A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689. Gardiner Samuel Rawson

of Lethington sarcastically, when he heard that the clergy claimed to govern the Church and own its property in the place of the bishops, "we may all bear the barrow now to build the house of the Lord." Knox organised the Church on a democratic and Presbyterian basis with Church Courts composed of the minister and lay elders in every parish, with representative Presbyteries in every group of parishes, and with a representative General Assembly for all Scotland. Like a prophet of old, Knox bitterly denounced those who laid a finger on the Church's discipline. The nobles let him do as he would as far as religion was concerned, but they insisted on retaining nominal bishops, not to rule the Church, but to hold the Church lands and pass the rents over to themselves.

      10. Mary and Elizabeth. 1561.– In August 1561 Mary landed in Scotland, having come by sea because Elizabeth refused to allow her to pass through England unless she would renounce her claim to the English crown. Mary would perhaps have yielded if Elizabeth would have named her as her successor. Elizabeth would do nothing of the kind. She had a special dislike to fixing on any one as her successor. About this time she threw into prison Lady Catherine Grey for committing the offence of marrying without her leave. Lady Catherine was the next sister of Lady Jane Grey, and therefore Elizabeth's heir if the will of Henry VIII. in favour of the Suffolk line (see p. 410) was to be held binding. Elizabeth no doubt had a political object in showing no favour to either of her expectant heirs. By encouraging Catherine's hopes she would drive her Catholic subjects to desperation. By encouraging Mary's she would drive her Protestant subjects to desperation. Yet there was also strong personal feeling to account for her conduct. She was resolved never to marry, however much her resolution might cost her. Yet she too was a very woman, hungry for manly companionship and care, and, though a politician to the core, was saddened and soured by the suppression of her womanly nature. To give herself a husband was to give herself a master, yet she dallied with the offers made to her, surely not from political craft alone. The thought of marriage, abhorrent to her brain, was pleasant to her heart, and she could not lightly speak the positive word of rejection. Even now, in the vain thought that she might rule a subject, even if she became his wife, she was toying with Lord Robert Dudley, the handsome and worthless son of the base Northumberland. So far did she carry her flirtations that tales against her fair fame were spread abroad, but marry him she never did. Her treatment of the Lady Catherine was doubtless caused far less by her fear of the claims of the Suffolk line than by her reluctance to think of one so near to her as a happy wife, and as years grew upon her she bore hardly on those around her who refused to live in that state of maidenhood which she had inflicted on herself.

      11. The French War. 1562-1564.– Elizabeth and Mary were not merely personal rivals. The deadly struggle on which they had entered was a European one, and the success or failure of the Catholic or the Protestant cause in some Continental country might determine the future history of Britain. In 1562 a civil war broke out between the French Protestants – or Huguenots,14 as they were usually called in France – and their Catholic fellow-subjects. The leaders of the Huguenots obtained Elizabeth's aid by offering her Havre, which she hoped to exchange for Calais. The Huguenots were, however, defeated at the battle of Dreux, though Guise, who commanded the Catholics, was in the moment of victory shot dead by an assassin. In 1563 peace was patched up for a time between the French parties, but Elizabeth refused to surrender Havre, till a plague broke out amongst the English garrison, and drove the scanty remnants of it back to England. In 1564 Elizabeth was forced to make peace without recovering Calais. The war thus ended was the only one in which she ever took part except when absolutely no alternative was left to her.