The engagement which then ensued is characteristic of the state of feeling. On the morning of the 28th a Scottish officer, wearing a hat with a black feather, rode his horse to the Tyne, in order to water it. An English musketeer, seeing the Scot fix his eye upon the breastworks, could not resist the temptation; he aimed well, and the officer fell wounded from his horse. Upon this the Scottish musketeers opened fire in return; both sides discharged their artillery upon their opponents. But the camp of the Scots was in a higher and stronger position than that [A.D. 1640.] of the English; they had also, without doubt, more practised artillerymen, and the English found themselves outmatched. But this was quite enough to bring the matter to a crisis. The English troops in the entrenchments complained that they had not been relieved from Newcastle as they should have been; they murmured that they were expected to do double duty. But they did not give vent to their discontent in words alone. They gave ear for a few minutes longer to the exhortations of their commander; but when they found that they had the worst of it, and were in danger from the Scottish artillery, they immediately abandoned their works and threw away their weapons, not so much from cowardice as from ill-humour excited by the war and the bad arrangements which had been made. On this the Scots, both horse and foot, under cover of their cannon, crossed the Tyne. The English were then completely driven from all their positions. On the next morning Lord Conway abandoned Newcastle[186]. Not less significant was the manner in which this town was taken possession of by the Scots, into whose hands, on the retreat of the troops, it inevitably fell.