Under no dynasty in the world have great national changes been so dependent on the personal aims of princes as in England under the Tudors. Just as all Henry VIII's subsequent proceedings were determined by the affair of the divorce, so also the policy of his three children was due to the relations into which they were thrown by their birth.

No one however could derive the course of English history at this epoch from this cause alone. How could Henry VIII have even thought of detaching his kingdom from the Roman See, but for the ancient and deep-seated national opposition to its encroachments? But the nation had also for ages had manifold and deep sympathies with Rome; and Mary Tudor allied herself with these. Together with subjective personal agencies, national influences of universal prevalence were at work. The different leanings of the sovereigns appear as exponents of opposite tendencies already existing in the nation. The struggle between these was decided when, as in the reign of Elizabeth, the most vigorous nature combined with the most powerful interests and the most influential motives to gain the mastery, although others of a different character were still by no means suppressed.

Now however the energetic race of the Tudors had disappeared from the throne. By the right of natural inheritance another family ascended it, which had its roots and associations in Scotland, the crown of which country it united with that of England.