n earnest of his intentions by sending
ships and money and men to their aid, the Scots repudiated their
compact with England, and entered into negotiations for marrying their
Queen to a prince in France.[1133]

[Footnote 1130: _L. and P._, xvii., 1221, 1233.]

[Footnote 1131: Wriothesley, _Chron._, i., 140.]

[Footnote 1132: 35 Hen. VIII., c. 27.]

[Footnote 1133: _L. and P._, vol. xviii.,
_passim_.]

Such a danger to England must at all costs be averted. Marriages
between Scots kings and French princesses had never boded good to
England; but the marriage of the Queen of Scotland to a French prince,
and possibly to one who might succeed to the French throne, transcended
all the other perils with which England could be threatened. The union
of the Scots and French crowns would have destroyed the possibility of
a British Empire. Henry had sadly mismanaged the business through
vaulting ambition, but there was little fault to be found with his
efforts to prevent the union of France and Scotland; and that was the
real objective of his last war with France. His aim was not mere
military glory or the conquest of France, as it had been in his (p. 410)
earlier years under the guidance of Wolsey; it was to weaken or
destroy a support which enabled Scotland to resist the union with
England, and portended a union between Scotland and France. The
Emperor's efforts to draw England into his war with France thus met
with a comparatively ready response. In May, 1543, a secret treaty
between Henry and Charles was ratified; on the 22nd of June a joint
intimation of war was notified to the French ambassador; and a
detachment of English troops, under Sir John Wallop and Sir Thomas
Seymour, was sent to aid the imperialists in their campaign in the
north of France.

Before hostilities actually broke out, Henry wedded his sixth and last
wife. Catherine Parr was almost as much married as Henry himself.
Thirty-one years of age in 1543, she had already been twice made a
widow; her first husband was one Edward Borough, her second, Lord
Latimer. Latimer had died at the end of 1542, and Catherine's hand was
immediately sought by Sir Thomas Seymour, Henry's younger brother-in-law.
Seymour was handsome and won her heart, but he was to be her fourth,
and not her third, husband; her will "was overruled by a higher
power," and, on the 12th of July, sh