Rough Wooing Facts & Worksheets

• Furthermore, men aged 16 to 60 living within sight of the beacons, across Lothian, the Borders and the Forth Valley, were ordered to be prepared to respond to the signal. In September 1547, the English launched an invasion that culminated in the decisive Battle of Pinkie near Musselburgh, giving them control over much of southern Scotland through military occupation.
• They established a stronghold at Haddington and seized Broughty Castle near Dundee. On 5 April 1548, Sir Robert Bowes began constructing a fort at Lauder. French assistance to Scotland intensified, bringing in military engineers such as Migliorino Ubaldini, who reinforced the defences of Edinburgh Castle and Dunbar. Meanwhile, English forces under William Grey, 13th Baron Grey de Wilton, burned Musselburgh on 9 June and Dunbar on 12 June. Only days later, on 16 June, 10,000 French troops landed at Leith and began besieging Haddington with artillery.
• Under the Treaty of Haddington, Mary, Queen of Scots, was sent to France for her safety in August 1548 and formally betrothed to the Dauphin Francis. The Italian commander Piero Strozzi began constructing fortifications at Leith with the aid of 300 Scottish labourers. Wounded in the leg during the fighting at Haddington, Strozzi supervised the works while being carried in a chair by four men.
• With additional defences raised at Dunglass, English commanders, including Thomas Holcroft, began referring to the occupied region as the ‘King’s Pale’.
• They envisioned Edward VI receiving feudal dues from this area, stretching from Dunglass to Berwick and from Lauder to Dryburgh, with local landlords to be replaced either by Scottish ‘assured men’ loyal to England or by English settlers.
• By May 1549, the English garrison along the frontier numbered 3,200 soldiers, bolstered by 1,700 German and 500 Spanish and Italian mercenaries. Yet with renewed financial and military support from France, brought by Paul de Thermes, Scottish resistance continued. On 19 June 1549, André de Montalembert, sieur d’Essé, captured the island of Inchkeith, marking another success for the Franco-Scottish alliance.

TREATIES

• The English evacuated Haddington on 19 September 1549. Hostilities came to an end when Scotland was included in the Treaty of Boulogne of 24 March 1550, which was principally an agreement between France and England. Peace was officially proclaimed in England on Saturday, 29 March 1550, though a week earlier the Privy Council had secretly instructed English commanders not to remove artillery that would ultimately be left behind for the Scots. The terms of the peace required the release of prisoners and the dismantling or slighting of fortifications along the border.
• As part of the settlement, six hostages from each side – French and English – were to be exchanged on 7 April. François de Seguenville-Fumel, sieur de Thors, delivered the treaty and its ratifications to Scotland in April 1550, where Mary of Guise and Regent Arran presented him with a gold chain crafted by the Edinburgh goldsmith John Mosman.
• The hostages in both England and France were treated with honour, and by August 1550 most had returned to their homes. On 1 October of the same year, Henry II of France staged a grand triumphal entry into Rouen, an event in which Mary of Guise and Mary, Queen of Scots, participated.
• A separate peace settlement between Scotland and the Holy Roman Empire was also necessary to address disputes over piracy and trade. To fund this embassy to Charles V, Regent Arran imposed a levy on 40 of Scotland’s leading trading burghs in August 1550. The resulting treaty was signed in Antwerp by Thomas, Master of Erskine, on 1 May 1551. Later that year, the Treaty of Norham formally concluded the conflict and secured the withdrawal of English forces from Scotland. By October 1551, Mary of Guise herself visited England, where she was received warmly, travelling from Portsmouth to meet Edward VI in London.
• The peace was finalised at Norham Castle and church on 10 June 1551. Negotiations were conducted by Thomas Erskine, Master of Erskine, Lord Maxwell, Sir Robert Carnegie of Kinnaird, and Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney, alongside the seigneur de Lansac, who represented Henry II of France.
• The English delegation consisted of Sir Robert Bowes, Sir Leonard Beckwith, Sir Thomas Challoner, and Richard Sampson, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. The agreed terms included England’s abandonment of all holdings in Scotland; the restoration of the border and Debatable Lands to their traditional boundaries and practices; the return of Edrington and fishing rights on the Tweed to Scotland; and the repatriation of all prisoners, hostages and pledges. Edward VI ratified the treaty on 30 June 1551, while Mary, Queen of Scots, confirmed it on 14 August of the same year.

