surrendered to Sir Andrew Wood, who carried the English prizes into the harbour of Dundee. There the dead were buried, and the wounded committed to the care of surgeons; and so ended this sea-fight, which spread still more the fame of Sir Andrew through all the maritime towns of Northern Europe. A few days after, Wood presented Sir Stephen Bull to the king, together "with the commanders of the ships and most distinguished soldiers." With a truly regal spirit, the courtly James, after complimenting equally the victor and the vanquished, sent the latter home without ransom, and with their ships to Henry, their king, as a present, with a message that "Scotland could boast of warlike sons by sea as well as land; and that he trusted England's piratical shipmen would trouble the Scottish seas no more, otherwise a different fate would await them." Henry returned James thanks, saying "he gratefully accepted his kindness, and could not but applaud the greatness of his mind" (Pinkerton, Buchanan). Wood, who, Tytler says, "was an enterprising and opulent merchant, a brave warrior and skilful naval commander, an able financialist, intimately acquainted with the management of commercial transactions, and a stalwart feudal baron," performed many other services to his country by sea and land. As a monument to his memory, a 32pounder, raised from the wreck of the Royal George, was placed upon the ruins of his castle of Largo, with a white marble slab, bearing an appropriate inscription. He died in 1540, and was borne to his grave, in Largo Church, by the crew of his barge. CHAPTER XX. IN THE DOWNS, 1511-OFF BRETAGNE, 1512. THE DOWNS. IN 1511 there was another sea encounter in the Downs, between certain English and Scottish ships, the result of which engendered much bitterness, and ultimately led to the battle of Flodden. In that year the Lord High Admiral of Scotland was Patrick, Earl of Bothwell; and John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was Lord High Admiral of England. It chanced, that in the year 1476, a ship belonging to John Barton (a merchant of Leith), containing a very valuable cargo, had been seized by a Portuguese squadron. In consequence of this, James IV. of Scotland granted letters of reprisal to Andrew, Robert, and John Barton, his sons, to retaliate whenever an opportunity occurred. In these letters the Bartons and their assignees were authorised to seize all Portuguese ships until they were paid 12,000 ducats by the King of Portugal. In 1506 these letters were renewed, and the Bartons, who were alike bold and enterprising, became very rich. Andrew was knighted by the king, and became proprietor of Barnton, one of the finest estates in Lothian. In that year, when a tournament was held at Stirling, "a blackamoor girl," the first ever seen in Scotland, captured by Sir Andrew from the Portuguese, was seated in a triumphal chariot, and adjudged the prize of the victor. The Dutch, who at this time were subjects of the house of Austria, had plundered certain Scottish ships, and murdered their crews. Enraged by those piracies, James dispatched Robert Barton against them to retaliate, which he did effectually, and sent several casks of "Hollanders' heads" to the castle of Stirling. There is reason to suspect that the Scottish naval officers at this period did not confine themselves to the repression of piratical outrages, or the vindication of their own personal wrongs, but that in some instances, at least, they pushed their retaliation further than either equity or the laws of nations warranted. It is alleged that the Bartons captured a much larger number of the Portuguese carracks than was necessary to compensate them for the individual losses which they had suffered; and the merchants of England complained that they de tained and rifled English vessels, on pretence of searching for Portuguese goods. Their complaints at last so excited the indignation of the Earl of Surrey that, in order to punish the excesses of the Scottish privateers, he fitted out two large ships of war, and placed them under the command of his sons, Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Edward, afterwards Lord High Admiral of England, and manned them with picked crews, cannoniers, and bow-men. According to Buchanan and some others, this was said to have been done at the urgent entreaty of the ambassador of Don Emanuel-a prince on whom Henry had just bestowed the Garter-who re Off Bretagne.] SIR ANDREW BARTON. presented to Henry VIII. that Barton, a daring and skilful officer, who had inflicted immense injury upon the Portuguese, the ancient allies of England, would certainly, in the event of a war, prove a formidable enemy to the English at sea, and "could at present be easily taken unawares and destroyed, and the odium of the action averted by stigmatising him as a pirate; a proceeding by which Henry, never at any time over-scrupulous, would provide for the safety of his own subjects, and gratify their sovereign, his friend and ally." The Howards fell in with Sir Andrew Barton as he was cruizing in the Downs, being guided to the place by the master of a merchant vessel which he had overhauled on the preceding day. The Scottish commander had with him only his own ship, the Lion, and her pinance, named the Jenny Pirwen; but the former must have been a large vessel, as subsequently she was found to