tions against heresy and the arch-heretic Henry of England;[1] and the old Archbishop Beton especially, with his nephew David, appealed to the King's superstition to avoid the desperate temptation. Religion would be betrayed. The ancient Church of the true saints would be exposed to ruin; and with the Church would fall the kingdom. At the moment, too, when the Catholic world was rising in arms for the faith,[2] it was no time for a King of Scotland to take the hand of its enemy. Finally, the clergy were rich, the King was poor: golden promises were thrown into the scale till it turned as they desired;[3] and in April the English ambassadors were obliged to report that James's tone was less favourable, and that they knew not what to expect. They had been required to give a particular statement in writing of the subjects which Henry desired to discuss with him; and a further difficulty was raised on the time and the place of the meeting. York had been originally fixed upon; but the King of Scotland could go no further beyond his own frontier than Newcastle.
- ↑ 'They shew themselves in all points to be the Pope's pestilent creatures, very limbs of the devil, whose Popish power violently to maintain, these lying friars cease not in their sermons, we being present, blasphemously to blatter against the verity, with slanderous reproach of us.'—Barlow to Cromwell: State Papers, vol. v. p. 37.
- ↑ Paul's first Pastoral Letter for a crusade against England had been issued about two months.
- ↑ With these engines they battered James's mind, which of itself was inclined enough to superstition: and, moreover, they corrupted those courtiers who could the most prevail with him, desiring them in their names to promise him a great sum of money, so that by these artifices they wholly turned away his mind from the thought of an interview.'—Buchanan, vol. ii. p. 163; and see Melville.
