er horse nor man for action in Scotland his
influence in the northern kingdom was strong enough to foil Henry's
plans. The Churchmen were as bitterly opposed to such a marriage as the
partizans of France; and their head, Cardinal Beaton, who had held aloof
from the Regent's Parliament, suddenly seized the Queen-mother and her
babe, crowned the infant Mary, called a Parliament in December which
annulled the marriage-treaty, and set Henry at defiance.

[Sidenote: War with France.]

The king's wrath at this overthrow of his hopes showed itself in a
brutal and impolitic act of vengeance. He was a skilful shipbuilder; and
among the many enterprises which the restless genius of Cromwell
undertook there was probably none in which Henry took so keen an
interest as in his creation of an English fleet. Hitherto merchant ships
had been impressed when a fleet was needed; but the progress of naval
warfare had made the maintenance of an armed force at sea a condition
of maritime power, and the resources furnished by the dissolution of the
abbeys had been devoted in part to the building of ships of war, the
largest of which, the _Mary Rose_, carried a crew of seven hundred men.
The new strength which England was to wield in its navy was first seen
in 1544. An army was gathered under Lord Hertford; and while Scotland
was looking for the usual advance over the border the Earl's forces were
quietly put on board and the English fleet appeared on the third of May
in the Firth of Forth. The surprise made resistance impossible. Leith
was seized and sacked, Edinburgh, then a town of wooden houses, was
given to the flames, and burned for three days and three nights. The
country for seven miles round was harried into a desert. The blow was a
hard one, but it was little likely to bring Scotchmen round to Henry's
projects of union. A brutal raid of the English borderers on Melrose and
the destruction of his ancestors' tombs estranged the Earl of Angus, and
was quickly avenged by his overthrow of the marauders at Ancrum Moor.
Henry had yet to learn the uselessness of mere force to compass his
ends. "I shall be glad to serve the king of England, with my honour,"
said the Lord of Buccleugh to an English envoy, "but I will not be
constrained thereto if all Teviotdale be burned to the bottom of hell."

Hertford's force returned in good time to join the army which Henry in
person was gathering at Calais to co-operate with the forces assembled
by Char