The Rough Wooing - by Ann Swinfen

It must have seemed the perfect solution. Marry Edward, the boy heir to the throne of England to Mary, the child queen of the Scots, and you would have peace and prosperity between the two countries. It would not be the first marriage between the two royal families.

Margaret Tudor

Most recently Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England and sister of King Henry VIII, had married King James IV of Scotland in 1503. This meant that Margaret Tudor was the grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots and aunt of Prince Edward, making Mary and Edward first cousins once removed, a relationship too close for marriage in the eyes of the Church. However, the Church could grant a dispensation, and there would be no trouble in gaining one from the English Church. No need to bother with the Pope, not since King Henry had severed all links with Rome.

 

Marie of Guise

There was just one fly in the ointment. Marie of Guise, mother of Scotland’s child queen. Marie was determinedly French, fanatically Catholic, and vituperatively anti-English. Part of the powerful French family of Guise, she was loyal not to Scotland, nor to England, but to France. She already had four French sons by a previous marriage, little Mary’s half-brothers. The Guises had their eyes fixed on a further rise to power, and Mary would be a useful pawn in the long game they were playing. She would be shipped away to France, brought up French speaking and Catholic, and married to the heir to the French – not the English – throne. In the meantime, her mother would rule Scotland and see to it that it remained Catholic and an ally of France against England.

Two mutually antagonistic plans, bound on a collision course.

Let us backtrack briefly.

 

James V of Scotland

The child queen Mary was born on 8 December 1542. Six days later, her father, King James V of Scotland, died of a fever, about three weeks after the Battle of Solway Moss, in which the Scots suffered a terrible defeat by the English army, a disaster which probably hastened his death. James was only 30, and his sole legitimate child was Mary. The Stuart kings had a distressing habit of dying young, leaving very young heirs. James himself had become king at under two. It made for trouble, as those around the infant monarch struggled for power.

 

Earl of Arran

If the infant Mary did not survive, the next heir to the Scottish throne (though somewhat distant) was the Earl of Arran, who became Regent (or Governor). At this point Arran was a Protestant and favoured an alliance with England. In the early part of 1543, he was involved in negotiations with England for this marriage of the two children, although Henry VIII did not altogether trust him and wanted him replaced. Even so, the Treaty of Greenwich, made on 1 July 1543, agreed that Mary would be married to Edward when she was ten.

Prince Edward at the time of the Rough Wooing

As early as March that year, George Douglas, brother of the Earl of Angus, warned Ralph Sadler, the English ambassador: 'if there be any motion now to take the Governor from his state, and to bring the government of this realm to the king of England, I assure you it is impossible to be done at this time. For, there is not so little a boy but that he will hurl stones against it, and the women will handle their distaffs, and the commons universally will rather die in it, yea, and many noblemen and all the clergy be fully against it.'

(If you have read Wolf Hall you will have met the young Ralph Sadler.)

Henry’s suspicions proved to be well founded. One of the most powerful men in Scotland at the time was Cardinal Beaton, more politician than man of God (who was later, May 1546, to meet an unpleasant end at the hands of Scottish Protestants in St Andrews). In September 1543, the Earl of Arran left pro-English Edinburgh secretly, in order to meet Cardinal Beaton, whereupon he converted to Catholicism, to the pro-French party, and to support for the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin of France. Oh, and incidentally, in pure gratitude for this change of heart the French bestowed upon him the dukedom of Châtelherault.

Now the Queen Mother, the Cardinal, and the Regent were in alliance, and opposed to the strong Protestant, pro-English party, mostly based in the east of Scotland. On 20 December 1543, war was declared between England and Scotland, a war which was to last for seven years and came to be known as the ‘Rough Wooing’. Everything hinged on whether a marriage alliance would be made between the child Mary and one young boy (Edward of England) or the other (Francis of France).

 

Mary Queen of Scots age c.16

In April 1544, King Henry, outraged at the Scottish alliance with France, ordered Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, (brother of Jane Seymour, and so the prince’s uncle) to attack and ravage Scotland. Seymour carried out his instructions with savage enthusiasm, a measure not likely to endear the pro-French party to England.

 

Prince Edward c.1546

King Henry VIII died on 28 January, 1547, and his son Edward became king at the age of nine. England was ruled by a body of Councillors, amongst them Seymour, who continued to wage war against Scotland. After the murder of Cardinal Beaton in 1546, the Protestant faction in the east of Scotland hoped for alliance with England, but were attacked by a French naval force, in alliance with the Earl of Arran and Marie of Guise.

