CHAPTER XLIII.

THE CROSS OF FIRE.

Fast as the fatal symbol flies,
In arms the huts and hamlets rise;
From winding glen, from upland brown,
They pour'd, each hardy tenant, down.
Nor slack'd the messenger his pace;
He show'd the sign, he named the place,
And pressing forward like the wind,
Left clamour and surprise behind.
                                                    Lady of the Lake.

On this night the beacons blazed on continent and isle, athwart the whole kingdom,—from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the German Sea. In every city, burgh, hamlet, and castle, cottage, convent, and monastery, the tidings were known within an hour, that the invasion had begun; and by day-dawn THE CROSS OF FIRE had spread from hand to hand, with the summons to the muster-place, and it went from glen to glen with incredible speed, each bearer naming the gathering or rendezvous of his clan, burgh, or sheriffdom, with the place where the array of the kingdom was to meet the Regent Arran.

The Crian Tarigh—the cross of fire, or of shame, for it bore both names; first, from the circumstance of its arms being scathed with fire, and then dipped in the blood of an animal; and second, from the everlasting infamy attending all who disobeyed the bearer—was a terrible Celtic symbol never before used in the lowlands of Scotland; but on this occasion it proved most effectual.

It was usually borne by a messenger on foot. On reaching a hamlet he gave it to the first person he met, and the latter, on hazard of his life, was bound to leave his occupation, be it at home or afield,—a bridal or a burial,—a birth or a deathbed,—a scene of sorrow or a scene of joy,—and to convey it till he met another, to whom he simply mentioned the muster-place. On beholding this terrible cross, every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty, capable of bearing arms, was compelled to appear at the rendezvous in his best harness; and woe to the wretch who failed. The utmost vengeance of fire and sword, as indicated by the three burned and bloody arms of this ancient symbol of our Celtic fathers, fell upon the false and disobedient, the timid and untrue.

Thus by dawn next day the whole of Scotland was in arms! The barons and chiefs were all on the march, from every point, for Edmondstone Edge, the royal muster-place; while in every walled city and town throughout the realm the armed burghers kept watch and ward, or filled the great castles in the neighbourhood with men, cannon, and all the munitions of war. The military measures of the Regent Arran, at this important crisis, reflected the greatest credit upon his personal activity, and upon his government, which had hitherto been as weak and vacillating as his religious opinions, which wavered alternately between the new and stern, bare creed of Calvin, and the pictorial splendours of the Church of Rome.

On learning the tragic event which occurred in the church of Tranent, Claude Hamilton of Preston became reanimated by what he had striven to forget, or commit to oblivion, his feud with the Fawsides; and a longing for the direst vengeance on Dame Alison and on her son inspired him and all his followers. He would have attacked, sacked, and rased her little fortalice to its foundations, had not the Albany herald arrived, bearing a special message from his lord and chief, the Regent Arran, commanding him to forget his feud for the time, and to bring his vassals to the muster-place to aid the general cause; after the triumph of which, he should have all the satisfaction the power of the Justician of Scotland could award.

His summons to attend the array of the kingdom ran thus, as we render it in English.

"REGINA. Well-beloved friend, we greet you well. For so much as our dearest cousin the regent, and the lords of our council, are surely informed that our old enemies of England tend to invade our realm; he resolves, with the support of all true barons and faithful lieges, to resist them in our just defence. It is our will, and we pray you, to address you incontinent with your honourable household, all bodin in array of war, to attend our royal standard, in all haste, at Edmondstone Edge, as ye love the defence and common weal of our realm, and under the pain and tynsale of life, lands, and goods; and as regards your outstanding feud with the Fawsides of that ilk, and the cruel and bloody deed of the widow of the umquhile Sir John Fawside, we promise you all manner of vengeance at the hands of the Earl of Argyle, our lord justice general, and gage the honour of our crown therein. Written under our signet at Edinburgh, the 3rd day of September, 1547.[*]

JAMES REGENT."

"To our well-beloved friend, the Laird of Preston—These."

[*] Father John's MSS.

Sternly Claude Hamilton read this missive, and gulping down his anger and grief—for he dearly loved his beautiful kinswoman,—he stifled his furious passion for a time; and, meanwhile, the grim Dame Alison, with Roger of Westmains acting as her lieutenant-governor, watched well in her moated tower, with gates barred, and every falcon and arquebuse loaded; and though she secluded herself in her bower-chamber, it is to be doubted whether, even in her quietest hours of reflection, amid the still calm sleepless hours of the long night-watch, she felt any remorse for the terrible deed she had done. If she did feel it, she carefully veiled it under an exterior that to ordinary eyes was unreadable and impenetrable.

Animated by a horror of his mother—an emotion too strange and terrible for analysis or description,—sick at heart, and crushed in spirit, poor Florence returned to Fawside tower no more; but resided with Dick Hackerston, the hospitable and sturdy burgher, who occupied a mansion in a broad-wynd on the north side of the city, nearly opposite the hospital and chapel of La Maison Dieu, and the Black Turnpike, so famous in the annals of 1567, all of which have now been removed. There he was provided with suitable arms and armour for man and horse, and, until the army took the field, there he remained, tended as a brother would have been, by the worthy merchant's wife, who saw there was something noble and poignant in his sad and silent sorrow, which held communion with none; and being young, handsome, and gallant in bearing, it impressed her all the more.

But to return to the Regent Arran: by the grey dawn of that day, on which the alarm of the coming foe first crossed the land with giant strides of fire from mountain-top to mountain-top, the lords of the royal privy council assembled in the tower of James V. at Holyrood. There came the earls of Huntly, Mar, Argyle, Cassilis, and Glencairn; the lords of Lyle, Fleming, and Kilmaurs (with his sinister visage, his glistening eyes and teeth), and many other peers—those who were loyal and true, and those who were base and venial—to reconsider and debate upon the measures to be taken at the present emergency. Despite their bonds and promises, when the hour of danger came, and all the land was armed or arming, Glencairn, Cassilis, and others of their infamous and corrupt faction, found themselves swept away by the loyalty of the commons, as by a sea, the waves of which there was no resisting; and they were compelled to lead their vassals to the field, and to unsheath their swords, against those with whom they were in secret league, and whose gold they had hoped to pocket; but to that foul political leprosy—that inborn spirit of treason and anti-nationality, which was characteristic of too many of the Scottish nobles, and which they inherited with their titles and their blood—were the future disasters of Pinkey, like too many other national woes and degradations, distinctly traceable.

Even Claude Hamilton, for the time, forgot his proffered titles of Lord Preston and Earl of Gladsmuir, and found himself marching at the head of a goodly band of mounted spearmen, including Symon Brodie in his suit of beaked armour, for the muster-place, the green sloping braes of Edmondstone Edge; and now Ned Shelly's chance of obtaining a young Scottish countess seemed as distant as the realization of his leader's political hopes, or the chance of an English bride for Bothwell, who heard the din of preparation in the castle of Edinburgh, where he chafed like a caged lion at the external commotion, in which he could bear no part, for good, for evil, or for aggrandisement.

