Why it's time to stop calling Henry VIII's war against Scotland the 'Rough Wooing'
The term ‘Rough Wooing’ denotes the rape of a woman by a man in order to force her into marriage
Mary, Queen of Scots inherited the throne aged six days old in December 1542. For the next eight years, Scotland was, on and off, subjected to violent warfare, initiated by her great-uncle, Henry VIII, in the hope of marrying Mary to his heir, Edward VI. A union of their countries would mirror the marriage of the monarchs.
The importance of this conflict over a queen’s marriage was matched by its violence, yet today it is little known. When it is discussed, this war is invariably described by the pseudo-contemporary moniker of ‘Rough Wooings’, first applied to the wars around 150 years after peace treaties were signed.
Anachronism is not in itself a reason to reject a name for historical events. Many wars are called by names which contemporaries would not recognise – step forward World War One (née the Great War) or the conflict formerly known as the English Civil War, which has been renamed and reframed by successive generations of historians.
Deeply troubling
Nevertheless, when approaching the past we have a responsibility to think about whose stories we are telling and those hidden by archival gaps – or who previous generations might have chosen to ignore. The names given to things are a crucial part of this, signalling whose side we are on, whose values or behaviour we endorse. From this perspective, the idea of a ‘rough wooing’ being used to describe a violent war of conquest is deeply troubling.
Researching these wars, I’ve been privileged to talk to students and community history groups throughout Scotland – not only was the war itself little known, but the name ‘Rough Wooings’ frequently provoked confusion amongst those who were not already fully-fledged history buffs. Some people expressed unease – the meaning was unclear, but the juxtaposition between ideas of violence and courtship was uncomfortable.
Examining the history of the term more closely shows these concerns are fully justified. Although obscure and ‘olde-worlde’ now, when it was first attached to these wars, the meaning of a ‘rough wooing’ was clear: it denoted a rape or other assault perpetrated upon a woman by a man to force her into marriage.
In a society habitually suspicious towards female victims and which framed courtship as conquest, it was easy to suspect that a ‘rough wooing’ may even have been desired. In a society where any extra-marital sex was disordered, marriage’s restoration of order could quiet and justify any violence in a ‘rough wooing’.
Like the so-called ‘rough sex defence’ or the pernicious idea that a rape survivor ‘asked for it’, their 18th-century progenitor of a ‘rough wooing’ was a powerful and useful phrase precisely because it deployed pervasive ideas about gender and sex to justify and excuse violence.
Union of Parliaments debate
Centuries after the 1540s wars were fought, these powerful ideas made the idea of a ‘rough wooing’ useful in explaining the events of Mary’s childhood, just as Anglo-Scottish union, the objective the wars were fought over, was again on the political horizon.
As debates around parliamentary union raged in 1706-7, those in favour of a federal union needed to demonstrate a sovereign past to argue for present constitutional parity. They also needed to explain past violence to render present union palatable.
As one of this party, Sir James Hodges, realised, a term which drew attention to the dynastic project of union, not the wider impact, and framed past violence as a struggle between two sovereign states which would benefit through union – a wooing was a prelude to marriage – was useful.
It’s unlikely that Hodges had researched the conflict deeply and read the evidence for rape being used as a method of subjugating the civilian population. We will never know if he paused to reflect on the fact that, as an adult, Mary, Queen of Scots was a victim of rape in order to force her marriage to the rapist – a rough wooing in its full sense – before he used this term to describe the first violence committed in an attempt to control her body.
It is clear that as the Anglo-Scottish past was being reinterpreted on the eve of parliamentary union, deep-rooted tropes about gender and consent shaped a violent past into a narrative for present purposes.
What were the alternatives Hodges could have chosen? Sources from the immediate aftermath of the wars remember either the burning of crops or buildings or presence of English soldiers but don’t give a specific name. For many of those who lived through those years, it was simply ‘the war’, or the most recent one. Slightly later some people settled on the ‘Nine Years War’ – a name now used for a different conflict.
READ MORE: Scotland's coldest murder case? Did Earl of Bothwell really kill Mary Queen of Scots' husband?
A better name
Whilst we can’t pick a name which reflects those used at the time, we can choose one which helps us understand the past better and does not align us with the aggressors in an attempted conquest, or with the notion that violent coercion can have any place in consensual relationships.
We can instead favour simplicity and clarity, a name which avoids romanticisation or narrative building, and does what it says on the tin: the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1540s.
Language mattered when this name became attached to these wars and it matters today. Words remain a powerful means to minimise or obfuscate violence against women, and sexual violence was and remains political.
Those who reported on rapes during these wars or later used the idea of a ‘rough wooing’ to explain the violence away understood this. Given persistently low rape conviction rates, a problem stretching back from the Justiciary Court records of the 1540s to our own day, we ought to too.
Consigning the name ‘rough wooing’ to the history books which have already been written, and interrogating it in those to come, is a necessary step in the right direction.
Dr Amy Blakeway is a historian at the University of St Andrews