The ins and outs of the struggle are too complex to detail here, but the English won a decisive victory at Pinkie Cleugh on 10 September 1547, causing panic amongst the pro-French party. And during all this fighting the child Mary was moved from one place of safety to another.

The area where I live became involved after the victory at Pinkie, when the English fleet sailed into the Tay estuary. The mouth of the Tay was guarded (and is still guarded) by Broughty Castle. The garrison there, being Protestant and pro-English, handed over the castle without a shot being fired.

Broughty Castle

The English forces also built a fort on the hill overlooking the harbour at Broughty, yards from where I live. It must have been a fairly temporary structure, as nothing now remains of it, except the name Fort Hill. The city of Dundee, also primarily Protestant, agreed to resist Governor Arran and ally itself with England.

The man established as governor of Broughty Castle, Sir Andrew Dudley, sent word to the English government that what he needed was not more troops, but good Bibles (Tyndale’s Bible), with which to convert any remaining Catholics to the Protestant faith. What he got instead was military reinforcements, who sailed up the Tay to Perth, burning Balmerino Abbey on the southern (Fife) shore, on Christmas Day 1547. On 29 December, they seized and burned the nunnery at Elcho, taking prisoner the nuns and the girls at school there, and holding them to ransom. As both nuns and schoolgirls came from good families, this would have proved quite profitable. (The nuns later returned and rebuilt their priory.)

 

Inchmahome Priory

Alarmed by the English successes in the east of Scotland, the pro-French party moved four-year-old Mary west to safety at Inchmahome Priory on an island in the Lake of Mentieth, where she remained for a few months. On 7 August 1548, Mary was smuggled away from Dumbarton Castle on a French ship and taken away to be reared in the French court. In 1554, Marie of Guise became Regent of Scotland in succession to the Earl of Arran, four years after the ‘Rough Wooing’ was abandoned, as now pointless.

 

King Edward VI c.1550

By then young King Edward was dead, on 6 July 1553, at the age of fifteen.

Francis, Dauphin of France

The French marriage went ahead, but only after Mary had secretly signed an agreement on 4 April 1558, bequeathing Scotland and her claim to the crown of England to the crown of France, should she die childless. On 24 April, she was married to Francis, Dauphin of France, at Notre Dame de Paris. She was 15, he was 14, and through this marriage became king consort of Scotland.

Henry II of France

Just over a year later, on 10 July 1559, King Henry II of France died after a jousting accident and the young couple became the rulers of both France and Scotland. The Guises were now in control of France, although Marie of Guise could only maintain her position in Scotland against the rise of the Protestant lords by the use of French troops.

 

Francis (15) & Mary (16) - King & Queen of Scotland & France

The reign of the young couple in France was not to last long. Francis died on 5 December 1560 at the age of sixteen. He was succeeded by his ten-year-old brother, and Mary was now surplus to requirements. She returned to Scotland.

So what did the Rough Wooing accomplish? As for its professed aims – nothing. What it did do was help to harden the lines between Catholic and Protestant Scots. It turned the young queen pro-French and anti-English, which would have a long term effect on her life and her relationship with her cousin Elizabeth I of England.

None of those manipulating Mary’s marriage chose well, both boys dying in their mid teens. It is interesting to speculate, however. What if Mary had married Edward? By all accounts he was a highly gifted and intelligent boy. If he had lived long enough and managed to father a child before his death, how different the rest of the sixteenth century in England and Scotland would have been!

Ann Swinfen

http://www.annswinfen.com

A Pirate's Life - Celia Rees

For the past couple of years, I've visited King Edward VI School, Handsworth, on or around World Book Day. The whole of Year 8 dress up as pirates, along with members of staff, and we have a jolly day of workshops in music, dance, drama, art and creative writing, all  based on my book Pirates! Lots of piratical fun.

I didn't write Pirates! as a dressing up option for World Book Day but I like to think I've made a contribution. A pirate outfit is easy to put together and ticks most of the boxes described by  Caroline Lawrence in her excellent History Girl post on 9th March, Dressing Your Hero.  

When Caroline asked fellow History Girls for World Book Day dressing up suggestions based on characters in our books, I naturally volunteered Pirates!  The pirate outfit is iconic and  instantly recognisable and there is a reason for every part of it. 

