Unhappy is the age which has o’er young a King.
Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, The Satire of the Three Estates
At the beginning of the sixteenth century relations between Scotland and her much larger and infinitely more powerful neighbour were better than they had been since the death of Alexander III in 1286. England, under its first Tudor monarch, was still recovering from the effects of the Hundred Years’ War and the prolonged civil conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. Henry VII not only restored internal stability but sought to create equilibrium externally and to this end he arranged the marriage of his son to Katherine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain, and his daughter Margaret to James IV, King of Scots. The romantically named Union of the Thistle and the Rose in 1503 seemed set to secure Henry’s northern frontier and usher in an era of peace within the island of Britain; but within a decade the Scots invaded England. The immediate cause of the war was a bitter dispute between Queen Margaret and her brother, Henry VIII, over a legacy. Nevertheless Queen Margaret did everything in her power to prevent her headstrong husband going to war, but to no avail; the Scots would have gone to war anyway, under the obligation of their age-old alliance with France which was then at odds with England.
This would be the last time that the Scots would serve as cannon fodder for French interests. At Flodden King James IV and the flower of Scottish chivalry were slaughtered, and the crown passed to a seventeen-month-old baby. There is something ironical about Queen Margaret, Guardian of James V, being the heiress to the English throne, in default of issue to her brother. Apart from the quarter of a century between the birth of Elizabeth Tudor (1533) and the death of her half-sister Mary (1558), the heir presumptive to the crown of England was a Scot. Despite Flodden, there was a strong feeling that, sooner or later, a Stewart would succeed to the English throne. This, in turn, tended to bring the Scots closer to their southern neighbours. Conversely, when a Scottish succession was less likely, the Scots tended to pursue a more independent policy. This was the situation by 1540: not only was King Henry in the prime of life, but he had a son and two daughters. Of course, no one could foresee that all three would follow him on the throne, and that all three would be childless, thus bringing the Tudor dynasty into jeopardy.
The minority of James V lasted till his eighteenth year. For much of that period the reins of government were in the hands of his mother who, naturally, would have been expected to act in her brother’s interest at all times. In point of fact she often let her heart rule her head, regardless of political considerations. Eleven months after the death of James IV, Margaret married Archibald, Earl of Angus, invariably dismissed as ‘a young witless fool’.1 This alienated many of the nobility, particularly the powerful earls of Arran and Home, and made her utterly dependent on the house of Douglas. Margaret’s headstrong actions gave the Council the excuse for removing her from the regency and guardianship of the king in July 1515, in favour of John Stewart, Duke of Albany, the young king’s cousin and next in line to the throne. Albany was actually born and brought up in France, and only returned to the land of his fathers after Flodden at the urgent request of the Council. Not surprisingly, he favoured closer ties with France. Henry VIII perceived Albany as a major stumbling-block to his plans for gaining control of Scotland though ironically Albany was fettered by the devious policies of France which, when it suited her, was only too ready to abandon him and his adopted country. Indeed, when Albany made what he intended to be a flying visit to France in 1517, the French went so far as to oblige Henry by revoking Albany’s passport and holding him for four years.
In September 1515 Margaret fled to England where, a month later, she bore to Angus a daughter, Margaret, who later became Countess of Lennox and mother of Henry, Lord Darnley. In 1516 Margaret went to her brother’s court, having parted from her husband who returned to Scotland, made his peace with Albany and was restored to his estates. Thereafter Angus was Margaret’s implacable enemy. The rivalry between the French and English factions in Scotland was exacerbated and complicated by the private feuds of the Hamiltons and the Douglases, the respective heads of whose houses, Arran and Angus, contended for the supreme power during the enforced absence of Albany in France. Returning to Scotland, Margaret quarrelled with her estranged husband over money matters and began to agitate for a divorce. In this she was aided by Albany, who found an unexpected ally when she was temporarily alienated from the English faction by her brother Henry’s strenuous opposition to her divorce. When Albany returned from France in 1521 his association with the Queen Mother gave rise to rumours that he intended marrying her himself, once she had obtained her divorce. At that time, however, Albany’s star was in the ascendant, and it was Angus who found it prudent to leave the country and seek refuge in France till 1524.
During these years there was constant warfare along the Anglo-Scottish border. In May 1524 Albany was obliged to retire to France, but Henry’s attempts to gain control of his little nephew were thwarted when James was proclaimed a reigning sovereign in July that year. Immediately after her divorce from Angus in 1527 Queen Margaret married Henry Stewart, second son of Lord Avondale, and her new husband, now created Lord Methven, became for a time the chief adviser to the boy-king. Margaret’s last meddlesome act came in 1534 when she tried to arrange a meeting between her brother and her son, but was frustrated by the Council and the Scottish clergy. In her anger and disappointment, she betrayed certain state secrets to Henry. The last remaining links with her son were shattered when he accused her of betraying him for English gold. Margaret died at Methven Castle in October 1541.
Despite the prolonged campaign of intimidation waged by Henry VIII against his young nephew, the Scots in general were moving closer to England and drifting away from France. In 1517 Albany had negotiated the Treaty of Rouen which, among other things, envisaged a marriage between King James and a French princess, but the Scots, still reeling from the disaster of Flodden, no longer had the same zest for major cross-border wars in support of the Auld Alliance. Among the common people, there was a growing feeling that closer ties with England, a country which had prospered immensely under the strong rule of the Tudors, would be no bad thing.
