If Providence is always on the side of the heaviest battalion, as Napoleon was wont to affirm, then the Scots on this occasion are in imminent danger of having “short shrift.” But it has been found that the fortunes of war depend on a variety of circumstances that are frequently of more importance than the number of troops, either on the one side or the other. Discipline and valour, when combined with patriotism and pride-of-arms, have accomplished feats which the heaviest battalions are sometimes impotent to achieve. We by no means wish to imply that the English were deficient in these desirable qualities; far from it. They were splendidly led, and in the encounter displayed the most heroic qualities; but they were matched by a small body of men, of the most dauntless courage and invincible determination who were thoroughly inured to battle, and ever ready at the call of duty, to encounter the most powerful foes. The Scots were taken by surprise. Some were at supper, and others had gone to rest when the alarm was given that the English were approaching.
But up then spake a little page,
Before the peep of dawn —
“O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord,
For Percy’s hard at hand.”
“Ye lie, ye lie, ye liar loud!
Sae loud I hear ye lie;
For Percy had not men yestreen,
To dight my men and me.
“But I have dream’d a dreary dream,
Beyond the Isle of Sky;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I.”
He belted on his guid braid sword,
And to the field he ran;
But he forgot the helmit good,
That should have kept his brain.
The battle now raged in earnest. A bright warm day had been followed by a clear still moonlight night. “The fight,” says Godscroft, “was continued very hard as among noble men on both sides, who did esteem more of glory than life. Percy strove to repair the foil he got at Newcastle, and the Earl Douglas did as much labour to keep the honour he had won. So in unequal numbers, but both eager in mind, they continued fighting a great part of the night. At last a cloud covering the face of the moon, not being able to discern friend from foe, they took some respite for a while; but so soon as the cloud was gone, the English gave so hard a charge, that the Scots were put back in such sort, that the Douglas standard was in great peril to have been lost. This did so irritate him, that he himself in the one wing, and the two Hepburns (father and son) in the other, pressing through the ranks of their own men, and advancing to the place where the greatest peril appeared, renewed a hard conflict, and by giving and receiving many wounds, they restored their men into the place from whence they had been beaten, and continued the fight till the next day at noon.”9 Foremost, in the thick of the fray, was the dauntless Douglas, laying about him on every side with a mace of iron, which two ordinary men were not able to lift, “and making a lane round about wheresoever he went.”
When Percy wi’ the Douglas met
I wat he was fu’ fain!
They swakked their swords till sair they swat,
And the blood ran down like rain.
“Thus he advanced like another Hector, thinking to recover and conquer the field, from his own prowess, until he was met by three spears that were pointed at him: one struck him on the shoulder, another on the stomach, near the belly, and the third entered his thigh. He could never disengage himself from these spears, but was borne to the ground fighting desperately. From that moment he never rose again. Some of his knights and squires had followed him, but not all; for though the moon shone it was rather dark. The three English lances knew they had struck down some person of considerable rank, but never thought it was Earl Douglas: had they known it they would have been so rejoiced that their courage would have been redoubled, and the fortune of the day had consequently been determined to their side. The Scots were ignorant also of their loss till the battle was over, otherwise they would certainly, from despair, have been discomfited.”10
When at last the dying Douglas was discovered by his kinsman, James Lindsay and John and Walter Sinclair, and was asked how he fared, he replied, “I do well dying as my predecessors have done before; not on a bed of lingering sickness, but in the field. These things I require you as my last petitions; First, that ye keep my death close both from my own folk, and from the enemy; then that ye suffer not my standard to be lost, or cast down; and last that ye avenge my death, and bury me at Melrose with my father. If I could hope for these things, I should die with the greater contentment, for long since I heard a prophecy that a dead man should win a field, and I hope in God it shall be I.”11
“My wound is deep; I fain would sleep,
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me by the bracken bush,
That grows on yonder lilye lee.
“O bury me by the bracken bush,
Beneath the blooming brier,
Let never living mortal ken,
A kindly Scot lies here.”12
Throwing a shroud over the prostrate body of the wounded and dying soldier, that the enemy might not discover who it was that had fallen, they raised the standard and shouted lustily “a Douglas! a Douglas!” and rushed with might and main upon the English host. Soon the English ranks began to waver, and when at last it was known that Hotspur had been taken prisoner by the Earl of Montgomery, “The enemy fled and turned their backs.” According to Godscroft there were 1840 of the English slain, 1040 taken prisoners, and 1000 wounded. The losses on the Scottish, according to the same historian, were comparatively trifling, amounting only to 100 slain and 200 taken prisoners.
This deed was done at Otterbourne
About the breaking of the day,
Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush,
And the Percy led captive away.
There are several incidents connected with this famous battle that are worthy of special notice, but one in particular demands a passing word. The Bishop of Durham, at the head of ten thousand men, appeared on the field almost immediately after the battle had ended. The Scots were greatly alarmed, and scarcely knew how, in the circumstances, – having so many prisoners and wounded to attend to, – they were to meet this formidable host. They fortified their camp, having only one pass by which it could be entered; made their prisoners swear that, whether rescued or not, they would remain their prisoners; and then they ordered their minstrels to play as merrily as possible. The Bishop of Durham had scarcely approached within a league of the Scots when they began to play such a concert that “it seemed as if all the devils in hell had come thither to join in the noise,” so that those of the English who had never before heard such were much frightened. As he drew nearer, the noise became more terrific – “the hills redoubling the sound.” The Bishop being impressed with the apparent strength of the camp, and not a little alarmed at the discordant piercing sounds which proceeded from it, thought it desirable to retreat as speedily as possible, as it appeared to him that there were greater chances of loss than gain. “He was affrighted with the sound of the horns.”
Thus ended one of the most notable battles on record. The flower of the chivalry of both nations took part in it, and never did men acquit themselves with greater credit. Indeed it is generally admitted that the valour displayed on both sides has rarely, if ever, been