Henry VIII, in the summer of 1542, was disgusted with his nephew. King James V of Scotland had refused to break with Rome, refused to abandon the Auld Alliance with France, and refused, repeatedly, to come south for a personal meeting with his uncle. Henry, finding King Francis I usefully distracted on the Continent, decided to settle the matter the other way. A considerable English army was ordered to muster on the Borders under Robert Bowes, one of the wardens, supported by the Earl of Angus and his Douglas kinsmen. James V, hearing the rumours, named the Earl of Huntly his lieutenant on the Borders and put 10,000 men at his disposal, headquartered at Kelso. Both armies were therefore in the field, neither quite ready to fight, when the English raiders walked into Huntly's ambush at first light.

The English postmortem was unsparing. George Douglas and the Earl of Angus, who had escaped only by the swiftness of his horse, wrote bluntly to the Privy Council in London: Trewely, it wos nocht tha that wan the feyld, it was we that losd it with our mysordour. Truly, it was not they who won the field. It was we who lost it with our misorder. The English had divided their force, lost their cohesion, and burdened themselves with driven cattle. They were ambushed at the most dangerous moment of any raid, the moment when soldiers begin to believe they have already gone home. The Scots took Cuthbert Ratcliff, John Heron of Chipchase, John Carr the Captain of Wark, and John Widdrington the Marshall of Berwick. At Wark Castle, only fifty of the original hundred soldiers stationed there returned, injured and unarmed.

Henry could not let the defeat stand. The Duke of Norfolk was ordered to cross the border and conduct a noble exploit to wipe out the dishonour. For five days in late October, Norfolk's men burned villages and towers around Kelso and Roxburgh, putting Paxton, Floors, Stichill, Ednam, Smailholm Spittle, and Kelso Abbey to the torch. Four Scotsmen caught spying near Eccles were hanged. Norfolk's reports back to London, however, told a different story than his bonfires suggested: his soldiers were short of food, the locals had hidden everything portable, and the Scottish army hovering near Lauder and Smailholm refused to come out and fight. The Diurnal of Occurrents claimed his incursion had caused little skaith, little real damage, and that the Scottish lords simply would not pursue him back across the border.

Three months after Haddon Rig, a second Scottish army marched south against Thomas Wharton's English force near Longtown. On 24 November, on the marshy ground of Solway Moss, the Scottish army collapsed without a coherent fight, losing not to overwhelming odds but to confusion in its own command. The shame of Solway Moss is widely credited with hastening James V's death at Falkland Palace on 14 December, six days after the birth of his daughter Mary, Queen of Scots. The murder of an English herald near Innerwick Castle, on a mission to negotiate the prisoners' release, was said by one English chronicle to have weighed on him as well. Haddon Rig had been a complete Scottish victory. It is mostly remembered, when it is remembered at all, as the prelude to the disaster that swallowed it.