heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

146 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
presence, as having the royal authority not to " suffer any manner of person,
" lord or other, to enter into cytie, towne, or castell in Northumberland,
"without he were herytor of the place;"* and, 1403, Sir William Clifford,
acting under the same, viz., Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland,
refused to surrender Berwick to the King's officers, except under certain
conditions.! When Henry, sixth Earl of Northumberland, arrested Wolsey
at Cawood, he silenced the cardinal's plea that as a member of the see
apostolic he was not under any temporal authority, with these words,
"
When I was sworn Warden of the Marches, you yourself told me that
" I might with my staff" arrest all men under the degree of the King, and
" now I am stronger, for I have a commission so to do." J
Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, this was a position of great
responsibility, to which the King would not be likely to appoint a man on
account of high connections and rank, but of proved integrity and ability.
But these were specially troubled times. Flodden had been fought (1513),
when James, brother-in-law to Henry VIII., and the flower of the Scottish
nobility, perished miserably. Margaret, his widow, had married within a
year the Earl of Angus, and was immediately deposed from her office as
Regent. The late King's cousin, the Duke of Albany, had been called in
as her successor, and endless dissension had been the result. Unhappily
the Queen had compromised her character with Albany, and identified
herself with him against Angus. Eventually Angus was exiled, and Albany
fled ;
and when Henry interposed to reconcile the contending factions,
assuring them that he desired nothing but the real welfare of Scotland,
the Estates defied him to do his worst against them.
The Borders on each side were wasted with the usual recklessness ;
and when Albany returned from France with 6,000 French men-at-arms, a
second Flodden was looked for, and Lord Dorset, Lord Latimer, the Earl
of Northumberland, Darcy, Clifford, and all the gentlemen of Yorkshire,
hastened to the rescue. But Albany lacked courage, his heart failed him,
and after attacking Newark he retreated, to the disgust of the gentlemen
of the Border, who tore the badges of their craven Regent from their
breasts and dashed them on the ground. "By God's blood," they cried, "we
"will never serve you more. Would to God we were all sworn English !"
And so the danger subsided for the time but only for a time.
:
Margaret's waywardness and intrigues kept the country continually unsettled,
and a war with England was always imminent. In 1528 the young
King James began to assume the active duties of the Crown, and aggravated,
rather than soothed, the existing irritation with England by identifying
himself with the papacy as opposed to the Reformation, favouring the Pope
House of Ptrcy, vol. i.
*
p. 134, t p. 230, J p. 415. Histoty of Scotland, Sir Walter Scott.