BATTLE OF OTTERBURN.
On what authority does Mr. Tytler (History of Scotland, vol. iii. pp. 45—53.), in his otherwise very fair account of this celebrated battle, assert that the Earl of Douglas was a younger man than Hotspur? I have no doubt that he found it so recorded somewhere, and willingly believed that his countrymen had prevailed, not only over superior numbers of the enemy, but also over greater experience on the part of the hostile general; but a little more investigation would have shown him that the difference of age lay the other way. Henry Percy, by his own account (in the Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy), was born in 1366, and was therefore twenty-two when the battle was fought. I do not know that there is any direct evidence to Douglas's age, but the following considerations appear to me decisive as to his being much older than his rival.
1. Froissart's visit to Scotland was undoubtedly prior to 1366 (although the exact date is not given), and during his stay of fifteen days at Dalkeith, he saw much of the youthful heir of that castle, the future hero of Otterburn, and describes him as a "promising youth."
2. Hotspur, in his deposition above mentioned, says that he first bore arms at the siege of Berwick in 1378; but his antagonist must have commenced his military career long before, as Froissart mentions him as knighted on the occasion of the battle fought a few days after the surrender of that place, between Sir Archibald Douglas and Sir Thomas Musgrave; none but kings' sons were knighted in childhood in those days, or without undergoing a long previous probation in the inferior grades of chivalry.
3. An early and constant family (if not general) tradition asserts that Douglas had a natural son
(ancestor of the Cavers family), old enough to bear his father's banner in the battle; on this, however, I lay little stress, as Froissart distinctly assigns that honourable post to another person, David Campbell, who was slain by the side of his lord.
Mr. Tytler is also evidently wrong in placing, on the authority of Macpherson's Notes on Winton, this battle on the 5th of August, 1388. Froissart gives the date as the 19th of August, and as the moon was full on the 18th, the combatants would have bright moonlight all night, which agrees with all the narratives; on the 5th they would have little moonlight, and would have lost it soon.
Though not very germane to the matter, except as being a point of chronology, I may add here that the remarkable solar eclipse, long remembered in Scotland by the name of the "Dark Hour," did not occur, as stated by Mr. Tytler, on 17th June, 1432, but on the same month and day of the following year.
J. S. Warden.