These political developments went hand in hand with radical changes in religious outlook. By 1527 the Lutheran reform movement reached Scotland and struck an immediate chord in a country whose Church was notoriously corrupt. Within a decade many of the most powerful and influential noblemen and clergy had espoused reform. From 1534 onwards, when Henry VIII finally broke with Rome, the clamour for religious change gathered momentum. Many of the reformers, in fact, found shelter in England from persecution, and in due course would return to Scotland, stronger in their reforming zeal than ever. At the same time, those on the conservative wing of the Church were driven more deeply into the pro-French camp.
For centuries Scotland had been a pawn in the power struggle between France and England, but in the period of James V’s personal rule the international situation was in a state of flux. France now felt infinitely more threatened by the rise of the Habsburg dynasty which, under the Emperor Charles V, controlled not only the Holy Roman Empire but also Spain and the Netherlands. Both France and the Emperor sought English support and while Henry astutely exploited this situation, keeping them at arm’s length with vague promises, whichever continental power was temporarily at odds with England would seek accommodation with the Scots. Even the Papacy was drawn into this diplomatic manoeuvring, especially after Henry set up his own Reformation. James briefly enjoyed the rare experience of being courted on all sides. He favoured a continuation of the French connection, ably conducted by Albany on his behalf. Albany, related by marriage to Pope Clement VII, also facilitated closer ties with the Papacy. By contrast, James was violently hostile towards his stepfather Angus, who had actually kept him in close confinement for more than two years (1525–27). When James escaped from Edinburgh and assumed the reigns of government at the beginning of 1528, Angus was toppled from power and fled to England, a fact which did nothing to endear England to the King.
Albany hoped to marry James to his niece, Catherine de’ Medici, a ward of the Pope, but Clement VII had other ideas on the matter and eventually secured her marriage to the son of Francis I, the future Henry II of France. The Pope compensated the Scots by granting James a tenth of the revenues of all ecclesiastical benefices in Scotland for three years, to be followed by £10,000 per annum, although in the end the annual payment was compounded into a lump sum of £72,000. In return James promised to uphold the Church of Rome and later on he secured for his illegitimate sons lucrative bishoprics. Meanwhile the quest for a suitable bride (that is to say, one whose dowry would give Scotland’s precarious finances a much-needed boost) went on apace. Although an imperial princess was briefly considered, and even Mary Tudor, elder daughter of Henry VIII, was not ruled out, the obvious choice would be some relative of the French monarch. Overtures were made concerning Madeleine, the sickly daughter of Francis I, but the latter was loath to let her endure the uncertain rigours of the Scottish climate. James was fobbed off with vague promises of some more robust princess, together with the Order of St Michael.
The marital saga took a leap forward in 1535 when France and the Empire were at war and relations between France and England had been severed. Suddenly Scotland was back in the limelight, and it was at this point that a marriage between James and Mary, daughter of the Duke of Vendôme, head of the rival House of Bourbon, was seriously contemplated. The chief attraction – indeed, the only attraction, for the girl herself was ugly and deformed – was a much larger dowry than usual. When James went to France in 1536 to pledge his troth he was immediately repelled by the ill-favoured hunchback who had been selected as his bride; instead he was drawn to the frail but exquisitely beautiful Princess Madeleine and she to him. This was a genuine love match, and Francis I did not have the heart to oppose it. On 1 January 1537 the young couple were wed. In May the consumptive Madeleine accompanied her husband to Scotland but within six weeks she was dead.
With indecent haste a second French marriage was promptly arranged by David Beaton, nephew of Archbishop James Beaton of St Andrews and the rising star of Scotland’s French faction as well as the bitterest opponent of the reformers. The replacement bride was Mary, daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, a lady noted for her grace and great stature. She had lately lost her husband, the Duke of Longueville. The young widow was briefly considered as a bride for Henry VIII who had recently lost his third wife, Jane Seymour. The story goes that Henry proposed marriage, saying that as he was a well-built man he should have a well-built wife. Mary retorted, ‘Yes, but my neck is small!’2 Besides, Francis I had no desire to see the power of the Guise family (actual rulers of Lorraine and often virtual rulers of France itself) increased by marriage to the king of England; but the king of Scots was another matter altogether, and so the proposed union received the royal blessing.
Mary of Guise was married by proxy in Notre-Dame, Paris, on 18 May 1538, Lord Maxwell standing in for the groom. In the company of Maxwell and a vast number of Scots nobility, Mary crossed the North Sea and landed at Crail in Fife on 10 June, barely twelve months after Madeleine. Shortly afterwards she went through a second marriage ceremony in St Andrews Cathedral. Thus was the Auld Alliance reaffirmed, just when relations between France and the Empire were cordial once more. Alarmed at the way his continental enemies seemed to be ganging up on him, Henry VIII made a desperate effort to detach Scotland from the threatened campaign. A meeting between James and Henry was planned at York, and the English king actually made the fatiguing journey north for that purpose; but James did not keep the appointment, fearing that Henry might abduct him. Henry, angered at James’s failure to turn up, vented his spleen by ordering all-out war.
