But at last growing impatient, she compromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of the disaffected southerners.
So, while aspiring to three crowns, Mary showed herself incapable of keeping even the one she had.

Not religion but her own crimes and follies caused her downfall, but it was over religion that the first clash with her subjects came.

She would have liked to restore Catholicism, though this was not her first object, for she would have been content to be left in the private enjoyment of her own worship.
Even on this the stalwarts of the kirk looked askance.

Knox preached as Mary landed that one mass was more terrible to him than ten thousand armed invaders.

Mary sent for him, hoping to win the hard man by a display of feminine and queenly graciousness.