a petition that she marry, she answered: "For me it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin."
The Commons who uttered the petition must have felt a premonition of what would actually take place if there were no heir of Elizabeth's body. The next heir to the throne was Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a zealous Catholic, and England had just fully established its religious independence. It is true that Mary's son and heir, James, who afterward became King of England, as well as of Scotland, was a Protestant, but the loyalty of the adhesion of his house to the new confession might well have been distrusted. There was no promise of happiness for England in the accession of a prince or princess of this house to its throne.
But the Stuarts came—and the troubles of England began in real
