guard the wearer's life in his sacred enterprise.[1] The enchanted offerings were a present of the Holy Father to James the Fifth; they were to be delivered in Scotland with the same ceremonials with which they had been consecrated; and at Rome prayers were sent up that the prince would use them in defence of Holy Church against those enemies for whom justice and judgment were now prepared; that, in estimating the value of the gifts, he would remember their mystic virtue and spiritual potency.[2]
The Scotch were, indeed, ill-selected as allies to the northern English, their hereditary enemies;[3] but religion had reconciled more inveterate antagonisms, and to the sanguine Paul, and his more sanguine English adviser, minor difficulties seemed as nothing, and vanished in the greatness of their cause.
Reginald Pole was now a cardinal. When hopes of
- ↑ 'Deum deprecantes ut dextram ense firmet caputque tuum hoc pileo vi Spiritûs Sancti per columbam figurati protegat.'—Paulus III. Regi Scotiæ: Epist. Reg. Pol., vol. ii. p. 269.
- ↑ 'Nec tam muneris qualitatem quam mysterium et vim spiritualem perpendes.'—Ibid.
- ↑ Although the Doncaster petitioners had spoken of 'their antient enemies of Scotland,' an alliance, nevertheless, in the cause of religion, was not, after all, impossible. When James V. was returning from France to Edinburgh, in the spring of 1537, his ship lay off Scarborough for a night to take in provisions—'Where certain of the commons of the country thereabout, to the number of twelve persons—Englishmen, your Highness's servants' (I am quoting a letter of Sir Thomas Clifford to Henry VIII.)—'did come on board in the King's ship, and, being on their knees before him, thanked God of his healthful and sound repair; showing how that they had long looked for him, and how they were oppressed, slain, and murdered; desiring him for God's sake to come in, and all should be his.'—State Papers, vol v. p. 80.
