Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/393

1526.] the Archbishop had dropped away to the party of France, and the feud of the Hamiltons with the Lennoxes bursting into sudden flame, there was a battle at Linlithgow, where Lennox himself was killed, with the Abbots of Melrose and Dunfermline, the brother and nephew of the primate, and two Stewarts, brothers of the worthless Methuen. Anarchy now followed. Gordon of Lochinvar killed the Laird of Bumbie at the door of St Giles's church, and though Parliament was sitting, appeared openly in the streets, unchallenged by any one. Angus, with his English friends, was able at intervals to maintain, by mere violence, some shadow of authority; but order was limited to places immediately controlled by his own dependents. The will of every man was every man's law—the tribunal of justice his inclination—the executive government his own arm and sword. The sister island remained the ideal of confusion, but Scotland was earning rapidly the secondary merit of successful imitation.

Angus continued dominant till the summer of 1528. In the spring of that year the Court of Rome, which at the moment, we are assured by Catholic historians, was engaged in defending the sacredness of matrimony against the licentious demands of Henry VIII., gave its sanction, nevertherless, to the most impudent request for a divorce ever prosecuted in a court of justice: and forth