page_title: Scotland in the early modern period
section_title: "Rough Wooing"
hierarchical_section_title: Scotland in the early modern period / Political history / Sixteenth century / "Rough Wooing"
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of Pinkie sketch, 1547. This image is annotated on its description page at Commons.
context_page_description: Scotland in the early modern period refers, for the purposes of this article, to Scotland between the death of James IV in 1513 and the end of the Jacobite risings in the mid-eighteenth century. It roughly corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the start of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
  After a long minority, the personal reign of James V saw the court become a centre of Renaissance patronage, but it ended in military defeat and another long minority for the infant Mary Queen of Scots. Scotland hovered between dominance by the English and French, which ended in the Treaty of Edinburgh 1560, by which both withdrew their troops, but leaving the way open for religious reform. The Scottish Reformation was strongly influenced by Calvinism leading to widespread iconoclasm and the introduction of a Presbyterian system of organisation and discipline that would have a major impact on Scottish life.
context_section_description: At the beginning of the infant Mary's reign, the Scottish political nation was divided between a pro-French faction, led by Cardinal Beaton and by the Queen's mother, Mary of Guise; and a pro-English faction, headed by James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. Failure of the pro-English to deliver a marriage between the infant Mary and Edward, the son of Henry VIII of England, that had been agreed under the Treaty of Greenwich (1543), led within two years to an English invasion to enforce the match, later known as the "rough wooing". This took the form of border skirmishing and several English campaigns into Scotland. In 1547, after the death of Henry VIII, forces under the English regent Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset were victorious at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, followed up by the occupation of the strategic lowland fortress of Haddington. The Scots responded by sending the five-year-old Mary to France, as the intended bride of the dauphin Francis, heir to the French throne. Her mother, Marie of Guise, stayed in Scotland to look after the interests of Mary – and of France – although Arran acted officially as regent.
  The arrival of French troops helped stiffen resistance to the English, who abandoned Haddington in September 1549 and, after the fall of Protector Somerset in England, withdrew from Scotland completely. From 1554, Marie of Guise formally took over the regency, maintaining a difficult position, partly by giving limited toleration to Protestant dissent and attempting to diffuse resentment over the continued presence of French troops. When the Protestant Elizabeth I came to the throne of England in 1558, the English party and the Protestants found their positions aligned and asked for English military support to expel the French. The arrival of English troops, and particularly the English fleet, in 1560, led to the besieging of the French forces in Leith, which fell in July. By this point Mary of Guise had died and French and English troops both withdrew under the Treaty of Edinburgh, leaving the young queen in France, but pro-English and Protestant parties in the ascendant.
caption: A contemporaneous wood cut of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh
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