By and large, however, the Scots had no appetite for this conflict. Scotland was now more or less evenly divided between the Catholic pro-French party and the reformers who felt that James should follow his uncle’s example and join forces with England against the papal crusade. When war broke out in July 1542 James could no longer rely on the mass of his subjects and was compelled to raise an army paid for out of his Church revenues and commanded by David Beaton who had succeeded his uncle as Archbishop in 1539 and was now a cardinal. He tried unsuccessfully to imbue the conflict with the nature of a holy war. The Scots’ enthusiasm for the campaign evaporated even further when the field command was entrusted to the King’s current favourite, the hopelessly inept Oliver Sinclair. At first the Scots, under the Earl of Home, succeeded in checking the English at Haddonrig in August, but when the main army crossed the border in the autumn it was decisively defeated on 24 November by the English under Sir Thomas Wharton, deputy warden of the West March, at Solway Moss. Twelve hundred prisoners were taken, including many prominent noblemen who were immediately hustled off to London for a stormy meeting with King Henry who cajoled, browbeat, bullied and finally bribed them to this way of thinking. The bulk of the Scottish army threw away their arms and fled back across the border in total disarray.
Hitherto James had been regarded as a vigorous young man, possessed of great personal courage; but as a result of the humiliating defeat at Solway Moss he suffered a complete mental and physical breakdown. He withdrew to Edinburgh (where he made his will and drew up an inventory of his personal wealth), and thence to Hallyards in Fife where he gloomily predicted that he would be dead within fifteen days. From Hallyards he journeyed to Linlithgow where he spent a few anxious days with Queen Mary, now heavily pregnant. In May 1540 Mary had borne a son, James. A second son, Robert, Duke of Albany, was born in April 1541 but died two days later. This tragedy was compounded by the death of little Prince James within the week. Queen Mary was distraught, though she showed remarkable fortitude, ‘telling the King that they were young enough to expect to have many more children’.3
The King had six surviving sons and two daughters, all born out of wedlock, and what faith he still had in a legitimate succession was pinned on the babe now kicking in the Queen’s belly. James had apparently been suffering acute depression for some time, and on that score had not been able to accompany his army. The news of Solway Moss tipped him over the edge. From Linlithgow he went to his favourite retreat, Falkland Palace, where he took to his bed. When informed that the Queen had given birth to a daughter on 7 December,4 he cried out, ‘It cam wi a lass and it’ll gang wi a lass’ – a reference to Marjorie Bruce whose marriage to Walter the Steward had started the Stewart dynasty. In this regard, James’s gloomy prediction was not fulfilled, for through this latest lass the dynasty would go on to rule England as well as Scotland. James, in fact, was more deeply affected by the news that his favourite, Oliver Sinclair, had been taken prisoner. ‘Oh fled Oliver! Is Oliver ta’en? Oh fled Oliver!’5 And with a mournful sigh he turned his back on the world and expired around midnight on Thursday, 14 December. He was just thirty, and his successor was a sickly baby girl a week old who was not expected to live.
A document signed by James, and dated on the day of his death, may have been drawn up posthumously in order to name a regency consisting of Cardinal Beaton, the Earl of Huntly, the Earl of Argyll and the Earl of Moray (the King’s illegitimate step-brother James Stewart – not to be confused by the later, and better-known person of the same name and title who was the eldest of James V’s sons born out of wedlock). The eldest surviving descendant of James II’s daughter Mary, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, had been heir presumptive since the death of the Duke of Albany in 1536. As such, he had a virtual right to be Governor of the Realm in the event of a minority, but as leader of the reforming faction he was expressly excluded by this document. Not surprisingly, within days of the King’s death, Arran is said to have drawn his blade and threatened the Cardinal, accusing him of being a ‘false churl’ who told many lies in James’s name. Arran and his followers denounced the regency document as a forgery. This unseemly squabble was soon overshadowed by the repatriation of the noble prisoners from London, now forming the core of a new pro-English faction under the Earl of Angus, returning to Scotland for the first time since he was ousted in 1528. This party, bolstered by English gold, were pledged to work towards an eventual marriage between the new-born infant and the five-year-old Prince Edward, Henry’s son and heir. Rumours that the baby was either dead, or not expected to live, were rife,6 and some at least of this English party were even prepared to help Henry or his son obtain the Scottish throne.
Cardinal Beaton appointed himself Chancellor on 10 January 1543. A fortnight later, however, the pro-English nobles had a meeting with Arran and within forty-eight hours the Cardinal had been deposed and taken into custody. In March parliament met briefly and solemnly declared Arran ‘Second Person in the Realm and Governor until the Queen’s perfect age’ (her twelfth birthday). Those who knew him best, however, were not impressed by this weak, vacillating figure who had now thrust himself into the most powerful position. For the moment, however, he acted decisively, pressing ahead with ecclesiastical reform. Under his direction, and taking their cue from England, parliament sanctioned the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular. The Catholic Church was now, for the moment, in retreat; when King Henry’s special envoy, Sir Ralph Sadler, reached Edinburgh, he participated in a reformed communion ceremony alongside Arran. Afterwards commissioners were appointed to begin talks for the proposed marriage of Mary and Edward.
