Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness and much charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character or discretion equaled her intellect and beauty.

But, thwarted, nagged and bullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared and whose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in the pursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice and crime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies.
{365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, was marked out for her by circumstances.

Scotland was to her but the stepping-stone to the throne of England.

As Elizabeth's next heir she might become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign, or as the head of a Catholic rebellion.

At first she prudently decided to wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary of state Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent on keeping friends with England.