Back in the Day: Pinkie Cleugh – the infamous defeat for Scots forces

The principal subject of today’s column is the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh and its aftermath.

READ MORE: Back in the Day: The ‘Rough Wooing’ of Scots and Henry VIII?

You may ask why the reign of Henry VIII and his invasions of Scotland is pertinent to this modern Scotland. After all, he died 160 years before the Acts of Union. Then you recall that Theresa May and this current Government threatened to use pre-Union “Henry VIII powers” to change legislation.

The powers date from 1539 and Parliament’s own website states: “The expression is a reference to King Henry VIII’s supposed preference for legislating directly by proclamation rather than through Parliament.”

Now who in this day and age would think he could rule all of the UK including Scotland without even the scrutiny of Parliament?

That we are subjugated by a man who thinks he is Henry VIII’s successor is one reason why I have been trying in recent weeks to show how Scotland was independent for centuries before the Acts of Union in 1707, apart from the decade when Scotland was conquered and controlled by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army from 1650 onwards.

Only if we know that we were once an independent nation and recognised as such across Europe can we ever hope to regain that status.

Henry ostensibly went to war against Scotland over the breaching of the 1543 Treaty of Greenwich which the Scottish Parliament had quickly disavowed – you’ll remember that it promised the marriage of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, to the future English King Edward VI.

Religion, as always in those times, was a principal driver of events. Many of the Scottish nobles, some of them previously funded by Henry, were now in the grip of Reformist fever, but the important difference is that they inclined to the teachings of John Calvin, the Cauld Blast from Geneva, rather than Henry’s Anglican Reformation.

Their reasoning is obvious – why give up religious domination from Rome only to have it replaced by English control? The truth is that the Rough Wooing was an attempt by Henry to annexe Scotland into his English empire. He had already done it to Wales with laws passed in 1535 and 1542, and had consolidated his hold over some English territories in France, but he wanted once and for all to become overlord of Scotland, end the Auld Alliance with France and encourage the Protestant Reformation – his English Reformation on his terms, of course.

The only break from constant English harassment of Scotland came in the latter days of Henry’s reign when, grown corpulent and with an ulcerated leg that caused him agony, he began to decline. He may have been diabetic but certainly had liver and kidney problems. The once formidable and lusty Defender of the Faith died feebly at the age of 55 on January 28, 1547.

By sheer coincidence, King François I of France died shortly afterwards, and his eldest son Henri II ascended to the throne of Scotland’s auld ally. He was a man with a plan, and it did not involve kow-towing to England.

His most important supporters were the powerful Guise family, one of whom, Marie de Guise, was the mother of the young Scottish queen Mary and leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholic faction.

That was no doubt one reason why Catholic King Henry intervened in a Scottish situation which had started with the assassination of Cardinal David Beaton in May 1546, after which the Protestant conspirators who had carried out the killing had barricaded themselves into St Andrew’s Castle.

They were still there the following summer, so Henri sent a flotilla of naval ships to bombard the Castle. The occupants surrendered in July 1547, with the Protestant nobles sent to French jails while the lesser folk were sent to serve as galley slaves – one of their number was a certain John Knox.

With Henry VIII dead, the Scots no doubt thought they would get a break from English aggression, but they were soon to be disenchanted of that notion.

The Duke of Somerset Edward Seymour, brother of the late Queen Jane, the mother of the new English king Edward VI, was now the leading figure of the English court and he still wanted Edward to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and unite the Crowns.

The English aristocracy were also furious at the proposal for Mary to marry the French crown prince, Dauphin Francois, that plan being initiated by King Henri and enthusiastically welcomed by most of the Catholic Scottish nobles.

Having been designated Lord Protector of England, the Duke of Somerset decided on a new military campaign to force the Scots to cancel the French arrangement and renew the agreement to marry Mary to Edward VI. It was nothing more or less than a war to subjugate the Scots once and for all, and it very nearly worked.

Somerset took personal command of a huge English army which gathered at Newcastle in late August, 1547. From the sheer scale of the English forces – 25,000 men including 3000 cavalry and 1500 men carrying the new-fashioned firearms which were an early form of musket – it can be deduced that Somerset was out for conquest and not just some punitive raid.

The fact that a large English navy armed with deadly cannons sailed north at the same time – there was hardly a Scottish navy worthy of the name – was a crucial factor in the actions that followed.

In early September, the large Scottish army gathered to the east of Edinburgh and though not as experienced as the English professional soldiers – and their commanders and Somerset knew it – they waited to confront the English army at a place near Musselburgh called Pinkie or Pinkie Cleugh, the latter a Scots word meaning a valley. The vast majority were armed with pikes to form schiltrons, massed ranks who were trained to move and fight as one.

