rest of them what generous unselfish people
they were, liking him (Cecil) all for himself;
and those sweet, charming girls, that
particularly sweet and charming girl, in whose
company he always found himself so happy.
He should be miserable all day, he knew;
it was very hard that he should be
tyrannised over in this fashion;  it was very
unfair and unjust. And they should see
if he wouldn't go.

At about eleven o'clock that night, when
the Doctor was pacing up and down moodily
like one of the "Jaggers in his cage at the
Zoo,"  a letter was brought in. The Doctor
threw it into the air with a loud "Harroo!"
"What did I tell you, girls?"  It was read
aloud:

MY DEAR DOCTOR.— Come in to me
tomorrow before you go, and don't give
away the place in the barouche yet.
                                                     C. L.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE FROM
FLODDEN FIELD.

DURING the last few years the labours of
north-country antiquaries (especially of the
late Reverend Robert Jones, vicar of
Branxton) have done so much to explain
the topography of Flodden and its
neighbourhood, that the history of this most
romantic and important battle has now
indisputably to be rewritten. The details
thus supplied have, for the first time,
explained the movements of the Earl of Surrey
and King James before the battle, and for
this reason a clear exposition of them is
peculiarly interesting to all who care to
know how the great battle was lost and won.

The sequence of events that led to the
great slaughter of Flodden is soon nar-
rated. In November, 1511, Henry the
Eighth, then only twenty, and in the third
year of his reign, joined Ferdinand of
Spain in an alliance to assist the warlike
Pope, Julius the Second, against the
ambitious French king, Louis the Twelfth, who
had invaded Italy. Pope Julius died in
February, 1513,  just as the French had
abandoned Milan to Sforza, and recrossed the
Alps. The new Pope, Leo the Tenth, took
but a tepid interest in the war, and
Maximilian and Henry, almost deserted by the
cooler and more wily Ferdinand, pressed
the war against Louis alone.

In April, 1513, our fleet was defeated
in a rash "cutting out" at Conquêt, near
Brest, our admiral, Sir Edmond Howard,
being drowned in the repulse. In June of
the same year the young king, eager to cross
spears with the French knights, landed at
Calais with the first division of an army of
twenty thousand men. Henry left England
in the charge of his most dear consort,
Queen Catharine, who was appointed
"rectrix and governor."  At the siege of
Terouenne, a town near St. Omer, the
Emperor Maximilian joined the English
army at the head of four thousand horse,
and to gratify the vanity of Henry, assumed
the cross of St. George, called himself an
English volunteer, and condescended to
accept one hundred crowns as his daily
pay. The French army, in attempting to
relieve the endangered town, was entirely
routed. Terouenne soon after fell.

It was at this crisis that Louis sought
every means to induce James the Fourth of
Scotland to invade England. He made
him presents of money, and Anne, the
young and beautiful French queen, sent the
Scottish monarch a jewelled ring from her
own finger, conjuring him, for her sake, to
march three miles upon English ground.
This ring led him to his ruin. James was
at the time in the twenty-fifth year of his
reign, and the thirty-ninth of his age. He
was a strong, sinewy, middle-sized man,
with red hair and beard, and a "majestic
countenance."  He excelled in fencing,
shooting, riding, and jousting; delighted in
fine horses, and was skilled in surgery. He
was easy of access, courteous, and mild, and
as Bishop Lesly calls him, "a king most
warlike, just, and holy."  He always wore
for penance a belt of iron chain, to which
he every year added a link in testimony of
his sorrow for having been at the head of
the nobles at the battle of Stirling, where
his father, James the Third, was murdered.
He had had for a long time many
complaints against his brother-in-law rankling
within him, and after receiving the French
queen's present, he despatched a herald to
Henry, at Terouenne, to reassert his old
demands. These were:

The delivery of the jewels left by Henry
the Seventh to his daughter, Margaret, the
wife of James.

The arrest and trial of the Bastard Heron
of Ford, a Borderer, who had killed during
a truce Sir Robert Ker, the warden of the
Scottish Marches.

Justice for the death of Andrew Barton,
the captain of a Scottish privateer, who
had been killed by a Yorkshire archer
during a naval battle with the two Lord
Howards.