Sadler very quickly learned that while the Scots might be anxious for some sort of accommodation with Henry, they were a proud people who would react swiftly to any suggestion of subjection to England. Henry might have got his way regarding the proposed marriage if he had not coupled it with a demand that the castles of Dumbarton, Dunbar, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Stirling and Tantallon be surrendered and that all treaties and agreements with France be nullified. This was tantamount to the complete subjugation of Scotland and the admission of Henry’s suzerainty. Even Henry’s staunchest partisans on the Council baulked at these high-handed terms. Sir George Douglas, numbered among the most steadfast of Henry’s supporters, stated bluntly: ‘There is not so little a boy but he will hurl stones against it, the wives will come out with their distaffs and the commons universally will rather die’.7 Reporting this verbatim to his royal master, Sadler was at pains to point out that the Scots might welcome a royal marriage that bound their country more closely to England, but they were adamant that Scotland’s identity must be preserved. Consequently they insisted that Mary should continue to be brought up in her own realm, and that Scotland was to retain its independence.
Sadler’s careful diplomacy was almost set at naught by King Henry who failed utterly to grasp the delicacy of the situation and insisted, rather heavy-handedly, that the baby queen should be sent to England as soon as she was weaned. This alarmed the Scots who felt that once Henry had obtained custody of the little girl, all the guarantees of Scotland’s sovereignty would be worthless. With a bad grace Henry backed down, although his belligerent attitude could have done nothing to allay Scottish suspicions. The parallels between the behaviour of Henry in 1543 and Edward I in 1290 were too awful to contemplate. For the time being, however, Henry gave way, and the Treaties of Greenwich, signed on 1 July, provided that young Mary would remain in Scotland till the age of ten when she would be expected to ‘complete marriage’ by going to England.
The ink on these documents was scarcely dry when opinion in Scotland veered away from England and back to France once more. Cardinal Beaton, released from captivity at the end of March, though continuing under house arrest in St Andrews, openly condemned the compact with England, while the Queen Mother, outraged at the manner in which she was not consulted on her daughter’s future, contrived to drive a wedge between Arran and King Henry. As the pro-French faction regrouped and consolidated behind Cardinal Beaton, the latter felt strong enough for a showdown with Arran. On 26 July Beaton mustered an army of about seven thousand men, advanced to Linlithgow that night and took charge of the little queen whom he conveyed to Stirling Castle, that impregnable bastion which, so often over the centuries, had been the very key to the kingdom.
This move was opposed half-heartedly, if at all, by Arran who, influenced by his half-brother John, Commendator of Paisley, was beginning to question the wisdom of too close an association with Henry VIII. Undoubtedly self-interest lay at the heart of these doubts, for he would have been extremely reluctant to agree to anything that might jeopardise his own prospects in the event of Mary dying childless. So he acquiesced in the transfer to Stirling, reasoning that a lot could happen in the ensuing years. Besides, if the arrangement with Henry broke down and the proposed marriage with Edward was called off, there was always Arran’s own son and heir, the Master of Hamilton, who would make an excellent substitute.
At this juncture another factor entered the reckoning. Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, was prevailed upon by the pro-French party to return from France. He was next in line of succession to the throne, after Arran, the legitimacy of whose own claim was often challenged. Beaton was in a strong position to pronounce one way or the other on Arran’s legitimacy and a word to this effect from brother John had the desired effect. On being advised of Arran’s change of heart, Henry VIII countered with the proposal that his daughter Elizabeth might wed the Master of Hamilton. This was backed by the offer of five thousand English soldiers, should military action be required to suppress the opposition. Henry overstepped the mark, however, with his final offer: if he was compelled to invade Scotland to achieve his goals, he was prepared to let Arran reign as king north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus. Arran did not relish the prospect of a Highland petty kingdom, and suggested that five thousand pounds in gold would be more useful than an expeditionary force. In the end he was persuaded to ratify the treaties on 25 August, but eight days later he went back on his word. As John Knox put it pithily:
The unhappy man . . . quietly stole away from the lords that were with him in the palace of Holyroodhouse, passed to Stirling, subjected himself to the Cardinal and his counsel, received absolution, renounced the profession of Christ Jesus his holy Evangel and violated his oath that before he had made for observation of the contract and league with England.8
The sacrament of absolution on 8 September was witnessed by Argyll and Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, who held the towel over his head. Arran’s defection was completed by the ceremony, the following day, in Stirling Castle when the nine-month-old queen was crowned ‘with such solemnitie as they do use in this country, which is not very costlie’, as Sir Ralph Sadler duly reported back to Henry.9 At the coronation, Arran bore the crown, Lennox the sceptre and Argyll the sword of state. The pro-English faction pointedly boycotted the affair.
The date could not have been less auspicious: 9 September was the thirtieth anniversary of Flodden.
Arran’s sudden turnaround was subsequently endorsed by the Council in which the consensus was that Henry’s arrogant, bullying tactics gave the Scots good cause to regard the treaties as null and void. In particular they took exception to Henry’s peremptory demand that they repudiate the Auld Alliance. The offer of five thousand troops was seen as a provocative threat, and the Scots countered by saying that if such an army crossed the border, twenty thousand Scots would take up arms to oppose them. Henry retaliated by ordering the seizure of Scottish ships in English ports or on the high seas. By 11 December, when the Westminster parliament had failed to ratify the Treaties of Greenwich, and the English government continued to refuse to release the Scottish ships, the Scottish parliament repudiated the agreement with England, restated the alliance with France and confirmed Beaton as Chancellor.
