The Tudors were a notoriously dysfunctional family who cared more about political power and the privileges of the ruling class than anything else.
It is debatable whether Henry VIII or Mary was the worst. My vote would go to Henry because 70,000 Englishmen (out of a population of 2.5 million) were executed for mostly petty crimes and perceived acts of treason during his reign. Mary had more people butchered on an annualized base, but her reign was mercifully short.
England controlled vast territories in present day France before the Tudor clan came to power. By the time the Grim Reaper came for Mary, they had nothing and their very survival as a nation was in peril. Religion meant nothing to the Tudors except a tool to achieve and hold political power.
It is precisely these type of experiences and the subsequent events which they spawned (the English Civil War, the misrule by the Stuart clan, the Salem Witch trials, etc.) which led our founding fathers to forbid the establishment of any state religion on the national level.
A lot of Catholic haters like to parade out these type of atrocities as proof Catholicism is false. All they really do is prove that any religion cooped by the state and political tyrants can be perverted to false ends. In the case of the martyrdom of Tyndale, they can't even involve the Catholic Church by proxy. But that doesn't fit their agenda. So the actual facts are simply ignored.
It is ironic that some people still worship King James and his Bible, when James himself was an immoral homosexual and quite insane:
A physical weakling, as an adolescent James had shown himself to be a coward, who liked only to hunt, to read (which he did, prodigiously) and to talk. To protect himself he wore thick quilted doublets, so padded that they provided a kind of armor against any assassin who might attack him with a knife. When he revealed a sexual preference for men, falling in love with his cousin Esmé Stewart and elevating him to a position of authority on the royal council, some of his nobles kidnapped James and held him captive, banishing Stewart and controlling James’s every move. After nearly a year James escaped, but continued to resent his jailers; after he began to rule on his own behalf, at seventeen, he made it a priority to bring the turbulent Scots nobles under control.
As he aged James indulged his preference for handsome men, living apart from his wife. His doting fondness was part paternal, part erotic; he called his favorite George Villiers “sweet child and wife” and referred to himself as “your dear dad and husband.” But to his courtiers, the sight of the aging, paunchy, balding monarch, who according to one court observer had a tendency to drool, leaning on his paramours was utterly repellant.
The first of the king’s minions was Robert Carr, Groom of the Bedchamber, who the king elevated to earl of Somerset and appointed Lord Chamberlain. After six years of favors and royal gifts Carr was brought low, accused of murder and sent away from court. The second and greatest royal favorite, the extraordinarily handsome George Villiers, rose from cupbearer to Gentleman of the Bedchamber and ultimately to Earl of Buckingham.
“I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else,” James announced to his councilors, “and more than you who are here assembled.” He compared his love for the earl to Jesus’s affection for the “beloved disciple” John. “Jesus Christ did the same,” the king said, “and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George.”
With such pronouncements King James seemed to reach a new level of outrage, especially when he compounded his offense, in the view of many, by heaping Buckingham with costly jewels, lands, and lucrative offices.
-Royal Panoply, Brief Lives Of The English Monarchs
Carrolly Erickson, History Book Club