HADDENRIG. NEARLY thirty years elapsed after Flodden before any other great bloodshed ensued upon the borders. But the latter years of the life of Henry VIII., one of the most fickle, self-willed, and absolute of English monarchs, now became occupied by the old story of those days, a war with Scotland and with France.

Several causes contributed to produce a rupture between Henry and his nephew, James V. of Scotland.

The latter, satisfied with the faith of his forefathers, declined to engage in theological disputes; and the Pontiff, to rivet him more closely to the apostolical see, bestowed a cardinal's hat upon the most favoured of his counsellors, David Beaton, afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrew's, and sent him a Sword of State, sharpened with much ceremony against England, and now preserved in the castle of Edinburgh. When His Holiness determined to publish the sentence of deprivation against Henry, for his apostacy from Rome, James of

frontier into Scotland. He was accompanied on this expedition by his brother, Richard, Sir John Widrington, Sir William Mowbray, and several other knights, together with the exiled Earl of Angus, and his brother, Sir George Douglas, both of whom were banished from Scotland.

They ravaged all Teviotdale, and were advancing towards Jedburgh, to destroy it with fire and sword, when, a few miles westward of Kelso, their march was stopped at Haddenrig by a force under George Gordon, Earl of Huntley, Knight of St. Michael, to whom James had committed the care of the borders.

The dress and arms of the Scottish borderers were extremely simple. Patten, in his account of Somerset's expedition, observes that, in battle the laird could not be distinguished from the trooper, as all wore the same kind of armour, called a jack, the baron only being distinguished by his sleeves of mail and his head-piece. The borderers in general acted as light cavalry; they rode horses of a small size, but astonishingly active, and trained to move by short bounds through the dangerous morasses that lay along the Scottish frontier. Their offensive weapons were a lance of uncommon length; a sword, either two-handed or of the more modern kind; sometimes a species of battleaxe, called a Jedburgh staff; and, latterly, dags or pistols. Although so much accustomed to move on horseback that they held it degrading to appear otherwise, the Marchmen occasionally acted as infantry, in forming that impenetrable phalanx of spears of which an old English chronicler says that "sooner shall a bare finger pierce through the skin of an angry hedgehog, than one encounter the brunt of their pikes."

The encounter at Haddenrig was one of border cavalry. With lance and sword they closed in with great fury, and a close and bitter conflict ensued; for there was not a man on either side who had not some private hate to satisfy, or outrage to avenge. Many were speared, shot, unhorsed, and cut down; and so steadily was the contest maintained that victory long remained doubtful; till, at a critical moment, George, Lord Home, came galloping up at the head of 400 lances, and fell upon the flank of Sir Robert Bowes.

This sudden access of force inspirited the Scots, who, after a time, put the English to the rout. The Governor of Norham was taken, together with Sir William Mowbray, Sir John Widrington, Sir George Douglas, and several hundred others. Aware that he might have to die the death of a traitor if captured, the Earl of Angus fought with blind desperation only to escape. A knight had already

disarmed and seized him; but Angus closing in, dispatched him with one blow of his dagger, and fled at the full speed of his horse.

Enraged by the loss at Haddenrig, Henry declared war, and ordered the Duke of Norfolk to assemble a numerous army at York. In the same year, James V. died of a broken heart, his daughter Mary was born; and more than ever did it seem probable that Henry, by force or marriage, might make Scotland his own.

ANCRUM MOOR.

To revenge the rejection of his offers to marry his son, Edward, to Mary Queen of Scots, then in her infancy, he resolved to invade her kingdom. Two knights of approved valour and distinction, Sir Ralph Evers (son of the first and father of the second Lord Ewrie) and Sir Brian Layton, entered Scotland at the head of 3,000 mercenaries, chiefly Germans and Spaniards, 1,500 English borderers, and 700 "assured Scottishmen,” chiefly Armstrongs, Turnbulls, and other broken clans; for it would appear that in those lawless times the Scottish borderers were unable to resist the temptation of English gold, and thus not a few of them are mentioned as assisting most infamously in the forays, and as being particularly active in securing plunder. To this they were, probably, the more readily induced by their own hereditary animosities and private quarrels; and nothing more deplorable can be conceived than the state of the border counties, until the total defeat of the English at Ancrum Moor.