be only second in size and armament to the Great Harry, and to have carried thirty-six great guns, irrespective of falconets and other means of offence. Considerable improvements had now taken place in shipbuilding, especially for warlike purposes. Port-holes had been introduced, which suggested the use of a second deck and, tier of guns; and hollow iron balls filled with combustibles were not unfrequently used. The royal dockyard at Woolwich had been founded in the preceding year, and the first ship of war built in it was named the Regent. If we are to believe the ballad of "Sir Andrew Barton," Peter Simon commanded the English gunners, and William Horseley, a gentleman of Yorkshire, the archers; history calls him Hustler," the best bow-man in Lord Howard's ship. 117 them, and the Yorkshire archer, Horseley, had special orders to shoot every Scot who was seen going aloft to work the machine. When two of his bravest seamen had perished in this way, Barton, confiding in his mail of proof, began to ascend the main-rigging to let go "the beams." Then Lord Howard called to Horseley to "shoot him." "Were I to die for it," he replied, "I have but two arrows left." The first he shot rebounded from Barton's armour and fell into the sea; but as Sir Andrew raised his arm to climb higher, the archer wounded him mortally through the armpit, where the mail afforded him no protection, and he fell heavily on the deck. Still the intrepid seaman continued to animate his crew by sounding his golden whistle from time to time, till a ball struck him in the body, and he expired. Abercrombie, in his "Martial Achievements," 1715, states that he died o his wounds, in the city of London. The greater part of his crew were slain. The English then carried the Lion by boarding, and she and her pinnace were taken into the Thames. After a short imprisonment in the palace of the Archbishop of York, the captive seamen were dismissed, but the ships were detained and added to the English navy, in which the Lion afterwards ranked as the second man-of-war, after the Great Harry, which was burnt by accident at Woolwich, in 1553. James IV. sent a herald to demand their restitution, and instant satisfaction for the insult; but the proud and imperious Henry paid little attention to the remonstrance, and merely remarked that "the destruction of pirates was surely no infringment of the Treaty of Peace, or a just cause for war." OFF BRETAGNE. The English vessels are alleged to have drawn near Barton with white rods displayed at their bowsprits in token of peace, which is very unlikely, as there was no war then between the two In the year after this event, Sir Edward Howard countries. He awaited their attack with courage; was made Lord High Admiral of England; and, in and, distinguished by his rich dress and bright the quarrel that ensued between the Pope, Julius armour, with a whistle of gold suspended by a II., and Louis, was sent by Henry VIII. to the chain of the same metal at his neck, he ap- coast of Bretagne with a fleet of forty-five armed peared on deck with his two-handed sword, to envessels. For his own maintenance while on this courage his men. He was assailed by Lord service, the king granted him ten shillings a day; Howard, while Sir Edward attacked and speedily for each of the captains, their diet, wages, and took the pinnace, and then bore down to assist his reward, eighteenpence a day. For every soldier, brother. The contest was long and obstinately mariner, and gunner, five shillings a month for maintained. The Lion was furnished with some his wages, and five shillings for his victuals, kind of machinery which suspended large weights reckoning twenty-eight days in the month. On or beams from her yard-arms, to be dropped on board this fleet were 10,000 troops, under the the enemy's deck when alongside. This con- Marquis of Dorset. Five thousand of these, says trivance was well-known to the English, who Lord Herbert, were archers, who, according to were apprehensive of the mischief it might do Spanish history, "carried, besides their bows, hal berts, which they pitched in the ground till their arrows were shot, and then took up again to do execution on the enemy, an excellent part of military discipline, and yet not remarked by our English chronicles." These forces remained quietly quartered in Fontarabia, without aiding Louis, further than by the influence of their presence, till, by want and sickness, Dorset had to bring them back to England. Prior to that, Sir Edward Howard had ravaged all the coast of Bretagne, about Coquet and Brest especially. The French fleet, the number of which is variously stated, came forth to meet him, under the command of Admiral Primaguet, an officer of distinguished bravery; but before they met in battle Howard had been joined by twenty-five additional warships, which Henry had personally reviewed and dispatched to him from Portsmouth. It was, says Hume, a maxim of Howard's that no admiral was good for anything who was not brave to a degree of madness, as the sea service requires much less plan and contrivance than the land; but the after fate of Howard served to show that even there valour ought to be tempered with discretion. sollerets for the feet were square-toed; the helmet had a metonniere to act as a gorget, with passguards on the pauldrons; and the horse was still completely mailed