by R J M Pugh
No matter, French help came in late autumn, when seven French vessels arrived with money and munitions, encouraging the pro-French party to even bolder measures. Lords Somerville and Maxwell, two of Henry’s ‘assured Scots’, were seized en route to England in November with treasonable documents on their person; Sir Ralph Sadler was obliged to seek refuge in Tantallon Castle, stronghold of the Angus Red Douglases. A further three of Henry’s confederates, the Earl of Rothes, Lord Gray and Henry Balnaves, the last named being a close associate of the arch-architect of the Reformation in Scotland, John Knox were taken into custody. In the autumn of 1543 Henry VIII ordered Sir Ralph Sadler to buy Dunbar Castle as a secure place to house his ‘tresour’, the money to be used to bribe his Scottish adherents. Sadler replied there was no hope of that as the castle was held by ‘a stout man who beareth none affection for Englonde’. That man was Robert Hamilton of the Briggs.3 A Scottish parliament convened on 3 December 1543 decreed that the Treaty of Greenwich was null and void as it had been sanctioned by the regent Arran against the wishes of the nation. The alliance with France was renewed, stringent laws against heresy (the Reformation) were enacted and Cardinal Beaton was appointed Lord Chancellor of Scotland.
The defection of Arran to the pro-French party did not however discourage the pro-England party. In January 1544 Earls Angus, Lennox, Glencairn and Cassillis gathered a considerable following at Leith and attempted to draw Arran and Beaton out of Edinburgh and settle the argument by trial of arms. The proposed battle never took place and, by April, the pro-England party was discredited. Arran’s defection and the collapse of the ‘assured Scots’ threw Henry VIII into a paroxysm of rage; at war with France, Henry knew that the Scots would prove a thorn in his side, so he was determined to chastise them by whatever means he could, rendering them incapable of offering any real support for France. On 4 May 1544 an English fleet commanded by the veteran Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, appeared off Newhaven in the Firth of Forth and landed troops at Leith. Arran and Beaton gathered together a force but, after a feeble attempt to engage Hertford, they fled to Linlithgow, leaving the English to plunder Leith and an area of five miles around Edinburgh Castle (which Hertford had been unable to capture) including the burning of the Palace of Holyrood. Having chastised the people of Edinburgh to his satisfaction – Hertford claimed that he had utterly destroyed Edinburgh which was untrue, although a number of townspeople lost their lives.4 Hertford made his way back home by land, burning several towns and villages in East Lothian including Tranent, Haddington and Dunbar. At Dunbar, Hertford’s army camped outside the town; on 25 May the townspeople went to bed expecting their houses to be torched the following morning. Hertford did not disappoint them. On the morning of 26 May many men, women and children were either burnt to death or suffocated by smoke.5 Informing Henry VIII of his campaign, Hertford wrote thus:
We have brent [burnt] the townes of Haddington and Dunbarre which we dare assure your majeste [sic] be well brent, with asmany [sic] other piles, gentlemens [sic] and others [sic] houses and villages 6
There was at least one positive outcome from Hertford’s invasion; it reconciled for a time the leaders of the pro-French and pro-English parties, although the Earls of Glencairn and Lennox continued to hold out against Arran and Beaton. First Glencairn, then Lennox were respectively defeated in what can only be described as skirmishes at Glasgow and Dumbarton; Lennox was forced to seek refuge in England. The worst the Scots had to fear came from English troops who now occupied a large part of the Border country. In November 1544 Hertford destroyed Jedburgh and Kelso and took Coldingham Priory which he converted into an armed camp for his Irish levies. In retaliation, Arran collected an army of 8,000 and borrowing a large cannon and several smaller guns from Dunbar Castle, arrived at Coldingham on 29 November, battering away fruitlessly at its walls for a day and a night. He then abandoned the siege, leaving the by now compliant Earl of Angus to make his way back to Dunbar with the artillery train. As a finishing flourish to his campaign, Hertford destroyed several hamlets in the Merse, burnt Melrose Abbey and desecrated the tombs of the Black Douglas earls, family ancestors of the Red Douglases of Angus.
