live, and the King had no other children, a civil war was inevitable.
At present such a difficulty would be disposed of by an immediate and
simple reference to the collateral branches of the royal family; the
crown would descend with even more facility than the property of an
intestate to the next of kin. At that time, if the rule had been
recognized, it would only have increased the difficulty, for the next
heir in blood was James of Scotland; and gravely as statesmen desired
the union of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the
very stones in London streets, it was said, would rise up against a
king of Scotland who claimed to enter England as sovereign. Even the
Parliament itself declared in formal language that they would resist
any attempt on the part of the Scotch king 'to the uttermost of their
power.'"

There can be no doubt that Mr. Froude has made out his case, and that
"the predominating terror," not only of English statesmen, but of the
English people and their King, was a war of succession. If we were not
convinced by what the historian says, we should only have to look over
the reign of Elizabeth, and observe how anxious the statesmen of that
time were to have the succession question settled, and how singular was
the effect of that question's existence and overshadowing importance on
the conduct of the Great Queen. The desire that she should marry, and
the pertinacity with which she was urged to abandon her maiden state by
Parliament, which strike us of the nineteenth century as being not
simply indelicate, but utterly gross even in the coarse sixteenth
century, must in fairness be attributed to the fear that prevailed
throughout England that that country might again become the theatre of
a civil conflict as extensive, as bloody, and as destructive of
material prosperity and moral excellence as had been the Wars of the
Roses,--a fear which the existence of the contest between Catholicism