Henry, to encourage the Protestants, and to warn James if possible, sent to him his rising diplomatist, Sir Ralph Sadler, who represented to James that Henry was much nearer related to him than were any of the Continental sovereigns, and who endeavoured to prevent there the publication of the bill of excommunication.
But it became necessarily a pitched battle betwixt the Papist party in Scotland and Henry. They beheld with natural alarm his destruction of the Papal Church in England, an example of the most terrible kind to all other national churches of the same creed; and Henry, on the other hand, knew that so long as that faith was in the ascendant in Scotland, there would be no assured quiet in his own kingdom. It was the one proximate and exposed quarter through which the Pope and his abettors on the Continent could perpetually assail him. From this moment, therefore, Henry spared no money, no negotiation, no pains to break down the Roman Catholic ascendancy in Scotland.
In 1540 he again sent Sir Ralph Sadler to James, who took him a present of a dozen fine stallions. At the private interview which Sadler solicited, he read to James an intercepted letter of Beaton's to the Pope, from which the ambassador endeavoured to make it appear that the cardinal was aiming at subjecting the royal authority to that of the Pope. James rather disconcerted the minister by laughing when he had heard the letter, and telling him that the cardinal had long ago given him a copy of it. Sadler, who was too practised a statesman to be foiled by such a circumstance, returned to the charge, and added that Henry was ashamed of the meanness of his nephew, who kept large flocks of sheep, as if he were a husbandman and not a king. If he wanted money, he could enrich himself by shearing the ecclesiastical sheep; he need only make the experiment, and he would find that the dissolute lives of the monks would justify his sequestration of their property, as much as had been the case in England. But James was alike impassible to arguments founded either on horses or sheep. He replied that he had sufficient property of his own, without coveting that of others; and that the Church need not be destroyed to supply his wants, it was ready to aid him freely; that undoubtedly there were monks and clergymen who disgraced their profession, but it was not in accordance with his notions of justice to punish the innocent with the guilty.
Failing again, Sadler tried to awaken the ambition of James by representing how near he was to the English throne, and intimated that his uncle was seriously disposed to name him as his heir and successor in case of anything happening to his only son, Prince Edward. He invited James to meet his loving uncle at York, where they might discuss and settle these matters. James parried this proposal by making it an absolute condition that their mutual ally, Francis I., should be present; and Sadler was compelled to return, ascribing his failure to the firm hold that the clergy had on the Scottish monarch. And, indeed, these solicitations on the side of England only drove the Scottish hierarchy to severer measures, and led James to sanction it in cruelty and persecution. It was enacted in the next Parliament that it was a capital offence to question the supreme authority of the Pope; that no private meetings, conventicles, or societies for the discussion of religious questions should be allowed; informers were tempted by high rewards to betray them; and no good Catholic was to have intercourse with any one who had, at any time, been heretical in his or her opinions, however nearly allied in blood. It was declared a damnable offence to deface or throw down images of the Virgin and the saints; and, finally, all clergymen, of all ranks and kinds, were called upon to reform their lives, so as to give no ground of reproach or argument to the enemy.
In the spring of 1541 the Cardinal Beaton, and Panter, the Royal secretary, were dispatched to Rome with secret instructions. This alarmed Henry, and yet afforded him a hope of making an impression on his nephew whilst the cardinal was away. Once more, therefore, he invited James to meet him at York. Lord William Howard, who was his envoy on the occasion, induced James to promise to meet Henry there, and we have seen him on his way accompanied by his bride, Catherine Howard, to the place of rendezvous. But James came not; and Henry, enraged, vowed that he would compel James by force to do that which he would not concede to persuasion.
The Romanist party in Scotland were better pleased with a hostile than a pacific position, for they greatly dreaded that Henry might at length warp the king's mind towards his own views. The leaders on both sides were, in fact, never at peace. On the one side, the exiled Douglases were always on the watch to recover their estates by their swords, and the fugitives in Scotland, on account of the Pilgrimage of Grace, were equally ready to fight their way back to their homes and fortunes. In the August of 1542, accordingly, there were sharp forays, first from one side of the borders, and then from the other. Sir James Bowes, the warden of the east marches, accompanied by Sir George Douglas, the Earl of Angus, and other Scottish exiles, and 3,000 horsemen, rushed into Teviotdale, when they were met at Haddenrig by the Earl of Huntly and Lord Home, who defeated them, and took 600 prisoners.
Henry, having issued a proclamation declaring the Scots the aggressors, ordered a levy of 40,000 men, and appointed the Duke of Norfolk the commander of this army. He was attended by the Earls of Shrewsbury, Derby, Cumberland, Surrey, Hertford, Rutland, with many others of the nobility. This imposing force was joined by the Earl of Angus and the rest of the banished Douglases who had escaped the slaughter at Haddenrig. After some delay at York the royal army, issuing a fresh proclamation, in which Henry claimed the crown of Scotland, advanced to Berwick, where it crossed into Scotland, and, advancing along the northern bank of the Tweed as far as Kelso, burned two towns and twenty villages. Norfolk did not venture to advance farther into the country, as he heard that James had assembled a powerful force, whilst Huntly, Home, and Seaton were hovering on his flanks. He therefore contented himself with ravaging the neighbourhood, and then crossed again at Kelso into England.
James, indignant at the invasion and the injuries inflicted on his subjects, and encamped on the Burrow Muir, at the head of 30,000 men marched thence in
