Contemporary map of the Siege of Leith of 1560

PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: England and Scottish Protestants vs. Scottish Catholics and French forces in Scotland

PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): Scotland

DECLARATION: None

MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: During the ongoing conflict between Catholic and Protestant Scots, the

Catholics appealed to France for aid and the Protestants to England.

OUTCOME: The French withdrew from Scotland, and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (the Scottish Kirk) grew.

APPROXIMATE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MEN UNDER ARMS: Unknown

CASUALTIES: Negligible

TREATIES: Treaty of Edinburgh, July 6, 1560, among England, France, and Scotland; Treaty of Berwick, February 27, 1560, between England and Scotland.

Following after a decade the costly ANGLO-SCOTTISH WAR (1542–1549), the 1559–60 conflict between the Protestants and Catholics of Scotland was more a stand-off or showdown than it was a full-scale war. In the midst of the heated religious conflict, Mary of Guise (1515–60), French Catholic widow of King James V (1512–42) of Scotland, withdrew to Leith Castle and, fearing for her life, secured French troops to come to her aid. For their part, the Scottish Protestants appealed to England’s queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) for troops. Although Elizabeth, cognizant of the perilous economic health of her kingdom and the relative weakness of her army, did not wish to provoke hostilities with France—much less its ally, Spain— she felt it her duty to defend Protestantism when it was threatened at her borders. Accordingly, she sent an army as well as a fleet and laid siege against Leith for the better part of a year. There was no battle, but at last the French yielded to this pressure and concluded the Treaty of Edinburgh, by which all foreign troops were to withdraw from Scotland. Separately, England and Scotland drew up the Treaty of Berwick, a mutual defense pact.

Further reading: Richard Glen Eaves, Henry VIII and James V’s Regency, 1524–1528: A Study in Anglo-Scottish Diplomacy (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987); Rosalind Mitchison, A History of Scotland, 3rd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Raymond Campbell Paterson, My Wound Is Deep: A History of the Anglo-Scottish Wars (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1997); Pamela E. Ritchie, Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548–1560: A Political Career (East Linton, East Lothian, Scotland: Tuckwell, Press, 2002); David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne (New York: Harper- Collins, 2001).