Mary had asked Elizabeth's permission to shorten the voyage by passing through England. "That must not be," thought the English queen. "Her presence here would be the signal for all the discontented Catholics in the kingdom to follow her banner." Permission was refused, unless Mary would agree beforehand to give up all claim to the English crown. "I ask but Elizabeth's friendship," said Mary. "I do not trouble her state nor try to win over her subjects, though I do know there be some in her realm that are not unready to hear offers"--but she would not promise to give up her claim to the crown. She was fully as independent as Elizabeth, and she added regretfully, "I grieve that I so far forgot myself as to ask a favor that I needed not. Surely, I may go home into my own realm without her passport or license. I came hither safely, and I may have means to return." Scotland rejoiced that the queen had come, and welcomed her with bonfires and music and speeches of welcome. The Scotch supposed that they were pleasing her, but Mary wrote to her friends:-- "In Edinburgh when I would have slept, five or six hundred ragamuffins saluted me with wretched fiddles and little rebecks, and then they sang psalms loudly and discordantly; but one must have patience." No one can help feeling sympathy with the lonely girl of nineteen who had left all that she loved to come and rule over a country that seemed to her almost barbarous in contrast with her beloved France. She was a Catholic; most of her people were Protestants. She won many friends and admirers, but she never gained the confidence and steady affection of her people that made Elizabeth strong. The queen and her subjects grew further apart. Mary had been brought up to believe that the marriage of Anne Boleyn was not lawful, and that therefore she herself and not Elizabeth was the rightful queen of England. The French king had taught her to sign herself "Queen of Scotland and England." Now that she had returned to Scotland, she dropped the latter part of the title, but demanded that Elizabeth should declare her heir to the throne, as she certainly was by all laws of the hereditary descent of the crown. Elizabeth firmly refused. It was probable that Mary would marry, and it was a matter of importance to Elizabeth that the husband should not be one who could strengthen the Scotch claim to the throne. Mary consulted Elizabeth about one or two of her suitors, and suddenly the English queen surprised all Europe by offering to Mary the unwilling hand of her own favorite, the Earl of Leicester, and hinted, though in her usual equivocal fashion, that if Mary would marry the earl, she would be recognized as the next heir to the crown. "I would marry Robin myself," declared the queen to Mary's commissioner, Sir James Melville, "save that I am determined to wed no man."