On this occasion, Sir Ralph Evers, who was wont to boast that he had "knocked at the gates of Edinburgh," acted with merciless severity; he burned 192 towns, towers, and farm-steadings in the counties of Berwick and Roxburgh; killed 403 men, and took 816 prisoners; seized 10,836 cattle, 12,492 horses, 850 bolls of corn, and other plunder to an amount unknown, according to a return made to his own Government. march towards Melrose, he burned the tower of Broomhouse, wherein, says Bishop Lesly, there perished an aged and noble lady, with her whole family.

On the

The Earl of Angus, who had some time before been recalled from exile, and who had large estates in the ravaged districts, was greatly exasperated against the English on account of the losses he had sustained; and also because, in the new spirit of the Reformation, they had some time before defaced the tombs of his ancestors in the abbey of Melrose, for which he swore to write a pardon on their own skins. The Earl of Arran, a weak noble, was at

that time Regent of Scotland, during the minority of the infant queen; and the loud complaints of Angus respecting his own losses, and the public disgrace, at length roused him from his timid indolence, and he took the field.

Angus, at the head of 1,000 horse, was following Layton's troops, who, after pillaging Melrose a second time, were moving towards Jedburgh, when a great body of Fifeshire men came up, under Norman Lesly, Master of Rothes--the same wild spirit who afterwards slew Cardinal Beaton, and fell at the battle of St. Quentin. The English were probably unwilling to the Teviot while these united forces hung upon their rear, and so they accordingly halted upon the moor of Ancrum. This was on the 12th of February, 1545.

Angus, with a force so small, was painfully undecided as to whether or not he should risk an encounter with such unequal strength, when he obtained fresh succours, in a strong force of borderers, led by Sir Walter Scott, of Buccleuch, who, like Angus, had many wrongs to avenge, particularly on Sir Ralph Evers, who in the preceding year had ravaged all his lands in western Teviotdale, stormed two of his strongest castles, slaughtered some forty of his men, and, as stated in Murdin's State Papers, carried off immense booty.

Buccleuch was a border warrior of great experience, who had evinced high courage at the battle of Melrose; but his military judgment was not turned into rashness by a longing for revenge. His experienced eye saw at once the line of tactics to be followed, and he prevailed upon Angus to draw their combined forces from the eminence they occupied, overlooking the English position, to a piece of level ground called Peniel Haugh, and to send their horses with the camp-boys to another height in the rear.

This stratagem, or movement, was intended to make the English believe that the Scots were taking to flight. Sir Ralph Evers and the other leaders readily fell into the snare; and were eager to pursue, lest the fugitives might escape. The English troops were sorely fatigued by their long march, and by the plunder with which many of them were laden, and were in want of both rest and refreshment; but "advance" was now the order, and they hurried forward, the infantry at a run and the cavalry at a trot, as they fancied, in pursuit.

The trot quickened to a gallop, the men-at-arms believing that all they had to do was to override and cut to pieces a terror-stricken enemy; but, on reaching the summit of the height which the Scots had so craftily abandoned, they were greatly

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astonished to perceive in the hollow below their serried ranks calmly waiting their approach. Confident of success, from the superiority of their numbers, and from the circumstance that their German and Spanish mercenaries were trained soldiers, who had served in many wars; and believing that these circumstances would make up for their exhaustion and for the disorder into which they had been thrown by the fury of their rush up-hill; the English leaders resolved on an attack, and continued to advance.

At that moment a heron, disturbed by the tumult of sounds, flew up from some adjacent sedges; and the Earl of Angus, in a spirit of elation and confidence, exclaimed, laughingly, "Oh, that I had here my white goss-hawk; for then we should all yoke (join) at once!"

Under Sir George Bowes and Sir Bryan Layton, the cavalry, of which their forces were chiefly composed, charged briskly, but were repelled by the Scottish spear-men, who now began to advance, and hurled them back in confusion on the main body, when many men were trod down by their comrades' horses. This thrust the second line back upon the third. Discharges of arquebuses were exchanged on both sides; but as the smoke of these was blown by the wind among the English, who had also the oblique rays of the evening sun shining in their eyes, neither leaders nor banners could be distinguished. Charging forward, horse and foot, the Scots fiercely drove the broken ranks against each other. They were thus impeded, and unable to use their weapons effectively, or plant in the turf those long rests over which the arquebuses were fired; and as each man of the wavering force began to seek an escape for himself from this sudden scene of helpless and fatal disorder, a rout became inevitable.

