Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/560

540 nobles on whose devotion to the Papacy he could calculate. He was proclaimed at the market-cross at Edinburgh, but the impudent forgery was exposed and denounced; and the discovery of the list of names which revealed the conspiracy against the lords who had opposed the war with England raised at once a storm of rage. The Earl of Arran, whose name was first upon the catalogue, was next of kin to the princess, and by Scottish usage was her legitimate guardian. Arran, with the assistance of Sir James Kirkaldy, called a convention of the nobles, and, by a majority too great even to allow a shadow of resistance, was declared Regent. The Cardinal was arrested and imprisoned; and the power passed from the Church to the laity.

The circumstances of the two countries now