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 with the assurance that if they quarrelled with him he should have the assistance of England, he left London on 5 Oct. 1524. He was detained for some weeks on the English side of the border by the Duke of Norfolk, but Wolsey having urged that he should be allowed to proceed, and his brother George, who had gone before him, remonstrating against further delay, he passed to Boncle, his brother's home in Berwickshire, on 1 Nov. From it he wrote a letter to the queen, professing amity and asking an interview. Margaret returned it sealed as if unread, while she had in fact perused and resealed it. Its contents had been communicated to Dr. Magnus, the English ambassador at the Scotch court, who praised it in a letter to Angus ‘as singularly well composed and couched for the purpose.’ Magnus had been sent by Wolsey to win her to the English interest, and with a proposal that the young king should marry the Princess Mary. But he made little speed. At every interview she returned to the point that her husband, whom she nicknamed ‘Anguish,’ should not be suffered to come to or to stay in Scotland. For a time Angus, who showed, doubtless under instructions from the English court, great forbearance, remained in Berwickshire, but on 23 Nov., with Lennox, the master of Glencairn, and the laird of Buccleuch, he rode to the gates of Edinburgh at the head of four hundred horsemen. They scaled the wall and burst the gate, and Angus proclaimed from the cross his peaceable intentions and desire to serve the king. Margaret, surrounded by a guard at Holyrood, replied by firing cannon, which killed some too-curious spectators, and by a proclamation in the king's name ordering her husband to leave Edinburgh. Unwilling or afraid to use extreme measures, he retired to Tantallon, while the queen and her son removed from Holyrood to the castle. From Tantallon Angus wrote for the aid Henry VIII had promised. It was now due, as the queen had commenced hostilities. He then passed to the west to visit his ally Lennox, afterwards, in the beginning of the new year 1525, to Melrose, and thence to St. Andrews. He there succeeded in effecting a coalition with Beaton the archbishop, Gavin Dunbar, bishop of Aberdeen, and John Prior of St. Andrews, who, although usually of the French party, with the view of preserving peace, united at this juncture with Angus, Lennox, and Argyll. They declined, at the queen's summons, to attend a council at Edinburgh unless mutual securities were given that Arran and Eglinton, the chief nobles of the queen's party, and Angus and Lennox would keep the peace for two months, and imposed other conditions which the queen declined. They then issued a proclamation at St. Andrews on 25 Jan. 1525 declaring that the king should be set at liberty, and summoned a convention to meet at Stirling on 6 Feb. They also informed Henry VIII of what they had done. The convention of Stirling adjourned to Dalkeith, and endeavoured through Margaret to make terms with the queen, but failing in this Angus and Lennox made a forcible entry into Edinburgh and called a parliament. Before this parliament commenced business, on 23 Feb., the queen had found it prudent to agree to an accommodation with her husband and his friends. Angus was admitted in the council of regency, made a lord of the articles, and promised a place among the guardians of the king, as well as on the committee for disposing of benefices. The edifying spectacle was exhibited to the people of the young king opening parliament in person, Angus bearing the crown, Arran the sceptre, and Argyll the sword. But the queen was at this very time corresponding with Albany, urging him to press on the divorce. One of the terms of her agreement with Angus stipulated that he was not to meddle ‘with her person, lands, and goods even gif he is her husband until Whitsunday next.’ She never seems to have lost a lingering hope that Angus would consent to dissolve their marriage, which would free him as well as herself, and pressed this upon him at several interviews. She even used her son as an agent to persuade him. Angus told Magnus that James had promised him boundless favours if he would consent to be divorced. Although the queen and Arran, as well as other nobles, were on the council of regency, the chief authority centred in Angus and Beaton, as chancellor. In March Angus was appointed lieutenant of the east and middle marches, and did good work in putting down the thieves of the dales, whose lawlessness revived with the dissensions in the central government. But the jealousy between him and Arran had been only concealed for a time. Angus, Lennox, and Argyll entered into a bond to defend each other against all enemies. Angus continued in close correspondence with Henry VIII, whose chief aim then was to win over the young king to his own and the English interest, and deliver him from his mother's influence. Both his mother and Angus spoiled instead of educating the future sovereign.

Parliament again met on 1 July and sat till 3 Aug.; the queen refused to attend, alleging fear of Angus, but he replied