Hertford’s invasion was the opening campaign of what became known in Scottish history as the Rough Wooing, Henry VIII’s attempt to force Scotland into an alliance with England. The year 1545 opened with a renewal of the conflict from Coldingham and other places in English hands. The English Border nobles seized every opportunity to wreak havoc on the Scottish East March. Despite his pro-English sympathies and his antipathy towards the regent Arran, Archibald, 6th Earl of Angus would not allow the insult to his ancestors’ tombs at Melrose to go unpunished.
Ancrum Moor
In February 1545 Sir Ralph Evers, Warden of the English Middle March who had destroyed the Douglas tombs at Melrose was confident of further success. Henry VIII had granted Evers all the land he could conquer in the Merse and Teviotdale. The Earl of Angus learnt of this and reputedly responded thus:
If they [the English] come to take seisin [possession] in [sic] my lands, I shall bear them witness to it, and perhaps write them an instrument with sharp pens and red ink [meaning swords dipped in English blood.]7
On 17 February he backed up his threat at Ancrum Moor, three miles from Jedburgh, Evers led a force of 5,200 into the Border country; his army was comprised of 3,000 German and Spanish mercenaries, 1,500 English Border reivers and 700 pro-English Scottish reivers. He marched into Jedburgh where he learnt that a Scottish army was lying near Melrose and proceeded there. Finding no enemy in the vicinity, he torched the town of Melrose, then made camp near Gersit Law, intending to march back to Jedburgh the following day. Angus had managed to muster a local force of 1,000 and he was joined by a similar number of troops led by George Leslie, 4th Earl of Rothes. Then the Earl of Arran arrived with a contingent of about 500 Fife levies and took command of the army which numbered about half of Evers’ force. The following day, 17 February 1545, Evers broke camp and began his return to Jedburgh, when a small force led by Angus waylaid him, constantly harrowing his force then disappearing into the hills. Finally, Angus appeared before the invaders, probably taunting them, then retreated to the nearby Palace Hill. Evers gave chase; when he reached the summit of the hill he saw the entire Scottish army at the foot of the hill. Angus’ raids had been designed to lure Evers into a full-scale battle on terms and ground favourable to the Scottish army drawn up in disciplined formation. The Scots had their backs to the setting sun which dazzled the advancing English who were also disadvantaged by the smoke drifting from the pistols and arquebuses discharged from the Scottish front line. However, it was the Scottish pikemen who won the day with their long spears. The pikemen charged a by now floundering Evers who was unable to re-deploy his men on the summit of the Palace Hill. The Scottish chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie tells us that
the Scottismen’s speares war [were] longer then [than] the Inglismen’s be [by] … an elne [possibly an ell, or forty-five inches.] quilk [which] when they joyned with the Inglismen had them all riven doune [torn down, or destroyed] befor evir [before ever] the Inglismen’s spears might touch thame [them.]8
Then the Scottish Border reivers among the English switched allegiance at the eleventh hour, turning on their former allies. The victory was complete. English casualties were 800 and included Evers, with 1,000 taken prisoner. Scottish losses were given as two which is an absurdly low figure. Whatever the precise casualties, Angus had won a resounding victory, avenging the despoiling of his ancestors’ tombs. The defeat at Ancrum Moor, also known as Lilyard’s Edge, was one of the worst ever inflicted on the English in the Scottish Borders. A monument was raised to commemorate the battle in the mid-eighteenth century; the memorial fell into disrepair so another version was erected in the following century, bearing the short poem which had been inscribed on the original monument. The poem was dedicated to a young woman called Lilliard whose sweetheart had been killed by the English and who took up
arms against them at Ancrum Moor, where she was cut to pieces:
Fair maiden Lilliard
lies under this stane [stone],
little was her stature
but muckle [great] was her fame,
upon the English loons [lads]
she laid monie [many] thumps,
and when her legs were cuttit off
she fought upon her stumps.
