The marriage of the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry the Seventh, to James the Fourth of Scotland, stanched for a time--but only for a time--the torrent of blood which was shed in the wars which raged, one after another, for nearly two hundred years after the death of Bruce. Another period of warfare followed, during which the disasters of Flodden Field and Solway Moss left Scotland apparently at the mercy of England. But when Henry the Eighth attempted to reconcile and unite the nations by a treaty of marriage between the Prince of Wales and Mary, the youthful Queen of Scots, the Scottish Estates, while agreeing to his proposal, declared that, after the marriage, Scotland was to remain a separate and independent kingdom; and it was soon found that to propitiate the Scottish nation was a task beyond even the long experience and the profound diplomatic ability of Sadler. Sadler argued that England had a young prince, and Scotland had a young princess, and that if they were betrothed, “these two realms being knit and conjoined in one, the subjects of the same, which have always been infested with the wars, might live together in wealth and perpetual peace.” “I pray you,” said a Scottish statesman in reply, “give me leave to ask you a question: If your lad were a lass, and our lass were a lad, would you then be so earnest in this matter? Could you be content that our lad should marry your lass, and so be King of England?” And when Sadler answered that he would, the Scotsman shook his head. “I cannot believe,” he said, “that your nation could agree to have a Scot to be King of England. And likewise I assure you that our nation, being a stout nation, will never agree to have an Englishman to be King of Scotland. And though the whole nobility of the realm would consent to it, yet our common people, and the stones in the street, would rise and rebel against it.” Then, to enforce the treaty of marriage, came the invasion of Scotland, when Edinburgh was burned to the ground, when the port of Leith and the picturesque castles of Roslyn and Craigmillar were in flames, when the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh were laid in ruins, and when the villages and farms of the lowlands were devastated by the English soldiery. But the violence of Henry was in vain; and during his reign the Scottish people hated England as they had never hated her before.[5]