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Chapter 10
From Reformation to the Union of the Crowns (1540–1625)
In This Chapter
Looking at the regency of Mary of Guise
Understanding the Scottish Reformation
Focusing on the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots
Studying the reign of James VI
Understanding the Union of the Crowns
The period from 1540 to 1625 was a momentous one – it changed Scotland from a Catholic country to a Protestant one. But it was a long, drawn-out process and not without bloodshed – monarchs were toppled and beheaded, as in the case of Mary, Queen of Scots – but out of this period came not only the Protestant ascendancy but also the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603. A Scottish king, James VI, held the crown of both nations as James I. He saw the need to build a more binding union than that of the crowns and began to lay plans to first unite the Churches of Scotland and England as a prelude to the creation of new state, Great Britain. Did he succeed? Read on.
Regency and Reformation
The defeat of the Scottish army at the Battle of Solway Moss in November 1542 hastened the death of the already fever-ridden James V the following month. His death meant that the Scottish throne fell to his daughter, Mary. The problem: Mary was only six days old when her father died! So, a regent had to be appointed to run the country until Mary was able. The job first fell to James Hamilton, the second earl of Arran, great-grandson of James II and a Protestant, who held office for 12 years.
Arran’s first task was to sign the Treaty of Greenwich of 1543, in which peace was agreed between England and Scotland on the basis of a marriage between Henry VIII’s son, Edward, who was 5 years old at the time, and Mary, who was 1. The marriage would become binding when Mary reached her tenth birthday. But that didn’t please everyone – in particular, the Scottish chancellor, Cardinal David Beaton; Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise; and assorted nobles, who were Catholic and pro-French.
The English king adopted the age-old strategy of bribery and corruption in order to get his way. Arran’s son was promised the hand of Princess Elizabeth; Scottish prisoners taken at Solway Moss were released on the basis that they would push forward the marriage of Edward and Mary. Just when Henry thought he had an agreement, a week later Arran reneged, reconverted to Catholicism and went over to the pro-French side.
Claiming that England had delayed too long in ratifying the agreement, the Scots signed an alternative agreement with France. Arran did all right: the French duchy of Châtelherault was later given to him. The infant Mary was crowned queen of the Scots on 9 September 1543, the 30th a
Rough wooing
Henry was understandably furious and the earl of Hertford (later duke of Somerset) was instructed to draw up an invasion plan. The purpose was not to gain territory but to punish the Scots for their treachery.
The objective was made clear in an Edict of the English Privy Council:
Put all to fyre and swoorde … burn Edinborough towne, so rased and defaced when ye have sacked and gotten what ye can of it as there may remayne forever a perpetuel memory of the vengeance of God.
This was the begi
The Scots defeated a larger English force consisting of mainly mercenaries at Ancrum Moor, near Jedburgh, in early 1545, which only made Henry even angrier. Henry decided on the military option as the only possible solution for getting the Scots to agree to the marriage proposal.
As part of his strategy, Henry used reforming preachers to destabilise the Scottish government. One such tool in this policy was the itinerant preacher and political activist George Wishart who had entered Scotland in 1543. Two years later, Cardinal Beaton had him arrested and burnt as a heretic in St Andrews in front of the castle, while he looked on.
Five months later, on 29 May 1546, Beaton was assassinated by a band of local Fife lairds, acting with the approval of Henry VIII. They occupied the castle and awaited help from England, which predictably never came. The earl of Arran laid siege to the castle, but the Castilians, as they were known, held out and were joined by John Knox in April 1547.
The arrival, on 29 June 1547, of a French fleet off St Andrews brought the siege to an end. The 150 occupants of the castle surrendered a month later and most, like Knox, were sent to France as
galley slaves
(men chained to benches and made to row for long periods while an overseer watched over them with a whip in hand in case of slacking).
The other part of the plan was to send an invasion force of 16,000 to conquer Scotland. An English army defeated a larger Scottish force at Pinkie, near Musselburgh, on 10 September 1547, a day referred to as ‘Black Friday’. Thousands were killed and 1,500 were taken prisoner. The Scottish army was chased to Edinburgh, but again, the castle successfully resisted the English onslaught.
The English headquarters were based at Haddington. From there, they maintained their control of southeastern Scotland, building a series of more than 20 forts between Berwick and Dundee – but at a huge expense (around £1 million). It was all to no avail – in July 1548, Mary was moved to France, and the Scots signed a treaty approving her marriage to the French dauphin, Francis, in return for a guarantee of Scottish sovereignty.
