The master and fellows of his old college, St. John’s, too, were anxious to propitiate the rising official and to bespeak his interest in favour of their foundation,[15] and the widowed Duchess of Suffolk (Lady Willoughby) consulted him in all her difficulties. The war with France was suspended, though the English forces holding Boulogne were closely beleaguered, and Somerset’s greed was diverting the money which should have been spent in war preparations; but in pursuance of the traditional policy of England, it became a question almost of national existence when it was seen that the French intrigues for the marriage of the child Queen of Scots and the final suppression of the rising reform party in Scotland were likely to succeed. Arran had signed the treaty with Henry for the marriage of Edward and Mary; but he, and especially the Queen-mother, Mary of Lorraine, had resisted the deportation of the infant Queen to England. It is possible that some arrangement might have been arrived at had not the ill-advised murder of Cardinal Beaton and the subsequent anarchy given to the new King of France, Henry II., an excuse for armed interference in protection of the Catholic party. Then it became incumbent upon the Protector to fight the Scots at all hazards, or French influence over the Border threatened to become permanent; a double danger, now that the religious question tended to alienate England from her secular alliance with the House of Burgundy. When Somerset made his rapid march upon Scotland with an army of 18,000 men, supported by a powerful fleet, in September 1547, his trusted Cecil attended him in the capacity apparently of provost-marshal, in conjunction with the chronicler of the campaign, William Patten.[16] The decisive battle of Pinkie was fought on the 10th September 1547, and was in a great measure won by the dash, at a critical moment, of the Spanish and Italian auxiliaries whom Somerset had enlisted. According to the “household” historian so often quoted,[17] Cecil narrowly escaped death from a cannon shot at Pinkie, but no other mention of the fact is to be found. It has been doubted whether at this time he held still the office of Master of Requests, in which he is said to have been succeeded by his old college friend Sir Thomas Smith,[18] but there was no break in his close connection in some capacity with the Protector. About five months after Pinkie, in a letter to Lord Cobham, Somerset calls him “my servant William Cecill,”[19] and refers to letters written to him on his behalf; and in June 1548 the powerful Earl of Warwick, who was soon to supplant Somerset, writes to Cecil, almost humbly thanking him for forwarding some request of his to the Protector.[20]