Gloria sit creatori! gloria comitibus
Qui fecerunt Petrum mori cum suis carminibus!
A modo sit pax et plausus in Anglorum finibus! Amen.
Translation.—I. The banners of the kingdom go forth, the comet of Earls shines, I mean the Earl of Lancaster, who tamed him whom nobody else could tame; whereby the pestiferous one being wounded by the blades of the Welsh, was disgracefully beheaded in the sixth month. What the authority of the powers above willed has been fulfilled; the death of Peter at last has been effected,—he reigned much too long. The bad tree is cut down, when Peter is struck on the neck:—Blessed be the weapon which thus approached Peter! Blessed be the hand which executed him! blessed the man who ordered the execution! blessed the steel which struck him whom the world would not bear any longer! O Cross, which allowed to be suffered this wretched misery, do thou take from us all the material of misery. Thee, highest God in Trinity, we pray earnestly, destroy and crush for ever the maintainers of Peter. Amen.
II. Celebrate, my tongue, the death of Peter who disturbed England, whom the king in his love for him placed over all Cornwall; hence in his pride he will be called Earl, and not Peter.—The people of the kingdom was made sorrowful for the fraud upon the treasure, when Peter becomes wastefully insolent with the treasury, not bearing in mind what the future day may produce for him.—This is the work of our salvation, that Peter is dead; all the artfulness of the multifarious traitor has perished; henceforth let the good omen rejoice our hearts, for sorrow is past.—When the fulness of time which was fit for the thing came, his head is cut off from the juncture of the body; he who raised troubles within the kingdom is now troubled from without.—He who was unwilling to have an equal, clothed in the extreme of pride, against his will bends his neck to the executioner; of whose merited death this hymn is set forth.—He who placed himself as a head above his equals, loses his own head; justly his body is pierced, whose heart was so puffed up; both land, sea, stars, and world, rejoice in his fall.—Ferocious and cruel among all men, he ceases now from his pomp; now he no longer behaves himself like an earl, or a king; the unworthy man, worthy of death, undergoes the death which he merits.—This tree with its branches bent falls into a proverb; for the stiffness which pride gave is softened; thus ought the ambitious and aspiring man to be humbled.—May the house of Peter, in which he is held, not be supported in strength; may the other place be profane, and may it be in disgrace, which the filthy gore spilled from Peter’s body has defiled!—Glory be to the Creator! Glory to the Earls who have made Peter die with his charms! Henceforth may there be peace and rejoicing throughout England! Amen.
The events of the Scottish war during the reign of Edward II. were not of a character to draw forth the songs of triumph which had attended the campaigns of his father. The loss of his father’s conquests, and the reverses of his own arms, while they produced universal dejection, only tended to widen the breach which his own folly had made between himself and his people. The following song was made in 1313, immediately after the disastrous battle of Bannockburn, where the Earl of Gloucester was slain. The writer, while he laments the humiliation to which his country had been reduced, glances from time to time at the evil counsels which had led to it.
THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN.
[From MS. Cotton. Titus, A. XX., fol. 68 ro. written in the reign of Ed. III.]