At the council board on this eventful morning, the peer whose advice had the most weight was George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, a loyal and noble lord, whose manners and education had been improved by study and by foreign travel. He had been made lieutenant of the north by James V., and captain-general of those forces which defeated the English at the battle of Haidonrig and baffled their next army under the Duke of Norfolk. When speaking of the matrimonial alliance with England, a marriage which Somerset seemed determined to form by the edge of the sword, he recommended that some accommodation might be made by a temporary truce or treaty.

On this, Mary of Lorraine, who had come to the council, gave him a glance of sorrowful reproach.

"My lords," said she, with a flush on her usually pale cheek, "when my dear husband was dying in Falkland Palace, as Monseigneur le Cardinal Beaton (who is now in heaven) told me, the setting sun shed a stream of light into the room where he lay, and with brilliance lit up the royal arms above the mantelpiece, the arms of Scotland, or, the lion gules within a double tressure, all were brightened as with a transient glory; but as the life of my beloved lord and king ebbed, and he sank lower on his pillow, dying—dying of a broken heart,—and breathed his last, the sun went down beyond the hills of Fife, and the arms of the kingdom became dark, so dark, in that chamber of death and gloom, as to be invisible; and this the cardinal, and all who were present, declared to be ominous of evil to come; and the evil has come upon the realm of my fatherless child when my lord of Huntly hath eyes of favour to the alliance of those who, for centuries, have striven, by the soldier's sword and the scrivener's guile, to dishonour the name and subvert the liberties of Scotland!"

As the beautiful Frenchwoman spoke, her fine hazel eyes became filled with a sparkling light; her bosom heaved, and her cheek was crimsoned by the excitement, that made her Valois blood course like lightning through her veins.

"You wrong me, royal lady," said the Highland earl; "be assured, madam, that the loyal spirit of my forefathers yet lives within me; and I trust that all who hear me will remember the words of the faithful and brave who, from the Abbey of Arbroath, addressed that ignoble Pope, John XXII., who leagued himself with England against them; and in the same spirit by which those Scottish barons adhered to Robert Bruce will we adhere to his descendant, your royal daughter. 'To him,' said they, 'we will adhere as our rightful king, the preserver of our people and the guardian of our liberties; but should he ever dream of subjecting us to England, then we will do our utmost to expel him from the throne as a traitor and an enemy; we will choose another king to rule over us, for never, so long as one hundred Scotsmen are alive, will we be subject to the yoke of England! We fight not for glory, we strive not for riches or honour, but for that liberty which no good man will consent to lose but with his life. We are willing to do anything for peace which may not compromise our freedom. If your Holiness disbelieve us, and continue to favour England, giving undue credit to her false assertions, then be sure that Heaven will impute to you all the calamities which our resistance must inevitably produce; and we commit the defence of our cause to God.' So spoke the faithful men of other days," continued the earl, "and, with the hand of that blessed God above their banner, may such to the latest posterity ever be the spirit of freedom which shall animate the Scottish people!"

These words filled the council with enthusiasm, and all separated to prepare for the mortal strife.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE INVASION.

Our Scottish warriors on the heath,
    In close battalia stood;
To free their country and their queen,
    Or shed their reddest blood.
The Anglo-Saxons' restless band
    Has cross'd the river Tweed;
And ower the hills o' Lammermuir
    They've march'd wi' mickle speed.
                                                    Twinlaw—Old Ballad.

Edward Duke of Somerset, formerly and better known in Scotland as that Earl of Hertford who led the invasion in the year 1544, had arrived at Newcastle on the 27th of August at the head of fourteen thousand two hundred Englishmen and many foreign auxiliaries, with fifteen pieces of cannon drawn by horses, and nine hundred waggons laden with stores. Sir Francis Fleming was master of the ordnance, and had fourteen hundred pioneers, under Captain John Brem, to clear the way before the guns, to build fascines, and so forth. Master William Patten, who accompanied this army in the quality of judge marshal, a post to which, he had been advanced by the interest of Edward Shelly, in his history[*] of the "Expedition," has given us a minute account of the campaign, and an accurate list of all the commanders in the Protector's army, to aid which thirty-four ships of war and thirty-two transports, under the pennon of Edward Lord Clinton and Say (afterwards high admiral of England) and Sir William Woodhouse, anchored at the mouth of the Tyne.

[*] "The Expedition into Scotland, of the most worthely fortunate Prince Edward, Duke of Somerset, &c., made in the first yere of his Maiestes most prosperous reign, and set out by way of diarie by W. Patten, Londoner. Vivat Victor! Out of the Parsonage of St. Mary Hill in London, this xxviii of January, 1548."

Lord Grey of Wilton, lieutenant of Boulogne, was high marshal and captain-general of the horse, who were all cap-a-pie in full armour, but of a light fashion. Sir Ralf Vane commanded four thousand men-at-arms and demi-lances; and Sir Francis Bryan (in the following year chief governor of Ireland) was captain of two thousand light horse. Sir Thomas Darcy led King Edward VI.'s band of pensioners.

Sir Peiter Mewtas was commander of the Almayners, or German infantry, who were all clad in buff coats and armed with arquebuses.

Don Pedro de Gamboa led the mounted Spanish arquebusiers; and these foreigners, being trained soldiers of fortune, who had served in many wars, were the flower of Somerset's forces. Many of them were veterans who had fought at the siege of Rhey, in 1521, when muskets were first used by the Spaniards, whose infantry were then deemed the finest in Europe.

Edward Shelly led the men-at-arms of Boulogne, who, like the mercenaries, were all trained and veteran soldiers, but dressed in blue doublets, slashed and faced with red. The celebrated Sir Ralf Sadler (whose papers were edited by Sir Walter Scott) was treasurer of this well-ordered army, and Sir James Wilford was provost-marshal.

On the 2nd September the Duke of Somerset entered Scotland, and marched along the eastern coast, keeping carefully in view of his fleet of sixty-four sail, which accompanied him towards the Firth of Forth. Unopposed, he reached that tremendous ravine, the Peaths, which is now spanned by a bridge that is perhaps the greatest in Europe, as it is two hundred and forty feet high by three hundred feet in length. Abrupt, precipitous, and narrow, this ravine formed one of the great passes into Scotland; and, being of easy defence, was deemed "a kind of sluice, by which the tide of war could be loosened or confined at pleasure."

For, an entire day Sir Francis Fleming and his gunners, and Captain Brem with his pioneers, toiled in that narrow and savage gorge to drag through the English artillery and waggons, while the Protector was busy storming several fortresses in the neighbourhood. Among these were the castles of Thornton and Dunglass, belonging to the Lord Home; and Inverwick, a house of the Hamiltons. These strongholds were blown up by gunpowder; but, "before we did so," saith Master Patten, "it would have rued any good housewife's heart to have beholden the great and unmerciful slaughter our men made of the brood geese and good laying hennes, which the wives had penned up in the holes and cellars of the castle [of Dunglass]. The spoil was not rich, to be sure; but of white bread, oaten cakes, and Scottish ale, was indifferent good store, and soon bestowed among my lord's soldiers accordingly."

