JAMES V. TO ABDICA TION OF QUEEN MAR Y. 53
promptitude and success ; she summoned the nobility to Stirling, and urged on them the
immediate assembly of another army. It was determined to despatch ambassadors to
France with a request for instant aid; and at a council held there shortly after, it was
resolved to Bend the young queen, then a beautiful child, in her sixth year, to the French
Court, where she could pursue her education free from the dangers to which she was
exposed in a country divided by rival factions, and exposed to almost constant war.
By their victory at the battle of Ancrum, the Scots in some degree retrieved their ground,
and they were shortly afterwards gratiiied by the opportune arrival of Monsieur D'Esse'
in the Firth of Forth, as ambassador from the French Monarch, with a fleet of six score
sail, bringing a reiuforcement of eight thousand French and one thousand Dutch troops,
which were disembarked at Leith on the 16th of June 1548, along with a numerous train
of artillery.' Monsieur D'EssB was the bearer of the warmest assurance of further aid in
troops, money, and arms, from the French King, and a proposal that the ancient amity
of the two nations should now be confirmed by a.marriage between his son, the Dauphin,
and the Scottish Queen, whose education meanwhile he offered to superintend with the
utmost care and affection. It need not be wondered at, that an alliance proposed in so
very different a manner from the last, was properly acceded to by the Scottish Parliament.
The Earl of Huntly, it is said, when desired to use his influence in favour of
the marriage with Edward VI., after he had been taken prisoner, replied, that however
he might like the match, he liked not the manner of wooing! ' Shortly after, Monsieur
Villegagnon, set sail with four galleys from Leith, and passing round the north of Scotland,
received the youthful Queen on board at Dumbarton. She was accompanied by her
governors, the Lords Erskine and Livingston, and her natural brother, the Lord James,
afterwards the famous Regent Murray, then in his seventeenth year. Along with her
also embarked the Queen's four Maries, famous in Scottish song, selected as her playmates
from the families of Livingston, Fleming, Seaton, and Beaton. What bruit," says
Knox, in referring to them, '( the Maries, and the rest of the dancers of the Court had,
the ballads of that age doe witness. " ' The English Government, on learning of this
design, fitted out a fleet to intercept the Queen, but the squadron fortunately escaped
every danger, and cast anchor in the harbour of Brest on the 13th of August 1548.
The slow recovery even of the chief towns of the kingdom from such repeated ravages,
i s apparent from the fact that Monsieur D'EssB, the French commander, on returning
from the south, undertook the fortification of Leith, but such was its ruinous state from
its frequent burnings, that no lodging could be found there for his men, and they were
forced to seek accommodation in the neighbouring villages.'
The fortification of Leith, however, exercised a most important influence upon it;
people crowded from all parts to shelter themselves under the protection of its garrison ;
and it speedily thereafter, as we shall find, became a place of great importance, when the
conclusion of peace with England permitted the rival factions, into which the kingdom
was already divided, to gain head and assume form and consistency.
Maitland furnishes a detailed account of these fortihations, which had five ports, only
.
1 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 46. Tgtler, vol. vi. p. 51. Keith's History, Note, vol. i p. 133.
Knox'a History of the Reformation, p. 373-4.-See Minstrehy of the Scottish Border for the old bsllad-''The
Queen's Harie." ' Bishop Lealie, p. 216.
