Transactions. 175 
destined soon to feel the strain of opposing policies—the English 
scheme for a marriage between the young Queen and the heir to 
the English throne, and the Scottish policy—for such it came to 
be—of resisting that matrimonial project of Henry VIII. 
Religious controversy, ever an inflammatory factor in politics, 
added fuel to the burning question. Al! methods—diplomacy, 
bribery, and bluster by turns—were used by Henry to bring 
about the English match. Failing policy, he was prepared to 
resort to force. It was a strange kind of courtship ; even 
whilst it was going on the generals of Henry were planning how 
they could best bring Scotland to her knees. In 1543 Lord 
Wharton, at a military council, recommended a scheme for 
ravaging the Scottish border. Amongst other places he wished 
to burn and lay waste, he proposed the destruction of Annan*— 
“the towne of Annande, which is the chief town in all Anerdaill 
except Dumfreis.” Lord Wharton’s notions about the bounds of 
Annandale were not pedantically precise. He had an antipathy 
to Annan, not without good cause. Its church, we are told by 
another Englishmanft, was ‘‘a strong place and very noysum 
alwey unto our men as they passed that way.” It was thus a 
serious obstacle to wardens’ raids—hence Wharton’s zeal for its 
destruction, his regarding it as a sort of Carthage on the west 
march. 
This council of war in 1543 gives the first inkling of events to 
follow. In 1545 every nerve was strained to induce Lord 
Maxwell, who had been taken captive at Solway Moss, to 
surrender to the English his castles of Carlaverock and Loch- 
maben. This attempt was furthered by a cruel working upon 
the prisoner’s fears and by his bad health, which confinement 
did not improve. It was at last so far successful that Carlaverock 
was yielded. Whilst this consummation of the King’s wishes 
wavered in the balance, Lord Wharton again was pressing for 
consideration his designs against the burgh upon whose doom he 
was bent. He contrasted two alternative schemes.{ One was 
to assail Dumfries, which, however, he thought ‘“ over harde and 
dangerous to be attempted with a warden’s roode.”§ The other, 
*State Papers of Henry VIIT. (1534-1546), vol. v., p. 344. 
tPatten’s Account in Dalzell’s Fragments, pp. 94-5. 
{State Papers, Henry VIII., Vol. v., 545. 
§‘‘ A wardan’s roode which is to go and cum in a day and a night.” 
The definition is Wharton’s own in letter (MS. State Papers, Scotland, 
Hdward Vi., 1547), dated 16 Sept., 1547, transcribed in ‘“‘Auld Lang Syne ” 
column (No. cix.) of Dumfries Standard. 
