Countess
of Salisbury, mother of Reginald Pole. This lady had inherited, in no
common degree, the fierce nature of the Plantagenets; born to command, she
had rallied round her the Courtenays, the Nevilles, and all the powerful
kindred of Richard the King Maker, her grandfather. Her Plantagenet descent
was purer than the king's; and if Mary died and Henry left no other issue,
half England was likely to declare either for one of her sons, or for the
Marquis of Exeter, the grandson of Edward IV.

In 1515, when Giustiniani,[113] the Venetian ambassador, was at the court,
the Dukes of Buckingham, of Suffolk, and of Norfolk, were also mentioned to
him as having each of them hopes of the crown. Buckingham, meddling
prematurely in the dangerous game, had lost his life for it; but in his
death he had strengthened the chance of Norfolk, who had married his
daughter. Suffolk was Henry's brother-in-law;[114] chivalrous, popular, and
the ablest soldier of his day; and Lady Margaret Lennox, also, daughter of
the Queen of Scotland by her second marriage, would not have wanted
supporters, and early became an object of intrigue. Indeed, as she had been
born in England, it was held in parliament that she stood next in order to
the Princess Mary.[115]

Many of these claims were likely to be advanced if Henry died leaving a
daughter to succeed him. They would all inevitably be advanced if he died
childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee the
probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French and
Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely looked for,
and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the frail thread
of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with which the nation
saw this last hope failing them--and failing them even in a manner more
dangerous than if it had failed by death; for it did but add another doubt,
when already there were too many. In order to detach France from Scotland,
and secure, if possible, its support for the claims of the princess, it had
been proposed to marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The
negotiations were conducted through the Bishop of Tarbes,[116] and at the
first conference the Bishop raised a question in the name of his
government, on the validity of the papal dispensation granted by Julius the
Second, to legalise the marriage from which she was sprung. The abortive
marriage Scheme perished in i