was the union of Scotland with England under the sceptre of Henry VIII. Scotland would in that case have submitted to a reform at the king’s hand; but she was reserved for other destinies, and her reform was to proceed from the people, and to be effected by the Word of God. The King of England was in no lack of motives for intervention in Scotland. James V. had just concluded an alliance for a hundred years with Charles V., the mortal enemy of Henry VIII., and had even asked for the hand of the emperor’s sister, the ex-queen of Hungary. This princess had rejected the match, and the emperor had proposed to James his niece Dorothea, daughter of the King of Denmark. Bothwell was able even to tell Northumberland, in this night-conference, of matters graver still. A secret ambassador from Charles V., said he, Peter von Rosenberg, has recently been at Edinburgh and, in a long conversation which he had with the king in his private apartments, has promised him that the emperor would put him in a position, before Easter, to assume the title of _prince of England_ and duke of York.[163] The Roman party, despairing of Henry VIII., were willing to transmit the crown to his nephew, the King of Scotland. Bothwell added that James, as he left the conference, met the chancellor of the kingdom and several nobles, and made haste to communicate to them the magnificent promise of Charles V. The chancellor contented himself with saying, ‘Pray God I may live to see the day on which the Pope will confirm it.’ The king replied, ‘Only let the emperor act; he will labor strenuously for us.’ It was not James V., but his grandson, who was to ascend the throne of the Tudors. The project formed by the Scottish nobles of placing Scotland under the sceptre of England was not so easy to carry out as they imagined. The priests, who supposed that they had surmounted the dangers proceeding from reform, undertook to remove in like manner those with which they were threatened by the nobility. But they were mistaken when they believed that the fire kindled by the Word of God was extinguished. Flames shot up suddenly even in places where it was least of all expected to see them. [Sidenote: ALEXANDER SEATON.]