Edinburgh; and at Dundee the mob, moved by sermons from the celebrated martyr George Wishart, did sack the houses of the Franciscans and the Dominicans; Beaton’s Abbey of Arbroath and the Abbey of Lindores were also plundered.  Clearly it was believed that Beaton was down, and that church-pillage was authorised by Arran.  Yet on September 3 Arran joined hands with Beaton!  The Cardinal, by threatening to disprove Arran’s legitimacy and ruin his hopes of the crown, or in some other way, had dominated the waverer, while Henry (August 29) was mobilising an army of 20,000 men for the invasion of Scotland.  On September 9 Mary was crowned at Stirling.  But Beaton could not hold both Arran and his rival Lennox, who committed an act of disgraceful treachery.  With Glencairn he seized large supplies of money and stores sent by France to Dumbarton Castle.  In 1544 he fled to England and to the protection of Henry, and married Margaret, daughter of Angus and Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV.  He became the father of Darnley, Mary’s husband in later years, and the fortunes of Scotland were fatally involved in the feud between the Lennox Stewarts and the House of Hamilton.

Meanwhile (November 1543) Arran and Beaton together broke and persecuted the abbey robbers of Perthshire and Angus, making “martyrs” and incurring, on Beaton’s part, fatal feuds with Leslies, Greys, Learmonths, and Kirkcaldys.  Parliament (December 11) declared the treaty with England void; the party of the Douglases, equally suspected by Henry and by Beaton, was crushed, and George Douglas was held a hostage, still betraying his country in letters to England.  Martyrs were burned in Perth and Dundee, which merely infuriated the populace.  In April 1544, while Henry was giving the most cruel orders to his army of invasion, one Wishart visited him with offers, which were accepted, for the murder of the Cardinal. {94} Early in May the English army under Hertford took Leith, “raised a jolly fire,” says Hertford, in Edinburgh; he burned the towns on his line of march, and retired.

On May 17 Lennox and Glencairn sold themselves to Henry; for ample rewards they were to secure the teaching of God’s word “as the mere and only foundation whence proceeds all truth and honour”!  Arran defeated Glencairn when he attempted his godly task, and Lennox was driven back into England.

In June Mary of Guise fell into the hands of nobles led by Angus, while the Fife, Perthshire, and Angus lairds, lately Beaton’s deadly foes, came into the Cardinal’s party.  With him and Arran, in November, were banded the Protestants who were to be his murderers, while the Douglases, in December, were cleared by Parliament of all their offences, and Henry offered 3000 crowns for their “trapping.”  Angus, in February 1545, protested that he loved Henry “best of all men,” and would make Lennox Governor of Scotland, while Wharton, for Henry, was trying to kidnap Angus.  Enraged by the English