What shaped Elizabeth's course in fact was hard necessity. She found herself at war with France and Scotland, and her throne threatened by the claim of the girl who linked the two countries, the claim of Mary Stuart, at once Queen of Scotland and wife of the Dauphin Francis. On Elizabeth's accession Mary and Francis assumed by the French king's order the arms and style of English sovereigns: and if war continued it was clear that their pretensions would be backed by Henry's forces as well as by the efforts of the Scots. Against such a danger Philip of Spain was Elizabeth's only ally. Philip's policy was at this time a purely conservative one. The vast schemes of ambition which had so often knit both Pope and Protestants, Germany and France, against his father were set aside by the young king. His position indeed was very different from that of Charles the Fifth. He was not Emperor. He had little weight in Germany. Even in Italy his influence was less than his father's. He had lost with Mary's death the crown of England. His most valuable possessions outside Spain, the provinces of the Netherlands, were disaffected to a foreign rule. All the king therefore aimed at was to keep his own. But the Netherlands were hard to keep: and with France mistress of England as of Scotland, and so mistress of the Channel, to keep them would be impossible. Sheer necessity forbade Philip to suffer the union of the three crowns of the west on the head of a French king; and the French marriage of Mary Stuart pledged him to oppose her pretensions and support Elizabeth's throne. For a moment he even dreamed of meeting the union of France with Scotland by that union of England with Spain which had been seen under Mary. He offered Elizabeth his hand. The match was a more natural one than Philip's union with her sister, for the young king's age was not far from her own. The offer however was courteously put aside, for Elizabeth had no purpose of lending England to the ambition of Spain, nor was it possible for her to repeat her sister's unpopular experiment. But Philip remained firm in his support of her throne. He secured for her the allegiance of the Catholics within her realm, who looked to him as their friend while they distrusted France as an ally of heretics. His envoys supported her cause in the negotiations at Cateau-Cambresis; he suffered her to borrow money and provide herself with arms in his provinces of the Netherlands. At such a crisis Elizabeth could not afford to alienate Philip by changes which would roughly dispel his hopes of retaining her within the bounds of Catholicism. [Sidenote: Elizabeth and the Papacy.]