Whatever the creed of either side, both in practice firmly held that Providence was on the side of big battalions. Almost of necessity the Regent was continually scheming for troops and possession of castles and so forth. Some quaint anecdotes are told of her dealings with Archibald, sixth Earl of Angus, grandson of old “Bell the Cat,” and gifted like him with power of emphatic utterance. Angus had married, in 1514, Margaret, the widow of James IV. For some time he was supreme in Scotland and was at the lowest a person to be reckoned with. In his passages of wit with the Regent she comes off second best, but then again the account is by Hume of Godscroft, historian and partisan of the house of Douglas. The time had not yet come for Kings to subsidise letters. Once Mary told Angus that she proposed to create the Earl of Huntly, his rival, a duke. “By the might of God”—his oath when angry—“then I will be a drake.” He was punning on duke, which is Scots for duck, and meant to say that he would still be the greater, though possibly the Queen required a surgical operation before she understood. Once he came to pay his compliments to her in Edinburgh at the head of a thousand horsemen. She angrily reproved him for breach of the proclamation against noblemen being so attended; but Angus had his answer ready. “The knaves will follow me. Gladly would I be rid of them, for they devour all my beef and my bread, and much, Madam, should I be beholden to you, if you could tell me how to get quit of them.” Again, when she unfolded to him a plan for a standing army, he promptly said, “We will fight ourselves better than any hired fellows,” she could hardly reply that it was against disturbing forces like his own that she longed for a defence. She proposed to garrison Tantallon, that strong fortress of the Douglas which still rises, mere shell though it be, in impressive ruin on the Lothian coast opposite the Bass Rock. Angus had his goshawk on his wrist, and was feeding it as he talked with the Queen, and one notes that it seemed quite proper for nobles to go about so accompanied. He made as if he addressed the bird, “Greedy gled, greedy gled, thou hast too much already, and yet desirest more”: the Queen chose not to take the obvious hint, but persisted. Angus boldly faced the question. “Why not, Madam? Ah yes, all is yours, but, Madam, I must be captain of your muster and keeper of Tantallon.” Not that these epigrams altered the situation, rather they expressed it. Even in the hostile narrative your sympathies are sometimes on the side of Mary of Guise. In 1558 a calf with two heads was shown to her, apparently as a portent of calamity, like the _bos locutus est_ of Livy, but what it exactly meant no one could say. “She scripped and said it was but a common thing,” in which, at any rate, she has the entire approval of the modern world. [Illustration: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, From the Morton Portrait]