The English marched in three great columns; each was flanked by horse and artillery; and each piece of cannon had a band of pioneers to guard it and clear the way before it. Somerset led the main body; Warwick still had the vanguard; and Thomas Lord Dacres of Gillesland, Knight of the Garter, led the rear.

Leaving Dunbar on his right, the duke pushed forward through East Lothian to the Tyne, which he crossed by the same old narrow bridge that spans it still; but there not unopposed, for the vassals of the house of Hepburn opened a cannonade of falcons and culverins from the ramparts of Bothwell's castle of Hailes, while a brisk assault was made upon the defiling columns by a famous border marauder named Dandy Kerr, of the house of Fernyherst, whose moss-troopers, after a rough encounter, were routed by the heavily-mounted men-at-arms of Warwick; then, laying the whole country in flames as they advanced, the English marched on until the 7th of September, when they halted at Long Niddry, in Haddingtonshire. There the coast is flat and low; and thus Somerset was enabled to communicate with his fleet, which came to anchor in the roads of Leith.

Somerset now became aware that a Scottish army was concentrated in the neighbourhood, as bands of their prickers, or light-armed horse, were seen galloping along all the eminences, hallooing and brandishing their long and slender spears in defiance. Despite these hostile appearances, the Lord Clinton was brave enough to come on shore and attend a council of war, at which it was arranged that he should anchor the fleet near the mouth of the Esk, to co-operate with the land forces, which Somerset proposed to halt finally eastward of Musselburgh, on the green links of that town, and in the parks of Wallyford and Drumore, where, on the evening of Friday, the 8th, he came in view of the camp of the Scots, thirty-six thousand strong, covering all the long green hill named Edmondstone Edge, at the base of which flowed the Esk.

Around the camp of Somerset, who pitched his own tent near the village of Saltpreston, the whole country was laid desolate by fire; and all who failed to escape perished by the sword. The tall square tower of Preston was soon stormed from a few old men and boys, who were headed by Mungo Tennant, and made a desperate resistance; but they were all slain; then the house was sacked by the English band of pensioners, and committed to the flames. The village of Tranent was burned, and its pretty little vicarage was gutted and destroyed; while in the church the altars and the tombs of the Fawsides were defaced and overthrown. Father John had fled no one knew whither; and for three days the whole landscape was shrouded in the smoke of burning hamlets, granges, mills, and stackyards. Amid this wicked devastation the old tower of Fawside, perched on the summit of its hill, escaped unscathed; but its time was coming.

All this destruction was visible from the Scottish camp, which consisted of four long rows or streets of white tents, that lay from east to west along the green slope of Edmondstone, surmounted by the many-coloured banners of chiefs, nobles, and burghs; and from amid these tents the weapons and armour of so many thousands of men caused a glittering that seemed incessant to the eyes of the English, as they surveyed the vast extent of ground occupied by the army of Arran. As at the battle of Falkirk in 1296, at that of Dunbar in 1650, and other fields, which the Scots have lost by the treason of their nobles or the imbecility of their preachers, the first position of the regent was strong and skilfully chosen.

In front flowed the beautiful Esk, between its steep rocky and wooded banks, from which the feathery ash, the green alder, and the wild rose-tree drooped to kiss the gurgling waters, which were deeper, broader, and more rapid than now. The old Roman bridge, so worn by war and time, which still spans the stream, and which formed the only avenue to their position, Arran had manned by archers and mounted with cannon. The left flank, towards the sea, was defended by an intrenchment of turf, also mounted with cannon and lined by arquebusiers; while a deep and pathless morass, through which nor horse nor man might march, covered the right.

Such was the position of the Scots before the disastrous field of Pinkey, or Inveresk—a battle, the issue of which was awaited breathlessly by Mary of Lorraine, at Edinburgh. By its strength, Somerset found himself completely baffled. To have assailed it would have been a hopeless task, which he saw would only end in a retreat that would cover his army with disgrace, if not with ruin and slaughter.

Arran surveyed the approach of the foe with a confidence in which our hero did not share; for he knew that the Scottish camp was filled by titled traitors, and that the auxiliaries under D'Essé had not yet left the coast of France. He had but one thought—to join Madeline, whom he believed to be in heaven, and to perish in the coming defeat—for what hope was there of victory for an army led by peers who in secret were the tools of Somerset!

From the slope of Edmondstone the Scots could see the high-pooped, low-waisted, and gaily-painted caravels of England coming in succession to anchor, by stem, and stern, off the mouth of the Esk, with their red ports open, and their brass cannon pointed to the shore. All bore the red cross of St. George, together with the banner of Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudley, K.G., high-admiral of England, Ireland, Calais, Boulogne, and the marches thereof; Normandy, Gascony, and Acquitaine; captain-general of the navy and seas—all of which high-sounding titles, did not save him from having his head ignominiously chopped off on the 20th January, 1549.

Amid the clamour, hurry, and bustle of the camp, Florence found but little relief from the agony that preyed upon his spirit. In the prospect of the coming battle, lay all his hope of relief—by plunging into the strife as into a raging sea, to drown his care, his sorrows past and present.

On the evening before the English halted in sight of the Scottish camp, he had left the hospitable mansion of bluff Dick Hackerston, for the last time; and the earnest and tender farewell which that good citizen took of his buxom wife, who laced on his mail with her own trembling hands and placed as an amulet round his neck a holy medal which an old grey friar had brought from Bethlehem; and the kisses which he bestowed again and again on his laughing and chubby-cheeked little ones, with the blessing which he knelt down to receive from his blind father—a frail old man, who for the last few years had vegetated in a huge leathern chair in the ingle-nook of the dining-chamber,—all formed a strong contrast in the mind of Florence to his desolate and friendless condition.

On this evening the old blind man was telling his beads,—for though he had heard Knox preach, and seen Friar Forest burned, he was still a devout Catholic; and by turns his withered fingers would quit the cedar-wood rosary, to play with the iron hilt of a large sword, which hung upon a knob of his chair. When his son knelt before him, he placed a hand upon his head, and a stern smile passed over the old man's face, when he felt the cold steel of Dick's helmet.

"Take this sword, my bairn," said he, "and go forth, believing that thine auld mother, who is now with the saints in heaven, is praying for thee and for thine. She lies in her grave in the kirkyard of St. Giles; but she bore me sax braw sons, Dick, beside thee; three fell by my side at Flodden, two at Ancrumford, and one at Haldonrig—all sword in hand for Scotland and her king. 'Tis but the tale that owre mony hae to tell. Ye were our last, Dick—born unto me in auld age, even as Isaac was born unto Abraham; but go forth—take this sword, and use it as I would use it again had my years been few as thine. Go—God and St. Mary bless you! Die if it be your weird; but turn not in battle, Dick Hackerston, lest the curse of thine auld blind father fall upon thee!"

