determined to proceed or retire according to its event. He is said, by the constant tradition of the country, to have ascended there the branches of a lofty oak, whose venerable trunk yet remains, for the purpose of viewing the battle; at least of gaining, from personal inspection, the earliest intelligence of its event. “The fight began by furious and repeated volleys of arrows from Hotspur’s archers, whose ground, as may be seen, greatly favoured that kind of warfare: and they did great execution on the royal army. The king’s bowmen were not wanting in return, and the battle raged with violence. The military art had not yet attained that perfection which almost supersedes the effect of individual exertion; and Hotspur, with his associate Douglas, bent on the king’s destruction, rushing through the midst of the hostile arrows, pierced their way to the spot on which he stood. To adopt the vivid language of a contemporary, ‘in the ardour of his spirit, he assembled a band of thirty warriors, broke into the royal army, and made a great alley in the midst thereof,’ (such was the terror which his presence inspired) ‘even to the stoutest of the king’s guards.’ Monstrelet says, Henry was thrice unhorsed by the Scottish earl, and would have been taken or slain had he not been defended and rescued by his own men. And the fortune of the day would have been forthwith decided, if the Scottish earl of March had not withdrawn him from the danger; for the royal standard-bearer was slain, his banner beaten down; and many of the chosen band appointed to guard it (among whom were the earl of Stafford and sir Walter Blount,) were killed by these desperate assailants,—while the young prince of Wales was wounded in the face by an arrow. In short, notwithstanding all the exertions of the royalists, victory seemed inclined to favour the rebel army, who fought with renewed ardour, from an opinion naturally derived from the overthrow of his standard, that the king himself had fallen, and animated each other to the combat with cheering and redoubled shouts of ‘_Henry Percy_, _king_! _Henry Percy_, _king_!’