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 underhand help from England, kept up a civil war for thirty years. All this weakened the two great Catholic powers, and made Elizabeth stand out more and more as the champion of European Protestantism.

On the whole, however, her reign is mainly occupied with two long duels, that with Mary, Queen of Scots, 1560-87, and that with the King of Spain, which began to be severe about 1570 and lasted till her death.

The beautiful Mary Stuart returned, a widowed Queen, to Scotland in 1561 to find that Elizabeth had already helped the Scottish nobles to overthrow the French power and the Catholic Church at one blow. The new Church that was then set up in Scotland was called the ‘Presbyterian’, from its government by ‘presbyters’ or elders instead of bishops, and was far more violently Protestant than ours. This is important to remember because, to those English Puritans who wanted to abolish bishops and the Prayer Book in our own Church, the example of Scotland was always present. Mary was a clever woman, but quite without principles, and far more reckless than her English rival. She honestly believed herself to be rightful Queen of England, but she found it hard work to keep her own crown, and in six years she had lost it. For she was always an object of suspicion to the Scottish nobles, both as a Catholic and as a Frenchwoman at heart. She married her cousin, Lord Darnley, in 1565, and bore him a son, who afterwards, as James I, united the two crowns of Britain. Then, in 1567, Mary allowed her husband to be murdered and married his murderer, the Earl of Bothwell. Scotland rose in wrath, deposed and imprisoned her, crowned her baby son, and had him brought up as a Protestant king. A year later Mary