With the help of the French the English invasion force at Haddington was placed under a siege in 1548. The next year, their headquarters were abandoned, due to a variety of reasons:
The death of Henry VIII in January 1547
Rebellions in Cornwall and East Anglia
The fall of the duke of Somerset in a palace coup
French attacks on the English garrison at Boulogne
In 1550, Mary de Guise, accompanied by nobles and clerics sympathetic to England, went to France. Like Arran, now referred to as Châtelherault, the French king ‘bought them completely’. This was the finest group of Scotsmen that money could buy!
The regency of Mary of Guise
With Arran bought off, the way was clear for Mary of Guise to assume the position of regent, which she did in 1554. Although initially she did her best to keep everyone happy – from Catholics to Protestants (see the next section) – in the end, her policies alienated the Scottish nobility.
It wasn’t so much religion, but patriotism and greed that brought her down. The two main grievances were taxation and French influence.
Taxation
Taxation rose considerably under Mary’s regency, to support French soldiers’ pay and to maintain the royal residences in France and Scotland. The wedding of Mary, Queen of Scots, to Francis alone cost the Scottish taxpayers £60,000. Scottish nobles were used to a low tax regime, and the new demands stirred up a great deal of discontent among them.
French influence
The Scottish people also resented the growing French influence, particularly the promotion of favourites to positions of power and the use of foreign troops to deal with public disorder. The marriage of Mary to Francis in 1558 also held out the possibility of Scotland becoming a province of France, because the treaty gave him the right to rule Scotland if she died before he did. This became more than a possibility when the dauphin succeeded to the French throne in 1559 as Francis II and Mary as queen consort of France.
The lords of the congregation
In December 1557, Protestant nobles – including the earl of Morton, the earl of Argyll and the earl of Glencairn – joined together as the lords of the congregation to oppose the marriage of Mary to Francis. They rightly saw that the French were trying to woo Scotland into a war with England in which Scottish sovereignty would eventually be lost.
The tempo of opposition increased with the issuing of the ‘Beggars’ Summons’ on the first day of 1559, warning friars to leave their houses in favour of the poor and infirm by what they called ‘flitting Friday’ (12 May). The other event was the arrival after 19 months as a galley slave of John Knox in Scotland. He stirred the passions of the mob, and riots took place in Perth the day before ‘flitting Friday’ in which the houses of the Black and Grey friars and the Carthusian monks were destroyed, as well as the tomb of James I.
Following religious riots in Perth, the lords gained support and were able to see off a joint French/Scottish force led by Châtelherault and D’Oysel, the French king’s lieutenant. Next to fall was Stirling, quickly followed by Edinburgh and Perth. John Knox was made minister of Edinburgh. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Châtelherault and his son, the earl of Arran, changed sides and faith in September and became leaders of the lords of the congregation. Châtelherault was Protestant once more!
However, the regent wasn’t finished yet: a French force of 3,000 men was sent to Scotland, and they drove the Reformers back to Stirling. The Protestant cause was hanging by a thread until an English fleet arrived in the Firth of Forth in January 1560, an event that caused the French to retreat to Leith. The Scots and the English agreed a treaty to expel the French from Scotland, but that proved u
Reformation
The Reformation was rather late in coming to Scotland, so to understand this development, you have to go back a few decades. Ever since Martin Luther nailed his
Ninety-Five Theses
to the door of his local church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, complaining against corruption within the Catholic Church (particularly the selling of indulgences), the papacy had been facing a doctrinal revolt. This revolt would end with a national system of religion replacing what had been an international one.
Luther’s disenchantment with the Church and its doctrines was shared by large numbers of people, both high and low, in Scotland. The Church had long been a target of criticism for its worship of money rather than religion. While the monasteries and religious orders grew in wealth, local churches decayed and the clergy were poor and uneducated. Many of the commendators who ran the abbeys were not even clerics. Also, many of them were put there by royal favour. Six of James V’s illegitimate sons held abbeys as commendators.
Lax morals were also a concern. Cardinal Beaton had eight illegitimate children and Bishop Hepburn of Moray had nine! In his
Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis,
first performed at Cupar, Fife, in front of James V in 1540, David Lindsay expressed a savage critique of the Church, which reputedly made the king laugh out loud.