By March 16 it was clear that a pitch battle was inevitable

Cunningham, the 4th Earl of Glencairn, joined together to promote the marriage of Edward and Mary, having been in effect bribed by Henry VIII to do so – Glencairn had been captured by the English at the Battle of Solway Moss and was released suspiciously early having promised Henry he would be his man in Scotland.

We have several contemporary sources as to what happened next, including Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie and George Buchanan, who is most famous as the tutor of James VI and I but who was an eminent historian and scholar in his own right.

The various accounts of what happened in Glasgow do have to be seen in the light of the writers’ convictions as committed protestant Reformers.

The Catholic Lennox, for one, had been associated with Marie de Guise, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and is said to have returned to Scotland from France in hope of marrying her after the death of King James V.

He was certainly allied with Marie and the anti-Reformer Cardinal David Beaton as well as Regent Arran – Lennox personally escorted the infant Queen Mary to Stirling Castle in July, 1543.

The rejection of the Treaty of Greenwich saw Lennox change sides, and the bad blood between him and Arran – they both had claims to the throne of Scotland – got worse after Lennox married Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret Tudor who was the wife of King James IV, killed at Flodden in 1513.

To the Regent and his council,