, Henry, that he might take advantage of the regent's
absence, marched an army into Scotland under the command of Surrey, who
ravaged the Merse and Teviotdale without opposition, and burned the town
of Jedburgh. The Scots had neither king nor regent to conduct them:
the two Humes had been put to death: Angus was in a manner banished: no
nobleman of vigor or authority remained, who was qualified to assume the
government: and the English monarch, who knew the distressed situation
of the country, determined to push them to extremity, in hopes of
engaging them, by the sense of their present weakness, to make a solemn
renunciation of the French alliance, and to embrace that of England.[*]
He even gave them hopes of contracting a marriage between the lady Mary,
heiress of England, and their young monarch; an expedient which would
forever unite the two kingdoms:[**] and the queen dowager, with her
whole party, recommended every where the advantages of this alliance,
and of a confederacy with Henry.

* Buchanan, lib. xiv. Drummond. Pitscottie.

** Buchanan, lib. xiv. Herbert.

*** Le Grand, vol. iii. p. 39.

They said that the interests of Scotland had too long been sacrificed to
those of the French nation, who, whenever they found themselves reduced
to difficulties, called for the assistance of their allies; but were
ready to abandon them as soon as they found their advantage in making
peace with England: that where a small state entered into so close a
confederacy with a greater, it must always expect this treatment, as
a consequence of the unequal alliance; but there were peculiar
circumstances in the situation of the kingdoms, which, in the present
case, rendered it inevitable: that France was so distant, and so divided
from them by sea, that she scarcely could, by any means, and never could
in time, send succors to the Scots, sufficient to protect them against
ravages from the neighboring kingdom: that nature had, in a manner,
formed an alliance between the two British nations; having enclosed them
in the same island; given them the same manners, language, laws, and
form of government; and prepared every thing for an intimate union
between them: and that, if national antipathies were abolished, which
would soon be the effect of peace, these two kingdoms, secured by the
ocean and by their domestic force, could set at defiance all foreign
enemies, and remain forever safe and unmolested.

The partisans of