The story of Lilliard is apocryphal, however, as the location of Ancrum Moor was known as Lillyat Cross in 1378. However, the monument is known as Lilliard’s Stone.
The disaster at Ancrum was particularly discomfiting to Henry VIII who was facing a potential invasion of England in the spring of 1545, with French assistance on its way to Scotland. Henry tried diplomacy, making peace feelers to the Earl of Cassillis to the effect that if the Scots honoured the Treaty of Greenwich he would overlook their late ‘offences’ – meaning Ancrum Moor – and regard them as friends and allies. Nothing came of this approach. In May, Francis I sent a French fleet to Scotland with a strong force of 3,000 foot and 500 horse commanded by Lorges de Montgomery; the Scots raised an army which brought the total strength to 6,000. This force crossed the Border in August but, as had occurred before, nothing of note was achieved. The French returned home, the promised invasion of England having failed.
Henry bided his time to wreak his revenge on a recalcitrant Scotland. In September 1545 he was resolved to punish the country with added severity. Again, the task of bringing the country to heel was given to the merciless Earl of Hertford who crossed the Border with an army of English, Irish, Germans, French, Spanish, Italians and Greeks. It was harvest-time and Hertford burned and pillaged his way through southern Scotland; the Scots themselves admitted that they had never before been ‘so burned, scourged and punished’.9 In the course of his expedition, five market towns, 243 villages and sixteen fortified places were destroyed. Hertford also partly demolished the Abbeys at Melrose, Dryburgh, Roxburgh and Coldingham Priory before he returned across the Border. The following year the pro-French Cardinal Beaton, Henry’s arch-enemy in Scotland was murdered by Scottish Protestants seeking revenge for Beaton’s execution of the Protestant reformer George Wishart. This was the sole consolation for the English king in 1546. Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547; he had scourged Scotland to a degree unsurpassed by any English king since the reign of Edward I. His young son Edward VI being in his minority, England was governed by Henry’s intractable and ruthless agent, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, now elevated as the Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England. Somerset continued the late King’s policy towards Scotland; he attempted to negotiate with the Scottish leaders, warning them that if they did not abandon their alliance with France England would consider this an act of war. The sole alternative was alliance with England and the marriage of the infant Queen Mary and Edward VI. To reinforce his second proposal, Somerset invaded southern Scotland in the first week of September 1547, hoping to impress the Scots with a show of strength.
On this, his third invasion of Scotland, Somerset was determined to bring Scotland to the negotiating table with cannon rather than casuistry; his political credibility was at stake and he knew the voices of opposition to him in England would not long remain silent should he fail to bring the Scots to heel. With war imminent it was decided to send the five-year-old Queen Mary to safety in France on 29 July 1547. Somerset crossed the Border with an army of 18,000; his idea of reasonable force was marked yet again by a dreary succession of burnt religious houses, market towns, villages and fortalices. On reaching East Lothian he burnt Dunbar and Haddington for a second time. As for the regent Arran, he sent the fiery cross throughout the entire realm of Scotland, the fiery cross being the ancient symbol of war or rebellion hitherto used by the Highland clans. The summons was obeyed.
