Parliament permitted the reading but forbade the discussion of the Bible in English.  Arran was posing as a kind of Protestant.  Ambassadors were sent to Henry to negotiate a marriage between his son Edward and the baby Queen; but Scotland would not give up a fortress, would never resign her independence, would not place Mary in Henry’s hands, would never submit to any but a native ruler.

The airy castle of Henry’s hopes fell into dust, built as it was on the oaths of traitors.  Love of such a religion as Henry professed, retaining the Mass and making free use of the stake and the gibbet, was not, even to Protestants, so attractive as to make them run the English course and submit to the English Lord Paramount.  Some time was needed to make Scots, whatever their religious opinions, lick the English rod.  But the scale was soon to turn; for every reforming sermon was apt to produce the harrying of religious houses, and every punishment of the robbers was persecution intolerable against which men sought English protection.

Henry VIII. now turned to Arran for support.  To Arran he offered the hand of his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who should later marry the heir of the Hamiltons.  But by mid-April Arran was under the influence of his bastard brother, the Abbot of Paisley (later Archbishop Hamilton).  The Earl of Lennox, a Stuart, and Keeper of Dumbarton Castle, arrived from France.  He was hostile to Arran; for, if Arran were illegitimate, Lennox was next heir to the crown after Mary:  he was thus, for the moment, the ally of Beaton against Arran.  George Douglas visited Henry, and returned with his terms—­Mary to be handed over to England at the age of ten, and to marry Prince Edward at twelve; Arran (by a prior arrangement) was to receive Scotland north of Forth, an auxiliary English army, and the hand of Elizabeth for his son.  To the English contingent Arran preferred 5000 pounds in ready money—­that was his price.

Sadleyr, Henry’s envoy, saw Mary of Guise, and saw her little daughter unclothed; he admired the child, but could not disentangle the cross-webs of intrigue.  The national party—­the Catholic party—­was strongest, because least disunited.  When the Scottish ambassadors who went to Henry in spring returned (July 21), the national party seized Mary and carried her to Stirling, where they offered Arran a meeting, and (he said) the child queen’s hand for his son.  But Arran’s own partisans, Glencairn and Cassilis, told Sadleyr that he fabled freely.  Representatives of both parties accepted Henry’s terms, but delayed the ratification.  Henry insisted that it should be ratified by August 24, but on August 16 he seized six Scottish merchant ships.  Though the Treaty was ratified on August 25, Arran was compelled to insist on compensation for the ships, but on August 28 he proclaimed Beaton a traitor.  In the beginning of September Arran favoured the wrecking of the Franciscan monastery in