At this time James, by Margaret Erskine, became the father of James,
later the Regent Moray. Strange tragedies would never have occurred had
the king first married Margaret Erskine, who, by 1536, was the wife of
Douglas of Loch Leven. He is said to have wished for her a divorce that
he might marry her; this could not be: he visited France, and on New
Year's Day, 1537, wedded Madeline, daughter of Francis I. Six months
later she died in Scotland.

Marriage for the king was necessary, and David Beaton, later Cardinal
Beaton and Archbishop of St Andrews, obtained for his lord a lady coveted
by Henry VIII., Mary, of the great Catholic house of Lorraine, widow of
the Duc de Longueville, and sister of the popular and ambitious Guises.
The pair were wedded on June 10, 1538; there was fresh offence to Henry
and a closer tie to the Catholic cause. The appointment of Cardinal
Beaton (1539) to the see of St Andrews, in succession to his uncle, gave
James a servant of high ecclesiastical rank, great subtlety, and
indomitable resolution, but remote from chastity of life and from
clemency to heretics. Martyrdoms became more frequent, and George
Buchanan, who had been tutor of James's son by Margaret Erskine, thought
well to open a window in a house where he was confined, walk out, and
depart to the Continent. Meanwhile Henry, no less than Beaton, was
busily burning his own martyrs. In 1539 Henry renewed his intercourse
with James, attempting to shake his faith in David Beaton, and to make
him rob his Church. James replied that he preferred to try to reform it;
and he enjoyed, in 1540, Sir David Lyndsay's satirical play on the vices
of the clergy, and, indeed, of all orders of men. In 1540 James ratified
the College of Justice, the fifteen Lords of Session, sitting as judges
in Edinburgh.

In 1541 the idea of a meeting between James and Henry was again mooted,
and Henry actually went to York, where James did not appear. Henry, who
had expected him, was furious. In August 1542, on a futile pretext, he
sent Norfolk with a great force to harry the Border. The English had the
worse at the battle of Hadden Rig; negotiations followed; Henry
proclaimed that Scottish kings had always been vassals of England, and
horrified his Council by openly proposing to kidnap James. Henry's
forces were now wrecking an abbey and killing women on the Border. James
tried to retaliate, but his levies (October 31) at Fala Moor declined to
follo