dinburgh; and there, after a little skirmish,
the Protector made such moderate proposals, in offering to retire if the
Scotch would only engage not to marry their princess to any foreign
prince, that the Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this he
made a horrible mistake; for the English soldiers on land, and the
English sailors on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they broke and
fled, and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dreadful
battle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy. The ground for four
miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with dead men, and with arms,
and legs, and heads. Some hid themselves in streams and were drowned;
some threw away their armour and were killed running, almost naked; but
in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or three hundred men.
They were much better clothed than the Scotch; at the poverty of whose
appearance and country they were exceedingly astonished.

A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it repealed the whip
with six strings, and did one or two other good things; though it
unhappily retained the punishment of burning for those people who did not
make believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the Government
had declared that they must and should believe. It also made a foolish
law (meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived idly and loitered
about for three days together, should be burned with a hot iron, made a
slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity soon came to
an end, and went the way of a great many other foolish laws.

The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parliament before all the
nobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many other noblemen, who only
wanted to be as proud if they could get a chance, became his enemies of
course; and it is supposed that he came back suddenly from Scotland
because he had received news that his brother, LORD SEYMOUR, was becoming
dangerous to him. This lord was now High Admiral of England; a very
handsome man, and a great favourite with the Court ladies--even with the
young Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him a little more than young
princesses in these times do with any one. He had married Catherine
Parr, the late King's widow, who was now dead; and, to strengthen his
power, he secretly supplied the young King with money. He may even have
engaged with some of his brother's enemies in a plot to carry the boy
off. O