Elizabeth was only three years old when her mother’s fall removed her from the line of the succession, and with the strange vicissitudes of her early girlhood we have nothing here to do. When, however, in 1542, the death of James V. of Scotland and the almost simultaneous birth of his daughter Mary seemed to bring nearer to its consummation Henry’s idea of a union of the two crowns, he proposed to marry the baby Queen of Scots to his own infant son and at the same time offered the hand of Elizabeth, who was then nine years old, to the Earl of Arran, head of the house of Hamilton, the next heir to the Scottish crown. The man was nearly an idiot and failed to see the advantages of such a connection, the consequence being that French intrigue and French money, backed up by the influence of the Queen Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, were victorious; and Henry was thwarted of his desire. The fact that he had been checkmated by the French king in this matter rankled in his breast and caused that foolish and profitless war, in alliance with the Emperor, against France, which is principally remembered for the siege and capture and subsequent loss of Boulogne. Charles V. tried very hard to get his cousin, Mary Tudor, Henry’s elder daughter, acknowledged as legitimate, but although this was not done in so many words, both she and her sister Elizabeth were restored to their respective places in the line of succession; and whilst the treaty of alliance between the two sovereigns was under discussion a suggestion was made that Charles’ son, Philip of Spain, then a lad of seventeen, should be betrothed to Elizabeth, who was eleven. It was probably never meant to be anything but a compliment, and certainly would not have been seriously entertained by the Emperor, but in any case the suggestion was quietly dropped and Spanish and English interests rapidly drifted apart again. In January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, leaving the succession to his two daughters in tail after his child-son Edward VI. and his heirs. The Queen Dowager, Catharine Parr, immediately married Sir Thomas Seymour, brother of the Protector Somerset, and uncle of the little King. To their care was confided Princess Elizabeth, then a girl of fourteen, who resided principally in the Queen’s dower houses at Chelsea and Hanworth, and it was at this critical period of her life that her personal interest in her love affairs may be said to have commenced.