And in this spirit did our people go forth to battle, like the Spartans of old!

CHAPTER XLV.

THE MEN-AT-ARMS.

Up, comrades, and saddle! to horse and away
    To the field where freedom's the prize, sirs!
There hearts of true mettle still carry the day,
    And men are the kings and the kaisers.
No shelter is there where a skulker may creep;
But each man's sword his own head must keep.
                                                                                    Schiller.

On the morning of the next day, when a bright sun was shining on the wide blue basin of the Forth, and a light silvery mist was creeping up from the low woods of Drumore and rolling along the green hill-sides, a body of fifteen hundred Scottish Light Horse, with all their helmets, their uplifted spears and bright appointments flashing, as they galloped forth with George Lord Home at their head, spread along the slope of Fawside Hill, in view of Somerset's camp. Being principally Border-prickers, they were fleetly mounted on strong and hardy horses, and were clad in open helmets with jacks of splinted steel, iron gorgets, and gloves. All had swords, Jethart axes, and long spears, which they brandished as they galloped or caracoled backwards and forwards in open squadrons, but irregularly and far apart, whooping, huzzaing, and taunting the English to attack them, by many injurious epithets.

Intent on meeting the earliest danger face to face, Florence joined this band of Border cavalry, and repeatedly rode near the gate of his own mansion. He felt a shudder as he surveyed it, and on perceiving, among many others on the bartizan of the tower, a dark figure which he thought was his mother, he sighed bitterly, and turning his head away, looked no more, save towards the masses of snow-white tents and hastily-constructed huts of the English camp, on the right and rear of which opened the beautiful Bay of Musselburgh, sweeping far away until its eastern promontory was lost in haze and distance; and on the left of which lay the wild ravine and smoke-blackened ruins of Tranent.

With the green banner of his family, charged with a lion rampant argent, armed and langued gules, borne by Home of Aytoune, the Border lord rode so close to the English camp that the Lord Grey of Wilton obtained the Duke of Somerset's permission to try the effect of a charge of the heavily-armed English horse upon these bravadoers. A long and glittering mass was then seen to defile from amid the white tents and the green chesnut-trees which shaded them. This mass formed in long squadrons as it advanced, with helmets and lances shining in the morning sun, and with pennons of every colour streaming on the wind behind. There were a thousand men-at-arms on barbed horses, with the demi-lances of Sir Ralf Vane. Among the latter rode Edward Shelly and many other gentlemen as volunteers. As they came on with a cheer, which was distinctly heard in both camps, the Border horse closed round Lord Home's green banner, and then, rushing on each other at full speed, and with all their lances levelled in the rest, the adverse columns met with a tremendous shock, which strewed the open meadows with hundreds of killed and wounded men and horses. Among those who fell first were the laird of Champfleurie and Allan Duthie of the Millheugh, who were slain side by side. The first was cloven down by a sword; the second had three feet of a lance thrust through his body.

It was impossible for the lightly-armed Scottish troopers to withstand the weight and fury of a charge from so many completely-mailed and heavily-mounted cavalry; they were soon broken, and after losing all order, continued a hand-to-hand conflict along the whole slope of Fawside Hill.

In fighting desperately to save his banner from Edward Shelly, whose gauntleted hand was placed thrice upon the pole, Lord Home was severely wounded, and his son the Master of Home, whom M. Beaugue styles a loyal Scottish chevalier, "inferior to none in the world, either in conduct or courage," was struck from his horse, disarmed, and with the laird of Garscadden and Captain Crawford of Jordanhill (afterwards so famous in the wars of Queen Mary's reign), was taken prisoner by Sir Ralf Vane and the Earl of Warwick.

In this conflict Florence ran his lance through the trunk hose of Master Patten; and as these were extravagantly bombasted with several pecks of bran, according to the English fashion, it continued to pour through the orifice as from a sack in which a hole had been torn, and to sow all the scene of the conflict, to the great amusement of friends and foes.

Still the strife went on. Surrounded by a mass of English men-at-arms, who by their very number impeded each other's actions and prevented his destruction, Florence Fawside, within a bowshot of his own gate, and within a green hollow, found himself fighting with all the resolution of a brave heart animated by despair, and coveting death rather than escape,—for he cared not to fly. His pressing danger was observed by his old enemy Lord Kilmaurs, who leaped on horseback, and, attended by three gentlemen in complete armour, was leaving the Scottish vanguard, when his father, the Earl of Glencairn, sternly exclaimed,—

"Whither go you, my lord?"

"To the front."

"But why almost alone?—and wherefore?"

"To the front, where the laird of Fawside is fighting those devilish men-at-arms; see you not how sorely he is beset?"

"Beware of the odds."

"What care I for odds?" replied Kilmaurs, shortening his reins and waving his lance, the pennon of which bore the hayfork sable, the badge of his family.

"The danger——"

"It never deterred a Cunninghame."

"But remember the letters of the Guises and the Valois,—he is our enemy."

"No Scotsman is my enemy to-day," exclaimed the reckless young lord; "follow me, sirs! I would rather share the death of yonder gallant lad, than stand idly by and see it."

Kilmaurs and his three companions came along the hillside at full speed, and, with levelled lances, burst into the fray just as Florence had been struck from his saddle, and had placed his horse between himself and the swords of the men-at-arms. Thrice a demi-lancer of Sir Ralf Vane's band had made a deadly thrust at him; but thrice the weapon had been parried by the friendly sword of Edward Shelly, who had just joined the mêlée, for the same kind purpose that had brought hither Lord Kilmaurs.

"Mount, Fawside," exclaimed the Englishman, keeping between Florence and the Boulogners; "mount while there is time, and leave me to deal with my Lord of Kilmaurs,—another day will serve your turn and mine."

"Thanks," said Florence breathlessly, as he leaped on his horse; "for this good deed I strike not at you to-day."

"But to-morrow——"

"And why to-morrow, Shelly?—alas, I have no one left to live or fight for now; but to-morrow be it, for I warned you to avoid Scottish ground."

"And in good sooth a few of us find its air unwholesome for our English lungs to-day."

While Florence drew off for a few minutes to recover his breath, and from the exhaustion of the late encounter, a rough and desperate conflict took place between Shelly and Kilmaurs, whose former quarrel gave acrimony to their hate and energy to their hands.

"Thou traitor and bondsman of Somerset!" exclaimed Shelly.

"Spy!" taunted the other, and their ringing swords struck fire at every ward and cut. Kilmaurs received a severe wound on the bridle hand, and Shelly's helmet was nearly cloven in two, the vizor being struck completely off; but now other hands and weapons mingled in the combat, and here as in other portions of this extensive skirmish, the Scots were beaten, and had to fly at full speed to reach their own camp; but not until after the contest had been maintained for three hours, with the greatest valour and desperation; and until they had lost no less than thirteen hundred men and horses, did they entirely give way; and then the remnant were pursued round Fawside Hill for three miles to the right flank of the Scottish camp.

