On this day in Tudor history, 25 July 1554, on the Feast of St James, Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon, got married at Winchester Cathedral in a ceremony officiated by Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

The thirty-eight-year-old Mary married twenty-seven-year-old Philip of Spain, son of her cousin, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

Let me share a contemporary account of Mary and Philip’s wedding ceremony…