In this she was most ably assisted by a number of men who
gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a
period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail
in one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the
bibliography at the end of this volume.
Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her
throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary,
of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a
Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and
daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised
the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night), was the mother of
a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king
of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend
to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack
of political ability and the violent methods which she employed
to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scotland
and forced Mary to take refuge on English territory. For
eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever and
a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who
was at last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted councilors
``to cutte off the Scottish Queen's heade.''
The head was duly ``cutte off'' in the year 1587 and caused
a war with Spain. But the combined navies of England and
Holland defeated Philip's Invincible Armada, as we have already
seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy the
power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a
profitable business adventure.
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