By the decease of Elizabeth, Queen of England, the issues of King Henry the Eighth failed; being spent in one generation and three successions. For that King, though he were one of the goodliest persons of his time, yet he left only by his six wives three children; who reigning successively and dying childless, made place to the line of Margaret, his eldest sister, married to James the Fourth King of Scotland. There succeeded therefore to the kingdom of England James the Sixth, then King of Scotland, descended of the same Margaret both by father and mother; so that by a rare event in the pedigrees of Kings, it seemed as if the Divine Providence, to extinguish and take away all note of a stranger, had doubled upon his person, within the circle of one age, the royal blood of England by both parents. This succession drew towards it the eyes of all men; being one of the most memorable accidents* that had happened a long time in the Christian world. For the kingdom of France having been re-united in the age before in all the provinces thereof formerly dismembered; and the kingdom of Spain being of more fresh memory united and made entire by the annexing of Portugal in the person of Philip the Second; there remained but this third and last union, for the counterpoising of the power of these three great monarchies, and the disposing of the affairs of Europe thereby to a more assured and universal peace and concord.