Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/97

 spirators were hanged at Tyburn on 27 May, and the Countess of Salisbury was on the same day beheaded within the Tower. Sir John Nevill was sent down to York to suffer there.

Partly with a view to allaying sedition by his presence and partly in the hope of meeting James V of Scotland, whom he had invited to an interview at York, Henry now arranged a progress into the north. But before he set out the Tower was cleared of its prisoners, and a number of further executions took place, among the victims being Lord Leonard Grey [q. v.] and Thomas Fiennes, ninth lord Dacre of the South [q. v.] Another prisoner, Arthur Plantagenet, viscount Lisle [q. v.], late deputy of Calais, was pardoned. The French ambassador, writing of this time of tyranny, says that men knew not of what they might be accused; they were condemned unheard; parliament had virtually made over all its functions to the king, and the leaders of parties plotted against each other.

Henry set out on his progress on 30 June. It was delayed by floods in Lincolnshire, and he only reached York in September. The different towns on his way vied with each other in offering him gifts and declaring their loyalty. But the Scottish king very prudently declined to meet him. On his return to Hampton Court in November he was shocked to learn that the queen had not been chaste before she married him, and that she had since been untrue to him even during the progress. Her accomplices were tried and executed before her in December, and she herself was brought to the block on 13 Feb. following (1542).

Parliament meanwhile had assembled, and among other things enacted that Ireland should be henceforth a kingdom. Henry was accordingly proclaimed king of Ireland as well as of England on 23 Jan. The island had by this time been brought into fairly complete subjection, almost all the Irish chieftains having made formal submission to the king, some of them in England in the king's own presence. With all this success, however, Henry continued to demand excessive subsidies or extortionate loans. He had also been nursing a quarrel with Scotland since the refusal of James to meet him at York, and things were tending to war both with that country and with France. Disturbances on the Scottish borders brought matters to a point; and Henry, issuing a long manifesto, in which he revived the claim of feudal superiority over the northern kingdom, sent Norfolk to invade it. Norfolk crossed the Tweed, 21 Oct., and laid waste the country till he was compelled for want of provisions to return to Berwick. Next month the Scots were routed at the Solway Moss, and James V died broken-hearted in December, leaving his infant daughter Mary heiress of the kingdom.

The prisoners taken at the Solway Moss, several of them noblemen of high standing, were sent up to London and paraded through the streets from Bishopsgate to the Tower. But on the news of King James's death Henry determined to make use of them to further a new policy in Scotland. He proposed to unite that country to the English crown by marrying his son Edward to the infant Mary as soon as the parties should be of sufficient age. The prisoners were accordingly treated with kindness, and allowed to return to their country on a solemn engagement to favour the treaty and to procure the delivery of Mary into Henry's hands to be brought up in England, or, if the Scottish parliament refused this, to assist Henry in subjugating their own country, or else to return to captivity. At the same time the Earl of Angus and Sir George Douglas, who had been many years resident in England, having been banished from Scotland as rebels, returned thither pledged to promote the same object. But the Scottish parliament, while agreeing to the marriage, refused to allow their queen to be brought up in England. By the skill of Sir George Douglas a compromise was effected, and treaties were actually drawn up on 1 July 1543 for the peace and marriage on terms ostensibly much more favourable to the Scots. But Scotland was unhappily rent by faction, and by the influence of Cardinal Beaton and the French party the treaties were soon set aside.

Meanwhile Henry had on 11 Feb. 1543 concluded an alliance with the emperor against France. Heretic as he was, and excommunicated by the pope, both Charles and Francis had, ever since Cromwell's fall, desired his friendship, each against the other; and though it had been apparent for years that he was inclining to the emperor rather than to France, yet until the emperor was willing to make a satisfactory alliance with him he had studiously affected friendship with the French, and pretended to be ready to marry the Princess Mary to the Duke of Orleans. Henry, however, now withdrew his ambassadors from France, and later in the year sent a detachment under Sir John Wallop in aid of the emperor, so that in the latter part of 1543 he found himself once more at war both with Scotland and France; and at war with both of them he remained till within a few months of his death.

In a brief interval of peace, however, he married, 12 July 1543, his last wife, Catherine