vert him from his purpose; and, committing the charge of the castle of Dumbarton to George Stirling, he sailed for England, where he was honourably entertained by king Henry, who settled a pension upon him, and gave him to wife his niece Margaret Douglas, a princess in the flower of her age, and celebrated for every accomplishment becoming the female character. The Queen-dowager, aware that the faction Lennox had thus left without a leader could not be brought to submit to Arran, whose levity and imbecility of character they were now perfectly acquainted with, nor to the Cardinal, whose cruelty they both hated and feared and dreading they might break out into some more desperate insurrection, condescended to soothe them and to take them under her particular protection. Arran was delighted to be delivered from such a formidable rival upon any terms; and in the next parliament, which met at Linlithgow, he succeeded in causing Lennox to be declared a traitor, and in having his estates and those of his friends confiscated, by which he realized considerable sums of money.
The English, during these domestic broils, made a furious inroad into Scotland, burned Jedburgh and Kelso, and laid waste the whole circumjacent country. Thence proceeding to Coldingham, they fortified the church and the church tower, in which they placed a garrison on retiring to their own country. This garrison, from the love of plunder as well as to prevent supplies for a besieging army, wasted the neighbouring district to a wide extent. Turning their attention at last to general interests, the Scottish government, at the head of which was the Cardinal, the Queen-dowager, and the nominal Regent Arran, issued a proclamation for the nobles and the more respectable of the commons to assemble armed, and with provisions for eight days, to attend the Regent Eight thousand men were speedily assembled, and though it was the depth of winter, they proceeded against the church and tower of Coldingham without delay. When they had been before the place only one day and one night, the Regent, informed that the English were advancing from Berwick, took horse, and with a few attendants galloped in the utmost haste to Dunbar. This inexplicable conduct threw the whole army into confusion, and, but for the bravery of one man, Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus, the whole of their tents, baggage, and artillery would have been abandoned to the enemy. But although Angus and a few of his friends, at the imminent hazard of their lives, saved the artillery and brought it in safety to Dunbar, the conduct of the army in general, and of the Regent in particular, was pusillanimous in the extreme. The spirit of the nation sunk and the courage of the enemy rose in proportion. Ralph Ivers, and Brian Latoun, the English commanders, overran, without meeting with any opposition, the districts of Merse, Teviotdale, and Lauderdale, and the Forth only seemed to limit their victorious arms. Angus, who alone of all the Scottish nobility at this time gave any indication of public spirit, indignant at the nation's disgrace and deeply affected with his own losses, for he had extensive estates both in Merse and Teviotdale, made a vehement representation to the Regent upon the folly of his conduct in allowing himself to be the dupe of an ambitious but cowardly priest, who, like the rest of his brethren, unwarlike abroad, was seditious at home, and, exempt from danger, wished only the power of wasting the fruit of other men's labours upon his own voluptuousness. Always feeble and always vacillating, the Regent was roused by these remonstrances to a momentary exertion. An order was issued through the neighbouring counties for all the nobles to attend him, wherever he should be, without loss of time, and in company with Angus, he set out the very next day for the borders, their whole retinue not exceeding three hundred horse. Arrived at Melrose, they determined to wait for their reinforcements, having yet been joined only by a few individuals from the Merse. The English, who were at Jedburgh, to the number of five thousand men, having by their
