And they did meet, most fatally, five years afterwards.
William Fawside, then in his nineteenth year, was a tall and handsome cavalier, than whom there was none more gay or gallant in costume, manner, or bearing at the court of the Regent Arran, to whom he officiated as Master of the Horse. He was the most graceful dancer on Falkland Green, and there, also, the victor of the ring and butts, with spear and bow; but when he and Claude of Preston, then a man well up in years, confronted each other in the lists under the southern brow of the Castle Rock of Edinburgh, to fight a solemn duel, to which the taunts and open accusations of murder (for so the widow styled her husband's fall on Fawside Brae) had brought him, the young Sir William saw, without pity, that his grey-haired adversary was animated by a reluctance which he was at no pains to conceal, for on many a day of battle his courage had been put to the sternest proof.
Cartels of defiance had been duly exchanged; mass had been said in the chapel of Our Lady in the Portsburgh; and there, in presence of the assembled citizens of Edinburgh, whose provost, William Craik, appeared on horseback in complete armour, and before a chair, in which sat George Earl of Errol, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland, as vicar-general to the infant queen, wearing on his surcoat the three shields of his house, in a field argent, and within a listed space, sixty paces long and forty broad, stood the young and resolute challenger, on foot, at the eastern end, and Preston at the western, all according to the custom of judicial combats. Each was in full armour of unpolished but highly-tempered steel, with open helmets; each bore a Scottish target, a sword, and dagger.
They were sworn solemnly by the constable, "That they had not brought into the lists other armour or weapons than such as were allowed by Scottish law, or any firework engine, witch's spell or enchantment, and that they trusted alone to their own valour, as God and His holy Evangelists should help them!"
It was then proclaimed that no man should speak or utter a cry, under penalty of a fine equal in value to twenty cattle; or put forth hand or weapon, under pain of forfeiting limb and life to the queen—the poor little unconscious queen, who was then in her cradle, in time-hallowed Holyrood.
The constable rose from his seat, and waved his white truncheon thrice, exclaiming,
"Let them go! Let them go! Let them go, and do their worst!"
This was the usual formula; and then they rushed on each other.
Preston fought warily; but the fury of his adversary and the wounds he inflicted soon raised the old man's blood, and, by one tremendous stroke of his two-handed sword, he clove the widow's son—her boasted, her fair and comely Willie—through helmet and bone, to the chin, slaying him in a moment; as the quaint records of the lord high constable's court have it, "cleaving him through harnpan and harns to ye bearde with ane straik of his quhinger."
His body was sent home for burial, but denuded of his armour,—every buckle of which had been that morn adjusted by his mother's hands,—of his jewels and rings, which, according to the form of judicial combats in Scotland, became, together with the posts and rails of the lists, the fees of the constable's servants.