an army of eighty thousand men, and forty-five bra« gunsj
against the English borders, to defend which there was not a
man, beyond the local militia, the moss-troopers of the
marches, and the retainers of the feudal nobility of the district
The Earl of Shrewsbury was appointed, instantly, to array and
command the men of the northern counties ; but he was anti-
cipated by the daring address of the bold Lord Dacre, warden
of the western marches, who actually crossed the borders with
five hundred men, made proclamation on Scottish ground, that
the Scots should return into peace with England before the
first day of March next, or they might take the consequences ;
which, he added, those who remembered Flodden might well
judge what they were like to be. At the same time, he wrote
to Albany granting him a month wherein to solicit peace of
Henry's indulgence. Thereupon Albany engaged to disband,
and actually did disband, an army, which might have marched
to the Trent, had it dared, without finding an organized foe to
resist it ; and Dacre contracted to counter-order the advance
of the English powers, not a man of which was yet levied. It
is no wonder, if in one of his letters to the king, Wolsey charac-
terized the regent as ^^ a coward and a fool.** The emperor
had been, equally with Henry, prevented, by lack of money,
fix)m pressing the war effectively ; for he was far from being
popular with his Spanish subjects, who accused him of favor-
ing his Austrians and Flemings, at theur expense; and the
Cortez were anything but liberal in their grants to sustain a
war, which did not in fiict materially interest them, being
waged chiefly in Italy and the Netherlands, their own borders
being in no danger even of menace.
