History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
While the Duke was fruitlessly endeavouring to bring James to fresh
friendship a sudden blow at home weakened his power. At the close of the
year Catharine Howard was arrested on a charge of adultery; a Parliament
which assembled in January 1542 passed a Bill of Attainder; and in
February the Queen was sent to the block. She was replaced by the widow
of Lord Latimer, Catharine Parr; and the influence of Norfolk in the
king's counsels gradually gave way to that of Bishop Gardiner of
Winchester. But Henry clung to the policy which the Duke favoured. At
the end of 1541 two great calamities, the loss of Hungary after a
victory of the Turks and a crushing defeat at Algiers, so weakened
Charles that in the summer of the following year Francis ventured to
attack him. The attack served only to draw closer the negotiations
between England and the Emperor; and Francis was forced, as he had
threatened, to give Henry work to occupy him at home. The busiest
counsellor of the Scotch king, Cardinal Beaton, crossed the seas to
negotiate a joint attack, and the attitude of Scotland became so
menacing that in the autumn of 1542 Norfolk was again sent to the border
with twenty thousand men. But terrible as were his ravages, he could not
bring the Scotch army to an engagement, and want of supplies soon forced
him to fall back over the border. It was in vain that James urged his
nobles to follow him in a counter-invasion. They were ready to defend
their country; but the memory of Flodden was still fresh, and success in
England would only give dangerous strength to a king in whom they saw an
enemy. But James was as stubborn in his purpose as the lords. Anxious
only to free himself from their presence, he waited till the two armies
had alike withdrawn, and then suddenly summoned his subjects to meet him
in arms on the western border. A disorderly host gathered at Lochmaben
and passed into Cumberland; but the English borderers followed on them
fast, and were preparing to attack when at nightfall on the twenty-fifth
of November a panic seized the whole Scotch force. Lost in the darkness
and cut off from retreat by the Solway Firth, thousands of men with all
the baggage and guns fell into the hands of the pursuers. The news of
this rout fell on the young king like a sentence of death. For a while
he wandered desperately from palace to palace till at the opening of
December the tidings met him at Falkland that his queen, Mary of Guise,
had given birth to a child. His two boys had both died in youth, and he
was longing passionately for an heir to the crown which was slipping
from his grasp. But the child was a daughter, the Mary Stuart of later
history. "The deil go with it," muttered the dying king, as his mind
fell back to the close of the line of Bruce and the marriage with
Robert's daughter which brought the Stuarts to the Scottish throne, "The
deil go with it! It will end as it began. It came with a lass, and it
will go with a lass." A few days later he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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