But Elizabeth, to waste time, offered Mary the hand of Lord Robert Dudley (Leicester), and, strange as it appears, Mary would probably have accepted him, as late as 1565, for Elizabeth let it be understood that to marry a Catholic prince would be the signal for war, while Mary hoped that, if she accepted Elizabeth's favourite, Dudley, she would be acknowledged as Elizabeth's heiress.

Mary was young, and showed little knowledge of the nature of woman.
In 1563 came the affair of Chatelard, a French minor poet, a Huguenot apparently, who, whether in mere fatuity or to discredit Mary, hid himself under her bed at Holyrood, and again at Burntisland.

Mary had listened to his rhymes, had danced with him, and smiled on him, but Chatelard went too far.

He was decapitated in the market street of St Andrews (Feb.

22, 1563).