Northumberland Yesterday and To-dayTerry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
History
Northumberland Yesterday and To-day
Terry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
Northumberland (England) -- Guidebooks; Northumberland (England) -- History
After this there was peace on the Borders for the next ten years or
so, when the game began again as merrily as ever. When Sir Thomas
Gray was absent from his castle of Wark-on-Tweed, attending
Parliament, the Scots came down upon it and carried off his
children and servants. Sir Robert Umfraville met and checked
another company that were harrying Coquetdale. In the year 1400,
Henry Bolingbroke himself led an army to Edinburgh; but a guerilla
band of Scots, avoiding his line of march, stole behind him and
ravaged Bamburghshire.
Two years after this, a party of Scots under the next Douglas rode
into Northumberland, coming nearly as far south as Newcastle.
Hotspur set off from Bamburgh, of which castle he was Constable at
the time, to intercept them. He awaited them on the banks of the
Glen, near Wooler; and the archers of his force went out for forage
meanwhile. When the Scots arrived, they found themselves in the
presence of an enemy whom they had imagined to be behind them, and
they immediately occupied Homildon Hill. The archers, returning,
saw the Scottish force on the hill, and began the attack forthwith,
letting fly their arrows upon the foe with deadly precision. Flight
after flight fell upon the Scots, who were completely bewildered,
and seemed incapable of action. A Scottish knight, Sir John
Swinton, implored the leaders to charge, passionately exclaiming,
“What madness has seized you, my brave countrymen, that you stand
here like deer to be shot down? Follow me, those who will! We will
either gain the victory, or die like men of courage.”
On hearing these brave words, Adam de Gordon, Swinton’s deadly foe,
felt his hatred turn to admiration, and kneeling before Swinton,
begged that he might receive the honour of knighthood from so
valiant a hand. The two gallant knights then charged the enemy,
followed by a number of the Scots; but the showers of arrows forced
them to retreat towards the river, and thither also moved the whole
Scottish force, followed still by that grim and deadly hail from
the English bows. Hotspur would now have charged, but the Earl of
March, his former antagonist, now his friend, restrained his
impetuous leader, and persuaded him to let the archers continue
their effective work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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