Complaynt of Scotland

The Complaynt of Scotland is a Scottish book printed in 1549 as propaganda during the war of the Rough Wooing against the Kingdom of England, and is an important work of the Scots language.

The book was part of the war of words between Scotland and England in the sixteenth century. The so-called "Rough Wooing" of Mary, Queen of Scots, by Henry VIII of England as a wife for his son Edward, which Edward VI continued, had included the publication of books in England asserting the idea of uniting the two countries, with England dominant. The Scottish Complaynt was an answer to these works. Another Scottish work, a dialogue similar in outlook, Ane Resonyng, by William Lamb from the same period was abandoned unpublished.

The Complaynt is anonymous, probably due to its controversial political content, and has been variously ascribed to Robert Wedderburn, James Inglis and David Lyndsay, though the 1979 Scottish Text Society edition of the work supports the Wedderburn attribution, as does the National Library of Scotland It was once thought to have been among the first books printed in Scotland but it is now believed to have been published in Paris. The book owes much of its structure, and some of its content, to the French work Alain Chartier's Quadrilogue-invectif, a similar political work also attacking England. The close ties between Scotland and France at that time, the Auld Alliance, are attested by the fact that the Complaynt is dedicated to Mary of Guise, the effective queen of Scotland of the time, rather than the Governor, Regent Arran.

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