Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/529

1542.] Scots, the Danes, and the Swedes to eat up all the Englishmen in four days.'

'Englishmen,' replied Paget, quietly, 'be not easy morsels to swallow; and their operation is such that, if any man take upon him to eat them, they will cause him with the sight thereof straight to burst.' 'The Scots know it well enough,' he added, for the Cardinal's benefit; 'and as for the Danes and Swedes, they be wise fellows, and know that they that come into England cannot depart thence without license and passport of the King's Majesty.' This was but the play of wit upon the surface; but it indicated the direction of the current, and the substantial fact became every day more visible, that the French would neither pay the arrears of their debts nor continue the pension. They were confident of Scotland. The will of James was the will of David Beton, and if Henry 'made any business with France, the Scottish King would straight molest him.' 'As touching the pension,' Paget wrote again in August to the King, 'they love not to hear of it, and that I note, not only now and heretofore, both by words and countenance in all my conferences, as well with the admiral as with the French King, and from the Cardinal Tournon's mouth, by the report of his secretary, that the French King thought none other but that your Majesty would join with the Emperor against him, but also by the report of the