But the castle had not fallen before the English party among the nobles had arranged to betray Scottish fortresses to England; and to lead 2000 Scottish “favourers of the Word of God” to fight under the flag of St George against their country.  An English host of 15,000 was assembled, and marched north accompanied by a fleet.  On the 9th of September 1547 the leader, Somerset, found the Scottish army occupying a well-chosen position near Musselburgh:  on their left lay the Firth, on their front a marsh and the river Esk.  But next day the Scots, as when Cromwell defeated them at Dunbar, left an impregnable position in their eagerness to cut Somerset off from his ships, and were routed with great slaughter in the battle of Pinkie.  Somerset made no great use of his victory:  he took and held Broughty Castle on Tay, fortified Inchcolme in the Firth of Forth, and devastated Holyrood.  Mischief he did, to little purpose.

The child queen was conveyed to an isle in the loch of Menteith, where she was safe, and her marriage with the Dauphin was negotiated.  In June 1548 a large French force under the Sieur d’Esse arrived, and later captured Haddington, held by the English, while, despite some Franco-Scottish successes in the field, Mary was sent with her Four Maries to France, where she landed in August, the only passenger who had not been sea-sick!  By April 1550 the English made peace, abandoning all their holds in Scotland.  The great essential prize, the child queen, had escaped them.

The clergy burned a martyr in 1550; in 1549 they had passed measures for their own reformation:  too late and futile was the scheme.  Early in 1549 Knox returned from France to England, where he was minister at Berwick and at Newcastle, a chaplain of the child Edward VI., and a successful opponent of Cranmer as regards kneeling at the celebration of the Holy Communion.  He refused a bishopric, foreseeing trouble under Mary Tudor, from whom he fled to the Continent.  In 1550-51 Mary of Guise, visiting France, procured for Arran the Duchy of Chatelherault, and for his eldest son the command of the Scottish Archer Guard, and, by way of exchange, in 1554 took from him the Regency, surrounding herself with French advisers, notably De Roubay and d’Oysel.

CHAPTER XVIII.  REGENCY OF MARY OF GUISE.

In England, on the death of Edward VI., Catholicism rejoiced in the accession of Mary Tudor, which, by driving Scottish Protestant refugees back into their own country, strengthened there the party of revolt against the Church, while the queen-mother’s preference of French over Scottish advisers, and her small force of trained French soldiers in garrisons, caused even the Scottish Catholics to hold France in fear and suspicion.  The French counsellors (1556) urged increased taxation for purposes of national defence against England; but the nobles would rather be invaded every year than tolerate a standing army in place of their old irregular feudal levies.  Their own independence of the Crown was dearer to the nobles and gentry than safety from their old enemy.  They might have reflected that a standing army of Scots, officered by themselves, would be a check on the French soldiers in garrison.