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When Elizabeth became Queen, quite a few people disputed her succession because they claimed the marriage of her father and
Anne Boleyn was not valid. They would claim that in fact Mary Stuart, the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland was the rightful Queen. Margaret
Tudor was Henry VIII’s sister,
Mary Stuart had become Queen of Scotland when she was 6 days old and her father died and then in 1558 she had married the son of the King of France.
One year later the King died and so Mary and her husband Francis II became King and Queen of France too. In fact Mary declared at this time that she was Queen of
Scotland, France and England.
However, because of problems Mary had in Scotland, in 1567 she was forced to flee to England and seek protection from Elizabeth.
This gave an opportunity to some northern nobles to start an uprising against Elizabeth. They got as far as Yorkshire but Elizabeth’s army under the
Earl of Sussex marched out of York and the rebels ran away, most of the leaders to Scotland.
It was also in this year that the very first public lottery took place in England on the steps of St Paul’s church and also that people were allowed to
play sports on Sunday.
This may be a big surprise to all of you young ones reading this but when I was your age, and quite a lot older, there was no professional sport on
Sunday. There were no football matches; a 5-day test match would start on Thursday, play Friday and Saturday, and then resume on Monday and Tuesday. The British
Grand Prix was always held on a Saturday as was the Boat Race and Wimbledon never had Sunday play. Funnily enough in Catholic European countries, sport did take
place.
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