Pinkie 1547: England tried to force a royal marriage and Scotland remembered Black Saturday
Henry VIII wanted the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to marry his son. When Scotland refused, England invaded, a campaign later dubbed the Rough Wooing. At Pinkie near Musselburgh in 1547, Scottish pikemen charged into fire from ships, cannon and archers at once. It was the last pitched battle between the two kingdoms before their crowns were united.
The Scots had rejected the Treaty of Greenwich and were drifting toward France. After Henry died in 1547, the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, pressed on, demanding both the marriage and an English-style reformation of the Scottish church. Religion sharpened the quarrel: the boy king Edward VI wrote that England fought for God and the Scots for the Pope, while some Scottish Protestants welcomed the invaders.
Somerset marched up the east coast in early September, supplied by a large fleet. His army mixed old-fashioned county levies with longbows and bills, several hundred German arquebusiers, a strong artillery train and 6,000 cavalry; eyewitness William Patten counted 16,800 fighting men. The Scottish regent, the Earl of Arran, had been warned by his agent in London and gathered a larger force, mostly pikemen with Highland archers, estimates ranging from about 22,000 to 36,000. He dug in on slopes west of the River Esk, between the Firth of Forth and a bog.
The day before, the Earl of Home rode out with 1,500 horsemen in a chivalric challenge. Lord Grey accepted, and Scotland lost most of its cavalry in the skirmish, with Home badly wounded. Arran then proposed single combat, or twenty champions a side; Somerset declined both. On Saturday 10 September Arran, perhaps thinking the English were retreating to their ships, crossed the Esk to force close fighting before their guns could be placed.
The gamble failed. His left wing came under fire from ships offshore, including the Galley Subtle, and collapsed into the centre. Scottish pikes did drive off the English cavalry, which had left its horse armour in camp, and Lord Grey was wounded. But the stalled Scots were raked from three sides and broke, and many died in the rout across the river and bogs. Patten published an illustrated account in London four months later as propaganda. Scotland called the day Black Saturday.
Source: Battle of Pinkie