from nose to tail. Among the weapons of the new period we find the partisan, a variety of the pike; and the Asiatic art of inlaying steel with gold, called damasquinee, became fashionable. The hackbut had now become common; and to the matchlock was added a wheellock, invented by the Italians. It was a small machine for producing sparks of fire by the rapid revolution of a wheel against a piece of sulphuret of iron, held like the flint of the modern musket, but the cock was on the side where the pan was latterly. The spring which turned the wheel was attached to a chain formed like those in watches, and wound up by a key called "a spanner." The trigger liberated the wheel, and the cock falling upon the pyrites, fire was produced by friction. Hence the name of firelock, still given by our soldiers even to Enfield rifles. The pistol, called a dag or tacke, the former stocked with a knob like a sword-pommel, and the latter merely cut off in a slanting direction, came into use now. Pike-men became the mass of the English and Scottish armies, from the period to which we have now arrived, down nearly to the time of William III. On the roth of August, 1512, the battle ensued. The French admiral, in the Cordeliere, carrying 1,200 fighting men, exclusive of mariners, grappled with In an old work called the "Relationes of the the Regent, of 1,000 tons, so lately built at Wool- most Famous Kingdomes," published at London in wich. The latter was to leeward. She was com- 1630, we have a curious description of the army manded by Sir Thomas Knevet, K.B., Henry's which went with Henry VIII. to Boulogne. Master of the Horse. The other captains of note the vanguard passed twelve thousand footmen and were Sir Charles Brandon, K.G., Sir Henry Guild- five hundred light horsemen, cloathed in blew ford, K.G., and Sir John Carew. During the hand-jackets with red guards. The middle-ward (wherein to-hand strife that ensued, the English boarders were bearing all before them; and Primaguet finding that his ship was about to be taken, set fire to the magazine (or powder-room as it was then named) with his own hand. The flames speedily extended to the Regent; both ships were blown into the air, and every one on board was destroyed. In the Regent 700 perished. The Sovereign, commanded by Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards Duke of Somerset, was also burnt. These disasters would seem to have cooled the ardour on board of both fleets, as they drew off and separated, each claiming the victory. the king was) consisted of twentie thousand footmen and two thousand horse, cloathed with red jackets and yellow guards. In the rear-ward was the Duke of Norfolk, and with him an army like in number and apparell, saving that therein served one thousand Irishmen, all naked save their mantles and their thicke-gathered skirts." The arms of the latter force were three darts, a sword, and a skean. They would seem to be the troops referred to as follows in Sir Sibbald Scott's "History of the British Army," wherein he says of an old print, "The appearance of some half-naked men, armed with broadswords and lances, with a To replace the Regent, Henry built another great bagpipe preceding them, at the siege of Boulogne, ship, called the Henry Grace de Dieu. Armour was now growing still more remarkable for its decoration. A suit of Henry's in the Tower was found by Sir Samuel Meyrick to have been entirely washed with silver. The breastplates had now become completely globular, with puckered lomboys of steel in lieu of tasses and tassettes; the under Henry VIII., in 1544, is one of the few instances on record of the Scots in connection with an English army." They are represented driving sheep and oxen to camp. If they were Scots at all, which is very doubtful, they must have come from some of the remoter isles in the West. The Ordinances of War of Henry VIII. are the Flodden.] A SCOTTISH FLEET. 119 first that make mention of a distinguishing uniform each prince to aid his ally against all men whatin his army; an Act of the same reign strictly soever. Henry was already in France when he enjoins the wearing of the established dress dispatched his fleet, consisting of the Great Michael, by all officers and soldiers, and, by way of en- under Robert Barton, the James, the Margaret, forcing it, the murder of either out of that dress the Great Ship of Lynne (an English prize), an or uniform is not punishable. The prevailing fifteen other ships of war, commanded by James colours were "sadd grene or russet." Gordon, of Letterfourie, and having on board 3,000 soldiers, under the Earl of Arran, who, on the way could not resist landing in Ireland, and burning Carrickfergus. Scattered by the waves and winds, the ultimate fate of this Scottish squadron was never known. In the year of the quarrel between Henry VIII. and Louis XII., there was fought in England one of the most memorable battles recorded in British history, that of Flodden. James IV., a young, chivalric, and magnificent prince, had married Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry, a new connection which did not, however, extinguish the national animosities of the two countries, or lessen the partiality of the Scots for their old allies, the French. James was jealous of his English brotherin-law, and was repeatedly irritated by certain real and many supposed injuries. Among