y
accomplished as the regent in his letter to the pope had boasted. In
fact, within two months after we find the cardinal himself confessing in
a letter to the pope that he was still in the thick of the fight, and
all but worn out--"_vigiliis, laboribus, atque sumptibus_"--not only in
contending with foes without, but also with traitors within, the
camp.[55] The regent himself was obliged to confess, in a subsequent
letter, that they were then in a miserable plight; and that, unless
material assistance came to them from abroad,--and in particular from
his holiness, when almost all their other friends were growing cold,--it
would be hard for them to maintain the struggle against the English
king. The balance of parties at this critical juncture was more nearly
equal than is generally supposed. "An active minority of the nobles and
gentry saw in the government of Beaton not only their own personal ruin,
but the giving away of the country to a power more dangerous to its
liberties than England itself.... With those who favoured England were
naturally associated those who desired a reformation of religion,--a
body now so numerous in the opinion of a papal legate [Grimani] who
visited the country in 1543, that, but for the interposition of God,
Scotland would soon be in as bad a case as England itself."[56] These
appeals for foreign help, and the hopes raised by them, intensified the
struggle, and retarded for years the triumph of a really national party
resolved to set the interests of Scotland above those of France and Rome
as well as of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Supra_, p. 18, n.

[28] [The saying in slightly different forms may be found in Laing's
Knox, i. 42; Calderwood's History, i. 86; Spottiswoode's History, i.
130.]

[29] [Various dates, ranging between 1529 and 1533, have been assigned
for Forrest's martyrdom.]

[30] [William Arth.]

[31] [It was probably in 1530 that he left Scotland.]

[32] [Howard and Barlo, in writing from Edinburgh on the 13th of May
1536, say, that to the Scots the reading of God's Word "in theyr vulgare
tonge is lately prohybitede by open proclamation" (Lemon's State Papers,
v. 48). Norfolk, writing to Crumwell from Berwick on the 29th of March
1539, says: "Dayly commeth unto me some gentlemen and some clerkes,
wiche do flee owte of Scotland as they saie for redyng of Scripture in
Inglishe; saying; that, if they were taken, they sholde be put to
execution" (Ibid. v. 154). In the