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THE EURES. 147
and the Emperor rather than the allied English and French, and, rejecting
Henry's efforts at conciliation, supported the Irish rebels against him.
In 1532 this unhappy alienation developed into war, and the Earl of
Northumberland and Sir Thomas Clifford read to the Scotch lords, at
the sword's point, those lessons of moderation which had been vainly urged
with gentleness. After a struggle of a year and a half peace was made,
and Henry even offered to make James Duke of York, and include him
in the line of inheritance.
But James, alarmed at the protests of the clergy against accepting
any favour from the arch-heretic, temporised with the offer, and excusing
himself, on the score of inconvenience and distance, from meeting Henry at
York, sailed over to France in May, 1536, and married Magdalen de Valois
on the new year's day following. During the next two years matters did
not improve. Margaret's dissensions with her husband, Methuen, which
culminated in a divorce, giving endless trouble and anxiety to Henry, who
sent Sir Robert Sadler to ascertain her real condition. He spent a night
at Darlington on his way, and in a letter to Cromwell describes the
disturbed and excited condition of the people there, summing up his
description in these terse words "I assure your lordship that the people
" be very tickle."
In 1537 Magdalen died, and James almost immediately married Mary,
daughter of the Duke of Guise, a link which bound the country to France
and the papacy and in May following English spies in Edinburgh reported
;
that an army was being prepared to co-operate with an invading force
from France. Sir Ralph Sadler again came north as ambassador to
remonstrate, and the Duke of Norfolk advanced from York to Berwick ;
and to this combined display of reason and force James submitted. Henry
again implored his nephew to meet his overtures with the frankness with
which they were made, and for two years, at least, there was peace.
During these trying circumstances we can well understand that a firm
hand and a loyal heart was needed for such a post as " Captain of the town
" and castle of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and Warden of the East Marches
" " towards Scotland ; and if
Henry found such a man, as no doubt he did
in Sir William Eure, we can well understand that in 1544 he should have
created him a baron of the realm.
But Henry's debt of gratitude was not confined to
Sir William Eure
only. His eldest son, Sir Ralph Eure, had been appointed constable of
Scarborough Castle; and in 1536 the famous conspiracy, called "The
"Pilgrimage of Grace," commenced a reaction provoked by the late drastic
measures of the King, to restore, at least in some degree, the faith and
practice of the pre-Reformation times. It would be beside my purpose to
trace in detail the progress and development of this movement. The spark