Cresy ]

The young Prince of Wales had presence of mind to take advantage of the confusion, and led his line to the charge. The French cavalry had by this time freed themselves of the Genoese runaways, and, by superior numbers and steady hand-to-hand fighting, began to hem young Edward round. The Earls of Northampton and Arundel now advanced to his aid; and soon the battle became hot and terrible. From the summit of the hill of Cressy, the king, near a windmill, was looking on, when a messenger from Warwick came, clamouring for Then said the king, “Is my son dead, or

succour.

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the captain came to the walls, and asked, "Who calleth there at this time of night?"

"Open your gate quickly," cried Philip, "for this is the fortune of France."

The sorrowful captain recognised the king; he let down the bridge and opened the gate and when Philip entered he had with him but Sir John of Heynault and five other barons.

On his return to camp the Black Prince, who had distinguished himself in a manner so remarkable, was embraced by the king his father.

"My brave son !" he exclaimed, "persevere in

hurt, or on the earth felled ?" No, sire," replied the knight; "but he is overmatched, and hath need of your aid." "Return to my son," said Edward, "and tell him that to him I reserve the honour of the day. I am confident he will show himself worthy of the honour of that knighthood which I so lately conferred upon him; and that, without my assistance, he will be able to repel the enemy."

This message added to the ardour of Warwick and the prince. A fresh charge with redoubled vigour was made upon the French, by which the whole line of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and the Count d'Alençon was killed; and then flight followed the confusion. Philip of France remained on the field

your honourable course. You are indeed my son, for valiantly have you acquitted yourself this day, and shown yourself worthy of empire."

The young prince then went on his knees and craved his father's blessing, and the night was spent in feasting and rejoicing. The recorded results of this battle would seem exaggeration, were they not so well authenticated. Won as it was chiefly by the bow, the English loss was so small that it has never been stated; but that of the French was terrible. Besides the Kings of Bohemia and Majorca and the Count d'Alençon, there fell the Duke of Lorraine; Lewis de Creci, Count of Flanders; and eight other counts, two archbishops, the

till the last, when the evening was closing in, unwilling to believe that all was lost. When no more than threescore knights remained about him, one, named Sir John of Heynault, who had remounted him after his horse had been killed by an arrow, said, "Sire, depart while there is yet time; lose not yourself wilfully. If this field is lost, you shall recover it again another season." They galloped away, and now the flight became general. The Welsh infantry rushed into the throng, and, with their long knives, cut the throats of all who had fallen; nor was any quarter given that day by the victors."

Philip rode to the castle of La Broyes, where he found the gates closed, for the night was dark; but

Count de Blois, 1,200 knights, and 30,000 soldiers. Such was the cost to humanity of one day's proceedings, in the unjust endeavour to conquer France.

Eighty standards were taken. Among these was the beautiful banner of the King of Boheinia, embroidered in gold, charged with three ostrich feathers, and the German motto "Ich Dien," which, says Rapin (after Camden probably), was brought to the Prince of Wales, who assumed therefrom his well-known crest and motto. But this favourite tradition is unsupported by history; for on the seal appended to a grant of the prince's to his brother, John of Gaunt, dated 1370, twenty-four years after Cressy, he appears with a single feather, while the

crest of John of Bohemia in that battle was a single eagle's pinion. The triple plume, now known as that of the Prince of Wales, was first adopted by Henry Stuart, the young and gallant son of James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, who, like the Black Prince, died before his father.

On the day subsequent to the battle, by displaying the captured French standards, many of the country people, who were ignorant of the general result, were lured towards the English camp, where a pitiful slaughter was made of them by 500 lances and 2,000 archers, dispatched for that special purpose. Edward remained for three days to bury the dead, some of whom he interred at Montreuil; and then he marched through the Boulonnois to lay siege to Calais, that he might always have an open gate into France. It may be interesting to give here a statement of the pay of the English troops in Normandy and before Calais at this time, as given in the Appendix to "Brady's History of England" (Vol. II., p. 88). They consisted of 31,294 combatants, whose subsistence for 131 days amounted to £127,201 2s. 9d.

"To Edward Prince of Wales, being in the king's service, in Normandy, France, and before Calais, with his retinue, for his wages of war, 4s. a day; 102 knights, each 2s. a day; 264 esquires, each 12d. a day; 384 archers on horseback, each 6d. a day; 69 foot archers, each 3d. a day; 513 Welshmen, whereof one chaplain, at 6d. a day, one physician,

one herald, 5 ensigns, 25 sergeants or officers over twenty men, each 4d. a day, 480 footmen, each 2d. a day.

