It is the privilege, or perhaps the misfortune, of rulers, that their marriage is one of the first things that engage the attention of their people; and while the nursery was disturbed by the cries of the infant queen, the councils of England and Scotland were agitated with the question of her marriage. Henry VIII., of England, had an infant son, Edward, afterwards Edward VI., for whom he wished to secure from the Scottish parliament a solemn promise of marriage with the young Queen of Scots. As might be presumed, it was not so much the desire of cultivating the friendship of his northern neighbours that actuated the English monarch, as the hope of accomplishing, by means of a marriage, what his predecessors had failed to accomplish by means of the sword, the subjugation of the Scottish kingdom. To have a clear conception of the political relations between the two countries, and to understand the foundation of the English claims, it will be necessary to take a retrospective glance at the history of Scotland. In 844, the Scots of Dalriada and various Pictish races became united under King Kenneth McAlpine. During the reign of Malcolm I., who ascended the throne of Alban a hundred years later, the district of Cumberland was, by Edmund of England, made over to the King of Scotland, on condition that the latter should, in return, render him certain assistance in time of war. The acquisition of other districts fronting the Scottish border was subsequently made, in return for offered assistance against the common enemy--the Danes. But the annexation of Cumberland was the principal source of the endless conflicts between the sister kingdoms, until the union of the crowns under James VI. For those possessions which he had acquired within the kingdom of England, the Scottish king was obliged to pay homage to his neighbouring monarch. In the course of time, however, the English Kings began to claim that the homage they received from Scotland was for the entire Scottish kingdom, as well as for the Scottish possessions within the English borders. This the Scots denied, protesting that, while paying homage for the English border lands which they had acquired, they were a free and independent people. Such a state of affairs may seem strange to us, but it was nothing uncommon in those feudal times. William the Conqueror, for instance, although independent sovereign of England, paid homage to the King of France for the dukedom of Normandy, which he held within French territory.