War and Governance in Scotland, 1543-1559

Explores how Scottish government and society was affected by the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1540s and their aftermath

• Provides the first major study of Scottish central and local governance in this period, demonstrating its ambition
• Reveals the depth and duration of warfare’s impact, reframing the 1550s as a period of post-war reconstruction
• Offers a new explanation for the Scottish reformation rooted in the difficulties of post-war reconstruction during the 1550s
• Highlights the performative nature and cultural facets of political life alongside institutions, processes and practicalities
• Deploys a wide source base from burgh records to state archives, from propaganda to diplomatic correspondence, to reveal a range of effects and perspectives
• Argues that the scale of this violence and disruption merits changing the traditional romantic name for this war ‘Rough Wooings’ to the less romanticised ‘Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1540s’

Drawing from local archives alongside national and international records, this book argues that warfare was the defining feature of government and politics in Scotland for the two decades following the death of James V. It demonstrates that beyond the direct effects of invasion, the need to raise unprecedented taxation, as well as warfare’s secondary consequences, such as plague and price inflation, disrupted communities throughout Scotland, engendering enhanced social control. These effects endured for many years after the peace of 1550: new laws were passed to manage those who had collaborated with the invaders and taxation remained high.

The post-war decade was one of reconstruction, and it was this which drove religious reformation in 1559-60. The book shows that appreciating the scale of the crown’s ambition places the Scottish state’s development closer to that of its European counterparts.