Rough Wooing

The Rough Wooing (Scottish Gaelic: An t-Suirghe Chnaparra; December 1543 – March 1551), also known as the Eight Years' War, was part of the Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 16th century. Following the English Reformation, the break with the Catholic Church, England attacked Scotland, partly to break the Auld Alliance and prevent Scotland being used as a springboard for future invasion by France, partly to weaken Scotland, and partly to force the Scottish Parliament to confirm the existing marriage alliance between Mary, Queen of Scots (born 8 December 1542), and the English heir apparent Edward (born 12 October 1537), son of King Henry VIII, under the terms of the Treaty of Greenwich of July 1543. An invasion of France was also contemplated.

Henry declared war to force the Scottish Parliament to agree to the planned marriage between Edward, who was six years old at the start of the war, and the infant queen, thereby creating a new alliance between Scotland and England. Upon Edward's accession to the throne in 1547 at the age of nine, the war continued for a time under the direction of the Lord High Treasurer, the Duke of Somerset, before Somerset's removal from power in 1549 and replacement by the Duke of Northumberland, who wished for a less costly foreign policy than his predecessor. It was the last major conflict between Scotland and England before the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

In Scotland, the war was called the "Eight" or "Nine Years' War". The idea of the war as a "wooing" was popularised many years later by Sir Walter Scott, to hide the extreme nature of the war. 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 with 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.

In November 1542, a Scottish army suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss and James V died soon after. He was succeeded by his six-day old daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. A plan for an English marriage for Mary proposed by the Treaty of Greenwich was conditionally accepted by the Scottish government led by Regent Arran. However, Arran was slow to advance the marriage due to strong internal factions favouring an alternative alliance with France and the continuance of the Catholic religion in Scotland. The English diplomat Ralph Sadler reported Adam Otterburn's comment on the Scottish opinion of the marriage:

Our people do not like of it. And though the Governor and some of the nobility have consented to it, yet I know that few or none of them do like of it; and our common people do utterly mislike of it. I pray you give me leave to ask you a question: if your lad was a lass, and our lass were a lad, would you then be so earnest in this matter? ... And lykewise I assure you that our nation will never agree to have an Englishman king of Scotland. And though the whole nobility of the realm would consent, yet our common people, and the stones in the street would rise and rebel against it.