Edward VI: Foreign Policy (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• Edward VI inherited two expensive, unresolved wars: one with Scotland and one with France

  • Both conflicts had already cost Henry VIII over £2 million with little to show for it

• Somerset continued the Scottish war through the Rough Wooing: military pressure to force a marriage alliance

  • He won the Battle of Pinkie (1547) but could not hold Scotland permanently

  • The French sent troops to Scotland in 1548

  • Mary, Queen of Scots, was sent to France to marry the French heir

• Northumberland abandoned the wars and made peace with France in the Treaty of Boulogne (1550)

  • England returned Boulogne and withdrew from Scotland

  • It was widely seen as a humiliating

• Historians disagree on how successful Edward VI's foreign policy was

  • Somerset's campaigns are often seen as costly failures

  • Northumberland's peace is seen by some as a necessary retreat and by others as a damaging climb-down

Somerset's War with Scotland: The Battle of Pinkie, 1547

• Somerset had to deal with two ongoing wars from Henry VIII: one with Scotland and one with France

  • Both were expensive

Context: What was the Rough Wooing?

• The Rough Wooing was Henry VIII's attempt to force Scotland into a marriage alliance

• Henry VIII wanted Edward VI to marry Mary, Queen of Scots

  • This would unite the English and the Scottish crowns under a Protestant king

• When the Scots refused, Henry used military raids to pressure them into accepting

• Somerset inherited this policy in 1547 and chose to continue it

Somerset's aims

• To secure the proposed marriage between Edward VI and Mary, Queen of Scots

• To garrison the Scottish border and hold territory rather than just raid and withdraw

• To win over Scottish Protestants and ordinary Scots, rather than simply intimidate them

• To prevent France from using Scotland as a base to threaten England from the north

The invasion: scale and strength

• Somerset led a combined land and naval invasion from Berwick-upon-Tweed in September 1547

  • 16,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry on land

  • 30 warships and 50 supply ships at sea

• A second force of 2,000 advanced from Carlisle in the west

The Battle of Pinkie, 10 September 1547

• The Scottish army was larger but poorly equipped

  • It had fewer cannon and little effective cavalry

• The English won a decisive victory at Pinkie Cleugh, just south of Edinburgh

• Somerset gained control of the border region and began building a chain of garrison forts in Scotland

Why did the strategy run into trouble?

• The garrison network was enormously expensive

• Somerset could win battles but could not occupy Scotland permanently

  • England did not have enough troops to hold the country

• The victory united Scottish resistance

  • Many Scots who had been neutral or sympathetic now rallied against the English

• France responded quickly

  • Henry II of France sent around 4,000 troops to Scotland in the summer of 1548

• With French military support, Scotland strengthened its resistance and Somerset's garrisons came under pressure

Mary, Queen of Scots, sent to France

• In August 1548, Mary, Queen of Scots was evacuated to France aged five

• In France, she was betrothed to the French Dauphin (Francis II)

  • This was the opposite of what Somerset had intended

    • The entire campaign had been to secure Mary's marriage to Edward VI

    • Instead, Scotland and France were now more closely bound together than before

Somerset withdraws

• By summer 1549, Somerset faced the Western Rising and Kett's Rebellion at home simultaneously

• He withdrew troops from Scotland to deal with the domestic crisis and to guard the south coast against a possible French invasion

• The garrison strategy was abandoned

  • Somerset's Scottish policy had collapsed without achieving any of its aims

Northumberland's Foreign Policy: Peace with France & Scotland

• Northumberland reversed Somerset's foreign policy completely

  • He prioritised stability at home over military ambition abroad

Why did Northumberland change direction?

• The treasury was empty

  • Somerset's wars were extremely costly; there was no money to continue

• The wars had achieved nothing

  • Scotland was more hostile than before

  • France was now deeply involved in Scotland

• England needed a period of peace

  • Northumberland had just come through the worst domestic rebellions of the Tudor century

• He also recognised that the main long-term threat to Protestant England came from Catholic Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, not France

  • A French alliance would counterbalance the greater threat from the Habsburgs, who were both Catholic and directly linked to Mary Tudor

The Treaty of Boulogne, March 1550

• Northumberland signed a peace treaty with France in March 1550

Relations with Charles V

• Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Spain

  • A committed Catholic

  • Hostile to England's increasingly Protestant religious direction under Northumberland

  • Cousin of Princess Mary, who remained Catholic throughout Edward's reign

• Northumberland's alliance with France helped counterbalance the threat from Charles V without triggering open conflict

• Catholic reform and anti-Protestant pressure were growing across Europe

  • Catholic powers were mobilising to reverse Protestant gains

  • England under Northumberland sought to avoid direct confrontation with this movement

How Successful was Edward VI's Foreign Policy?

• Use the evidence below to build your own argument

  • Consider the aims of each policy, what it achieved and what it cost

Evidence that foreign policy was not successful

• Somerset spent a significant amount of money (around £600,000) on the Scottish campaign, and achieved none of his aims

  • Pinkie was a military victory but changed nothing lastingly

  • English garrisons were abandoned within two years

• The Franco-Scottish alliance was strengthened, not broken

  • The campaign united Scottish resistance behind France

• Mary, Queen of Scots was sent to France to marry the French heir

  • This was the opposite of what the campaign hoped to achieve

• England returned Boulogne without military defeat

  • Henry VIII had spent vast sums capturing it

  • This was seen as humiliating

• All English garrisons were withdrawn from Scotland

  • England's influence to the north of the border was sharply reduced

• The wars left the government near-bankrupt

  • They contributed directly to the economic crisis of the late 1540s

• There was no consistent foreign policy strategy across the reign as a whole

  • Somerset and Northumberland pointed in completely opposite directions

Evidence that foreign policy was more successful than often credited

• Northumberland stabilised England's international position

• The peace ended wars England was struggling to win

  • Continuing these would have damaged the treasury further

• The French alliance was strategically sensible

  • It balanced the threat from Catholic Spain and the Holy Roman Empire

• England avoided a direct confrontation with Charles V

  • Despite its increasingly Protestant religious settlement

• Trade expansion began under Northumberland

  • New routes to West Africa, the 1553 voyage that later led to the Muscovy Company and the search for a north-east passage

  • These are the origins of Elizabethan commercial expansion

    • Northumberland helped shift England's foreign policy away from expensive European warfare and towards trade