arded Lenox as the head of their party, and they
readily made him a tender of their services. In a little time he had
collected an army of ten thousand men, and he threatened his enemies
with immediate destruction. The cardinal had no equal force to oppose to
him; but as he was a prudent man, he foresaw that Lenox could not long
subsist so great an army, and he endeavored to gain time by opening a
negotiation with him. He seduced his followers by various artifices; he
prevailed on the Douglases to change party; he represented to the whole
nation the danger of civil wars and commotions; and Lenox, observing the
unequal contest in which he was engaged, was at last obliged to lay down
his arms, and to accept of an accommodation with the governor and the
cardinal. Present peace was restored; but no confidence took place
between the parties. Lenox, fortifying his castles, and putting himself
in a posture of defence, waited the arrival of English succors, from
whose assistance alone he expected to obtain the superiority over his
enemies.

{1544.} While the winter season restrained Henry from military
operations, he summoned a new parliament, in which a law was passed,
such as he was pleased to dictate, with regard to the succession of the
crown. After declaring that the prince of Wales, or any of the king's
male issue, were first and immediate heirs to the crown, the parliament
restored the two princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, to their right of
succession. This seemed a reasonable piece of justice, and corrected
what the king's former violence had thrown into confusion; but it was
impossible for Henry to do any thing, how laudable soever, without
betraying, in some circumstance, his usual extravagance and caprice:
though he opened the way for these two princesses to mount the throne,
he would not allow the acts to be reversed which had declared them
illegitimate; he made the parliament confer on him a power of still
excluding them, if they refused to submit to any conditions which he
should be pleased to impose; and he required them to enact, that, in
default of his own issue, he might dispose of the crown as he pleased,
by will or letters-patent. He did not probably foresee that, in
proportion as he degraded the parliament, by rendering it the passive
instrument of his variable and violent inclinations, he taught the
people to regard all its acts as invalid, and thereby defeated even the
purposes which he was so bent to attai