providing only he had not committed
treason against the King of England, or
personally wronged any lady.

"God forbid,"  replied the disguised
knight, "that I should have been guilty of
such shameful sin. I did but assist in killing
a Scotchman, who ruled our Border too
strictly, and often did wrong to
Englishmen."

He then raised his visor, and showed
the face of the Bastard Heron, who had
slain Sir Robert Ker, the warden of the
Marches. Then Surrey knew that he had
a guide who knew every inch of ground
between Carlisle and the Cheviots.

The Earl of Caithness, a young nobleman
who had angered James by a savage revenge
of some ancient feud, came to the Scottish
camp with three hundred young riders, all
dressed in green, and submitted to the king's
mercy. James instantly wrote him out a
pardon on the head of a drum, which is still
preserved in the Caithness archives. The
earl and his band perished to a man, ever
since which time it has been unlucky in
Caithness to wear green, or to cross the Ord
on a Monday, the day on which the earl
and his doomed men forded the river on
their march to Flodden.

That same night Surrey, unable to lure
the king from the hill of Flodden, broke
up his camp and marched through the village
of Doddington to Barmoor Wood. The
English were full of fight. They knew that
Henry had said of the earl, "That he was a
nobleman who would defend his subjects
from insults;"  and they remembered how,
years before, he had repulsed the Scotch
from Norham, and harried Scotland, and had
received a personal challenge from James;
and they had also now heard how the queen
had written to her husband, "All your
subjects are very glad to be busy with the
Scots, for they take it for a pastime. My
heart is very good to it. Everything here
shall go well."

Moreover, the Scottish king had publicly
promised to use no sorcery, which
was a special comfort; so the Cumberland
moss-troopers looked to their horses,
and the Cheshire men smoothed out the
feathers of their arrows, and the Yorkshire
men ground their halberds to a razor's
edge, and all night the armourers, by red
gleams from the forge, hammered and filed
at rivets, and coats-of-mail, and gauntlets,
that were soon to be beaten after a rougher
and less careful fashion.

And here the long and careful labours of
Mr. Jones and the local antiquaries throw
new lights on the grand old history of
heroism and death. The Scottish scouts
wondered why the accursed Lord Thomas
should all at once march towards the Tweed,
when it was his own frontier he had to
defend. The early morning soon showed,
for Lord Thomas Howard and his artillery
began to defile over the steep one-arched
bridge that crosses the Till and
Twizel, five miles from Flodden, in the
direction of Norham. The legend is that
Borthwick, the Scottish master-gunner,
seeing these movements, fell down on his
knees, and implored his wilful master to
let him open fire on the enemy's troops;
but Mr. Jones sensibly observes that, as
Lord Howard was himself four hours in
moving his heavy guns and baggage from
Twizel Bridge to Flodden, this story is only
invented to throw all the blame on poor
King James, who, as it is, has quite enough
to bear.

The Gallows Knowe and every eminence
round Coldstream was crowded with people,
who could now see the Scottish king's flag
on the ridge of Branxton Hill. The rear-guard
went a nearer way, and crossed the
Till, as Mr. Jones for the first time clearly
proves, at two points, at a bend of the
river, between Ford and Etall castles. The
one is the Willowford, a little to the north
of the village of Crookham, the other
Sandyford, to the east of Crookham. The
stream of Pallinsburn (where Paulinus had
baptised the wild Scotch) here joins the
Till, and is only three or four feet wide.
The rear-guard and van-guard were to
meet at the village of Branxton, opposite
Flodden. One division passed to the south
of Pallinsburn bog, and the other marched
through it over Branxton Bridge, the
foundations of which were visible some
forty years ago. The van-guard, after
crossing Twizel Bridge, marched on the
beaten road by way of Cornhill, then turned
for the Bareless Toll on the old road to
Branxton, and took up its position to the
west of the church and village, both of
which were then larger than at present.

Lord Thomas, Sir Edmond Howard,
and Sir Marmaduke Constable, led the
van-guard, which was drawn up to the
south-west of the church, in the fields
leading to Moneylaws;  behind these three
divisions were the baggage-waggons and
the standard-bearer, Sir John Forster, with
the holy banner of St. Cuthbert. The
Earl of Surrey and the rear-guard were
near the Vicarage, with Sir Philip Tilney
and Lord Scrope of Bolton;  while to his