Armed from head to heel
In mail and plate of Milan steel,
with helm richly embossed with burnished gold and surmounted by a flowing crest, amid which
A falcon hovered on her nest,
With wings outspread and forward breast.
He was followed by two gallant and ambitious squires; then came four men-at-arms 'with halbert, bill, and battle-axe,' bearing their chieftain's lance and pennon; and finally twenty yeomen, each a chosen archer who could bend a six-foot bow, and all with falcons embroidered on their breasts. They were welcomed with blare of trumpets and the martial salute of cannon, making a clangor, such as the old turrets of Norham had seldom heard. Marmion responded to the noisy welcome of soldiers and minstrels by a lavish distribution of gold and was ushered into the presence of Sir Hugh the Heron, with whom he spent the hours till midnight in sumptuous feasting.
Norham Castle, the ruins of which we reached at the close of day, after a long tour by motor from Berwick, was once a magnificent mansion and fortress, standing on high ground overlooking the Tweed. For a thousand years it was the scene of alternating peace and turmoil. Founded in the seventh century, it passed from English to Scottish hands and back again for many years. By the beginning of the thirteenth century it had become one of the strongest of English fortresses. James IV captured it just before the battle of Flodden Field, but after that event the English recovered it. For the past three hundred years it has been crumbling to ruins, and now there is little left except a single wall and a remnant of the
sable palisade,
That closed the castle barricade
before which Marmion's bugle-horn was sounded.
Like so many of Scott's characters, Marmion, though a fictitious personage, moved among the real people of history and could boast a genuine ancestry. There was a distinguished family of Marmion, Lords of Fontenoy in Normandy, one of whom became a follower of William the Conqueror and received a grant of the castle and tower of Tamworth and the manor of Scrivelby, in Lincolnshire. The family became extinct in the latter part of the thirteenth century.
In the second canto the scene changes to St. Cuthbert's Holy Isle, where Constance de Beverley is a prisoner. She had broken her vows as a nun and deserted the convent to follow Marmion, in the guise of a page, as his paramour—
And forfeited to be his slave
All here, and all beyond the grave.