But although so much had been done, the marriage of Elizabeth and Arran was as far off as ever. In their policy of binding the nations together by a closer tie, Cecil in England and Maitland in Scotland had a great mass of public opinion to support them, especially on the Protestant side.[33] The Scottish Estates were so eager for the Union of the Crowns that they would not listen to Maitland, who, though strongly in favour of the marriage, foresaw difficulties which could be only overcome by waiting; and it was resolved that commissioners should at once be sent to lay the wishes of the Estates before Elizabeth.[34] If Mary of Scotland died without issue, Arran was, after his father, the next heir to the Crown; but it can scarcely be doubted that the Lords of the Congregation did not contemplate waiting for the extinction of the Stuart line. Mary had not been in Scotland since her childhood. She was Queen of France; and, in all probability, she would remain in France for the rest of her life. So long as Mary of Guise was Regent, so long as Frenchmen governed Scotland, so long as Scotland, like France, adhered to the Catholic Faith, the power of the house of Stuart was hardly, if at all, impaired by the absence of the queen. But now all this was at an end. Mary of Guise was dead. An English army had expelled the soldiers of France. The government of Scotland was in the hands of Scotsmen. The Scottish nation was no longer Catholic. To celebrate the mass was an offence against the law; and the Scottish clergy were using the Prayer-book of Edward the Sixth. Thus it was a mere form of words to call Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland as well as of France. Of real power she no longer possessed a vestige; and it is easy to see that in the first bloom of the Scottish Reformation, with Knox in full vigour, and with the whole country in revolt against the Romish priesthood, the marriage of Arran would very likely have been followed by the triumph of the Protestant Hamiltons over the Catholic Stuarts, and the union of the two nations, with one crown, and probably with one form of Church government. Perhaps in the history of great events we too seldom remember that kings and queens are, after all, merely men and women. Here was a crisis at which the Protestants of England and Scotland were unanimous in wishing the Defender of their Faith to enter upon a contract, by means of which she would accomplish what had been one of the great ends of English policy from the days of Edward the First to those of Henry the Eighth. But that contract was one which concerned her as a woman rather than as a queen; and she knew that the ceremony which might put the Crown of Scotland within reach of the Queen of England would, while uniting the kingdoms, separate Elizabeth Tudor from Robert Dudley. The Protestants of England knew this, and dread of the Dudley marriage, as well as their anxiety to cement the alliance with Scotland, made them support the pretensions of Arran.