While these wholesome measures were being adopted, the alliance of the country with England appeared to be growing stronger; and even if a purely evangelical reformation was not to be looked for, the ties which bound Scotland to Rome must certainly be broken. On Sunday afternoon, March 18, the day after the closing of the session of parliament, arrived Sir Ralph Sadler, an envoy from Henry VIII. He betook himself that very evening to Holyrood, and there learnt from the regent the resolutions which had just been taken. Sadler was charged with the duty of concluding the marriage contract between Edward and Mary, as well as the project of a perpetual alliance between the two countries.[287] Sadler, who acted in the business with his utmost energy, soon found that the Scots were not prepared to go to the same length as his master. ‘In my opinion,’ he wrote (March 27), ‘they had lever suffer extremity than come to the obedience and subjection of England: they will have their realm free and live within themselves after their own laws and customs.... I think assuredly all the nobles and the whole temporality of this realm desire the marriage and to join with us in perfect friendship: in which case I think also they will utterly abandon France.’ This was not what Henry was aiming at. After the death of the young princess, the Tudors, in his view, were to inherit her kingdom. The alliance, nevertheless, was concluded. On July 1 the earl of Glencairn, Sir George Douglas, Learmont, and Balnaves, the Scottish envoys, signed at Greenwich the treaty of marriage and of peace. This treaty was solemnly read, August 25, in Holyrood abbey, and was there signed, sealed, and approved by the regent and the nobles. The queen was to remain in Scotland until she should be ten years old, and then be taken into England to be educated. Three Scottish lords should be given as hostages to Henry; and in confirmation of the alliance a consecrated wafer, according to a Romish usage, was broken between the regent and Sir R. Sadler, the representative of Henry VIII. Each of them received and ate half of it, in token of their unity and as a pledge of their fidelity,--a strange method of cementing an alliance which had for its end the destruction of Romish superstitions. The treaty was published everywhere as a basis of perpetual agreement; but the union of the two nations had still many a storm to encounter. CHAPTER XIII. BEATOUN IS LIBERATED AND RECOVERS HIS POWER.--BREACH OF THE TREATY.--FRESH PERSECUTION. (MARCH, 1543.-SUMMER OF 1544.)