English: In 'The Fortified House In Scotland' the author Nigel Tranter quotes an English source recounting how the occupants of the castle started shooting at the invaders on the day before the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh (1547) "with hand-guns and hakbutts till the battle lost, when they pluct in their peces lyke a dog his taile, and couched themselves within, all muet; but by and by the hous was set on fyre and they, for their good will, brent and smoothered within".

It was the second major military disaster suffered by the Scots in the Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 16th century, just one generation after Flodden. The slaughter appears to have prompted the following comment which was published two years later.

"Inglis men ar cruel quhene thai get victorie, and Scottis men ar merciful quhene thai get victorie. And to conclude, it is unpossibil that Inglis men and Scottis men can remane in concord undir ane monarch or ane prince, because their naturis and conditiounis ar as indefferent as is the nature of scheip and volfis [wolves]." -- Anonymous, The Complaynt Of Scotland, 1549