George Durie - Rough Wooing, Regent Mary and Queen Mary

Rough Wooing, Regent Mary and Queen Mary

Much obloquy has been attached to his name for the part he took in the negotiations prior to the battle. The members of the privy council deceived the Scottish army as to the conciliatory demands of the English, which they gave out to be insulting. They have been thought to have acted thus, less from patriotic feeling than from religious rancour. A large number of the clergy had been enrolled in the Scottish army, among whom a similar feeling prevailed. William Patten, the English chronicler of the "Expedition into Scotland", and an eye-witness of the battle, gives a very minute description of a banner found on the field after the fight, which was said to be that of the abbot of Dunfermline, and under which the "kirkmen" had fought.

When the popular tide had run so far in Scotland that many of the queen-regent's most influential advisers had deserted her, the abbot showed no sign of defection. When her prospects were the darkest, he approved of her withdrawal to Leith, whither he accompanied her with others of the catholic clergy. The defence was entrusted almost entirely to French troops, to obtain help against whom the Scottish Protestant party applied to England. The Catholics, in their turn, sent the abbot to France to represent to King Francis and Queen Mary how they were situated. Although then sixty-seven years of age, he seems to have been quite as resolute as before. He embarked at Dunbar for France on 29 January 1560. In August following the Scottish parliament voted the abolition of the Roman Catholic Church and hierarchy in Scotland, and sent Sir James Sandilands to France to obtain the ratification of this measure by the queen. His untoward reception was attributed in Scotland partly to the influence of Durie, who was then at the French court.