War of the Rough Wooing

Rough Wooing
Part of the Anglo-Scottish Wars
The infant Mary, Queen of Scots (shown here as an older girl) was the focus of the 'Rough Wooing'.
Date 24 November 1542 – March 1551 Location Northern England and Scotland Result Scottish victory
Belligerents
Kingdom of Scotland	Kingdom of England
Commanders and leaders
James V of Scotland Mary I of Scotland Mary of Guise Earl of Arran Adam Otterburn Oliver Sinclair  (POW)	Henry VIII of England Edward VI of England Lord Hertford Earl of Shrewsbury Viscount Lisle, Lord Admiral
Strength
unknown	unknown
Casualties and losses
unknown	unknown

The Rough Wooing (December 1543 – March 1551) was a war between Scotland and England. Following its break with Rome, England once more decided to try to conquer Scotland, partially to destroy the Auld Alliance in order to prevent Scotland being used as a springboard for future invasion by France. War was declared by Henry VIII in an attempt to force the Scots to agree to a marriage between his son Edward and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, thereby creating a new alliance between Scotland and England. Edward VI, crowned king in 1547, continued the war until changing circumstances made it irrelevant in 1550. It was the last major conflict between Scotland and England before the Union of the Crowns in 1603, excepting perhaps the English intervention at the Siege of Leith in 1560, and was part of the Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 16th century.

In Scotland, the war was called the "Eight" or "Nine Years' War." The idea of the war as a "" was popularised many years later by Sir Walter Scott, and the phrase "Rough Wooing" appeared in several history books from the 1850s onwards.

The phrase appears to derive from a famous remark attributed to George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly by Patrick Abercromby in his edition of Jean de Beaugué's history of the war: "We liked not the manner of the wooing, and we could not stoop to being bullied into love," or, as William Patten reported, "I lyke not thys wooyng." The historian William Ferguson contrasted this jocular nickname and the savagery and devastation of the war:

English policy was simply to pulverise Scotland, to beat her either into acquiescence or out of existence, and Hertford's campaigns resemble nothing so much as Nazi total warfare, "blitzkrieg", reign of terror, extermination of all resisters, the encouragement of collaborators, and so on.

More recently, Marcus Merriman titled his book The Rough Wooings to emphasise the division of the conflict into two or three distinct phases.

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