hop, Wilekin! England is mine and thine,”[732] were cut to pieces not so much by the royal troops as by the peasantry of the district, who flocked to the battle-field armed with forks and flails, with which they either despatched them at once or drove them to suffocation in the ditches.[733] His French and Norman knights were all made prisoners;[734] he himself took to flight, but was overtaken and captured;[735] and his wife, who had accompanied him throughout his enterprise, was made captive with him.[736] The victors followed up their success by posting bodies of troops at S. Edmund’s, Ipswich and Colchester, hoping that Hugh Bigod, thus confined within his own earldom, would be unable to provide for the large force of Flemish mercenaries still quartered in his various castles, and that these would be starved into surrender. The approach of winter however disposed both parties for a compromise; a truce was arranged to last till the octave of Pentecost, Hugh consenting to dismiss his Flemings, who were furnished with a safe-conduct through Essex and Kent and with ships to transport them from Dover back to their own land.[737] [727] R. Diceto as above, p. 376. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 61. [728] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 61. R. Diceto as above, p. 376. Jordan Fantosme, vv. 478–838 (Michel, pp. 22–38), has a long account of this first Scottish invasion, but it is far from clear, and some parts of it, _e.g._ the statement that Warkworth was taken by the Scots, seem incompatible with after-events. [729] _Gesta Hen._ as above. [730] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 377. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 61. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 54. [731] _Gesta Hen._ as above. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 55. The date, according to R. Diceto (as above, p. 378) is October 17; the _Gesta_ (as above, p. 62) make it October 16. [732] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. i. p. 381. “Hoppe, hoppe, Wilekin, hoppe, Wilekin, Engelond is min ant tin.” [733] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1086–1091 (Michel, p. 50). [734] R. Diceto as above, pp. 377, 378. _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 61, 62. Rog. Howden as above, p. 55. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 246. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 179). The number of Robert’s Flemish troops is surely exaggerated by all these writers; still, even at the lowest computation, the odds seem to have been, as R. Diceto says, at least four to one. [735] Gerv. Cant. as above.