se.
She sent a messenger to James, explaining the terrible accident, as
she termed it, which had occurred, and deprecating his displeasure.
James, though at first filled with indignation, and determined to
avenge his mother's death, allowed himself to be appeased.

About twenty years after this, Elizabeth died, and the great object
of Mary's ambition throughout her whole life was attained by the
union of the Scotch and English crowns on the head of her son. As
soon as Elizabeth ceased to breathe, James the Sixth of Scotland was
proclaimed James the First of England. He was at that time nearly
forty years of age. He was married, and had several young children.
The circumstances of King James's journey to London, when he went to
take possession of his new kingdom, are related in the History of
Charles I., belonging to this series. Though James thus became
monarch of both England and Scotland, it must not be supposed that
the two _kingdoms_ were combined. They remained separate for many
years--two independent kingdoms governed by one king.

When James succeeded to the English throne, his mother had been dead
many years, and whatever feelings of affection may have bound his
heart to her in early life, they were now well-nigh obliterated by
the lapse of time, and by the new ties by which he was connected with
his wife and his children. As soon as he was seated on his new
throne, however, he ordered the Castle of Fotheringay, which had been
the scene of his mother's trial and death, to be leveled with the
ground, and he transferred her remains to Westminster Abbey, where
they still repose.

[Illustration: MARY'S TOMB AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

If the lifeless dust had retained its consciousness when it was thus
transferred, with what intense emotions of pride and pleasure would
the mother's heart have been filled, in being thus brought to her
final home in that ancient sepulcher of the English kings, by her son,
now, at last, safely established, where she had so long toiled and
suffered to instate him, in his place in the line. Ambition was the
great, paramount, ruling principle of Mary's life. Love was, with her,
an occasional, though perfectly uncontrollable impulse, which came
suddenly to interrupt her plans and divert her from her course,
leaving her to get back to it again, after devious wanderings, with
great difficulty and through many tears. The love, with the
consequences which followed from it, destroyed _her_; wh