On 24 March z6o3 died Elizabeth Tudor， Queen of England and Ireland<br > for nearly forty-five years. The Virgin Queen died， wrote a contemporary，<br > easily like a ripe apple off a tree ; she also died， as her name indicated，<br > without direct heirs. So， with this last surviving child of Henry vtII， the<br > strong， stubborn， talented Tudor line ended. The succession went to a com-<br > paratively remote cousin，James vl of Scotland， the great-grandson of her<br > father s sister. In this way the first Stuart monarch inherited the crown of<br > England，joining to it the Scottish crown he had already possessed for most<br > of his thirty-six years (although the two countries were not otherwise<br > joined). Thenew King James I， liking the sound of the phrase Great Britain<br > adopted it to cover his new situation.<br > The son of Mary Queen of Scots and her ill-fated second husband， Henry<br > Lord Darnley， King James had ascended the throne of Scotland as a baby，<br > following the enforced abdication of his mother. Meanwhile Queen Mary<br > languished in an English prison at the orders of Queen Elizabeth， until her<br > execution at Fotheringhay nearly nineteen years later， in February t 587.<br > By this time the son whom she had not seen since infancy had grown into<br >a capable， canny ruler， politically astute in a way his fascinating mother<br >had never been. The experience of a traumatic childhood and scarcely more<br >settled adolescence helped King James to emerge as the one Stuart King<br >who achieved some kind of stable rule in Scotland.<br > Now it was with delight that he ascended the throne of England and<br >left behind what he believed to be more taxing Scottish problems. King<br >James summed up his respective feelings about the two countries thus，<br >before his arrival in England. He looked yearningly towards the manage-<br >able horse of St George compared to his own wild unruly colt of Scot-<br >land. It is a far more barbarous and stiff-necked people that I ride over， <br >he cried.<br >