The skull and crossed bones is a universally recognised symbol of death. Its use stretches back to the Middle Ages and it still signifies poisonous materials. It was routinely used in the margins of ships' logs to make a death on board. This is probably where the pirates took it from. The black or red flag marked with the skull and cross bones was a potent warning to ships to heave to and surrender. 

Although the skull and cross bones was the generic flag,  pirates liked to personalise so that ships would know, not just that they were being attacked by pirates, but specifically  by Blackbeard or Black Bart Roberts, or some other notorious pirate. 

Pirate Flags

The dart pointing at a red heart on Blackbeard's flag, top left, meant no quarter. If there was any resistance, everybody on board would be killed.  Back Bart had two flags, the first (just below the centre), shows him drinking with death, the flag beneath shows him balancing on skulls representing Barbados and Martinique. He had a particular dislike for these islands and any ship hailing from either could expect no mercy. 

What about the rest of their clothes? Pirates liked dressing up. The flamboyance often associated with pirate captains came from their habit, when plundering a ship, of taking the richest clothes, velvets and silks, for themselves. 

Black Bart Roberts

Black Bart Roberts is described as wearing 'a rich crimson Damask Waistcoat and Breeches, a red feather in his Hat, a Gold Chain round his Neck with a Diamond Cross hanging to it...' (A General History of the Pyrates, Captain Charles Johnson). Pirates could also be extremely vain. Edward Teach (Blackbeard) is described as accustomed to twisting his signature beard 'with Ribbons, in small Tails.' (A General History of the Pyrates, Captain Charles Johnson).

Edward Teach - Blackbeard

It is not hard to see where Johnny Depp's look came from in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Johnny Depp - Captain Jack Sparrow

We owe the sartorial detail to this work: 

  

The author, one Captain Johnson, was really Daniel Defoe. He based his History on contemporary sources, interviews and letters. The History proved wildly popular and ran to several editions. It is still the best source book on pirates. Nearly everything in later books can be found between its pages and, because it was written by Daniel Defoe, it is as exciting to read as any novel. 

Daniel Defoe was the first to detail the adventures of these two most notorious pirates:

Ann Bonny and Mary Read

 'Most notorious' because they are women. This is a particularly telling image. They are depicted with their shirts open. We can clearly see they are women by their breasts. This is not an 18th Century version of page 3; it has a far more serious purpose. They have to be shown in this fashion because in every other way they are dressed like men. They are wearing the short jacket, loose trowsers, soft hat, and latched shoes of the sailors of the time.  Their breasts show them to be women; their weaponry - short, curved swords for fighting on board ship; several pistols for quick firing: axes for cutting ropes when boarding - shows them to be pirates. 

Original cover rough for Pirates!

I didn't have to go much further than Defoe's General History to find the descriptions I needed for my pirates, or for the reasons they dressed they way they did. Everything about their appearance tells us something. They dressed like sailors, because that is what they were before they became pirates and they would still be wearing the distinctive, practical clothing needed for life on board ship. The  major difference in appearance between a pirate and a sailor would be the weaponry the pirate had slung about him (or her). 

Even the most popular images of pirates tell us something about pirate life.  Take  Treasure Island's Long John Silver. His peg leg and parrot have become popular cliches but there are good reasons for both. 

Jim, Long John Silver and his Parrot, N.C. Wyeth

Parrots were routinely brought back by sailors from tropical parts, as pets or to sell. A broken leg was a common injury, sustained when falling from the rigging. The limb was often smashed so badly that it had to be amputated. For an ordinary sailor, this could mean the end of a life at sea and he might well be put off at the next port. A one legged sailor was of little use on board ship but pirates looked after their own. An injured pirate would be given compensation and kept on in some capacity, probably as cook. Similarly the iconic eye patch. Eye injuries were common from flying ropes'  ends but, again, a pirate blinded in this way could expect to be protected. 

'A short life but a merry one' was a pirates' saying and it was certainly a great deal better than life on board naval or merchant ship. Aside from the primitive health insurance, pirates could expect a fair share from any prize taken and it is no wonder many answered the call, who will go? The spoils could be enormous, pirates could live (and dress) like princes, but that has to be set along side the risk. Any pirate caught and sentenced could expect to share the fate of Captain Kidd.  

Captain Kidd gibbeted over the Thames at Tilbury Point

A short life but a merry one, indeed.

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com