"To Henry of Lancaster, being in the king's service before Calais, with his retinue and one other earl, each 6s. 8d. a day; eleven bannerets, each 4s. a day; 193 knights, each 25. a day; 512 esquires, each 12d. a day; 46 men-at-arms and 612 archers on horseback, each 6d. a day.

"To William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton (K.G. in 1350), and his retinue, at the same rate.

"To Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, 6s. 8d. per day; 3 bannerets, 48 knights, 164 esquires, 81 archers on horseback, as above."

Knights-bannerets were generally created on the field, and the form of creation was simply performed by the candidate presenting his pennon to the king or general, who cut off the train and made it square; hence they were sometimes known as knights of the square banner, marking authority over a troop capable of forming a solid square of from ten to fifteen men per face. Hence the term "squadron."

While Edward was pressing with famine and steel the siege of Calais, where John de Vienne held him at bay for nearly a year, there occurred an event at home, and only two months subsequent to the splendid victory at Cressy, which, like it, did singular honour to the English arms.

DURHAM.

INDUCED by the urgent entreaties of the King of France, now sorely pressed by the invading army of England, David II., King of Scotland, was lured into war with that country. He accordingly assembled a numerous army at Perth, where a body of troops from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland appeared at the royal muster-place; but a deadly feud which existed between Ronald, Lord of the Isles, and the Earl of Ross, led to the assassination of the former in the monastery of Elcho, at the instigation of the latter, who, dreading the king's vengeance, retired with all his followers, and sought refuge in the mountains. Then the men of the Isles, enraged by the unpunished murder of their chief, returned home in confusion; and by this feud

the king's host was sensibly diminished in number, yet he commenced his march for England at the head of 50,000 men. Though possessing but little of his father's judgment, and less of his military skill, David had all the hereditary valour of his house, and made the utmost haste on his expedition.

He entered England by the western frontier, with a force stated variously by Froissard at 50,000, by Speed at 62,000, and by Knyghton at 36,000, and more probably with truth. 2,000 of these were cavalry in complete armour; and though the Scots used cannon so early as 1340, there is no record of their having as yet such engines in the field. He stormed the Moat of Liddel, which was defended by Walter Selby, a celebrated freebooter,

whom he beheaded. He was one of the band of robbers, so famous in English story, who pillaged two cardinals and the Bishop of Durham, when they came towards Scotland to publish the Pope's most unjust sentence of excommunication against the Scottish people for resisting England, on the plea that by doing so they retarded the progress of the Holy War! The garrison of the Moat were put to the sword. At this early stage of the expedition, Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, recommended its abandonment, to the indignation of the other Scottish barons.

"What!" they exclaimed; "must we fight for your gain? You have profited by the spoils of England, and do you grudge us our share? Never had we such an opportunity for taking just vengeance on our enemies. Edward and his chief commanders are absent, and here are none to oppose our progress save churchmen and base artisans."

In this reply to Sir William Douglas, the barons particularly alluded to the storming of the Moat of Liddel, which was connected with the western territories of Liddesdale, and served as a frontier garrison against his castle of Hermitage. Then the king continued his march, and, crossing the Tyne at a place called Ryton, above the town of Newcastle, advanced into the Bishopric of Durham, where, according to the legendaries, St. Cuthbert appeared to him in a vision one night, and besought him to save the property of the Church from pillage and sacrilege. On the 16th of October, 1346, at nine in the morning, he halted and encamped at Beaurepair, or Bear Park, in the parish of St. Oswalds, at Durham, a beautiful ecclesiastical retreat, which had been defaced and ruined by the Scots in the time of Edward II.; but its remains still exist, pleasantly situated on an eminence two miles from the city, having a long, extended, level meadow to the south.

