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He remained a prisoner in h house for nearly four months, and was on discharged after he had entered into a re ance of £4000, to pay whatever fine sho

cellor," says Burnet; "and in him the party lost their chief support, and the pr his most emulous rival." Burnet acknow that the proceedings against him "wer mary and severe, beyond the usage of the

of the realm, and being then presented to the | fitting. people, who were asked by the archbishop if they were willing to accept him and obey him as their liege lord, the order of the oath and the presentation was reversed the former not being admi-imposed upon him. "Thus fell the lor nistered till after the king had been shown by the archbishop, whose address to the people also, as Burnet has observed, was couched "in such terms as should demonstrate he was no elective prince; for he, being declared the rightful and undoubted heir, both by the laws of God and council, and without the common forms man, they were desired to give their good-wills | processes." and assents to the same, as by their duty of allegiance they were bound to do." As usual, a general pardon for state offenders was proclaimed, from which, however, were excepted, along with a few other names, those of the Duke of Norfolk and Cardinal Pole.

The "Good Duke," with all his eminence of station and sounding titles, was far from being yet satisfied with the position he had attained. So long as the chancellor continued a member of the council, Somerset must have felt that his exercise of supreme power would be subject to a constant check; and the crafty Southampton (Wriothesley), on the other hand, seems to have been by no means thrown into despair, or any thought of abandoning his post, by his discomfiture in their first trial of strength. In fact, it may be said to have been the eagerness with which he allowed himself to be carried away and absorbed by his political functions, that brought about his ruin. "Resolving," as Burnet says, "to give himself wholly to matters of state," in order that he might have time to attend the daily meetings of the council, on the 18th of February, without consulting his colleagues in the government, he put the great seal to a commission in the king's name, empowering four masters of his court, or any two of them, to hear all manner of causes in his absence, and giving to their decrees the same force as if they had been pronounced by himself, on condition only that they should be signed by him before their enrolment. This act of imprudence was immediately pounced upon by the opposite party; the subject was referred to the judges, who declared that the chancellor had committed an offence against the king which was punishable at common law with the loss of office, and fine and imprisonment at the royal pleasure. Southampton, after an attempt to maintain the legality of the commission, offered to submit to have it revoked, if it were deemed illegal; but these terms of accommodation were of course rejected; and, at last, on the 6th of March, the council resolved that the great seal should be taken from him, and that he should, in the meantime, be confined to his residence at Ely House, and be fined as should be afterwards thought

The next measure of the protector was into his own hands the entire power of t cutive government. A week after the e of Southampton, by a commission running king's name, and signed by himself a friends Cranmer, St. John, Russell, Nor ton, Cheyney, Paget, and Brown, the dul declared governor of the king and prote the kingdom, without any participation part of the council, which was indeed dis by the members being united in a new with the twelve persons who had been app to be their advisers by Henry's will, a whole being now constituted a mere cou advice, the protector being at the same ti powered to add to their numbers to any he pleased. In other words, Somerset v vested with the whole of the royal aut and, in everything save the name, made England.

The frame of the government at home thus settled, the attention of the protect immediately called to foreign affairs. The of Campes (7th June, 1546), had, as alre lated, both established peace with Fran suspended active hostilities with the Sec though Henry had continued to keep up a intercourse with the Protestants in Scotla the party opposed to the government of th of Arran, and had, after the murder of Ca Beaton, openly sent supplies to the auth that atrocity, whom Arran was in vain vouring to dislodge from the castle of S drews. Henry, on his death-bed, is said t enjoined the lords of his council that they s leave nothing undone to bring about the riage between his son and the infant Que Scots, on which he had so strongly set his and his desire no doubt was that they s pursue that object, as he himself would done had he lived, either, as opportunity circumstances might seem to invite, by ne tion and intrigue, or by a "rougher wo Somerset, accordingly, now addressed a lett the Scottish nobility, strongly urging upon the policy as well as the obligation of fult "the promises, seals, and oaths, which, by P

authority, had passed for concluding this marriage. This appeal, however, produced little effect upon the party that now predominated in Scotland. In fact, immediately after this, hostilities between the two countries recommenced, with an encounter between an English vessel called the Pansy, commanded by Sir Andrew Dudley, brother to the Earl of Warwick, and the Lion, "a principal ship of Scotland."

