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 the realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland.' Its relation to foreign States, and to Scotland among them, formed, as it were, the physical conditions of the life of the England of Elizabeth's reign, and very complex relations they were; and, unless we have a fairly clear comprehension of at least their principal complications, we can no more hope to understand the life of England, than we could understand the life of an animal without knowing something of the atmospheric and other conditions which surround it, and of the part these play in its life. I must repeat too, even at the risk of some tediousness, that in the sixteenth century the religious question was the pivot upon which turned the policy, not of England alone, but of every State in Europe. It is in the light of these facts that we must look at Elizabeth's position, and upon the bearing which her foreign relations had upon it. It is impossible to exaggerate the perils with which she was surrounded: without money, without generals, without trained soldiers, and with her own people divided into two bitter religious factions, to one of which she was herself bound by the conditions of her birth and history, but to offend either of which was to add the danger of rebellion to that of foreign hostility. The most pressing danger at the moment was that of a conquest by France, and this was enormously enhanced by the intimate alliance existing between France and Scotland. Elizabeth's relations with Mary were, from the nature of the case, extremely delicate. Not only was Mary the daughter of a French princess, and the wife of a king of France, but she was also the next heir to the throne of England itself. Moreover, this relation, difficult enough in itself, was complicated by the fact that