Fawside had his armour cut or riven in more than twenty places, by the long swords of the men-at-arms of Boulogne; and his fine grey charger, the gift of Mary of Lorraine, bore him through the Howemire and back to the camp, but so covered was it with wounds as to be disembowelled and dying.

Such was the result of this severe cavalry encounter, a prelude to the greater strife of the morrow; it filled the Scots with greater rancour, and the English (who knew that they must either win a battle or be driven into the sea) with a glow of triumph, which they were at no pains to conceal, for the livelong night their camp rang with rejoicing, and shouts of acclamation.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE PARLEY.

Lo, I have ripen'd discord into war!
So let them now agree and form the league;
Since Trojan swords have spilt Ausonian blood;
The war stands sure; and hand to hand they've fought:
Such nuptial rites,—such Hymeneal feasts!
                                                                                    Æneid, viii.

After this conflict had been waged throughout the lower parts of the ground between the hostile camps, the Duke of Somerset, attended by Don Pedro de Gamboa, the Earl of Warwick, and others had ascended the steep green eminence of Inveresk, where, within the trenches of a Roman camp, stood the ancient church of St. Michael. From this lofty point, Somerset fully reconnoitred the position of the Scots; and he became more than ever convinced that any attempt to dislodge them would be attended with great loss, and perhaps by a total defeat. As he and his group of attendants were somewhat moodily descending the hill towards their own camp, they heard the sound of a trumpet issuing from a copsewood, and in a green lane which leads directly from St. Michael's Church towards the hill of Fawside, they were met, as we are told in history, by four Scotsmen. The first of these was a gentleman on horseback—Florence Fawside—in full armour except his head, on which he wore a blue velvet bonnet adorned by a tall white ostrich feather. He bore a steel gauntlet on his lance, and was attended by the Albany Herald in his tabard, the Ormond Pursuivant with his silver collar of SS around his neck, and by a trumpeter in the royal livery (red and yellow) who sharply blew the peculiar notes which invite a parley.

Florence had scarcely reached the Scottish camp, after the recent discomfiture of the Lord Home's mosstroopers, ere he was despatched to the English Protector, on a delicate mission by the Regent Arran and the Earl of Huntly.

"Well, Scots, what seek you?" asked Somerset, who was a stately man of a noble presence, with a fine open countenance, and a short-clipped beard, of the late King Henry's fashion. Over his armour, which was richly studded and inlaid with gold damasquinée, he wore an open cassock-coat of crimson velvet, lined with white ermine, and on his breast were the collar and order of the garter. Dudley Earl of Warwick was nearly dressed in the same fashion, and wore the same illustrious order. "Come you hither to offer me terms?" asked the duke.

"Such terms as your excellency may accept without dishonour," replied Fawside, bowing low, for in manner and bearing the noble Somerset looked every inch a prince, and indeed closely resembled his late monarch Henry VIII. in face, figure, and dress.

"'Tis well," said he; "but in whose name come you?"

"In the name of James Earl of Arran, Lord Hamilton of Cadzow, knight of the most Ancient Order of the Thistle, Chevalier of St. Michael in France, regent of Scotland and the Isles, for our Sovereign Lady the Queen, whom God long preserve!" replied the Albany Herald with due formality.

"And his purpose is——"

"To receive back by cartel all the prisoners who may have been captured by your men-at-arms, in the conflict which is just ended; and on doing so, you will be permitted to retreat without molestation into England."

"This we decline," said Somerset bluntly; "and now for your purpose, fair sir?" he added, turning to Florence, whose pale and saddened countenance could not fail to interest him.

"I came in the name of George Earl of Huntly, Lord of Badenoch, Lochaber, and Auchindoune, also Chevalier of St. Michael, in France," replied Florence.

"And what would he with us?"

"This noble earl bids me say to you, Edward Duke of Somerset, that, being solicitous to avoid the unnecessary effusion of Christian blood, he is ready to decide this quarrel by single combat with you alone, or to encounter you with ten or twenty gentlemen on each side, on foot or on horseback, as may be arranged. Here lies his glove. Of these chosen combatants, I claim the honour of being one."

"And I, on the other side," exclaimed Don Pedro de Gamboa and several gentlemen, pressing forward.

"Nay," said Somerset loftily; "this cannot be. Knight, herald, pursuivant, and trumpeter, return to those fool-hardy lords who so unwisely sent you hither, and say that our quarrel, being a national and not a personal one, can only be decided by a general appeal to arms. And thou, sir," he added, with increasing hauteur, to Florence, "say to the Earl of Huntly, who sent thee, that in making such a challenge to me, being of such estate, he seemeth to lack wit, for, by the sufferance of God, I have committed to me the care of a mighty and precious jewel, even such a charge as the Lord Arran hath—the government of a youthful sovereign and the protection of a realm, while there be in my army many noble gentlemen, the Lord Huntly's equals, to whom he might have sent his cartel freely and without chance of refusal."

"Your excellency speaketh wisely and well. Here will I take up the glove, and in return send mine," exclaimed the fiery Earl of Warwick, drawing off his steel gauntlet, while his swarthy face glowed with excitement; "and I tell thee, trumpeter, thou shalt have one hundred silver crowns if thou bringest back a favourable answer from this Lord of Huntly and Badenoch."

"Dudley, this may not be," said Somerset; "Huntly, an earl, I believe, of a hundred years ago, is not peer to thee who representest our Norman earls of the twelfth century."

"Then give me the glove," exclaimed Don Pedro de Gamboa: "what care I for earl or for emperor?"

"Nor may this be," replied Florence. "The Earl of Huntly, a true and valiant Catholic lord, will not meet in single combat a renegade soldier of fortune, who, like Don Pedro, is beyond the pale of country and religion, since he sells his sword to those who are the avowed enemies of the faith of our fathers, the church of God and Rome."

The Spaniard, who was a dark, sallow-visaged, and black-bearded free companion, gave Florence a terrible frown, and his glowing eyes seemed to flash within the four bars of his casquetel. He had served under the Admiral Don Diego de Velasquez when, with three hundred Spaniards, that adventurous cavalier first landed in Cuba; and there Gamboa first won a name as a ferocious and daring soldier in the war with the natives, many of whom were roasted alive; others were torn to pieces by wild dogs, and the rest were awed into submission. Gamboa struck with his mailed hand the orders of our Lady of Montesa and San Julian de Alcantara, which sparkled on his cuirass; then he uttered a hoarse Spanish oath, and laid a hand on his sword. On this Florence lowered the point of his lance and reined back his steed to defend himself; but Somerset and Warwick adroitly urged their horses between them, and preserved the peace.

To end this interview, of which Master Patten and Father John of Tranent have left us such a minute account, Somerset said,—

"Sirs, what command hath the Lord Bothwell in yonder host upon the hill?"

