Treaty of Berwick (1560)

This parliament also ratified the treaty; William Maitland commended it and the goodwill and favour of Elizabeth in relieving the extreme necessity and "almost utter ruen of the whole countrie."

Knox directly related the treaty to the thinking of his colleague Christopher Goodman in his tract, How Superior Powers Ought to be Obeyed, by writing: And because we have heard the malicious tongues of wicked men make false report of this our fact, we have faithfully and truly inserted in this our history the said contract, ... that memory thereof may bide to our posterity; to the end that they may judge with indifference, whether that we have done anything prejudicial to our commonwealth or yet contrarious unto that debtful obedience which true subjects owe to their superiors[10] The modern historian Michael Lynch called the treaty "an astonishing document which mentioned many things but not religion.

"[11] Pamela Ritchie, historian and author of a political biography of Mary of Guise, sees the treaty as facilitating "the interference of a foreign monarch in what was essentially a domestic crisis.

While the intervention was opportunistic, arranged following the tumult of Amboise when France was first troubled by her wars of Religion, the English army did not receive widespread welcome and support and failed to take Leith by storm.

On 20 January Richard Maitland wrote to his friend in London of their readiness to abandon the Auld Alliance, noting;It shall not be amiss to consider in what case the French be presently, their estate is not always so calm at home as everyman thinketh ... the demand by the Empire for the restitution of Metz, Toul, and Verdun may grow to some business.