Guise obtained French military support, and the Lords invited an English army under the terms of their Treaty of Berwick (1560).

The leader of the Lords of the Congregation, the former Regent Arran, left Glasgow for Hamilton on 17 March 1560, leaving 25 men in the Bishop's Palace and 13 in the Steeple of the Cathedral.

Henri Cleutin, sieur de Villeparisis, led his French troops to Glasgow in the morning of 18 March.

[2] The French then returned to Leith shadowed by 800 Scots horsemen led by James Hamilton, 3rd Earl of Arran.

[3] The chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie points out that the Scots did not engage their full force with the French at this time because their allies, the English fleet commanded by William Winter, had just arrived.