_Grave Difficulties as to the Right of Succession—Statement of the Various Claims—Duke of Northumberland’s Selfish Scheme—Its Failure—His Arrest and Execution—Lady Jane Grey—Triumph of Mary—Her Coronation—Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Rebellion—Execution of Lady Jane and her Husband—Execution of Duke of Suffolk and Sir Thomas Wyatt—Accusation against the Princess Elizabeth—Her Imprisonment and Liberation—Death of Mary and Accession of Elizabeth—Her Coronation—Religious Troubles—Lord and Lady Hertford—Plots in Favour of the Queen of Scots—Hopes of the King of Spain—Hatred of Spain in the English Nation—Execution of the Duke of Norfolk, the First for Fourteen Years—Fresh Prisoners owing to the Jesuit Activity against the Queen—Execution of the Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay, and Results—Sir Walter Raleigh’s Imprisonment and Liberation—Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex—His Prosperity, Folly, Downfall—Death of the Queen._ There had been no doubt about the succession when Henry VIII died. Jane Seymour, the mother of Edward, was Henry’s lawful wife beyond question, for Queens Katharine and Anne were both dead when he married Jane. But on the death of Edward the matter looked very complicated in many eyes. Let us take the possible claimants in order. First, there were the two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who had both been declared illegitimate on the ground that their mothers had never been lawful wives. King Henry, it is true, in his later years, had received them as his daughters, and as possible heirs, though the Statute disqualifying them had not been repealed. Next, Henry VII had left two daughters. The elder, Margaret, married James IV of Scotland, who was killed at Flodden. His son, James V, was father of Mary Queen of Scots, but she was excluded from right of succession by the Alien Act, having been born on a foreign soil. But further, Margaret, within a year of King James’s death, had married the Earl of Angus, and a wretched marriage it was. He had a wife already, but a papal brief decreed that, as she had married in good faith, her child Margaret was legitimate.