Almost contemporaneously with the advance of Gloucester, Clifford and Beaumont, with 300 men-at-arms--Gray, whose father rode with them, says 300, while Barbour makes them 800--hurried along the lower ground on the English right towards Stirling. Their evident object, as Barbour says, was to relieve the castle; but the Lanercost chronicler ingenuously explains that it was to prevent the Scots from escaping by flight. Randolph, strangely ill-served by his scouts and by his eyes, if Barbour be right, is said not to have been aware of the movement till he received a sharp message from Bruce (as if Bruce's attention was not fully engaged elsewhere), telling him significantly that a rose had fallen from his chaplet. This is sheer monkish imagination. Gray makes no mention of this incredible inadvertence, but represents Randolph as fired by the news of Bruce's repulse of the English van; and the Lanercost chronicler states that the Scots deliberately allowed the advance of the party. Of course they did; Randolph undoubtedly descried them the moment they debouched on the carse. To do so was no less important than it was for Sir Edward to be ready for Gloucester's onset. The next step for Randolph was to tackle his enemy at the right spot and not elsewhere. With a strong detachment he rapidly traversed the wooded edge of the Park, so as to converge upon the English horsemen at the narrow neck between St Ninian's and the Forth--the only point, in fact, where he could calculate upon holding them without moving his whole division down into the low-lying ground (if even that would have done it), and deranging the order of battle. When they were 'neath the kirk,' he issued from the wood and menaced their further progress. 'Let us retire a little,' said Beaumont; 'let them come; give them the fields.' 'Sir,' remarked Sir Thomas Gray, the elder, 'I suspect if you give them so much now, they will have all only too soon.' 'Why,' rejoined Beaumont tartly, 'if you are afraid you can flee.' 'Sir,' replied Gray, 'it is not for fear that I shall flee this day.'