The first was the King of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, daughter of James the Fifth, son of Princess Margaret of England, eldest daughter of Henry the Seventh. The second was the Lady Arbella Stuart, the only child of Lord Charles Stuart, son of Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of the same Princess Margaret. The third was Edward Seymour, son of Lady Katherine Grey, daughter of Lady Frances Brandon, eldest daughter of Princess Mary, youngest daughter of Henry the Seventh. The fourth was Lady Anne Stanley, eldest daughter of Ferdinand Earl of Derby, son of Lady Margaret Clifford, only daughter of Lady Eleanor Brandon, second daughter of the same Princess Mary. And the fifth was Sir Robert Basset of Umberleigh, son of Sir Arthur Basset, son of Lady Frances Plantagenet, eldest daughter of Arthur Lord Lisle, son of Edward the Fourth. Of these five, the one who would have inherited the Crown, under the will of Henry the Eighth, was unquestionably Edward Seymour; and, Mary and Elizabeth being both now dead, the reversion fell to him also under that of Edward the Sixth. But, strange to say, he was not a formidable opponent of James of Scotland. Queen Elizabeth had been so deeply offended with his mother (Lady Katherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane) for making a love-match without her royal licence, that she had immured both bride and bridegroom in the Tower for years. Perhaps the prestige of Elizabeth's will remained potent, even after Elizabeth was dead; perhaps Edward Seymour had no wish to occupy such a thorny seat as the throne of England. Neither he nor Lady Anne Stanley set up the faintest claim to the succession; though Seymour, at least, might have done so with a decided show of justice, as the law of succession then stood. By the two royal wills, King James of Scotland, and his cousin, Lady Arbella Stuart, were entirely dispossessed; their claim had to be made under the law as it had stood unaltered by the will of Henry the Eighth. But there was one prior question, which, had it been settled in the affirmative, would have finally disposed of all these four claims at once. If the contract between Edward the Fourth and Elizabeth Lucy were to be regarded as a legal marriage, then there could be no doubt who was the true heir. Better than any claim of Stuart or Tudor, of Seymour or Stanley, was then that of the Devonshire knight, Sir Robert Basset. For fifteen hundred years, a contract had been held as legal marriage. The vast estates of the Plantagenets of Kent had passed to the Holands on the validity of a contract no better, and perhaps worse, than that of Elizabeth Lucy. [Note 2.] Why was this contract to be set aside?