Both countries were already making preparations for a war on a greater scale, when an event happened that materially affected their position towards each other. Francis

I. died at Rambouillet on the 31st March; thus surviving by little more than two months the King of England, with whom he had been so constantly connected, either

five months before this fortress, had made a truce with the garrison in February: and when the French galleys arrived, in the end of June, he was engaged on a plundering expedition beyond

[graphic]

REMAINS OF THE CASTLE OF ST. ANDREWS.-From a drawing by J. Oliphant.

as a friend or an enemy, for more than thirty years. Since the accession of Edward, however, arrangements had been made for having the late alliance between the two crowns renewed; and the treaty had, in fact, been concluded at London, and wanted only to be formally ratified by Francis at the time of his death. That heaviest blow, as it was considered at the moment, that could have befallen the Protestant cause on the Continent, enabling the emperor, as it did, to carry everything before him for a time both in Germany and in Italy, soon appeared likely to be no less disastrous to the same interest in Scotland. Henry II., the son and successor of Francis, preserved for a little while a show of amicable intercourse with England; but it was sufficiently evident from the first what course he was about to take. Under the control of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the brothers of the queen-dowager of Scotland, who now, along with Arran, stood at the head of the Catholic party and of the established government in that country, the politics of the new King of France immediately evinced a complete return to the old system of a close alliance with the Scots, as affording the most effective means of annoying and embarrassing England. When the treaty of London was presented to Henry II., he refused to sign it; and soon after he openly took part in the war on the side of the Scottish government by sending a fleet of sixteen galleys, under the command of Leo Strozzi, prior of Capua, to assist the regent in reducing the castle of St. Andrews. Arran, after lying for

See an abstract of the letter in Hayward.

2 Ibid.

the western marches, from which, however, he hastened home, bringing with him, according to the Scottish historians, a great booty, as soon as he heard that the foreign auxiliaries had made their appearance. Meanwhile, the holders of the castle in the beginning of March had concluded two treaties with the English protector, by which they bound themselves by every means in their power to procure the marriage of the infant Queen of Scotland with King Edward, and engaged to give their best aid to an English army which should be forthwith sent to Scotland to obtain possession of the queen. It was also stipulated, that as soon as that object should be effected they should deliver the castle to the commissioners of the English king. But the force that was now brought against them soon put an end to all hope of their continuing to hold out. A blockade by sea, cutting off their usual supplies, was now added to a much more skilful and effective bombardment from the land than Arran's Scottish engineers had been able to direct against them in the former siege. At last, on the 29th of July, a great breach was made, and on the following day the besieged, among whom, to add to their other straits and sufferings, a pestilential sickness had for some time been making considerable ravages, agreed to capitulate on condition only that their lives should be spared, and that they should be conveyed to France. Arran recovered his eldest son, whom the murderers of the cardinal had found in the castle, and whom they had detained in captivity during the fourteen months they had held the place. Among the prisoners carried to France was the famous

cellor," says Burnet; "and in him the Popish party lost their chief support, and the protector his most emulous rival." Burnet acknowledges that the proceedings against him "were summary and severe, beyond the usage of the privy council, and without the common forms of legal processes."

of the realm, and being then presented to the fitting. He remained a prisoner in his own people, who were asked by the archbishop if they house for nearly four months, and was only then were willing to accept him and obey him as their discharged after he had entered into a recognizliege lord, the order of the oath and the presen-ance of £4000, to pay whatever fine should be tation was reversed-the former not being admi-imposed upon him. "Thus fell the lord-channistered till after the king had been shown by the archbishop, whose address to the people also, as Burnet has observed, was couched "in such terms as should demonstrate he was no elective prince; for he, being declared the rightful and undoubted heir, both by the laws of God and man, they were desired to give their good-wills and assents to the same, as by their duty of allegiance they were bound to do." As usual, a general pardon for state offenders was proclaimed, from which, however, were excepted, along with a few other names, those of the Duke of Norfolk and Cardinal Pole.

