In like manner, the troublous times in which Mary Stuart was called to act her part rendered her own way intricate and uncertain. A devotee of the Catholic faith, she was placed upon the throne of Scotland at the very hour when that country, under the powerful leadership of John Knox, was fast becoming Protestant. This state of affairs made her task as ruler in her own realm sufficiently trying. But her difficulties were increased by the inevitable antagonisms with her great Protestant rival, Elizabeth of England, and through the involved relations of Great Britain with Spain and Catholic Europe generally. These historical puzzles seem always to call for fresh explanation. No less perplexing are the circumstances into which this Queen was drawn by her marital relations and other personal entanglements. Upon all these matters Swinburne sheds light through the medium of a sound critical judgment, in a style no less conspicuous for its fascination than by reason of its illuminative power. Mary (1542-1587), Queen of Scots, daughter of King James V and his wife Mary of Lorraine, was born in December, 1542, a few days before the death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at Solway Moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative on the occasion was an unpopular favorite appointed general in defiance of their ill-will. On the 9th of September following, the ceremony of coronation was duly performed on the infant. A scheme for her betrothal to Edward, Prince of Wales, was defeated by the grasping greed of his father, whose obvious ambition to annex the crown of Scotland at once to that of England aroused instantly the general suspicion and indignation of Scottish patriotism. In 1548 the Queen of six years old was betrothed to the dauphin Francis, and set sail for France, where she arrived August 15th. The society in which the child was thenceforward reared is known to readers of Brantome as well as that of Imperial Rome at its worst is known to readers of Suetonius or Petronius--as well as that of papal Rome at its worst is known to readers of the diary kept by the domestic chaplain of Pope Alexander VI. Only in their pages can a parallel be found to the gay and easy record which reveals, without sign of shame or suspicion of offence, the daily life of a court compared to which the court of King Charles II is as the court of Queen Victoria to the society described by Grammont.