Meanwhile, unknown to King David, Henry de Piercy, Ralph de Neville, Musgrove, Scrope, Hastings, and other great northern barons, were assembling forces to repel him. With them was the ubiquitous Edward Baliol-for in those days the Baliols were to Scotland what the Bonapartes are to France-and they were further reinforced by the Church vassals of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, by those of the Bishops of Durham, Carlisle, and Lincoln, and by 10,000 trained soldiers, who had been about to depart for the closer siege of Calais. Their muster-place was the park of Bishop Auckland; and their whole strength is said to have been 1,200 men-at-arms, 3,000 archers, and 17,000 infantry. Many monks

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were in the ranks, a proof of useless zeal, when so many of the northern lords and sheriffs were present in arms. Froissard has asserted that Queen Philippa was their leader, and other historians of both countries have followed him implicitly. "A comely princess, the mother of heroes, at the head of an army in absence of her lord, is an ornament to history," says Lord Hailes; "yet no English writer of considerable antiquity mentions this circumstance, which, if true, they would not have omitted."

On the morning of the 17th October they were only six miles distant from the Scots, to oppose whose progress they marched towards Sunderland Bridge, intending, doubtless, to barricade and defend it by archers. The Knight of Liddesdale who had advanced on a foraging expedition at the head of the men-at-arms alone, suddenly came upon the entire English army on the march, near the Ferry-of-the-Hill. He endeavoured to elude an encounter, but was compelled to fight, and had his brother taken prisoner and 500 of his best men slain; while he escaped with difficulty, to alarm the Scottish camp, where all were now under arms and prepared for battle.

David formed his army in three divisions. The first was led by the High Steward of Scotland and the Earl of March; the second by the Earl of Moray and Sir William Douglas of Liddesdale, then named "The Flower of Chivalry;" the third, which consisted of select troops, the principal knights, many nobles, and a party of French auxiliaries, was led by the king in person.

Advancing by the Red Hills, on the west of the city of Durham, the English were gradually drawing near the ground on which the battle was to be fought. It was hilly, and in some places so steep towards the river Wear that it is singular how masses of men could manœuvre in such a place. Notwithstanding the repulse of Douglas, King David considered the English a raw and undisciplined army, and evinced the utmost eagerness to begin the encounter. He felt certain of victory, as his soldiers did of the spoil of Durham. In front of the English army, amid the banners of the nobles, was borne a great crucifix; and the monks of Durham, aware that they might be pillaged without ceremony if the Scots were victorious, had resort to that which in those days was easily believed in-a miracle. On the night before the battle, it was said, the Prior of Durham, John Fossour, had a holy vision, in which he was commanded to take the sacred corporal cloth with which St. Cuthbert was wont to cover the chalice when he had celebrated mass, to place it on a spear, and

next morning to repair to the Red Hills, where he was to remain with it until the close of the battle.

The English advanced in four divisions. Lord Henry Piercy led the first, supported by the Bishop of Durham, and several nobles of the northern counties; the second was led by William de la Zouche, the Archbishop of York, accompanied by the Bishop of Carlisle, and the Lords Neville and Hastings; the third was led by the Bishop of Lincoln, the Lord Mowbray, and Sir Thomas Rokeby;

lines were drawing nearer, with all their arms and armour glittering in the sunshine, the monks of Durham, in obedience to the prior's vision, were busy on a hillock called the Maiden's Bower. There they were offering up their prayers for the success of their countrymen, on their knees around the holy relic of St. Cuthbert. This banner-cloth has been described as being a yard broad and five quarters deep, "the bottom indented in five parts, all fringed and made fast about with red silk and gold.

the fourth was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord de Roos, and the Sheriff of Northumberlan.l. With this division rode Edward Baliol, who some writers assert commanded it. Each of these divisions consisted of above 4,000 men, and each had an accompaniment of horse and archers. Fordun, and some others, enumerate the latter at 20,000. Be that as it may, Sir John Grahame, who was now Earl of Menteith, remembering how a quick cavalry movement against the archers had decided the field of Bannockburn, asked leave to attack them. "Give me but one hundred horse," said he, "and I shall undertake to disperse them all." But David declined. Meanwhile, as the adverse

It was made of red velvet, on both sides embroi dered with flowers of green silk and gold; and in the midst was the corporal cloth enclosed, covered over with white velvet, half a yard square every way, having a cross of red velvet on both sides; and then five little silver bells fastened to the said banner-cloth, like unto sacring-bells." During the whole time of the conflict the monks also occupied themselves in forming and erecting "a beautiful wooden cross, in remembrance of the holy banner being borne to the battle."

The first blow was struck by Sir John Grahame, who attacked the archers, in his anxiety to scatter them, at the head of his own private followers; but