to have
puzzled his head at all with the legal question; he wanted to have the
young widow for his wife, and he settled the affair on that ground
alone. They were married.

[Footnote C: Matthew, xvi. 19]

Catharine was a faithful and dutiful spouse; but when, at last, Henry
fell in love with Anne Boleyn, he made these old difficulties a pretext
for discarding her. He endeavored, as has been already related, to
induce the papal authorities to annul their dispensation; because they
would not do it, he espoused the Protestant cause, and England, as a
nation, seceded from the Catholic communion. The ecclesiastical and
parliamentary authorities of his own realm then, being made Protestant,
annulled the marriage, and thus Anne Boleyn, to whom he had previously
been married by a private ceremony, became legally and technically his
wife. If this annulling of his first marriage were valid, then Elizabeth
was his heir--otherwise not; for if the pope's dispensation was to
stand, then Catharine was a wife. Anne Boleyn would in that case, of
course, have been only a companion, and Elizabeth, claiming through her,
a usurper.

The question, thus, was very complicated. It branched into extensive
ramifications, which opened a wide field of debate, and led to endless
controversies. It is not probable, however, that Mary Queen of Scots,
or her friends, gave themselves much trouble about the legal points at
issue. She and they were all Catholics, and it was sufficient for them
to know that the Holy Father at Rome had sanctioned the marriage of
Catharine, and that that marriage, if allowed to stand, made her the
Queen of England. She was at this time in France. She had been sent
there at a very early period of her life, to escape the troubles of her
native land, and also to be educated. She was a gentle and beautiful
child, and as she grew up amid the gay scenes and festivities of Paris,
she became a very great favorite, being universally beloved. She married
at length, though while she was still quite young, the son of the French
king. Her young husband became king himself soon afterward, on account
of his father's being killed, in a very remarkable manner, at a
tournament; and thus Mary, Queen of Scots before, became also Queen of
France now. All these events, passed over thus very summarily here, are
narrated in full detail in the History of Mary Queen of Scots pertaining
to this series.

While Mary was thus residing in France as th