Furthermore, to ensure that Arran would not swing back in favour of Henry, the Council had ordered that the Master of Hamilton be held in the Cardinal’s castle at St Andrews to guarantee his father’s compliance. Furthermore, Arran was compelled to take advice from a committee headed by Beaton and Mary of Guise. Beaton had already escorted Arran to Dundee, so that he might personally put down the mob attacks on monastic buildings. In December parliament, under Beaton’s firm hand, now passed an Act for the ruthless punishment of heretics and Arran was urged to implement it without delay. Later the same month news arrived from France that Catherine de’ Medici, wife of King Henry II, had given birth to a son. In baby Francis, a year younger than little Mary, the Scots now had a viable alternative to Prince Edward.
Arran’s dramatic change of heart signalled the first major turning-point in the life of the baby queen. Hitherto Henry VIII had tried to coerce the Scots with threats, bribes and harassment. Now the gloves were off and he would have to resort to force to bring the Scots to heel. For the moment, however, he watched and waited with mounting impatience to see how matters would develop in Scotland itself. Angus, Glencairn, Cassilis and a few other great magnates continued to protest their steadfast loyalty to Henry. The English party soon received a welcome though not wholly unexpected addition in the form of the Earl of Lennox. Hitherto a staunch member of the French party, he was first and foremost an enemy of Arran. Ergo, when Arran defected to the French party, Lennox must join the English party.
His change of allegiance, immediately after Mary’s coronation, was so sudden that when he encountered Cardinal Marco Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia and Papal Legate, together with an important French delegation headed by Jacques de la Brosse and Jacques Mesnaige, just landed at Dumbarton about 8 October, they were completely fooled by him and gladly handed over the artillery, ammunition and a thousand crowns in cash supplied by the King of France and the Pope. This valuable accretion of money and matériel, despatched from the Continent to ensure that the Scots joined the impending crusade against England, thus fell into the wrong hands. Even though Lennox failed to detain Grimani (who was worthy of a king’s ransom), this coup put new heart and muscle into the English faction. With the money and military equipment unwittingly supplied by the French they were now in a strong position to dictate terms. In desperation, Cardinal Beaton produced a last-ditch but rather ludicrous plan for reconciliation between the opposing factions: Arran was to divorce his wife and marry the Queen Mother, while Lennox, then a bachelor of twenty-six, was to marry baby Mary. On 15 December 1543 the Scottish parliament endorsed these proposals and, to the relief of Brosse and Mesnaige, re-affirmed the ‘auld bands’ that tied Scotland to France.10
When Henry VIII learned that the Scots had swung back once more into the French camp and had unilaterally repudiated the marriage agreement, he ordered that series of vicious punitive expeditions which the Scots, with wry understatement, would later call the Rough Wooing. Henry’s drastic action, intended once and for all to crush the enemy at his back, was also dictated to some extent by dramatic developments on the European front. The Emperor Charles V repudiated Henry while the Papacy summoned the great Council of Trent that would launch the Counter-Reformation, directed against England in particular. As a preliminary to a full-scale invasion of Scotland, Henry redoubled his efforts to secure the loyalty of Angus, Cassilis, Glencaim and Lennox. At one stage he got into a rather unseemly auction, whereby the Scottish earls were, in effect, ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder. In 1543 he had bribed them with relatively small sums of a hundred or two hundred pounds; a year later he was obliged to up the ante to a thousand pounds apiece. In the interim what then passed for the Scottish government (with continuing subsidies from France) made counter offers and, in the end, topped Henry’s bid, so that some semblance of national solidarity, albeit cash-induced, was briefly restored by the end of 1544.
If English gold was the carrot, the expedition led by the Earl of Hertford in May 1544 was the stick. It gives us an insight into Henry’s muddled thinking at this time that he convinced himself that he could best secure the loyalty of the Scots by systematically burning and pillaging throughout the Borders and the Lowlands. Scottish military opposition to this ruthless campaign was weak and ineffectual. On Sunday, 4 May, a 16,000-strong English force landed close to Edinburgh, virtually unopposed, while the main army crossed the Tweed and advanced overland. Towns and villages along the way were burned, but particular attention was paid to the great religious houses of Melrose, Dryburgh and Roxburgh. The wanton destruction of these abbeys was but the prelude to the onslaught on Edinburgh itself. The burning of the city occupied two days, during which the English soldiery went on an orgy of murder and rape. The Abbey and Palace of Holyroodhouse were sacked and extensively damaged. From the nauseatingly self-righteous tone of the report to Lord Russell, the Lord Privy Seal, it is clear that the English regarded this campaign as a crusade. ‘In these victories,’ wrote an anonymous correspondent, ‘who is to be most lauded but God, by whose goodness the English hath had a great season, notable victories.’11 Hertford then swung south-east and returned to England, leaving a trail of destroyed towns in his wake. There would be no let-up for the Scots, however; armies led by Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Brian Layton continued to ravage the Border districts throughout the rest of the year. The one crumb of comfort came on 26 May when Lennox and his ally Glencairn (who had gone over to the English) were routed in a ferocious battle near Glasgow. Glencairn took refuge in Dumbarton Castle, while Lennox sailed off to England.
