8. “This battle was called the Field of Flodden by the Scotsmen and Brankston [Bramstone] by the Englishmen, because it was stricken on the hills of Flodden beside a town called Brankston; and was stricken the ninth day of September, 1513.” Lesley, History, 1830, p. 96.

10. Hall says that the English slew “twelve thousand, at the least, of the best gentlemen and flower of Scotland.” The gazette of the battle (Pinkerton’s History, II, 457), Polydore Vergil, and modern Scottish historians, say ten thousand. Among these were twelve earls, thirteen lords, and many other persons of high rank.

12. ‘Iack with a feather’ is said in contempt of the Scottish king’s levity or foolhardiness. “Then was the body bowelled, embawmed and cered:” Hall, p. 564, ed. 1809. “His body was bowelled, rebowelled, and enclosed in lead,” “lapped in lead:” Stowe, Chronicle, p. 494 b, ed. 1631; Survey, Book III, p. 81 a, ed. 1710. Fair Rosamond’s bones, when they were exhumed at Godstow, says Leland, were closed in lead and within that closed in leather: Dugdale’s Monasticon, ed. 1823, IV, 365, No VIII.

In the letter sent to Henry VIII in France James included the slaughter of Andrew Barton among the unredressed grievances of which he had to complain. A few days before the battle of Flodden, Lord Thomas Howard, then admiral, used the occasion of his father’s dispatching a herald to the King of Scots to say that “inasmuch as the said king had divers and many times caused the said lord to be called at days of true to make redress for Andrew Barton, a pirate of the sea long before that vanquished by the same Lord Admiral, he was now come, in his own proper person, to be in the vanguard of the field, to justify the death of the said Andrew against him and all his people, and would see what could be laid to his charge the said day:” Hall’s Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 558.

There is a slight resemblance in one or two particulars, such as might be expected from similarity of circumstances, between this ballad and ‘Durham Field.’ In the latter the King of Scots swears that he will hold his parliament in leeve London, st. 6. A squire warns him that there are bold yeomen in England; the king is angry, draws his sword, and kills the squire, 7–9. In ‘Scotish Ffeilde,’ Percy Folio, Hales and Furnivall, I, 217,[[217]] the French king says there is nothing left in England save millers and mass-priests, v. 109; and in the poem on Flodden, reprinted by Weber, and recently by Federer,[[218]] Lord Home makes this same assertion, Weber, p. 10, 187–92; Federer, p. 8, sts 46, 47. Cf. ‘Durham Field,’ p. 282.

The forged manuscript formerly in the possession of J. Payne Collier, containing thirty ballads alleged to be of the early part of the seventeenth century, has for the second piece in the volume a transcript of this ballad, with variations.

The battle of Flodden called out a great deal of verse. The most notable pieces are two already referred to, and a third which will be given here in an appendix; the less important will be found in Weber’s volume.

1

King Jamie hath made a vow,

Keepe it well if he may!