Scottish Blog

The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh was the last battle between the England and Scotland during the War of the Rough Wooing.

The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh was fought between the English and the Scots. In essence it was the last segment of the War of the Rough Wooing against Scotland. In essence the objective of the war, at least from the side of the English, was to encourage the Scots to wed the young Mary Queen of Scots to the son of the English king, Edward VI.

The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh took place on the 10th of September of 1547. The armies were led by Earl of Arran for the Scottish and Duke of Somerset for the English. Estimates of the size of the Scots forces numbered between 23,000 and 36,000 troops, while the English consisted of roughly 17,000 troops and 30 warships.

The day before the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh took place, the leader of the Scots, the Earl of Arran, marched with one and a half thousand troops to meet the Duke of Somerset. He challenged the Duke to a duel with an equal number of troops.

On the day of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, the Scots fared no better than they did the previous day. The English army was heavily protected from one side by their artillery and on the other side by a bog, they also had support of warships. For the Scots this meant that the only route of attack was directly from the front. Although the battle was not without minor victories for the Scots, like driving of the English main cavalry charge. Ultimately the Scots were defeated, suffering almost 5000 casualties and 1,500 prisoners.

As the Battle of Pnkie Cleugh was such an important one for Scottish history, a large number of Scottish clans participated in it, as a rundown, these were some of the most important in the battle:

Clan Buchanan
Clan Cameron
Clan Campbell
Clan Farquharson
Clan Forbes
Clan Gordon
Clan Graham
Clan Hunter
Clan Irvine
Clan MacFarlane
Clan MacGregor
Clan MacKenzie
Clan MacLaren
Clan Munro
Clan Ogilvy
Clan Stuart