The "Good Duke," with all his eminence of station and sounding titles, was far from being yet satisfied with the position he had attained. | So long as the chancellor continued a member of the council, Somerset must have felt that his exercise of supreme power would be subject to a constant check; and the crafty Southampton (Wriothesley), on the other hand, seems to have been by no means thrown into despair, or any thought of abandoning his post, by his discomfiture in their first trial of strength. In fact, it may be said to have been the eagerness with which he allowed himself to be carried away and absorbed by his political functions, that brought about his ruin. "Resolving," as Burnet says, "to give himself wholly to matters of state," in order that he might have time to attend the daily meetings of the council, on the 18th of February, without consulting his colleagues in the government, he put the great seal to a commission in the king's name, empowering four masters of his court, or any two of them, to hear all manner of causes in his absence, and giving to their decrees the same force as if they had been pronounced by himself, on condition only that they should be signed by him before their enrolment. This act of imprudence was immediately pounced upon by the opposite party; the subject was referred to the judges, who declared that the chancellor had committed an offence against the king which was punishable at common law with the loss of office, and fine and imprisonment at the royal pleasure. Southampton, after an attempt to maintain the legality of the commission, offered to submit to have it revoked, if it were deemed illegal; but these terms of accommodation were of course rejected; and, at last, on the 6th of March, the council resolved that the great seal should be taken from him, and that he should, in the meantime, be confined to his residence at Ely House, and be fined as should be afterwards thought

The next measure of the protector was to take into his own hands the entire power of the executive government. A week after the ejection of Southampton, by a commission running in the king's name, and signed by himself and his friends Cranmer, St. John, Russell, Northampton, Cheyney, Paget, and Brown, the duke was declared governor of the king and protector of the kingdom, without any participation on the part of the council, which was indeed dissolved, by the members being united in a new council with the twelve persons who had been appointed to be their advisers by Henry's will, and the whole being now constituted a mere council of advice, the protector being at the same time empowered to add to their numbers to any extent he pleased. In other words, Somerset was invested with the whole of the royal authority, and, in everything save the name, made King of England.

The frame of the government at home being thus settled, the attention of the protector was immediately called to foreign affairs. The treaty of Campes (7th June, 1546), had, as already related, both established peace with France and suspended active hostilities with the Scots, although Henry had continued to keep up a secret intercourse with the Protestants in Scotland, as the party opposed to the government of the Earl of Arran, and had, after the murder of Cardinal Beaton, openly sent supplies to the authors of that atrocity, whom Arran was in vain endeavouring to dislodge from the castle of St. Andrews. Henry, on his death-bed, is said to have enjoined the lords of his council that they should leave nothing undone to bring about the marriage between his son and the infant Queen of Scots, on which he had so strongly set his heart; and his desire no doubt was that they should pursue that object, as he himself would have done had he lived, either, as opportunity and circumstances might seem to invite, by negotiation and intrigue, or by a "rougher wooing." Somerset, accordingly, now addressed a letter to the Scottish nobility, strongly urging upon them the policy as well as the obligation of fulfilling "the promises, seals, and oaths, which, by public

authority, had passed for concluding this mar- | five months before this fortress, had made a truce

riage." This appeal, however, produced little
effect upon the party that now predominated in
Scotland. In fact, immediately after this, hosti-
lities between the two coun-
tries recommenced, with an
encounter between an English
vessel called the Pansy, com-
manded by Sir Andrew Dud-
ley, brother to the Earl of
Warwick, and the Lion, "a
principal ship of Scotland."

