ed
him to fall back over the border. It was in vain that James urged his
nobles to follow him in a counter-invasion. They were ready to defend
their country; but the memory of Flodden was still fresh, and success in
England would only give dangerous strength to a king in whom they saw an
enemy. But James was as stubborn in his purpose as the lords. Anxious
only to free himself from their presence, he waited till the two armies
had alike withdrawn, and then suddenly summoned his subjects to meet him
in arms on the western border. A disorderly host gathered at Lochmaben
and passed into Cumberland; but the English borderers followed on them
fast, and were preparing to attack when at nightfall on the twenty-fifth
of November a panic seized the whole Scotch force. Lost in the darkness
and cut off from retreat by the Solway Firth, thousands of men with all
the baggage and guns fell into the hands of the pursuers. The news of
this rout fell on the young king like a sentence of death. For a while
he wandered desperately from palace to palace till at the opening of
December the tidings met him at Falkland that his queen, Mary of Guise,
had given birth to a child. His two boys had both died in youth, and he
was longing passionately for an heir to the crown which was slipping
from his grasp. But the child was a daughter, the Mary Stuart of later
history. "The deil go with it," muttered the dying king, as his mind
fell back to the close of the line of Bruce and the marriage with
Robert's daughter which brought the Stuarts to the Scottish throne, "The
deil go with it! It will end as it began. It came with a lass, and it
will go with a lass." A few days later he died.

[Sidenote: The Marriage Treaty.]

The death of James did more than remove a formidable foe. It opened up
for the first time a prospect of that union of the two kingdoms which
was at last to close their long hostility. Scotland, torn by factions
and with a babe for queen, seemed to lie at Henry's feet: and the king
seized the opportunity of completing his father's work by a union of the
realms. At the opening of 1543 he proposed to the Scotch regent, the
Earl of Arran, the marriage of the infant Mary Stuart with his son
Edward. To ensure this bridal he demanded that Mary should at once be
sent to England, the four great fortresses of Scotland be placed in
English hands, and a voice given to Henry himself in the administration
of the Scotch Council of Regency. Arran and