Shortly after arriving in London about the middle of June, Lennox had a meeting with Henry as a result of which he concluded a marriage treaty. On 26 June, he formally bound himself to hand over Dumbarton Castle and the Isle of Bute as an English base, in exchange for Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Margaret Tudor by her second husband, the Earl of Angus. As the ward and niece of Henry VIII, Lady Margaret Douglas was also next in line, after little Queen Mary, in the succession to the English throne. For thus nailing his colours to the English mast Lennox was rewarded not only with the lady’s hand but appointed Lieutenant for the northern counties of England as well as the whole of southern Scotland, with the promise of the governorship of the entire northern kingdom if his mission to deliver Scotland into Henry’s hands were successful. This Scottish quisling carried out a number of military sweeps with the avowed aim of securing the girl-queen and handing her over to Henry, but to no effect. His main achievement was to impregnate his bride who, on 7 December 1545, gave birth to a son, obsequiously named Henry after his royal godfather. Lennox, briefly considered as a potential groom for Queen Mary, would live to see his son, Lord Darnley, succeed where he had failed.
As Hertford’s marauders came within six miles of Stirling, laying waste everything in their path, Queen Mary herself had been whisked off to Dunkeld, at the edge of the Highlands, for greater safety. In this hazardous undertaking Mary of Guise had the moral support of Cardinal Grimani, who was greatly impressed by her courage and fortitude. At all times she kept up a cheerful countenance, all the more remarkable in view of the desperate situation of such a divided kingdom as poor Scotland. ‘I say poor Scotland,’ wrote Grimani, ‘because it is so divided and disturbed that if God does not show his hand and inspire these nobles to unite together, public and private ruin is clearly to be foreseen.’12
Instead of closing ranks in face of the English depredations, the Scots predictably were more divided than ever. Even the pro-French government was split into various factions. Arran was discredited, while Beaton was blamed for all the woes which beset the kingdom. Out of this confusion Mary of Guise emerged as the one resolute and stable figure. Now the mercurial nobles began shifting their allegiance and argued that the Queen Mother should have some say in the administration, a decision taken by the Council on 3 June 1544. Though not displacing Arran, she now played a significant part in the Privy Council. When she let her wishes be known that she favoured a French marriage for her daughter, however, the Scottish nobles recoiled. Arran, who still entertained ambitions about wedding little Mary to the Master of Hamilton, and now also Beaton, strenuously opposed a French match. Public opinion, such as it was, tended to favour Arran’s son, and by the beginning of 1545 many of the influential nobles had come round to that way of thinking. For the time being Queen Mary would remain in her own country and in a brief resurgence of national feeling the Scots braced themselves for a further English invasion. Ironically, one of the commanders of the Scottish army which met the English and defeated them at Ancrum Moor on 17 February 1545 was none other than the Earl of Angus, ex-husband of Margaret Tudor and one-time tool of King Henry. Among the eight hundred English dead was Sir Ralph Eure himself.
There was now stalemate; Henry, who could think of no way out of this impasse, tried to revive the Treaties of Greenwich but when the Scots remained obdurate he again despatched Hertford to wreak havoc on the Lowlands. This time the expedition coincided with harvest-time, with the deliberate aim of burning the crops before they were gathered in. In this campaign of systematic rapine, Hertford was ably assisted by Lennox, whose cohorts ravaged Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Interestingly, about this time several of the clan chiefs in the West Highlands agreed to a form of regional autonomy under English auspices; but, as the nominal head of this government was killed shortly afterwards, this curious state within a state never got off the ground. With the onset of winter Hertford and his army retreated south, having succeeded only in antagonising former sympathisers and potential allies by their brutal tactics, and stiffening the resolve of those who had always opposed Henry. The only positive achievement, so far as the English were concerned, was the removal of Beaton, and even that was something attained by factors other than Henry’s bribes.
Beaton’s popularity had dipped sharply as a result of the Rough Wooing; after all, it was his pro-French policy that had precipitated it in the first place. As well as getting the blame for the misery endured in the Lowlands over two summers, Beaton was widely perceived as the very worst kind of churchman: a cardinal who amassed a personal fortune, who practised nepotism on a grand scale, and whose lascivious personal life was scandalous in the extreme. Henry had long sought to eliminate Beaton but in the end the Cardinal’s assassination was triggered off by local events. In 1543 the reformer George Wishart had returned to Scotland from Cambridge ostensibly to assist in the drafting of the Treaties of Greenwich, but he also took the opportunity to preach the gospel of reform. Unlike John Knox, George was a gentle soul, possessed of other-worldly, almost saintly, qualities, and it seems highly unlikely that he was ‘the Scottish man callit Wishart’ who allegedly had complicity in plots to murder the Cardinal. On 1 March 1546 he was seized by Beaton’s agents and burned at the stake in the castle forecourt of St Andrews while the Cardinal and his cronies spectated in comfort from the castle walls. To add some excitement to the spectacle, Beaton ordered that bags of gunpowder be sewn into Wishart’s clothing at strategic points. At each explosion Beaton and his cronies cheered as if watching a fireworks display.
Wishart’s death provoked a bloody response from the Protestant lairds of Fife who, disguised as the stonemasons hired by Beaton to strengthen his fortifications, entered the Cardinal’s castle on the night of 29 May 1546 and seized the prelate in bed with his long-term mistress, Marion Ogilvy. The terrified Cardinal was dragged from his chamber at sword-point, asked to repent for shedding the blood of Wishart, and then savagely put to death. Afterwards, his horribly mutilated corpse, grotesquely clad in archiepiscopal vestments, was dangled from the foretower of the castle, that the common people might jeer, taunt and insult him further. According to one eye-witness account: ‘Ane callit Guthrie loosit done his ballops’ poynt and pischit in his mouth that all the pepill might sie’.13 Later the body was preserved in salt like pork and kept in a barrel in the notorious Bottle Dungeon of St Andrews for fourteen months, while Beaton’s murderers held the sea-girt castle against government troops.