Both countries were already making preparations for a war on a greater scale, when an event happened that materially affected their position towards each other. Francis

I. died at Rambouillet on the 31st March; thus surviving by little more than two months the King of England, with whom he had been so constantly connected, either

with the garrison in February: and when the French galleys arrived, in the end of June, he was engaged on a plundering expedition beyond

[graphic]

REMAINS OF THE CASTLE OF ST. ANDREWS.-From a drawing by J. Oliphant.

as a friend or an enemy, for more than thirty | the western marches, from which, however, he years. Since the accession of Edward, however, arrangements had been made for having the late alliance between the two crowns renewed; and the treaty had, in fact, been concluded at London, and wanted only to be formally ratified by Francis at the time of his death. That heaviest blow, as it was considered at the moment, that could have befallen the Protestant cause on the Continent, enabling the emperor, as it did, to carry everything before him for a time both in Germany and in Italy, soon appeared likely to be no less disastrous to the same interest in Scotland. Henry II., the son and successor of Francis, preserved for a little while a show of amicable intercourse with England; but it was sufficiently evident from the first what course he was about to take. Under the control of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the brothers of the queen-dowager of Scotland, who now, along with Arran, stood at the head of the Catholic party and of the established government in that country, the politics of the new King of France immediately evinced a complete return to the old system of a close alliance with the Scots, as affording the most effective means of annoying and embarrassing England. When the treaty of London was presented to Henry II., he refused to sign it; and soon after he openly took part in the war on the side of the Scottish government by sending a fleet of sixteen galleys, under the command of Leo Strozzi, prior of Capua, to assist the regent in reducing the castle of St. Andrews. Arran, after lying for

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hastened home, bringing with him, according to
the Scottish historians, a great booty, as soon as
he heard that the foreign auxiliaries had made
their appearance. Meanwhile, the holders of the
castle in the beginning of March had concluded
two treaties with the English protector, by which
they bound themselves by every means in their
power to procure the marriage of the infant
Queen of Scotland with King Edward, and en-
gaged to give their best aid to an English army
which should be forthwith sent to Scotland to
obtain possession of the queen.
It was also sti-
pulated, that as soon as that object should be
effected they should deliver the castle to the
commissioners of the English king. But the
force that was now brought against them soon
put an end to all hope of their continuing to hold
out. A blockade by sea, cutting off their usual
supplies, was now added to a much more skilful
and effective bombardment from the land than
Arran's Scottish engineers had been able to di-
rect against them in the former siege. At last, on
the 29th of July, a great breach was made, and
on the following day the besieged, among whom,
to add to their other straits and sufferings, a pes-
tilential sickness had for some time been making
considerable ravages, agreed to capitulate on con-
dition only that their lives should be spared, and
that they should be conveyed to France. Arran
recovered his eldest son, whom the murderers of
the cardinal had found in the castle, and whom
they had detained in captivity during the four-
teen months they had held the place. Among
the prisoners carried to France was the famous

John Knox, who had joined Norman Lesly and | Cockburnspath, the invaders began the work of his companions after the truce made with Arran war by sitting down before Douglas Castle, a in the preceding February. The castle of St. hold belonging to Sir George Douglas. The capAndrews was demolished by order of the Scot-tain, Matthew Hume, the son of a brother of tish privy council. It has ever since remained a Lord Hume, made no vain show of resistance, ruin.

