some as notable things may be wrought by us women, as by our predecessors have been done before. Let us seek this honour against some other, rather than fall to debate amongst ourselves."[81] Mary, however, was by this time convinced of Elizabeth's want of sincerity, and formed, therefore, a matrimonial plan of her own, which, she flattered herself, would be considered judicious by all parties. It will be recollected, that, during the troubles which ensued soon after Mary's birth, Matthew, Earl of Lennox, having drawn upon himself the suspicion, both of the Protestant and Catholic parties in Scotland, retired into England, where Henry VIII. gave him his niece in marriage. The Lady Margaret Douglas was daughter of the eldest daughter of Henry VII., the Princess Margaret, who, upon the decease of her first husband James IV., had married the Earl of Angus, of which marriage the Lady Margaret was the issue. Lennox, belonging as he did to the house of Stuart, was himself related to the Royal Family of Scotland; and his wife, failing the children of Henry VIII., and the direct line of succession by her mother's first husband James IV., in which line Mary stood, was the legal heir to the crown of England. The first child of this marriage died in infancy. The second, afterwards known as Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was born in 1546, and was, consequently, about four years younger than Mary. This disparity in point of years, though unfortunate in another point of view, was not such as to preclude the possibility of an alliance between two persons, in whose veins flowed so much of the blood of the Stuarts and the Tudors. Henry VIII. had, along with his niece, bestowed upon Lennox English lands, from which he derived a yearly revenue of fifteen hundred marks. His own estates in Scotland were forfeited, so that he thus came to be considered more an English than a Scottish subject. He had long, however, nourished the secret hope of restoring his fortunes in his native land. His wife, who was a woman of an ambitious and intriguing spirit, induced him, at an early period, to educate his son with a view to his aspiring to the hand of the Scottish Queen. On the death of Francis II. she went herself to Paris, for the purpose of ingratiating herself with Mary, and securing a favourable opinion for Darnley. Mary, probably, gave her some hope that she might, at a future date, take her proposals into serious consideration; for it appears, by some papers still preserved in the British Museum, that few rejoiced more sincerely at the Queen's safe arrival in Scotland, than Lady Lennox. She is said to have fallen on her knees, and, with uplifted hands, thanked God that the Scottish queen had escaped the English ships. For this piece of piety, and to show her the necessity of taking less interest in the affairs of Elizabeth's rival, Cecil sent Lady Lennox to prison for some months.