"None," replied Florence; "he is now a prisoner in a royal castle, and deservedly so."

"A prisoner?"

"Accused of crimes against the state and queen."

"Hah—discovered!" said Somerset to Warwick; but the deep glance they exchanged was not unnoticed by Florence, who quite understood its import, and how deeply Bothwell (like too many others) was implicated with these invaders of his country.

"Tell the Regent Arran and the Earl of Huntly," resumed Somerset, "that we have now spent some eight days in your country; and that though your force far exceedeth ours, if they will march down into the plain they will have fighting enough; and I will give you, herald, and you, trumpeter, each one a thousand crowns for your pains. What say you, sir herald, to so fair a sum?"

"As Solon said to Croesus, king of Lydia."

"And what said he?"

"If another comes who hath more mettle, then he may be master of all this gold; and before to-morrow night we must win or lose a battle," replied the herald.

"A man of wit, by St. George! And to you, sir," added Somerset to Florence, "will I give a chain of gold worth thrice the sum, and knighthood from my sword, if you will take it from an Englishman."

"Knighthood could I have from no sword nobler than that of your highness, if I survive the battle, which, in my present mood, I deem most unlikely," replied Florence, with a stern and sombre air that seemed strange on his youthful face, as he bowed, reined back his horse, and, as if weary of the interview, withdrew to the Scottish camp to report that his mission had proved unavailing.

The result of this interview was a letter sent by Somerset to Arran about nightfall. It was borne by Edward Shelly, and contained an offer of retiring into England if the Scots would promise to keep their young queen at home until she attained such an age as might enable her to judge whether or not she would fulfil the original engagement with Edward VI., who would then have attained manhood; but so exasperated were the Scots by the unwarrantable aggressions of the English, that they rejected with scorn proposals which they knew arose rather from the pressing dictates of prudence, present danger, and political selfishness, and from the doubts and difficulties of Somerset's position, than from any sincere desire for peace, or for the welfare of Mary and her kingdom; so, from one end of their camp to the other, there rose a universal shout,—

"To battle! to battle!—no truce—no treaty!—to battle!"

And so the night closed in.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE BLACK SATURDAY.

Yet turn ye to the eastern hand,
    And wae and wonder ye shall see;
How thirty thousand Scotsmen stand,
    Where yon rank river meets the sea.
There shall the lyon lose the gylte,
    And the leopards hear it clean away;
At Pinkycleuch there shall be spylte
    Much gentil blood that day.
                                                        Thomas the Rhymer.

The dawn of the next day, the 10th of September, 1547—by the Scots called, the Feast of St. Finian, by the English and others the Festival of St. Nicholas of Tolentino—was singularly beautiful. When the sun arose from his bed beyond the eastern sea, the waves rolled and glittered in amber light; the spray seemed to rise and fall in showers of snow and diamonds upon the rocky bluffs; while the dew of the past night lay heavy on every leaf and shrub. Between its green and far-stretching shores of yellow sand and opening bays, of mountain slopes and brown basaltic rocks, its grassy isles and covered headlands, the Forth lay almost waveless like a sea of gold, and receding far away as the eye could reach, until it melted into the eastern horizon, where cloud and wave were blent together.

The fertile hills and upheaved bluffs of Fife were tinted by the glory of the morning with saffron and purple, though mellowed by haze and distance; while the capital, with its castle, its steep ridge of towering mansions, St. Giles's tower, and Arthur's rocky cone, stood clearly forth from the deep unbroken blue of the west. As the sun rose higher, seeming to mount into heaven, through successive bars or horizontal lines of vapour, which turned to glowing gold and purple, the beauty of the morning increased, for it exhibited one of those glorious arrangements of massive cloud and blazing sunshine, brilliant light and sudden shadow, peculiar to the lowlands of Scotland.

Cleared of the grain, which was now stowed away in the vaults of baronial towers or of fortified granges, or else consumed by the flame and the troop-horses of the foe, the fields were bare now, and yellow stubble covered all the upland slopes, from the margin of the sea to the lonely Lammermuirs. In some places, the plough that lay now rusting and disused, had already been at work, and had turned up the long, brown furrows, above which the ravening gled and the black corbie, as if scenting the battle from afar, were wheeling in lazy circles. Westward, beyond the Esk, the stackyards were full of yellow grain, and along the river's bank, and among the old coppice that shrouded Pinkey House, Wallyford, and the Templar Hospital of St. Germains, the leaves were assuming those varied tints of orange, russet, green, and brown—the beautiful, but fading hues of the Scottish forests in autumn.

Such was the aspect of the morning and the scenery, when, on this Saturday in September, 1547, Florence Fawside reined up his horse on the slope of Inveresk Hill, and saw before him the whole arena of a battle-field; whereon manoeuvred the far-extended and glittering lines of more than fifty thousand Scots and Englishmen, prepared for mortal strife! And this was to gratify the mad ambition, of Henry VIII., who, from his deathbed bequeathed, like the first Edward, to his successors, the hopeless task of attempting to humble a free and warlike people.

The English had first begun to move about dawn, by sending some of their artillery to the summit of Inveresk and to Crookstone Loan, from whence they could play upon the camp of the Scots, towards whom their whole force moved in three great columns, Warwick still leading the van; Somerset led the second column, and Lord Dacres the third, or rear-guard; but on coming into the fertile plain, amid which the little stream named Pinkey Burn, flows through a cleuch or hollow, the English were astonished to find that the Scots, with singular imprudence, had accepted the duke's challenge, and left their strong position, to meet his better-trained and well-appointed army in the open field.

The regent of Scotland had unwisely mistaken the first movements of the English for an intention to seek safety in flight, by a precipitate retreat from the sands of Musselburgh on board their fleet. Alarmed lest they should thus escape, after their unwarrantable hostilities, and the devastations committed on their northern march, he resolved at once to cross the Esk, and get between them and their shipping, so as to cut off all chance of their retiring towards the sea. This movement he resolved to execute in defiance of the advice of the most wary and skilful soldiers in his army, which was armed almost entirely in the fashion of the middle ages, with lances, bows, swords, and battle-axes; while the English had many of the more modern appliances of warfare in the hands of their well-trained and veteran bands of Spaniards, Germans, and the garrisons of Calais and Boulogne, all of whom carried arquebuses or hand-guns.

The Earls of Arran, Huntly, Angus, and Argyle, on this day appeared each at the head of his division, sheathed in full armour, wearing above their cuirasses the Order of the Thistle, together with the Collar of St. Michael, which they had received from Francis I., two years before. Each wore around his helmet an earl's coronet, from the centre of which, beneath a plume of feathers, rose his gilded crest; thus, the first carried an oak-tree; the second, a stag's-head; the third, a salamander vert amid flames of fire; and the fourth, the wild boar's head of the Campbells, showing its ghastly tusks above his polished vizor.

