Sir Edward Stanley, who eventually became the possessor of both Wraysholme and Hornby, the former, as it would seem, having been forfeited to the Crown by the attainder of his wife’s uncle, Sir James Harrington, who, with his brother, Sir Robert, fought on the side of Richard III. at Bosworth Field, had been a soldier from his youth up. “The camp,” it is said, “was his school, and his learning the pike and sword.” The lords of Wraysholme, with their retainers, had many a time and oft set out to repel the Scots in their plundering raids across the Border, but now they were called upon to meet the Scottish King himself, who had entered England with a powerful army, and laid waste some of the Border strongholds. Summoning his followers, the valiant Stanley prepared himself for the field, when, as the old ballad tells us,—
Sir Edward Stanley, stiff in stour,[19]
He is the man on whom I mean,
With him did pass a mighty pow’r,
Of soldiers seemly to be seen.
Most lively lads in Lonsdale bred,
With weapons of unwieldy weight,
All such as Tatham Fells had fed,
Went under Stanley’s streamer bright.
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