Two Queens in One Isle

In the long run, of course, history proved the King a true oracle, but at the time when the Scottish marriage was under discussion he had two apparently healthy sons to carry on his line and could reasonably have felt that the possibility of ‘the succession of the realm’ passing to Margaret or her children was remote enough to be disregarded.

This, as Francis Bacon was to remark, ‘passed as an oracle’ and silenced the opposition.