he died with no
children but Mary, England ran the risk of being plunged into an
anarchy worse than that of the civil wars. "By English law," wrote
Falier, the Venetian ambassador, in 1531, "females are excluded from
the throne;"[511] that was not true, but it was undoubtedly a
widespread impression, based upon the past history of England. No
Queen-Regnant had asserted a right to the English throne but one, and
that one precedent provided the most effective argument for avoiding a
repetition of the experiment. Matilda was never crowned, though she
had the same claim to the throne as Mary, and her attempt to (p. 180)
enforce her title involved England in nineteen years of anarchy and
civil war. Stephen stood to Matilda in precisely the same relation as
James V. of Scotland stood to the Princess Mary; and in 1532, as soon
as he came of age, James was urged to style himself "Prince of England"
and Duke of York, in manifest derogation of Mary's title.[512] At that
time Charles V. was discussing alternative plans for deposing Henry
VIII. One was to set up James V., the other to marry Mary to some
great English noble and proclaim them King and Queen;[513] Mary by
herself was thought to have no chance of success. John of Gaunt had
maintained in Parliament that the succession descended only through
males;[514] the Lancastrian case was that Henry IV., the son of Edward
III.'s fourth son, had a better title to the throne than Philippa, the
daughter of the third; an Act limiting the succession to the male line
was passed in 1406;[515] and Henry VII. himself only reigned through a
tacit denial of the right of women to sit on the English throne.

[Footnote 511: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 300.]

[Footnote 512: _L. and P._, v., 609, 817.]

[Footnote 513: _Ibid._, vi., 446.]

[Footnote 514: _Chronicon Angliae_, Rolls Ser., p.
92, _s.a._, 1376; _D.N.B._, xxix., 421. This became
the orthodox Lancastrian theory (_cf._ Fortescue,
_Governance of England_, ed. Plummer, pp. 352-55).]

[Footnote 515: Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, iii., 58.
This Act was, however, repealed before the end of
the same year.]

The objection to female sovereigns was grounded not so much on male
disbelief in their personal qualifications, as upon the inevitable
consequence of matrim