The Castilians, as the defenders were nicknamed, hoped that King Henry would send a seaborne expedition to raise the siege, but no help from that quarter was forthcoming. Arran, still Governor of Scotland, vacillated. Unable to condone the murder of a prince of the Church (especially as his brother John was now Bishop of Dunkeld) but loath to summon French assistance lest it jeopardise his son’s chances of a royal marriage, he did nothing. The fact that the Master of Hamilton was being held hostage by the Castilians also had some bearing on his resolution, or lack of it. Although the Governor’s troops made several attempts to tunnel their way into the castle, the fact that this episcopal fortress was washed by the waves meant that supplies of food and ammunition could easily be sent in. The siege dragged on, and was only brought to an end with French help on 31 July 1547. The more prominent Castilians were promptly shipped off to French dungeons, but the smaller fry, including the preacher John Knox, became galley-slaves. The great reformer would remained chained to his oar for the next two years.
On 31 March 1547 Francis I of France died and was succeeded by his son Henry II, a monarch who was under the influence of the powerful Guise family and therefore more amenable to doing something positive to help Mary of Guise and her daughter. This help soon materialised in the form of the taskforce that captured St Andrews Castle. This success brought Arran and his government more firmly back into the French fold again. Arran, now discredited for placing family before national interest, strove to retrieve his position. Having been fobbed off with the possibility of a daughter of the Duke of Montpensier as a bride for his son, he gave way and agreed to a French marriage for Queen Mary. As Governor, he had had the care of King James V’s considerable personal wealth and what clinched the deal for him was a guarantee that no questions would be asked regarding his handling of this fortune. In January 1548 he finally undertook to persuade the Scottish parliament to sanction the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin, her immediate transfer to France, and the surrender of the principal Scottish fortresses to French garrisons.14 As a reward for effectively handing over his country to France, Arran was given the French duchy of Châtelherault, a title proudly borne by his descendants to this day.
Meanwhile, on 28 January 1547, Henry VIII died and was succeeded by his son Edward VI, a boy of ten. This produced no change in English policy; if anything, the situation became much worse, for the Earl of Hertford had now been elevated and, as Duke of Somerset, was Lord Protector of England. With the experience of two seasons’ campaigning in Scotland under his belt, Somerset laid his plans with sadistic skill. In addition to a well-trained army of about 25,000 English troops, he had enlisted 2,000 of the ‘wildest and most savage’ Irishmen, many of them veterans of the western raids led by Lennox. The Scots, well aware that retribution was at hand, made plans to meet this catastrophe. The fiery cross was sent into every parish and, as a result, the first truly national effort since Bannockburn in 1314 was organised. Over 36,000 men converged on Edinburgh from all over the country. On hearing that the English had landed, the Scots army marched out of the capital under the command of Arran.
At Pinkie Cleugh, on the escarpment known as Edmonstone Edge south of Musselburgh, they encountered the English army on 10 September. Unfortunately for the Scots, Arran was no Wallace or Bruce and he seems to have been singularly lacking in their qualities of generalship. To be sure, he doubted the reliability of his lieutenants, especially the flamboyant Earl of Huntly, only recently ransomed from England, but he had little control over his troops whose ferocious courage was no substitute for the most elementary discipline. At the sight of the English, the Scots abandoned their commanding position and swooped down the steep slopes in a headlong charge, to be skewered on the pikes and lances of Somerset’s highly trained army. When Arran himself, closely followed by Angus, fled the field, the surviving Scots threw away their arms and tried to outrun the pursuing cavalry, only to be cut down in swathes. In five hours of ferocious combat, some 14,000 Scots were killed while the rest fled in headlong rout back to Edinburgh.
Only five years after Solway Moss, the Scots had suffered another crushing defeat. Somerset’s men now ravaged the Lothians at will and it was the day after Pinkie, when the English seized the port of Leith, that the little queen and her mother were transported by Lord Livingston from Dunkeld to the even more secure priory of Inchmahome, on a picturesque little island in the Lake of Menteith, sixteen miles west of Stirling. Robert Erskine, Commendator of Inchmahome, was one of the fatal casualties of Pinkie so he could not have met Mary, far less taught the four-year-old Latin, French, Spanish and Italian, history, geography, horticulture and embroidery as the legends maintain. To this day one may visit the impressively atmospheric ruins on the heavily wooded island and see Queen Mary’s Garden, Queen Mary’s Bower and Queen Mary’s Tree, the tangible if highly unlikely mementoes of the royal toddler’s three-week sojourn. Mary and her mother returned to Stirling as soon as the English recrossed the border on 29 September. The next four months were spent in the castle which was the only real home she had ever known. Shortly after returning to Stirling she was struck down by a serious illness which Sadler claimed was smallpox, but from the fact that she contracted this disease later in life, it seems more probable that the dread malady late in 1547 was chickenpox. Word that an English army under Lord Grey de Wilton had invaded Berwickshire and seized Haddington determined the Queen Mother on 21 February 1548 to move her daughter to the relative safety of Dumbarton Castle. A few days later, the little queen, now fully recovered from her illness, was transferred to the impregnable fortress on the Firth of Clyde.
