Closely interwoven with the religious settlement were the questions of the heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy. Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the people and a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race and wholly by her first marriage to Francis II, she would have been most {331} distasteful to the ruling party in England. Elizabeth was therefore desired and finally urged by Parliament to marry. Her refusal to do this has been attributed to some hidden cause, as her love for Leicester or the knowledge that she was incapable of bearing a child. But though neither of these hypotheses can be disproved, neither is necessary to account for her policy. It is true that it would have strengthened her position to have had a child to succeed her; but it would have weakened her personal sway to have had a husband. She wanted to rule as well as to reign. Her many suitors were encouraged just sufficiently to flatter her vanity and to attain her diplomatic ends. First, her brother-in-law Philip sought her hand, and was promptly rejected as a Spanish Catholic. Then, there was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, apparently her favorite in spite of his worthless character, but his rank was not high enough. Then, there were princes of Sweden and Denmark, an Archduke of Austria and two sons of Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began when Elizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote: 1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides. Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make her flirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twice she forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwards consented to hear the petition, she was careful not to call another Parliament for five years. [Sidenote: Financial measures] Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largely owing to the debasement of the currency royal expenditure had risen from L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in the last year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way, and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By the wise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543, the hardest problems were solved. [Sidenote: Underhand war]