On the day that the Westminster and Holyrood governments start to set out their respective cases before the Supreme Court as to the competence off the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a possible referendum on Scottish independence it is perhaps not totally inappropriate to look back some 470 or so years to a different type of Anglo-Scottish conflict over the border and possible union.
The BBC News website has a report about archaeological excavations in the Rule valley in the borderlands between England and Scotland which are yielding evidence of fighting on a raid there in September 1545.
The raid was part of what is usually known as the “Rough Wooing” when the English government over several years unsuccessfully tried to persuade, then coerce and finally force the Scots to agree to the marriage of the young King Edward VI to the even younger Queen Mary I of Scots. The result was to drive the Scots more firmly into the French alliance and eventually to the marriage of the young Queen of Scots to the future King Francis II. Mutatis mutandis this seems reminiscent of current debates about the future for Scotland.
Border raids were for several centuries of course part and parcel of life in the region with defensive tower houses in most settlements. On occasion these raids escalated into war between the two kingdoms.
The current excavation is at Bedrule Castle, which was apparently destroyed, or rendered untenable, by a sizeable English raid along with other defensive structures in the valley on September 16th 1545. It is part of a wider project to make the story of the raid better known.
The article can be read at Archaeologists study valley's day of destruction
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