"Reflect, lord regent," said the Earl of Huntly; "I pray you to reflect on this measure."

"Reflect on what?" asked Arran sharply, through his golden helmet.

"The sequel of a movement so rash as this."

"A brave soldier never reflects," replied Arran proudly.

"But a skilful captain doth," was the pointed response.

"True, my Lord Huntly," said the Earl of Angus; "you are in the right, and our friend Arran is most unwise to reject such prudent counsel."

"Enough, sirs—enough!" said Arran, who was burning with impatience, as he saw the long lines of the English glittering in the sunshine, and a longing for vengeance on Somerset, whose invasion had convulsed the realm, and whose plots, spies, assassins, and bribes, had so long disturbed the Scottish government, gathered in his heart; "let us attack them ere they escape by sea. You smile, my Lord Kilmaurs!" he added, turning wrathfully to that young lord.

"Nay, my lord regent—this is no time to smile; nor did I," replied the other bluntly.

"Methought a strange expression crossed your face."

Kilmaurs grew pale with rage, for being in the English interest, he had felt some satisfaction on foreseeing the ruin of Arran's army.

"Your grace is scarcely well bred in reproaching me with a wound received in the service of my country," said he, pointing to the scar which traversed his cheek, and the spasmodic twitching of which was a constant source of annoyance to him. He then put spurs to his horse and galloped to the head of his father's vassals, all stout yeomen of Cunninghame and Kyle, who were arrayed in a dense and steely mass under the banner with the hayfork sable, and were preparing to cross the fatal river at a ford.

The rash movement of Arran was urged by the Earl of Glencairn and many others, who are now known to have been the pensioners of England, and in secret league with Somerset; but dearly did it cost the earl and his Cunninghames.

"The lord regent is right," said he; "let us down at one fell swoop upon them; for what is yonder host but a banded horde of English clowns and Irish kerne—of Spanish robbers and German boors, come hither in steel bonnets to seek for blood and beer? Down at once, I say, and bear me this horde of invaders at spear-point to the sea!"

"But the German infantry," said Huntly, "and those arquebuses of Spain——"

"A rabble of tawny loons clad in armour so heavy, and mounted on horses so gorgeously trapped, that they can never escape your Highlandmen or the Lord Home's light Border-prickers."

The Earl of Angus now refused to advance, swearing "by St. Bryde of Douglas it was rank madness to cast advantage at their horses' heels."

"On pain of treason to our lady the queen, I charge you, lord earl, to pass forward with the van, or beware our speedy vengeance!" said Arran.

"My fear is less of thee than for my queen and country," replied the Douglas calmly, as he led his squadron girdle-deep through the stream, which swept some of them through the arches of the bridge, and away into the sea beyond.

"What says your leal and right-hand man, the young Laird of Fawside?" asked the Earl of Cassilis with a scarcely perceptible sneer; "doubtless that he is ready, on either side of the Esk, to die for your grace and the queen."

"To say so, my lord, were an empty boast," replied Florence quietly (his heart was too heavy for anger). "In yonder plain are six-and-thirty thousand Scots, who far excel me, I hope, in their readiness to die."

"To battle, then!" exclaimed Arran, waving his truncheon. "God and St. Andrew are with us!"

By this time the whole Scottish army had defiled across the high Roman bridge of Esk, and formed in dense columns of horse, foot, and archers, as they advanced towards the foe, presenting a splendid array, with all their polished helmets and cuirasses shining in the sun—their many square, triangular, and swallow-tailed banners waving, and their tall, uplifted lances, eighteen feet in length, and not less than fifteen thousand in number, swaying heavily to and fro, like a field of giant corn, as the close ranks marched on shoulder to shoulder, until the whole thirty-six thousand men stood in firm order of battle on the plain beyond the hill of Inveresk, which overlooked their left flank, while the green upland slope of Fawside rose upon their right.

With the shrill fife, the rattling drum (or Almainie swesche, as the Scots named it), the droning bagpipe, the twanging bugle-horn, the kettle, the clashing cymbal, and the sharp brass trumpet, filling the air with harsh but martial music, the Scottish lines drew near the English; and then the shouts, the cheers, the war-cries (the slogan of the Lowlanders, the cathghairm of the Celts), by which the soldiers of hastily-collected levies usually encourage each other, or taunt the foe, began to load the air with a confusion of sounds, after the deep boom of the first English cannon from the green brow of Inveresk had pealed through the clear welkin, and made a ghastly lane amid the nearest close column of Scottish infantry, causing the silken banners to rustle, the ranks to swerve, and the tall ash spears to sway like a corn-field bending beneath a blast of wind; and then to heaven went up a louder and a deeper shout, as the ranks closed over the mangled dead, and the forward march went on.

The centre was led by the Regent Arran in person. It consisted of the hardy clans from Stathearn, with the flower of the Scottish infantry, the men of Lothian, of Kinross, and of Stirlingshire. With many barons, he had also at least eight hundred chosen citizens of Edinburgh, led by William Craik, their provost. In their centre, Dick Hackerston bore the "Blue Blanket," or ancient banner of the city—a great swallow-tailed pennon of azure silk, worked for the burgesses by Margaret of Oldenburg. Among the men of Strathearn were the MacNabs, in their red, glaring tartans; and amid them were twelve stately warriors, conspicuous in their long lurichs of steel. These were Ian Mion and his eleven brothers, the heroes of the savage story of Lochearn, and on their banner was painted a human head affrontée.

The right wing consisted of six thousand western Highlanders, and brave and hardy islesmen, inured to battle and to storm, under MacLeod, MacGregor, and Archibald Earl of Argyle, the regent's son-in-law. On both its flanks and rear this column was covered by artillery. The other divisions presented the aspect either of dull or uniform masses covered with shining steel or brown leather; but this displayed the varied tartans of many Celtic tribes; and from its marching masses, with the incessant brandishing of swords and round targets, rose the wildest and most tumultuary shouts and outcries.

The left division of the Scots consisted of ten thousand infantry of Fife, Mearn, and the eastern counties, led by Archibald Earl of Angus, flanked by culverins and light horse. In their centre there marched a singular force, consisting of more than a thousand Scottish monks, who had been drawn from their cloisters by a terror of the Reformation (which Henry had so roughly established in England) being spread into Scotland, if Somerset's expedition proved successful. They were clad in plain black armour, and wore white or grey surcoats with crosses on the breast and back, to distinguish them as Dominicans, Cistercians, or Franciscans; and in their centre waved a white silk banner, which had been consecrated with many solemn ceremonies by the abbot of Dunfermline, after it had been made by Mary of Lorraine and the Countesses of Yarrow and Arran. Thereon was depicted a female kneeling with dishevelled hair before a cross, and around her was the motto—

"Afflictæ Ecclesiæ ne Obliviscaris."

