Henry VIII. enjoyed to the full the advantage of an undisputed succession. He restricted the rights of Queens Consort, as his father had ignored the rights of Queens Regnant. A strange Nemesis followed, foretold in the so-called prophecies of Merlin. That these really were talked of, before the events occurred, can be proved by MSS. among the uncalendared papers temp. Henry VIII. Public Record Office. There is in full “the Examination of John Ryan of St. Botolphs, Fruiterer, concerning discourses which he heard at the Bell on Tower Hill, Prophecies of Merlin, that there never again would be King crowned of England after the King’s son Prince Edward, 22nd August, 1538.” James V. of Scotland had sadly said on his death-bed, “The Kingdom came with a lass, and it will go with a lass.” So was it to be in England. The pale sickly youth who succeeded, third of the Tudors, died without wife or child, and on the steps of the throne stood four royal women, whose lives form the most interesting period of national history. Each of them had a special claim. Mary, pronounced illegitimate by the Protestant party, and by statute of Parliament, inherited through her father’s _will_ alone; Elizabeth, pronounced illegitimate by the Catholic party, and by a similar statute, stood second in that will; Mary, Queen of Scotland and of France, showed flawless descent from Margaret, the elder sister of Henry VIII.; and Lady Jane Grey proved like flawless descent from Mary, Henry’s younger sister. Henry, a despot even “by his dead hand,” had, failing Edward, left the crown to Mary, then to Elizabeth, then to Lady Jane Grey. Edward VI., not a minor by the laws of England that allowed Government to commence at fourteen years, considered both his sisters illegitimate under his father’s statutes, preferring of the two Elizabeth’s claim. But for the peace of the kingdom he left by _will_ the crown to Lady Jane Grey, ignoring, as his father had done, the prior claims of Mary, Queen of Scotland and of France. The results of the complication are too well known to be here rehearsed. The first act of Mary was to establish her own legitimacy, the honour of her mother, and the power of the Pope; her second was to establish the office of Queen Regnant “by Statute to be so clear that none but the malitious and ignorant could be induced and persuaded unto this Error and Folly to think that her Highness coulde ne should have enjoye and use such like Royal Authoritie ... nor doo ne execute and use all things concerning the Statute (in which only the name of the King was expressed) as the Kinges of this Realme, her most noble Progenitours have heretofore doon, used and exercised” (1 Mar., c. iii.)