but stand stoutly in your truth?” asked Mary sternly. “I pray God it may so fall out.” “If it doth not,” replied the Princess, “I request neither favour nor pardon at your Majesty’s hand.” The Queen drily suggested that her sister would probably say that she had been unjustly punished, but Elizabeth deftly turned the point by a fervent reiteration of her dutifulness and loyalty, and Mary, apparently somewhat mollified, dismissed her sister not unamiably. Foxe, who describes the scene,[93] says that it was believed that Philip listened behind the arras to what passed at the interview, and “that he showed himself a very friend in that matter.” Certain it is that on several occasions after Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne he claimed her gratitude or consideration for having on one occasion rescued her from grave peril, and it is probable that this may have been the occasion referred to. There were many reasons beyond the temporary one already mentioned that explain Philip’s solicitude for Elizabeth’s life. Failing Elizabeth, and any possible issue of the Queen, the next heir to the English throne by natural law was the young Queen of Scots, practically a French princess married to the heir of France. Better a thousand times for Philip and his House that England should be ruled even by a heretic friendly to him than by the staunchest Catholic under the control of the hereditary enemy of the House of Habsburg. It must have been clear to him, moreover, by this time that the Reformation in England had not been crushed by Mary’s advent, and that a large proportion of the people regarded France as a more desirable friend than Spain. Nor could he shut his eyes to Elizabeth’s popularity, and to the fact that the enemies of his faith and his House looked to the young Princess as their head. So sagacious a politician would naturally endeavour to gain the goodwill, even the disposal in marriage, of a person so potentially powerful as his young sister-in-law, who, in any case, was likely to outlive his wife, and might if well handled perpetuate the hold of Spain upon England, now depending upon so tenuous a thread.