“Day set on Norham’s castled steep,
On Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot’s mountains lone
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.”

The “castled steep” is still crowned by a massive fragment of the old fortress that has braved, in its time, so many days of storm and stress. A good deal of the curtain wall, too, is standing, and the natural defences of the castle are admirable, for a deep ravine on the east and the river with its steep banks on the south made it practically unassailable at these points. It was built in 1121, as we have seen, by Bishop Flambard of Durham, as a defence for the northern portions of his diocese. The necessity for its presence there was soon made apparent, for it was attacked by the Scots again and again; and by the time thirty years had passed. Bishop Pudsey found it necessary to strengthen it greatly. When Edward I. was called to arbitrate between the claimants to the Scottish throne, he came to Norham and met the rival nobles, who, with their followers, were quartered at Ladykirk, on the opposite side of the Tweed. It was known as Upsettlington then, however; the name of Ladykirk was bestowed upon it long afterwards, when James IV. built the little chapel there, in gratitude for an escape from drowning in the Tweed. Edward held his interview with the Scottish nobles in Norham church, and announced that he had come there in the character of lord paramount, and as such was prepared to make choice of one among them. Edward did not by any means make up his mind quickly, and the various places in which the successive acts in the affair took place are widely scattered, for he met the nobles at Norham, some time afterwards delivered his decision at Berwick, and finally received the homage of John Balliol at Newcastle.

Norham, like Wark, has also its romantic episode—or rather, an episode more conspicuously so in a series of them to which the name might with justice be applied. It occurred during the time that Sir Thomas Gray was holding the castle against a determined blockade of it by the Scots in 1318. A certain fair lady of Lincolnshire sent one of her maidens to a knight whom she loved, Sir William Marmion (whose name probably suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name for the hero of his tale of Norham and Flodden). Sir William was at a banquet when the maiden came before him bearing a helmet with a golden crest, together with a letter from his lady bidding him go “into the daungerust place in England, and there to let the heaulme be seene and knowen as famose.” Evidently it was well known where “the daungerust place in England” was to be found, for the story laconically says “So he went to Norham.” He had not been there more than a day or two when a band of nearly two hundred Scots, bold and expert horsemen, led by Philip de Mowbray, made an attack on the castle, rousing Sir Thomas and his garrison from their dinner. They quickly mounted, and were about to sally forth when Sir Thomas caught sight of Marmion, in rich armour, and on his head the helmet with the golden crest; and halting his men, he cried out, “Sir knight, ye be come hither as a knight-errant to fame your helm; and since deeds of chivalry should rather be done on horseback than on foot, mount up on your horse, and spur him like a valiant knight into the midst of your enemies here at hand, and I forsake God if I rescue not thy body dead or alive, or I myself will die for it.” At this Marmion mounted and spurred towards the Scots, by whom he was instantly set upon, wounded, and dragged from the saddle. But before they had time to give him the final blow they were scattered by the rapid charge of Sir Thomas and his men, who quickly rescued Marmion and set him on his horse again; and using their lances against the horses of the Scots, caused many of them to throw their riders, while the rest galloped away. The women of the castle caught fifty of the riderless horses, on which more of the garrison mounted and joined in the pursuit of the flying Scots, whom they chased nearly to Berwick.

The tables were sometimes turned, however; and on one of these occasions the valiant Sir Thomas Gray and his son were enticed out of the castle into an ambush laid for them by their foes, and both captured.

In 1513, just before the battle of Flodden, its walls were at length laid low by James IV., but not until the famous cannon “Mons Meg”—still, I believe, to be seen at Edinburgh Castle—had been brought against it. One of the cannon-balls fired from “Mons Meg” was found, and is still kept with others at the Castle. It is said that the Scots were told of the weakest spot in the fortifications by a treacherous inmate of the castle, who doubtless expected a rich reward for his information. Indeed, the ballad of “Flodden” says he came for it; but the valiant and chivalrous king would give him no reward but that which he said every traitor deserved—a rope.

Afterwards the castle was restored once more, but its more stirring days were over; and, to-day, it stands a shattered but dignified ruin, overlooking the tranquil river and peaceful woodlands which once echoed so continuously to the clash of arms and the shouts of besiegers and besieged.

The village of Norham was in Saxon days known as Ubbanford—the Upper Ford of two that were available in those days on the Tweed. There was a church here, too, in Saxon times, for Bishop Ecfrid built one about the year 830, and in it was buried the Saxon king Ceolwulf who became a monk: the present church has a good deal remaining of the one built on the same site by Bishop Flambard, about the same time as the castle. Earl Gospatric, whom William the Conqueror made Earl of Northumberland in return for a considerable sum of money—doubtless thinking that to give a Northumbrian the Earldom would reconcile the North to his rule—is buried in the church porch. Gospatric joined in the resistance of the North to William, but returned to his allegiance later. The Market Cross of Norham stands on the original base.

From Norham to Tweedmouth the river sweeps forward between picturesque ever-widening banks, and often hidden by a leafy screen, past the village of Horncliffe, beneath the Union Suspension Bridge, one of the first erected of its kind, until at length its bright waters lave the historic walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in the quiet harbour there meet the inrushing tide from the North Sea.

CHAPTER IX.
DRUM AND TRUMPET.

“The history of Northumberland is essentially a drum and trumpet history, from the time when the buccina of the Batavian cohort first rang out over the moors of Procolitia down to the proclamation of James III. at Warkworth Cross”—Cadwallader J Bates.