the former was the death of Sir Andrew Barton. He renewed the ancient alliance between Scotland and France, with an additional clause that reciprocally bound At the same time a Scottish herald sailed to France, the bearer of a letter from James to Henry, requiring the immediate retreat of the English army out of that country. To this demand Henry, then besieging Terouenne, refused to accede; whereupon the King of Scotland declared war. Henry's reply by the herald was coarse and insulting, but it was never received; for ere its bearer landed, the young King of Scotland, with the flower of his land, lay dead on Flodden Hill. CHAPTER XXI. FLODDEN, 1513. Ir came to pass now, by the turn of events and of the times, that the same Earl of Surrey who in 1503 had handed to James IV. of Scotland his royal and beautiful English bride, at Lamberton Kirk, in the Merse, was destined to be his opponent and conqueror, ten years afterwards, in that battle which was so disastrous to Scotland, and was long remembered as a calamity so great that its name still recalls something of sadness; for there was scarcely a family of importance which was not bereaved of a husband, a father, a brother, or a son. In some instances all the males of a family perished side by side, fighting for their king and country. Though war had been ostensibly declared by the King of Scotland to aid his ally, the King of France, it was undoubtedly accelerated by the brawls and raids of the borderers. Shortly before the declaration, Sir Robert Kerr, of Cessford, Warden of the Middle Marches, had been run through by a lance and dispatched by Sir William Heron, Lilburn, and Starkhed, three English borderers. Henry VIII. gave up Lilburn to the Scots, but Starkhed for the time escaped. The former was sent a prisoner to Fast Castle, with Heron of Ford, a brother of the murderer, and died there; but Andrew Kerr, son of the slain knight, killed Starkhed, and placed his head on one of the portes of Edinburgh (Ridpath); and then followed the sea-fight with Barton, and many other causes of irritation, among which, the mean manner in which Henry VIII. absolutely cheated his sister, the Scottish queen, out of her father's legacy, was perhaps one. Yet the war was not popular with the mass of the Scottish people. However, the king was so beloved by his subjects of all ranks, that when orders were given to assemble the army of the realm on the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, then the Campus Martius of the Scottish hosts, the appeal was responded to by the muster of one of the best-equipped armies that as yet Scotland had ever seen. La Motte, the French Ambassador, brought the king a ring from the finger of Anne of Bretagne, Queen of France, and a letter, written in an amorous strain, appealing to his chivalry, terming him her own knight, and beseeching him to advance only three steps on English ground, with his army, for the sake of her who considered him her defender. It was in vain that the wisest of his counsellors sought to dissuade James from war, and that his queen, with sobs, tears, and caresses, implored him not to peril his own life by taking the field against Henry her brother; asking him, touchingly, "why he preferred the Queen of France to her, his wife, the mother of his children, whom he had wedded in her girlhood?" But James, says Pitscottie, turned a deaf ear to all; so an attempt was made to dissuade him from his expedition, by working upon the emotions of forehead was bald; long yellow hair flowed upon his shoulders; he held in his right hand a long pilgrim's staff, and seemed to be about fifty years of age. Approaching the desk where James was kneeling at vesper prayer amid the gloom of the evening, "Sir king," said he, gravely and solemnly, "my mother hath sent me to thee, desiring thee not to pass at this time where thou art purposed, for if thou dost, thou wilt not fare well in tly journey, nor any who pass with thee. Further, A PLAN OF FLODDEN FIELD. superstitious melancholy which, partly from constitution, and partly from remorse for his rebellion against his unhappy father, formed a prominent feature in his character. The story of this device is related with great minuteness by Lindesay of Pitscottie, probably on the information of Sir David Lindesay, of the Mount, the Lyon King of Arms, then a very young man, who was present. In St. Catherine's Aisle of the Chapel Royal of Linlithgow (now a parish church), where the king had constructed a throne for himself, with twelve stalls for the Knights of the Thistle, when he was engaged at his devotions there entered by the door a man of strange and solemn aspect, clad in a blue weed, belted with a piece of linen. His she bade thee meddle with no woman, nor use their counsel, nor let them touch thy body, or thou theirs, for if thou dost, thou shalt be confounded and put to shame." Then, adds the chronicler, he vanished away, and slipped through the hands of those who sought to seize him, "as if he had been a blink of the sun or a whiff of the whirlwind, and could no more be seen." The common belief in Scotland is that the whole was a device of Margaret Tudor to deter the king from war. This is made more apparent by the warning given concerning women, as she had good cause to be jealous of his love intrigues; and the phrase, "My mother sent me," was adopted to make |