THOUGH hindsight proved them wrong, most of those on the Scottish side that September felt that they were fighting like Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn for the independence of their nation, but it turned out to be more like Stirling Bridge, only with a different result. Most chroniclers of the time agree that both armies were roughly of the same size with the Scots perhaps having more men-at-arms, but crucially, the English had naval support from the fleet offshore as well as much larger cavalry forces and vastly superior artillery including 15 heavy guns which could tear holes in an army or any castle for that matter.

On September 9, 1547, Somerset’s army advanced far enough to see that the Scots were well dug in on the West bank of the River Esk over which there was a single bridge.

The Scottish army was divided into three “battles” with the Earl of Argyll and his 3000 clansmen given the important task of guarding the bridge with the Earl of Huntly and his troops alongside. The chief Scottish commander was the Earl of Arran who held the centre while the right wing of around 1500 cavalry – mostly from the Borders – was under the command of Lord Home.

That first day saw Somerset prove his tactical genius. He signalled for the fleet standing out in the Forth to come to the mouth of the River Esk and start firing their cannons at the Scots in their formidable defensive position. Somerset knew he had to dislodge the Scottish army from its place on the far bank of the Esk and he calculated that firing his cannons from his ships would force the Scots to leave their defences.

So it proved, with a major blunder by the Scots cavalry the first telling blow. It has often been speculated that the Borders horsemen lost the plot on that Saturday afternoon, but whatever the reason, there’s no doubt that they crossed the shallow River Esk and began to harry the English. Somerset then did a Stirling Bridge in reverse – like William Wallace 250 years previously almost to the day, he waited until the vast majority of the Scottish cavalry were on his side of the river and gave the order for a massive attack by his far superior cavalry. In a short time, the Scottish horsed forces were scattered and they suffered the indignity of seeing their commander, Lord Home, captured and displayed as a prisoner.

Both sides settled down for the night but the advantage was now very much with the English and on the morning of Sunday, September 10 – a date that should feature much more in the history of Scottish infamy – Somerset wasted no time in ordering the advance.

His land and sea artillery began to pound the Scottish army and seeing that he was caught in a pincer movement that would destroy his force, Arran gave the order to charge. Argyll and his fierce clansmen were first across the bridge followed by the bulk of the Scottish troops, mostly armed with pikes. These long spears were deadly weapons, usually, but it required troops to be able to close on their enemy where they could be lethal even to cavalry.

Too late the Scots realised their danger. The more that crossed the Esk, the tighter their ranks became, presenting an easy target to the cannons offshore and on land, and the musketeers able to shoot with impunity at a distance. All they had to do was fire at the Scottish mass and they would hit a target.

The Scottish bodies began to pile up, making it even more difficult to advance, and then Somerset played his ace card. With no Scottish cavalry to repulse them, the English mounted troops were able to charge unhindered at the left and right flanks of the army that was now trapped on the east bank of the Esk, forcing the Scots to huddle even closer together.

With many Scots crushed underfoot by their own colleagues, the advance halted and while at first they performed heroics in the face of attacks by a better army, the Scottish forces knew they were facing overwhelming odds. Leaving thousands – some historians say 6000 to 10,000, others even more – dead on the field, the Scottish army turned and fled towards Edinburgh. It is said that the Earls of Arran and Angus did not stop galloping until they were inside the walls of Edinburgh Castle itself.

Only now did Arran’s real motivation show itself – the occupation and conquest of southern Scotland. For he did not bother to besiege Edinburgh Castle but sacked Holyrood Abbey and other churches before attacking and occupying towns as far apart as Dundee and Dumfries. South-east Scotland was now effectively an English colony.

STILL the Scots refused to surrender and now the Auld Alliance came into play. Marie de Guise sent for French help and a strong force arrived in June 1548, by which time another English invasion had taken place, the occupying army now based at Haddington in East Lothian.

With French support that included professional mercenaries from across Europe, Haddington was besieged, and even a fresh boost of troops from England could not stop the inevitable as the town and other English strongholds were abandoned over the following months.

Queen Mary had been moved to Dumbarton Castle and under the 1548 Treaty of Haddington, her marriage to the Dauphin was arranged. The five-year-old queen and her attendants left for France on August 7, 1548. With Somerset having virtually bankrupted England with his war on Scotland, the English ended the Rough Wooing and Scotland’s independence was secured by a peace treaty signed in June 1551, seven months before Somerset was executed on trumped up charges of treason.

In Mary’s absence in France, the Reformers gained the upper hand and by the time she returned in 1561, the former galley slave John Knox had led Scotland into Protestantism.