19/47 One was to set up James V., the other to marry Mary to some great English noble and proclaim them King and Queen;[513] Mary by herself was thought to have no chance of success. John of Gaunt had maintained in Parliament that the succession descended only through males;[514] the Lancastrian case was that Henry IV., the son of Edward III.'s fourth son, had a better title to the throne than Philippa, the daughter of the third; an Act limiting the succession to the male line was passed in 1406;[515] and Henry VII. himself only reigned through a tacit denial of the right of women to sit on the English throne. Cal._, iv., 300.] [Footnote 512: _L. and P._, v., 609, 817.] [Footnote 513: _Ibid._, vi., 446.] [Footnote 514: _Chronicon Angliae_, Rolls Ser., p. |