Royal Scots Navy - War With England in 1557 and The Reformation Crisis

War With England in 1557 and The Reformation Crisis

When Anglo-Scottish relations deteriorated again in 1557, small ships called 'shallops' were noted between Leith and France, passing as fishermen, but bringing munitions and money. Private merchants ships were rigged at Leith, Aberdeen and Dundee as men-of-war, and Mary of Guise claimed English prizes, one over 200 tons, for her fleet. Once again, the re-fitted Mary Willoughby sailed with 11 other ships against Scotland in August 1557, landing troops and six field guns on Orkney to attack the castle of Kirkwall, the church of St. Magnus, and the Bishop's Palace. The English were repulsed by a Scottish force numbering 3000, and the vice-admiral Sir John Clere of Ormesby (a cousin of Anne Boleyn) was drowned or killed in the town, but none of the English ships were lost.

Veteran ships of the Kirkwall raid came to the aid of the Scottish Protestants at the Siege of Leith in January 1560, including the Greyhound, Tiger, the Bull, New Bark, and inevitably the Willoughby, all under the command of Willam Winter. Winter's mission was to harass French ships in the Firth of Forth and try to prevent their landing troops.

Winter's arrival in the Forth was unexpected, and the English fleet seem to have been unopposed. Scotland's royal fleet, built up over two generations, had been largely destroyed and there were no French ships to oppose him. Already in the 1540s, Salamander, Little Unicorn, Mary Willoughby, Marie Galante and Lyonesse were all in English hands, while the Great Lion had been sunk off Yarmouth. Of the major royal ships, only the Great Unicorn is not known for certain to have been destroyed, and the royal government depended once again on small hired ships like the Lion