Catholic connections and faith. She was very plain in person, and
unprepossessing in manners. She was, however, intelligent and shrewd,
and was governed by calculations and policy in all that she did. The
people by whom she was surrounded admired her talents and feared her
power, but nobody loved her. She had many good qualities as a
monarch, but none considered as a woman.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.]

Elizabeth was somewhat envious of her cousin Mary's beauty, and of her
being such an object of interest and affection to all who knew her.
But she had a far more serious and permanent cause of alienation from
her than personal envy. It was this: Elizabeth's father, King Henry
VIII., had, in succession, several wives, and there had been a
question raised about the legality of his marriage with Elizabeth's
mother. Parliament decided at one time that this marriage was not
valid; at another time, subsequently, they decided that it was.
This difference in the two decisions was not owing so much to a
change of sentiment in the persons who voted, as to a change in the
ascendency of the parties by which the decision was controlled. If the
marriage were valid, then Elizabeth was entitled to the English crown.
If it were not valid, then she was not entitled to it: it belonged to
the next heir. Now it happened that Mary Queen of Scots was the next
heir. Her grandmother on the father's side was an English princess,
and through her Mary had a just title to the crown, if Queen
Elizabeth's title was annulled.

Now, while Mary was in France, during the lifetime of King Henry,
Francis's father, he and the members of the family of Guise advanced
Mary's claim to the British crown, and denied that of Elizabeth. They
made a coat of arms, in which the arms of France, and Scotland, and
England were combined, and had it engraved on Mary's silver plate. On
one great occasion, they had this symbol displayed conspicuously over
the gateway of a town where Mary was making a public entry. The
English embassador, who was present, made this, and the other acts of
the same kind, known to Elizabeth, and she was greatly incensed at
them. She considered Mary as plotting treasonably against her power,
and began to contrive plans to circumvent and thwart her.

Nor was Elizabeth wholly unreasonable in this. Mary, though
personally a gentle and peaceful woman, yet in her teens, was very
formidable to Elizabeth as an opposing claimant of t