriages that had already occurred] 1835-1907; legal from the passage of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act in 1907... but the article that I read only mentions the Anglican rules, not the Roman Catholic ones.

A marriage between Philip and Elizabeth would instead have been possible.
The couple would not have married under the rules of the Church of England (which with a progeny from Mary and Philip would have no more reason to exist because England would return fully Catholic - No Act of Supremacy 1558, Act of Uniformity 1558, etc...), but under the canon law of the Catholic Church. This type of marriage required a dispensation from the local bishop; otherwise the marriage union was invalid. Since both Philip and Elizabeth were members of reigning houses the marriage dispensation had to come from the Pope himself (in order that a monarch could not force a dispensation from a bishop who was his own subject). As such, their marriage was absolutely valid according to the canon law of the Catholic Church and according to the civil law.
But Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and this union was deemed illegitimate by English Catholics who did not recognise Henry's divorce.
For many years Philip maintained peace with England, and even defended Elizabeth from the Pope's threat of excommunication (only in the 1570 Pope Pius V declared Elizabeth to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicating any that obeyed her orders, with the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis).
This was a measure taken to preserve a European balance of power.
Elizabeth, instead, foolishly and impulsively, has allied herself with the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands, began a policy of piracy against Spanish trade, threatened to plunder the great Spanish treasure ships coming from the new world and she went so far as to attack the Spanish ports. The last straw was the Treaty of Nonsuch signed by Elizabeth in 1585 – promising troops and supplies to the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands: an act of war by England against Spain.


Wouldn´t her religion be a problem? Spain was fiercely anti-protestant and there is no way Elisabeth would become a Catholic, as that would mean that she would declare herself an illegitimate daughter of Henry 8.

I remain amazed at how Wikipedia recalls with precision the List of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation and the about 290 cases of Protestants executed under Mary (even Unknown men and Unknown women!), and instead recalls so confused the List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation between 1534 and 1680, mostly those who were later declared saints by the Catholic Church, but forgetting the simple people!
If you ask a student, even at university level, what do come to mind to him, expressions like "Reform" and "Counter-Reformation", nine times out of ten, I believe, will talk about the fires of the Inquisition, the Index of banned books, in short, the various manifestations of intolerance of Catholics against Protestants.
And if you ask at the same student who knows what the civil and religious life in England in the sixteenth century, and especially during the reign of the "great" Elizabeth, nine times out of ten he will speak in glowing terms of the English liberty, of the English tolerance, of the wonderful climate of respect for the opinions of others that characterized the "lucky" country, while in the rest of Europe, and especially in the Catholics countries, the executioner, the jailer and tormentor in charge of torture, worked tirelessly to trample on the sacred right of each human being to follow the religion and philosophical views that feels true.
Will be quoted, then, the persecution of the Puritans, which results in the historic journey of the "Mayflower"; but this is a fact, moreover, necessary to the foundation of another myth characteristic of modern historiography: the fact that the spirit of freedom was in the chromosomes of the Pilgrim Fathers, and, then, through them, in the future Unites States of America, which, as everyone knows, are the most mature and complete democracy in the world.
Why, having governed for five years in the sense anti-Protestant, the Queen Mary Tudor was called, and then remained forever, "Bloody Mary", while, for sending to the gallows a large number of Catholics during the forty-five years of her reign, Elizabeth is known to history as "the great"?
The Catholics, in the England of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, were subjected to extremely cruel persecution, but the story, of course, is written by the victors and
not from the losers.
The British, people of merchants, have perfectly mastered the art to sell well of the products, including that particular commodity is its public image: and the export of their culture, their way of seeing the world, of their style of life, is still one of the strengths of their commercial and financial imperialism. Our history books continue to convey the "black legend" that the English of the time of Elizabeth have spread towards Catholicism, Spain, Italy, at the same time when they were busy celebrating themselves as heralds of freedom of thought.
The majority of the English people, after Henry VIII had broken with the Church of Rome, it denied to him the annulment of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and proclaimed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, had been for many years faithful to Catholicism; the whole royal operation of the separation from Rome was motivated largely by the desire to plunder the immense property of the Catholic Church (about a fifth of the land of the Kingdom!), what allowed him to heal the state finances, extremely bumpy.
So do the British when they are struggling with THEM debt : they confiscate the wealth of some subject politically inconvenient; they prey on some foreign nation in the name of “white’s man burden”.
Of the confiscation of the immense wealth of the English Church was born a new class of owners who, having been accomplices of the monarchy in perpetrating the crime were linked to it physically and morally; all that remained was one last thing to do, to demonize the defeated opponent: were launched the anti-Catholic laws that raged for centuries, and that reduced the Catholics, inevitably less and less numerous, to the rank of subjects of series B.
Priests and monks were banned from the British Isles: if one of them was discovered in England, was sentenced to death by quartering.
Nevertheless, many Jesuits landed clandestinely in England to keep alive the Catholic faith. They had to live in hiding, but at the same time had to visit the various communities around the country. So they organized a secret network between English Catholics to hide the Jesuits and other priests.
At the head of this organization were the women: because of their social dependence from the husbands, wives and mothers Catholic enjoyed a certain immunity, because they were not able to pay the fines and hardly were imprisoned because of their role in wives had to be of help to their husbands: in religious matters, the priests were spiritual leaders, but for their physical safety, often depended entirely by the women.

At many people do not like to remember that the noble father of the Anglo-Saxon liberalism, the philosopher John Locke, fully approve of discrimination against Catholics, indeed their active persecution, and just as he was composing his A Letter Concerning Toleration.
 
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