ion, but only to narrate
the facts, and leave each reader to come to his own conclusions.

The foundation of the long and dreadful quarrel between these royal
cousins was, as has been already remarked, their consanguinity, which
made them both competitors for the same throne; and as that throne was,
in some respects, the highest and most powerful in the world, it is not
surprising that two such ambitious women should be eager and persevering
in their contest for it. By turning to the genealogical table on page
68, where a view is presented of the royal family of England in the time
of Elizabeth, the reader will see once more what was the precise
relationship which the two queens bore to each other and to the
succession. By this table it is very evident that Elizabeth was the true
inheritor of the crown, provided it were admitted that she was the
lawful daughter and heir of King Henry the Eighth, and this depended on
the question of the validity of her father's marriage with his first
wife, Catharine of Aragon; for, as has been before said, he was married
to Anne Boleyn before obtaining any thing like a divorce from Catharine;
consequently, the marriage with Elizabeth's mother could not be legally
valid, unless that with Catharine had been void _from the beginning_.
The friends of Mary Queen of Scots maintained that it was not thus
void, and that, consequently, the marriage with Anne Boleyn was null;
that Elizabeth, therefore, the descendant of the marriage, was not,
legally and technically, a daughter of Henry the Eighth, and,
consequently, not entitled to inherit his crown; and that the crown, of
right, ought to descend to the next heir, that is, to Mary Queen of
Scots herself.

Queen Elizabeth's friends and partisans maintained, on the other hand,
that the marriage of King Henry with Catharine was null and void from
the beginning, because Catharine had been before the wife of his
brother. The circumstances of this marriage were very curious and
peculiar. It was his father's work, and not his own. His father was King
Henry the Seventh. Henry the Seventh had several children, and among
them were his two oldest sons, Arthur and Henry. When Arthur was about
sixteen years old, his father, being very much in want of money,
conceived the plan of replenishing his coffers by marrying his son to a
rich wife. He accordingly contracted a marriage between him and
Catharine of Aragon, Catharine's father agreeing to pay him two hun