In the aftermath of Pinkie, the Scots were forced to the conclusion that French protection was the lesser of two evils. As if to emphasise the ease with which the English could invade the disunited country whenever they chose, there was the constant reminder of Lord Grey’s English garrison at Haddington, disconcertingly close to the capital and occupying a strategic position on the main south-east trade route. At a meeting of the Council in November the Scots bowed to the inevitable, and a few weeks later a mission consisting of fifty officers arrived from France. These military advisers were but the advance guard for the well-equipped army of six thousand men, under André de Montalembert, Sieur d’Essé, which landed at Leith on Saturday, 16 June 1548. In their train came German artillerists, Italian engineers, Swiss pikemen, Dutch arquebusiers and other military specialists, as well as two squadrons of crack light cavalry. This expeditionary force wasted no time in besieging Haddington, in whose abbey, on 7 July, it was formally agreed that Mary, as the future bride of Dauphin Francis, should go to France at the earliest opportunity.
This huge military build-up was almost nullified by a sudden turn of events. In March 1548 the little Queen of Scots fell violently ill again, this time with measles. For several days she hovered between life and death, and rumours that she had actually succumbed circulated widely. The nation held its breath, and the Council (with dire memories of the Maid of Norway in 1290) must have lamented the fact that, once again, the fate of Scotland relied on the uncertain health of a little girl. Eventually the high fever abated and the immediate crisis passed on 23 March. That spring she recuperated from her illnesses, and by the second week of July she was restored to health and fit enough to undertake the most arduous journey of her life. Meanwhile King Henry II had sent a French fleet with his personal galley to bring the little queen to safety. On 29 July Mary went aboard the flagship of Admiral Villegaignon and took a highly emotional farewell of her mother. Mary’s departure was something of an anticlimax, however, for the galleys were delayed in the firth for nine days awaiting a favourable wind.
Although Mary of Guise was left behind – the government of Scotland was now in her hands, backed by Montalembert’s formidable army of occupation – the little girl was accompanied by a vast retinue suitable to her exalted station. They included at least two of her half-brothers, Robert and John Stewart, and possibly also James Stewart (later Earl of Moray), her eldest half-brother, proving that royal blood, even if tainted by bastardy, was still thicker than water. This principle even extended to Mary’s governess, Janet Stewart, an illegitimate daughter of James IV by the Countess of Bothwell. Janet was recently widowed, her husband Lord Fleming being among those slain at Pinkie. Lady Fleming, regarded as a great beauty marred by a short temper, created a fuss before the little armada had even set out. Chafing at the delay waiting for a suitable wind, she demanded that the ship’s captain allow her to go ashore ‘to repose her’; but the French skipper retorted that Lady Fleming, ‘so far from being able to go on land, could go to France and like it, or drown on the way’.15
Among the assorted lords and ladies aboard ship were the four little girls of noble birth known to posterity as the Four Maries: Mary Fleming, Mary Seton, Mary Beaton and Mary Livingston. The first was the daughter of the irascible governess, Lady Fleming, and therefore a distant kinswoman of Queen Mary herself. Mary Seton was the daughter of George, sixth Lord Seton, and his French wife Marie Pieris who had come to Scotland as a maid of honour to Mary of Guise. Mary Beaton was the daughter of Robert Beaton of Creich and a distant relative of the late Cardinal David Beaton and his brother, the future Archbishop James Beaton. She, too, had a French mother, yet another of the Queen Mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Mary Livingston was the daughter of Lord Livingston, Queen Mary’s guardian at Stirling and Dunkeld.
The flotilla finally weighed anchor on 7 August. The feelings of Mary of Guise at being parted from her daughter can be imagined. Once before, she had been forced, for reasons of state, to abandon a child, the son of her first marriage, when she departed for Scotland. Now she was wrenched from the daughter with whom she had shared so many adventures in a few short years. Henry Jones, an English spy, reported to Somerset that ‘The Old Queen do lament the young Queen’s departure, and marvelleth that she heareth nothing from her’.16 The Queen Mother’s anguish was compounded by the uncertainty of the voyage down the west coast of Scotland, through the channel between Ireland and the Isle of Man to Wales. Then giving the tip of Cornwall a wide berth they beat up the Channel for the French coast. The westerly wind for which they had prayed turned out to be too stiff for comfort. By the time they were thirty miles off the Lizard, mountainous waves pursued them and the galley’s rudder was smashed. Queen Mary alone seems to have been immune from seasickness and quite oblivious of the dangers of shipwreck.
Six days after leaving the Clyde, the battered fleet anchored off the French coast and Mary stepped ashore at Roscoff, the fishing port near Brest where, 198 years later, her great-great-great-grand-son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, would disembark after the collapse of the Forty-five Rebellion. The little Chapel of St Ninian at Roscoff is said to mark the very spot where Mary landed.’17 According to the anonymous compiler of the Diurnal of Occurrents she went to France to be brought up under the fear of God. John Knox, inevitably, had a different view: she had gone ‘to the end that in her youth she should drink of that liquor, that should remain with her all her lifetime, for a plague to this realm and for her final destruction’.