The great squares or close columns of Scottish infantry were formed in admirable order, but in the ancient and somewhat unwieldy fashion of their country. Drawn up shoulder to shoulder, each soldier carried his spear, which was six Scots ells (i.e. eighteen feet) in length, pointing to the front; the first rank knelt, the next stooped, the third stood erect; but all had their weapons levelled at three angles towards the foe; thus the Scots were "so completely defended by the close order in which they were formed, and by the length of their lances, that to charge them seemed to be as rash as to oppose your bare hands to a hedgehog's bristles."

Lances, two-handed swords, and daggers, with mauls and Jethart staves, were the arms of the cavalry, who were all in complete mail, except the Borderers, who were always lightly armed, and seldom wore more than a skull-cap and breastplate or splinted jack, with plate sleeves and gloves of steel. A few were armed with wheel-lock pistols, which were brought from Italy or Flanders; but in the art of war, in order, and, above all, in perfect obedience, as well as in the discipline of the Boulogners and the new fashion of weapons, arquebuse and culiver, by which their auxiliaries the foreign horse and foot were armed, the English on this day were every way superior to the Scots.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE BATTLE.

Near Ilus' tomb, in order ranged around,
The Trojan lines possess'd the rising ground;
The sea with ships, the fields with armies spread,
The victors rage, the dying and the dead.
                                                                            Iliad, book xi.

The joy of Somerset was great on perceiving that the Scots had quitted their formidable position, and, between his fleet on one flank and his artillery on the other, were deliberately marching into a mouth of fire. He and the Earl of Warwick warmly congratulated each other, and then repaired to their posts. The earl formed his division on the slope of Inveresk hill; the duke formed his line from thence till its other flank reached the plain. The mounted arquebusiers of Don de Gamboa and the men-at-arms of Lord Grey, flushed by their victory of yesterday, formed the extreme left, while Lord Dacres commanded the seaward line.

Being armed with shorter pikes than the Scots, the long and serried array of the English looked compact and low; the sun was in their rear, and above their long lines of glittering helmets poured aslant his morning rays, in which every polished sword and point of steel flashed and sparkled brightly.

On this day the royal standard of England was borne by Sir Andrew Flammock, a gentleman of approved valour, who rode near Somerset, on a magnificently caparisoned horse, and in the centre of the whole army. This scarlet banner, with its three yellow leopards, was the mark of many an eye, the aim of many a Highland archer, and Lowland cannonier; thus the unfortunate bearer had no sinecure of his office; and on Arran saying to those about him,—

"Sirs, I would give a fair barony to have yonder standard in my hand!"

"I care not for baronies," said Florence, who rode by his side; "I care not for life itself, lord earl,—and thou shalt have the banner, if human strength can win it."

"Then," adds the vicar of Tranent, who records this episode, "ere the Lord Arran could reply, the battaile began with a mighty furie."

As the chief intention of Arran was to throw the division of the Earl of Angus—if not the whole Scottish army—between the English and their fleet, the flank which marched near the sea, became (as Somerset had foreseen) exposed to an immediate cannonade from the whole line of the English ships, sixty-four in number. The booming of their artillery echoed along the indented shore with a thousand reverberations, while the pale smoke enveloped all the line of anchored ships, from their low-waisted and high-pooped hulls, to the gaudy banners and long wavy streamers which decorated their masts; and their shot of stone or iron, bowled with fatal precision among the dense masses of the men of Fife and Mearn, making long and terrible lanes of death and mutilation—of shattered limbs and dismembered bodies. This caused a flank movement by which the whole Scottish line swerved south and westward towards the slope of Fawside Hill. On perceiving this, Somerset ordered the Lord Grey at the head of his mailed men-at-arms, and Edward Shelly with his Boulogners to charge the right wing of the Scots, to the end, that both their flanks might be driven upon the centre. With this body went the bearer of the royal standard; and true to his pledge, Florence galloped to join the right wing of the Scots, that he might be nearer his intended prize.

"St. George! St. George for England! Come on, my valiant Boulogners, my true-bred English fighting-cocks!" cried Shelly, standing in his stirrups, and waving his lance as he spurred in front of the line.

In solid squadrons, with their barbed horses making the ground shake beneath their mighty rush, the men-at-arms all clad in shining steel, with swords uplifted and their faces glowing through their barred helmets with ardour and excitement, came furiously on, their trumpets sounding, and the red cross of England waving above them. On came Edward Shelly at the head of his mounted Boulogners, the last of those "five hundred light horsemen, cloathed in blue jackets with red guards," whom King Henry had taken to Boulogne;[*] and with them came Sir Ralf Vane, Sir Thomas Darcy, and the Lord Fitzwalter, all wearing magnificent armour, streaming plumes, and gay colours, leading the column of demi-lancers, a thousand heavy horse, and sixteen hundred chosen infantry, to break that portion of the Scottish line.

[*] Vide "Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms." 1630.

The brilliant horsemen first gained the slope of Fawside Hill, and then making a sweeping wheel to their right, like a rolling sea of shining men and foaming chargers, they rushed with tremendous fury down upon the Scottish flank. There was a sudden and a fearful shock; and again, like a rolling sea from the face of a flinty bluff, this human tide of valour was hurled back upon itself in confusion and disorder.

Foremost in the mêlée fought Florence, with his eyes fixed on the standard, and many a mounted man went down before him, till at last, with a shout of triumph, he laid his hand upon the pole, as it swayed to and fro, above the fighting and the falling.

"The standard!" cried Lord Grey; "by Heaven and King Harry's bones, let us save the standard!"

He made a blow at the left hand of Florence, who gave him a severe cut across the mouth just as his helmet flew open, and then by a wound in the neck completed his discomfiture. Sir Andrew Flammock was roughly unhorsed by Sir George Douglas; but he retained the standard, by tearing it (as he fell) from the pole, which remained in the hand of Florence as a trophy of victory.

It was at the present farm-house of Barbauchly that this encounter took place; and into its muddy ditch, back from the triple line of gleaming Scottish pikes, there rolled two hundred of Somerset's best cavaliers. Ratcliff, Clarence, and many others were slain, many more were wounded; while hundreds of riderless horses, wild with affright, fled over the field in every direction, some with their entrails hanging out, having been stabbed in the belly by the spears, the long double-edged daggers, or Tynedale knives of the Scots. "Rendered furious by their wounds, many of these chargers carried disorder into the English companies, which were thrown into such confusion (says an historian) that the Lord Grey had the greatest difficulty in extricating them and retreating."

While he drew off his discomfited cavalry to re-form them, there lingered near the Scottish line a single horseman, whose blue surcoat, trimmed with gold and slashed with scarlet, worn loosely and open above his armour, and whose lofty plume, as well as his trappings and bearing, marked him as an approved soldier and man of distinction. This was Edward Shelly, in the livery of a Boulogner. Rising in his stirrups, he thrice waved his lance aloft; and Florence, remembering their quarrel and appointed duel, rode forth at once to meet him. He had long since broken his lance; but he now couched in the fashion of one the pole of the English standard, which he still retained, and with it he rushed at full speed upon his challenger.