When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in 1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all unheard by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling foundations upon which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of Europe had rested.  The sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of disintegration and reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage between old political associates were opened, new affinities were formed, and the international balance re-adjusted.

In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual guarantee against England’s actively aiding its traditional ally, the ruler of Spain and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was for the latter country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with Scotland, by means of which English force might be diverted at any time.  The existence of the Scottish “back door” to England, with the ever probable enemy behind it, had long been a check upon English power, and a humiliation to English kings in their efforts to hold the balance between the Continental rivals.  But with the spread of Lutheranism in Germany and Henry VIII.’s defiance of the Papacy, the Catholic powers, drawn together in the face of common danger, found a fresh bond of union in their orthodoxy which partially superseded old rivalries.

In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French influence, became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally necessary to preserve England’s independence.

Henry VIII.’s policy towards Scotland had been that of divide et impera, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him.  The rout of the Scots at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V., leaving his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at length to place Scotland in England’s power.  The murder of Cardinal Beaton, the bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with Henry’s sister were all subsequent moves in the same game.  Mary was betrothed in her cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet anchor for centuries had been the “auld alliance” with the Scots, appeared to be helpless against a coalition of England and the emperor.

Thenceforward, England’s main object was to keep a tight grip upon Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and subsequently the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of Mary Stuart, to free Scotland from English influence.  The marriage juggle of Elizabeth was largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if the fortuitous adjustment of her qualities kept England Protestant, and France wavering for all those critical years, if she secured the inactivity of Spain, the resistance of Protestant Holland, and the freedom of navigation by her skilful statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart was a hardly less powerful factor in the final triumph of England by reason of certain defects in her character, the consequences of which are dealt with in this book.