In every parliament of Elizabeth the House of Commons was zealously attached to the protestant interest. This, as well as an apprehension of disturbance from a contested succession, led to those importunate solicitations that she would choose a husband, which she so artfully evaded. A determination so contrary to her apparent interest, and to the earnest desire of her people, may give some countenance to the surmises of the time, that she was restrained from marriage by a secret consciousness that it was unlikely to be fruitful.[188] Whether these conjectures were well founded, of which I know no evidence, or whether the risk of experiencing that ingratitude which the husbands of sovereign princesses have often displayed, and of which one glaring example was immediately before her eyes, outweighed in her judgment that of remaining single, or whether she might not even apprehend a more desperate combination of the catholic party at home and abroad, if the birth of any issue from her should shut out their hopes of Mary's succession, it is difficult for us to decide. Though the queen's marriage were the primary object of these addresses, as the most probable means of securing an undisputed heir to the crown, yet she might have satisfied the parliament in some degree by limiting the succession to one certain line. But it seems doubtful whether this would have answered the proposed end. If she had taken a firm resolution against matrimony, which, unless on the supposition already hinted, could hardly be reconciled with a sincere regard for her people's welfare, it might be less dangerous to leave the course of events to regulate her inheritance. Though all parties seem to have conspired in pressing her to some decisive settlement on this subject, it would not have been easy to content the two factions, who looked for a successor to very different quarters.[189] It is evident that any confirmation of the Suffolk title would have been regarded by the Queen of Scots and her numerous partisans as a flagrant injustice, to which they would not submit but by compulsion: and on the other hand, by re-establishing the hereditary line, Elizabeth would have lost her check on one whom she had reason to consider as a rival and competitor, and whose influence was already alarmingly extensive among her subjects.