SCOTLAND BETWEEN ENGLAND and FRANCE Scotland And

CHAPTER TWO ‘DANCING TO THE FRENCH TUNE?:’ SCOTLAND BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE ‘who entendyth Fraunce to wyn with Skotland let him begyn’1 Scotland and Henry VIII Cromwell’s quotation of the famous adage in 1523 raises a number of problems in the context of the Anglo-French War. Was the intention of Henry VIII in 1543 to ‘win’ France or just make limited acqui- sitions? In what sense would such a campaign involve Scotland and what were the priorities between France and Scotland? The approach of war on the mainland of Europe inevitably raised the question of what role Scotland would play since, in previous Anglo-French con- flicts during Henry’s reign, the country had been activated by France as a crucial diversion of English efforts.2 This had not been effective in the 1520s because of the internal state of Scotland but by 1540 James V was an adult monarch and his own man. Furthermore, though nephew of Henry VIII, James was generally hostile to the English connections of his mother, partly as a result of his hatred for Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, her second husband. He had moved further, under the prompting of David Beaton, towards a pro- French policy and this involved some serious ‘shopping around’ in France for a wife. He wrote to the duke of Vendôme for the hand of his eldest daughter in July 1535, had travelled to Picardy to see her in the summer of 1536 (not exactly a convenient moment) but had not found Marie de Bourbon to his taste.3 He went on the French court, 1 Common saying quoted in a speech attributed to Thomas Cromwell in 1522, R.B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1902), I, pp. 34–43. 2 See J. Cameron, James V King of Scotland (East Lothian, 1998) and R.C. Eaves, Henry VIII’s Scottish Diplomacy, 1513–1524 (New York, 1971); J.D. Mackie, ‘Henry VIII and Scotland’ TRHS ser. 4, 29 (1947), 93–114. 3 Copy: BL Royal MS 18 B, fo. 19 r–v, 191v; another copy: NAS Edinburgh, GD 149/264, fo. 62; English summary: Letters of James V, ed. D. Hay (Edinburgh, 1954), scotland between england and france 87 then at Lyon, and married Francis I’s daughter, Madeleine, instead in January 1537. After her early death, he had taken as his second wife Marie de Lorraine, daughter of the duke of Guise and relative of one of the most powerful families of princes étrangers in France. This, by any standards, represented a declaration of intent to distance himself from his mother, Queen Margaret’s, dynasty. As Gardiner argued in a paper of 1538, by the French marriage, James V ‘should with such alliance be encouraged and made of a greater stomake’ and rendered more unlikely to respond to demands for justice in border violations.4 The instinctive sympathy in France for the interests of Scotland must always be remembered. The correspondence of Marie de Lorraine alone testifies to a close and intensifying relationship between the highest ranks of the French nobility and the rulers of Scotland in the 1540s.5 The Scots guard placed a body of Scots military nobility at the centre of the French court.6 Nevertheless, French help to Scotland was scarcely altruistic and not even reliable when the French were at peace with England. Early in 1540, Cromwell’s confidant Ralph Sadler was despatched to Edinburgh to explore the state of affairs there (at the same time as Henry was gauging the temper of Francis and Charles V). Sadler’s brief was partly to encourage a rift between James V and Cardinal Beaton by suggesting that the Cardinal was trying to usurp secular jurisdiction by seeking to protect certain men arrested for treason who were his friends. Sadler also pressed the case for James to consider the iniquities of the bishop of Rome and all his works, blandishments predictably sidestepped by the Scottish King. He urged James to solve his finan- cial problems by dissolving the monasteries, as his uncle had done, since they were ‘a kind of unprofitable people, that live idly upon the sweat and labours of the poor.’ James countered that the sins of some should not require the suppression of all. But Sadler came to the main p. 295; L&P, t. VIII, no. 1137. Du Bellay, Mémoires, III, p. 809; AMA, CC 128, fo. 82r–v; J. Bapst, Les mariages de Jacques V (Paris, 1889), pp. 241–308. 4 Gardiner, instructions for Bonner, 20 Aug. [1538], Muller, Letters, p. 84. 5 The Foreign Correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, Queen of Scotland, from the Originals in the Balcarres Papers ed. M. Wood, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, SHS, 1923–1925) (hereafter Balcarres Papers). 6 See list of the Scots guard, 17 April 1543, BL Add. Ch. 14042. On this subject in general, F. Michel, Les Ecossais en France et les Français en Ecosse, 2 vols. (Paris, 1862), I, pp. 429–465; E. Bonner, ‘Continuing the Auld Alliance in the sixteenth-century: Scots in France and the French in Scotland, in G. Simpson (ed.), The Scottish Soldier Abroad, 1247–1967 (Edinbugh, 1992), pp. 31–46..

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