Suddenly amid them there was a cry of "Remember Broomhouse!" and then the 700 "assured Scots," the Armstrongs, Turnbulls, and Halls, with this shout, tore off their red St. George's Crosses, and, making common cause with their already victorious countrymen, turned with axe and spear, in unsparing severity, upon the now broken and flying enemy. The peasantry of the neighbourhood, hitherto only spectators of the brief conflict, now drew near to intercept and cut down the English, who were easily distinguishable by the red cross on their white surcoats; and even women, whose hearts had been steeled by their barbarities, joined in the pursuit, and shrieked to the conquerors to "Remember Broomhouse!"

One of these, still remembered as "the maiden Lilliard," mingled in the fray when she saw her

The battle became, as usual then, a pitiless slaughter, which lasted till nightfall. Of the enemy there fell 800 men, among whom were Sir Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Layton, to the intense satisfaction of the Earl of Angus; while 1,000 were made prisoners, among whom were many men of rank, whose ransoms proved valuable. One was an alderman of London, named Read, who, having contumaciously refused to pay his portion of a sum demanded from that city by Henry, was sent by him to serve on foot against the Scots, whom, says Ridpath, he found more exorbitant in their exactions than the tyrannical Tudor.

The Scots loss was very trifling. They lost no time in following up their victory. The whole camp equipage of the English was found in Melrose, and the border districts were everywhere cleared of them. The Regent embraced the victor,

the congratulations of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Lorraine; and a proclamation was issued that all who had adopted the red cross should be pardoned on returning to their allegiance.

The two English knights were honourably interred, in Melrose Abbey. The coffin of Evers, an entire stone, was found there in 1813, a little to the left of the great altar. His skeleton was then entire, but speedily crumbled into dust.

Shortly after this victory at Ancrum Moor, and the expulsion of the English from the border counties, word was sent to the Scottish Court that Francis I. was about to prove himself a formidable enemy to England on her own soil, and the faithful ally of Scotland, by invading the former, and carrying out a project he had in view; and this was nothing less than capture of the Isle of Wight, which he conceived might be fortified, and maintained as a possession of France.

IN conformity with his promises, Francis I. began to make preparations, not only for expel ling the English garrisons from Boulogne, Calais, and other places, but to invade their country in

return.

With this view, he equipped in several of the ports of France one hundred and fifty great ships, and sixty of smaller tonnage, with ten more carracks hired from the Genoese. He sent orders to Captain Paulin to bring five-and-twenty row galleys from the Levant (in imitation of Louis XII., who had four from the same place), and to anchor them at the mouth of the Seine; where a catastrophe occurred. Francis gave a magnificent dinner to the ladies of his Court on board the greatest vesselone armed with a hundred pieces of cannon, and which De Mezeray describes as "the most stately vessel belonging to the sea"--but the cooks by their carelessness set it on fire; her guns went off in succession, and, singularly enough, seem to have been shotted in harbour, and so did infinite mischief to all the craft around her. At last she blew up a circumstance "which," we are told, "greatly disordered the feast, and gave an ill presage of that expedition." In this fleet Père Daniel states, the French had one ship carrying 100 guns entirely of brass.

Francis mustered an army of 40,000 men; to these he intended to add 12,000 German Free Lances, to block up Boulogne by land, as well as by sea, so that it should be impossible for the English to relieve it. To execute this project he sent a reinforcement to the marshal commanding, Odoard Seigneur du Biez et de Vendôme, ordering him to finish a fort that had been begun at Portet ; and then coming to Hâvre de Grâce in the middle of August, he ordered the fleet to sail for England.

On the other hand, Henry VIII. was not idle. To expedite by his presence the naval operations that were being carried on at Portsmouth for the prosecution of the war, he took up his residence there. Burnet states that the ships on both sides in this war were merely hired merchantmen; but only some could have been such, for the purposes of transport.

On the 18th of July the French fleet, stated to be 200 sail, under Claude d'Annebaut, Baron de Retz, created Admiral of France in 1543, was reported to be off St. Helen's, and menacing the Isle of Wight, after having landed some detachments at Brighton, then the fishing village of Brighthelmstone, to burn and spoil the country. But the beacon-fires were soon set ablaze on the green downs of Sussex; and Holinshed tells us