Scotland and France conclude the Treaty of Haddington in response to the war known as the "Rough Wooing". According to the treaty, the five-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, is to marry the Dauphin of France.

The Kingdom of Scotland was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England. During the Middle Ages, Scotland engaged in intermittent conflict with England, most prominently the Wars of Scottish Independence, which saw the Scots maintain and assert their independence from the English. Following Scotland's annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and England's capture of Berwick in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest.