THE CRYPT, FORD CASTLE.
All the time the energetic Earl of Surrey was marshalling the English hosts, and, marching with twenty-six thousand men northward through Durham, received there the sacred banner of St. Cuthbert. On September 4th. Surrey challenged James to battle, which the king accepted against the advice of his best councillors. The Scots had become restive under the king's do-nothing policy, and many of them left the camp and returned home with the booty already acquired. James selected a strong position on Flodden Hill, with both flanks protected and having the deep and sluggish waters of the Till flowing in front. Surrey advanced and reconnoitred, and then sent the king a herald requesting him to descend into the plain, as he acted ungallantly in thus practically shutting himself up in a fortress. The king would not admit the herald. Surrey then attempted a stratagem. Crossing the Till on the 8th, he encamped at Barmoor Wood, about two miles from the Scottish position, concealing his movement from the enemy. On the 9th he marched down the Till to near its confluence with the Tweed, and recrossed to the eastern bank. This, too, was uninterrupted by the Scots, who remained strangely inactive, though it is recorded that the chief Scottish nobles implored the king to attack the English. The aged Earl Angus begged him either to assault the English or retreat. "If you are afraid, Angus," replied the king, "you can go home." The master of artillery implored the king to allow him to bring his guns to bear upon the English, but James returned the reply that he would meet his antagonist on equal terms in a fair field, and scorned to take an advantage. Then Surrey drew up his line between James and the Border, and advanced up the valley of the Till towards the Scots. The king set fire to the temporary huts on the hillside where he had been encamped, and descended to the valley, the smoke concealing the movements of each army from the other; but Surrey's stratagem was thus successful in drawing him from his strong position. The English van was led by Lord Thomas Howard, Surrey commanding the main body, Sir Edward Stanley the rear, and Lord Dacre the reserves. The Scottish advance was led by the Earls of Home and Huntley, the king leading the centre, the Earls of Lennox and Argyle the rear, and the reserves, consisting of the flower of the Lothians, were under the Earl of Bothwell. The battle began at four in the afternoon, when the Scottish advance charged upon the right wing of the English advance and routed it. Dacre promptly galloped forward with his reserves, and restored the fortunes of the day for the English right. The main bodies in the mean time became engaged in a desperate contest. The Scottish king in his ardor forgot that the duties of a commander were distinct from the indiscriminate valor of a knight, and placed himself in front of his spearmen, surrounded by his nobles, who, while they deplored the gallant weakness of such conduct, disdained to leave their sovereign unprotected. Dacre and Howard, having defeated the Scottish wing in front of them, at this time turned their full strength against the flank of the Scottish centre. It was a terrific combat, the Scots fighting desperately in an unbroken ring around their king. The battle lasted till night, and almost annihilated the Scottish forces. Of all the splendid host, embracing the flower of the nobility and chivalry of the kingdom, only a few haggard and wounded stragglers returned to tell the tale. The English victors lost five thousand slain, and the Scots more than twice that number, and among them the greatest men of the land. They left on the field their king, two bishops, two mitred abbots, twenty-seven peers and their sons, and there was scarcely a family of any position in Scotland that did not lose a relative there. The young Earl of Caithness and his entire band of three hundred followers perished on the field. The body of the dead king, afterwards found by Dacre, was taken to Berwick and presented to his commander, who had it embalmed and conveyed to the monastery of Sheyne in Surrey. The poetic instincts of the Scots were deeply moved by the woes of the fatal field of Flodden, and innumerable poems and ballads record the sad story, the crowning work of all being Scott's Marmion.
BAMBOROUGH AND GRACE DARLING.
GRACE DARLING'S MONUMENT.
North of Flodden Field, and not far distant, is the Scottish Border, which in this part is made by the river Tweed, with Berwick at its mouth. The two kingdoms, so long in hot quarrel, are now united by a magnificent railway-bridge, elevated one hundred and twenty-five feet above the river and costing $600,000. For miles along the coast the railway runs almost upon the edge of the ocean, elevated on the cliffs high above the sea, while off the coast are Holy Isle and Lindisfarne. Here St. Cuthbert was the bishop, and its abbey is a splendid ruin, while on the rocky islet of Farne he lived a hermit, encompassing his cell with a mound so high that he could see nothing but the heavens. Two miles from Farne, on the mainland, was the royal city of Bebban Burgh, now Bamborough, the castle standing upon an almost perpendicular rock rising one hundred and fifty feet and overlooking the sea. This was King Ida's castle, a Border stronghold in ancient times whose massive keep yet stands. It is now a charity-school, a lighthouse, and a life-saving station. Thirty beds are kept in the restored castle for shipwrecked sailors, and Bamborough is to the mariner on that perilous coast what the convent of St. Bernard is to the traveller in the Alps. Here, at this Border haven, we will close this descriptive tour by recalling Bamborough's most pleasant memory—that of Grace Darling. She was a native of the place, and was lodged, clothed, and educated at the school in Bamborough Castle. Her remains lie in Bamborough churchyard under an altar-tomb bearing her recumbent figure and surmounted by a Gothic canopy. She is represented lying on a plaited straw mattrass and holding an oar. All this coast is beset with perils and wrecks have been frequent. The islet of Farne and a cluster of other rocks off shore add to the dangers, and on some of them there are lighthouses. One of these rocks—Longstone Island—Grace Darling rendered memorable by her intrepidity in perilling her life during the storm of September, 1838. Her father was the keeper of Longstone Light, and on the night of September 6 the Forfarshire steamer, proceeding from Hull to Dundee, was wrecked there. Of fifty-three persons on board, thirty-eight perished, and on the morning of the 7th, Grace, then about twenty-three years of age, discovered the survivors clinging to the rocks and remnants of the steamer, in imminent danger of being washed off by the returning tide. With her parents' assistance, but against their remonstrance, Grace launched a boat, and with her father succeeded in rescuing nine of them, while six escaped by other means. Presents and demonstrations of admiration were showered upon her from all parts of the kingdom, and a public subscription of $3500 was raised for her benefit. Poor Grace died four years later of consumption. A monument to her has been placed in St. Cuthbert's Chapel on Longstone Island, and upon it is this inscription, from Wordsworth:
"Pious and pure, modest, and yet so brave,
Though young, so wise—though meek, so resolute.
"Oh that winds and waves could speak
Of things which their united power called forth
From the pure depths of her humanity!
A maiden gentle, yet at duty's call
Firm and unflinching as the lighthouse reared
On the island-rock, her lonely dwelling-place;
Or, like the invincible rock itself, that braves,
Age after age, the hostile elements,
As when it guarded holy Cuthbert's cell.
"All night the storm had raged, nor ceased, nor paused,
When, as day broke, the maid, through misty air,
Espies far off a wreck amid the surf,
Beating on one of those disastrous isles—
Half of a vessel, half—no more; the rest
Had vanished!"