ROUGH WOOING: PROPAGANDA WAR

• The English aim of promoting a union between Scotland and England received mixed support among certain groups within Scotland. Some Scots, unwilling to see France dominate their national affairs or sympathetic to advancing the Protestant cause, viewed an alliance with England more favourably. To encourage such sentiments, several books and pamphlets were produced in England as propaganda. These works emphasised three main themes: England’s long-asserted claims of sovereignty over Scotland, the perceived injustice of Scotland’s rejection of the Treaty of Greenwich, and the superiority of Protestantism.
• At Broughty Castle, the English commander Andrew Dudley even hoped to circulate English-printed Bibles, which were scarce in Scotland. In response, the Scots issued counter-propaganda, most notably The Complaynt of Scotland, likely printed in France in 1549. Another work, Ane Resonyng by William Lamb, was written but never published.
• The earliest English tract was issued prior to the Battle of Solway Moss. The 1544 raid on Edinburgh by Hertford was recorded in print as The Late expedicion of the Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford into Scotland. 
• In 1547, shortly before the Battle of Pinkie, Somerset initiated a new wave of propaganda, beginning with James Henrisoun’s An Exhortacion to the Scottes to conforme themselfes to the honourable, Expedient & godly Union betweene the two realmes of Englande & Scotland. This was followed by Somerset’s own printed Proclamation of 4 September 1547 and the Epistle or Exhortation of February 1548.
• Nicholas Bodrugan, a Welshman, added Epitome of the title of the kynges majestie of Englande, which drew on Geoffrey of Monmouth to justify English sovereignty claims and sought to calm Scottish concerns that English common law was harsher than their own. Meanwhile, David Lindsay’s poem The Tragedy of the Cardinal was published in London, accompanied by an account of George Wishart’s death and prefaced by Robert Burrant with a call for religious reform. In October 1548, Sir John Mason and other clerks were rewarded £20 for researching archival records relating to Scottish affairs for use in these tracts.
• Recognising the power of such writings, Lord Methven warned Mary of Guise in June 1548 of the influence English propaganda was having. The Protestant lairds of Fife, who had murdered Cardinal Beaton and captured the Regent’s son James Hamilton at St Andrews Castle, staked their hopes on English backing. In East Lothian, George Wishart’s associates threw in their lot with England, as did Patrick Gray, 4th Lord Gray and Patrick Ruthven, Master of Ruthven. Other Scots were persuaded to sign oaths of loyalty and accept payments from England, becoming ‘assured men’. A draft of such a bond was prepared by Henry Balnaves at St Andrews Castle in December 1546. This system took root mainly in contested border regions and around English garrisons. 
• After the war ended, those accused of ‘assurance’ faced charges of collaboration: in 1553, 192 citizens of Dundee were acquitted, and the entire town of Dumfries was granted a pardon. By July 1549, however, as England suffered losses in France, the assurance system collapsed. Commenting on the matter, Henrisoun questioned whether it was better ‘to conquer hearts without charges, or burn, and build forts at great charges, which will never conquer Scotland?’
• When the war ended, the French celebrated their intervention with elaborate festivities such as the triumphal entry into Rouen, which were commemorated in illustrated festival books. In England, several commanders commissioned portraits to memorialise their achievements, including John Luttrell, James Wilford and Thomas Wyndham. A painting was also created to honour Edward Shelley, who had died at Pinkie. The siege of Haddington later inspired Elizabethan playwright Ulpian Fulwell, who in 1575 composed a work celebrating its events.