In the meantime, Grange perceived that the right wing of the Regent’s
vanguard, chiefly composed of men from the Barony of Renfrewshire, was
beginning to waver. Hastening to them, he called out that the enemy was
already giving way, and besought them to hold out till he returned with
reinforcements. Then riding at full speed to the Regent’s left wing,
which had been standing in reserve, he obtained a body of fresh troops,
with which he dashed at the enemy’s flank. This movement decided the
fate of the battle. The vanguard of the Queen’s army was forced to fall
back upon the main body, which, instead of supporting it and enabling
it to rally, broke into precipitate flight. Grange pursued with the
cavalry; but he ‘was never cruel,’ and moreover, the Regent had issued
orders to save and not to kill, so that there were but few taken, and
fewer slain. No indiscriminate slaughter of his fleeing countrymen was
needed to make the victory complete and decisive. His clever tactics
and his courageous behaviour had secured that already.
On the 8th of May 1568, immediately before his departure to join
the forces of the Regent in Glasgow, Sir William Kirkcaldy, being
obliged to withdraw a considerable part of the garrison on which the
safety, no less of the Capital than of the stronghold depended, took
the precaution of securing the active co-operation of the citizens
themselves, for the repression of any insurrectionary movement in the
Queen’s favour, by means of a mutual bond signed by himself on behalf
of the Castle, and by Sir Simon Preston of Craigmillar, Provost of
Edinburgh, acting for himself, the bailies, Council, and community.
With many protestations of loyalty to the ‘most undoubted sovereign’s
Regent and Governor, James, Earl of Murray,’ and with strong
expressions of indignation at the ‘unnatural and ungodly proceedings’
of those who were convened in arms against him, it bound each of the
contracting parties to assist the other ‘at all times and in all places
needful, against all and sundry.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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