[2] Reaction to the marriage was swift: Margaret and Henry were besieged at Stirling Castle by Lord Erskine, with the support of James V and her former husband, the Earl of Angus.

However, after James V escaped from the care of the Douglas family and joined his mother at Stirling Castle,[3] Henry was created Lord Methven.

[7] The historian Marcus Merriman connected Methven's letter with the employment of an Italian military engineer Migliorino Ubaldini who directed the construction of new fortifications at Edinburgh Castle.

He found four principal motives; religion, fear, regard for a belief in prophecy, and the ignorant conceit that English justice and rule might be better.

He advised her that there were so many dissidents that the unity of Scotland would be best served by offering an act of remission, a general pardon, rather than punishment, as her husband James V had done for rebels during his minority, (on 10 December 1540).

Methven thought the defeat at Pinkie, which he called the "jeornay of Penke", was due to these causes, and the unorderly haste of the Scottish army.

As an example to the local lairds who were obliged to do this work, he yoked 240 oxen and began to drag the guns through his and Lord Ruthven's lands.

At Haddington, he reported on 5 July; "all nycht all our greit artallzery lawborit and has dong the tolbutht and reft an pece that lay betuix it and the kirk of the Freyris."