Henry VIII., though aiming at the same object as his father, thought it more natural that Scotland should accept of an English, than England of a Scottish King. Immediately, therefore, after the birth of Mary, he determined upon straining every nerve to secure her for his son Edward. For this purpose, he concluded a temporary peace with the Regent Arran, and sent back into Scotland the numerous prisoners who had surrendered themselves at Solway Moss, upon an understanding that they should do all they could to second his views with their countrymen. His first proposals, however, were so extravagant, that the Scottish Parliament would not listen to them for a moment. He demanded not only that the young Queen should be sent into England, to be educated under his own superintendance, but that he himself, as her future father-in-law, should be allowed an active share in the government of Scotland. Having subsequently consented to depart considerably from the haughty tone in which these terms were dictated, a treaty of marriage was agreed upon at the instigation of Arran, whom Henry had won to his interests, in which it was promised, that Mary should be sent into England at the age of ten, and that six persons of rank should, in the mean time, be delivered as hostages for the fulfilment of this promise. It may easily be conceived, that whatever the Regent, together with some of the reformed nobility and their partisans, might think of this treaty, the Queen Mother and Cardinal Beaton, who had for the present formed a coalition, could not be very well satisfied with it. Henry, with all the hasty violence of his nature, had, in a fit of spleen, espoused the reformed opinions; and if Mary became the wife of his son, it was evident that all the interests both of the House of Guise and of the Catholic religion in Scotland, would suffer a fatal blow. By their forcible representations of the inevitable ruin which they alleged this alliance would bring upon Scotland, converting it into a mere province of their ancient and inveterate enemies, and obliging it to renounce forever the friendship of their constant allies the French, they succeeded in effecting a change in public opinion; and the result was, that Arran found himself at length obliged to yield to their superior influence, to deliver up to the Cardinal and Mary of Lorraine the young Queen, and refuse to ratify the engagements he had entered into with Henry. The Cardinal now carried every thing before him, having converted or intimidated almost all his enemies. The Earl of Lennox alone, a nobleman whose pretensions were greater than his power, could not forgive Beaton for having used him merely as a cat's paw in his intrigues to gain the ascendency over Arran. Lennox had himself aspired at the Regency, alleging that his title, as presumptive heir to the Crown, was a more legitimate one than that of the House of Hamilton, to which Arran belonged. But the still more ambitious