By this overwhelming blow the Scots were prostrated; and Henry VIII., returning from victory in France with an ample exchequer and the martial spirit of the English thoroughly roused, might with no great difficulty have repeated the successes of Edward I. He could have overrun the Lowlands, have stormed or starved out the fortresses and placed Southern garrisons in them, and thus have for the time provided one solution of the Scottish difficulty. But Henry profited by Edward's ultimate failures. He was aware that he might succeed for a time, but he was aware also that such success was really none; and he took advantage of the depression of the nation which followed Flodden rather to conciliate their friendship by forbearance than to pursue his advantage by force. The dead King had left two sons—the eldest, James V., then but two years old; the second an infant. In a Parliament held after the battle, the widowed Queen Margaret was declared Regent; the Government was re-established without interference from England, yet indirectly under English influence; and, by a judicious temperance at a critical time, the nucleus of a Southern party was formed at the Court which never after was wholly dissolved.
The time, however, was still far distant when the national enmity could even begin really to yield, and the French faction would, sooner or later, have recovered from the unpopularity which had followed upon their great disaster. A reaction at last could not have been avoided, but it arrived sooner than was anticipated through the conduct of the Queen Regent. Margaret