The English protector had been for some time busy collecting an army for the invasion of Scotland; and by the end of August he was ready to set out for the north at the head of a well-appointed force, which appears to have amounted to above 20,000 men, of whom 6000 were cavalry; a fleet of sixty-five vessels, of which thirty-five were ships of war, and the remainder laden with ammunition and victuals, being equipped to accompany the expedition, under the command of the Lord Clinton. A journal of this invasion of Scotland is extant, written by a person who served in the protector's army, which is not only one of the most minutely curious records of that age, but one of the most vivid pictures of the realities of war ever drawn.' The author, W. Patten, was conjoint judge-marshal of the army along with the afterwards celebrated William Cecil, and his work is dedicated to Paget, whom he styles "his most benign fautor and patron." He is, of course, a professed worshipper of his grace of Somerset, upon whom he heaps his laudation throughout with unbounded prodigality. Yet, allowance being made for some courtly embellishment, he evidently, in the main, sets down what he saw with his own eyes, and he tells his story with a hearty gossiping relish that of itself betokens a keen and quick-sighted observer.

but soon came forth, "and brought with him," says our journalist, "his band to my lord's grace, which was of twenty-one sober (poor) soldiers, all so apparelled and appointed that, so God help me (I will say it for no praise), I never saw such a bunch of beggars come out of one house together in my life." Six of the most decent of these scarecrows were detained; the rest were allowed "to gea their gate,"—that is, to go their way,with an admonition that they would be hanged the next time they were caught. The castle was afterwards blown up with gunpowder, as were also Thornton and Anderwick, two other peels or strongholds belonging to Lord Hume.

The invading force continued its march close to the German Ocean, and, passing within gunshot of Dunbar, encamped for the night in the neighbourhood of Tantallon Castle. Here they received the first certain intelligence of the posi tion of the enemy. The next day, Wednesday, the 7th, turning to the west, they crossed the small river Lynn, the horse taking the water, the infantry passing over by Linton bridge. A number of Scottish prickers, or horse, were now seen on a rising ground not far from Hailes Castle, belonging to Earl Bothwell, some of whom appeared to be making towards the river, with the intention probably of picking up stragglers or attacking the rear of the English cavalry, whom a sudden mist had enveloped while they were yet crossing the water.

ranged that the ships of war should fall down the Frith, and take their stations opposite to the town of Musselburgh, near to which the army lay. On the evening of the same day, Friday, the 8th, the English encamped in the neighbourhood of Salt Preston, now called Prestonpans.

The army having been collected at Newcastle, the protector rode thither from London, and was A communication was now established with met six miles from the town on Saturday, the the fleet, which lay over against Leith; and, the 27th of August, by Warwick, the lord-lieute-lord-admiral having come on shore, it was arnant, and Sadler, the master-treasurer. The next day a muster of the whole force was held; and on Monday, the 29th, they set forward for the Borders. Reaching Berwick on Friday, the 2d of September, they found there Lord Clinton with the fleet, which immediately put to sea, while the army rested a day, and then, on the Sunday, set forward on its march close along the shore. Having made their way, on the 5th, across the deep glen or valley of the Peaths, or the Pease (as it is commonly pronounced), at

The two armies were now separated by a distance of little more than two miles, and each camp was to be seen from the high grounds in the neighbourhood of the other. Both had the sea to the north, while on the south, and about midway between them, rose, facing the west, the

1 "The Expedition into Scotland of the most worthily fortun-eminence called Falside, or Fawside Brae, the

ate Prince Edward Duke of Somerset, uncle to our most noble Sovereign Lord the King's Majesty Edward the VI., Governor of his Highness' Person, and Protector of his Grace's realms,

dominions, and subjects; made in the first year of his Majesty's

most prosperous reign, and set out by way of Diary. By W. Patten, Londoner." This narrative, which was first published at London in 1548, was reprinted in (Dalyell's) Fragments of Scottish History, 4to, Edin. 1798, of which work, however, the

whole impression amounted to only 200 copies. Patten's Diary,

therefore, is still a tract. of great rarity.

termination of an inconsiderable range of hills extending in a direction parallel to the sea. Upon this elevation, which was surmounted by "a sorry castle, and half a score houses of like worthiness by it," all the morning of Saturday, the 9th, the Scottish horsemen were seen "pranking" up and down; but in the afternoon a party

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