In that early autumn, Somerset established a base at Eyemouth, Berwickshire, for the troops he left behind as a rearguard screen; from Eyemouth he proceeded to Dunglass, destroying its fortalice and the castles of Innerwick and Thornton. Somerset was surprised that the regent Arran had not attempted to oppose him at the Paths of Pease, or Pease Glen, outside Cockburnspath, a sickeningly deep and dangerous ravine which was virtually impossible to cross save by a narrow wooden bridge. Although a few trenches had been dug in the vicinity, Arran made no serious attempt to confront the invader – perhaps deliberately so, following the time-honoured strategy of luring English armies away from their supply bases while pursuing a scorched earth policy to deny food to the invaders. On his campaign, Somerset was supplied by Admiral Lord Clinton’s fleet sailing up the east coast and parallel to the land advance. Also, Somerset’s invasion occurred before the harvest, so there was no time to gather in or burn the ripening crops. Once again the poor Merse and East Lothian tenant farmers were forced to watch their homes, possessions and the rewards of the agricultural year go up in smoke or be confiscated. The ferocity of Somerset’s onslaught had one positive effect; it instilled courage and stiffened the resolve and determination of every Scot, particularly the Merse and East Lothian fighting men; they answered Arran’s summons to war, flocking in their hundreds to Mussselburgh’s market cross, the rallying point in the south-east.
Somerset passed within cannonshot of Dunbar Castle but the garrison did little more than discharge a few ‘diverse shottes’, as an English eyewitness commented.10 No attack was mounted from the castle and Somerset easily brushed aside Arran’s cavalry stationed near Dunbar. On 8 September Somerset reached Pinkie Cleugh on the outskirts of Musselburgh, six miles south of Edinburgh; his provisioning fleet commanded by Admiral Clinton had already dropped anchor off Fisherrow on the Musselburgh coast. The 4th Earl of Argyll, the 4th Earl of Huntly and the 6th Earl of Angus, all bitter enemies, nonetheless joined Arran.
Pinkie Cleugh
Somerset occupied the high ground of Falside (modern Fa’side), facing Musselburgh and the North Sea. Fa’side is more steep ridge than moor but it offered an excellent view of Arran’s army on the plain of the river Esk below. Somerset’s army numbered 10,800 infantry supported by 1,400 pioneers and German arquebusiers; a large artillery train was supplemented by the guns of Admiral Clinton’s eighty warships moored off Fisherrow; the cavalry numbered 6,000 which included a contingent of mounted Italian arquebusiers. The cavalry was led by Lord Grey of Wilton, the infantry was commanded by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, Lord Dacre of Gillesland and Somerset himself. The English infantry were armed with longbow, bill (halberd), sword and arquebus, the clumsy forerunner of the musket. Against Somerset’s 18,200 were ranged Arran’s infantry led by the Earls of Angus, Huntly and Arran himself; it consisted mainly of pikemen, Highland bowmen and some arquebusiers, a force totalling 22,000 supported by 2,000 light cavalry commanded by Lord Home. The Scots also possessed more than thirty artillery pieces of various calibres.
Arran drew up his army on the west bank of the river Esk, along Edmonton Edge; his left flank was situated near the sea, while his right flank was protected by the Shire Moss, boggy ground which offered protection over the numerically superior English cavalry. His cannon and arquebusiers were positioned behind makeshift fortifications – probably gabions, the large wicker baskets filled with stone and earth for protection against enemy shot. (Some of the Scottish artillery was pointed seaward to keep Clinton’s warships at a distance.) Somerset’s position on Fa’side Ridge was about three miles east of Arran’s front line; it was fortified by trenches and gun emplacements. The battle of Pinkie Cleugh was fought over two days.
First day, Friday, 9 September
Hostilities commenced in late afternoon with Lord Home leading what might be justifiably termed a forlorn hope of 1,500 cavalry; taking up position at the west end of Fa’side Ridge, Home somewhat chivalrously but unrealistically challenged Lord Grey’s horse. The attack had little chance of success, Home being outnumbered four to one. Even so, Somerset was reluctant to commit his cavalry at this stage, although he relented, o
rdering Lord Grey forward with 1,500 heavy and 500 light horse. Despite the fact that the English had the sun beginning to set over the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, in their faces, they charged the Scots, cutting them up so badly that Arran lost the bulk of his cavalry in a single action. Later in the day Somerset camped by the shore of Aitchison’s Haven (modern Morrison’s Haven), overlooking Arran’s position. The two armies settled down for the night, each confident of victory the following day.