Philip first proposed matrimony, but Elizabeth was very careful not to
give herself, or England, such a master. Then when the queen declared
herself a Protestant and showed no inclination to assist Philip in any
of his enterprises, the Spanish king proceeded to plot against her
throne. He subsidized Roman Catholic priests, especially Jesuits, who
violated the laws of the land. He stirred up sedition and even went so
far as to plan Elizabeth's assassination. Many conspiracies against the
English queen centered in the person of the ill-starred Mary Stuart,
[Footnote: Mary Stuart (1542-1587).] queen of Scotland, who was
next in line of succession to the English throne and withal a Catholic.
[Sidenote: Mary Stuart]
Descended from the Stuart kings of Scotland and from Henry VII of
England, related to the powerful family of Guise in France, Mary had
been brought up at the French court and married to the short-lived
French king, Francis II. Upon the death of the latter she returned in
1561 to Scotland, a young woman of but eighteen years, only to find
that the government had fallen victim to the prevalent factional fights
among the Scotch nobles and that in the preceding year the parliament
had solemnly adopted a Calvinistic form of Protestantism.
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