Our Scottish warriors on the heath,
In close battalia stood;
To free their country and their queen,
Or shed their reddest blood.
The Anglo-Saxons' restless band
Has cross'd the river Tweed;
And ower the hills o' Lammermuir
They've march'd wi' mickle speed.
Twinlaw—Old Ballad.
Edward Duke of Somerset, formerly and better known in Scotland as that Earl of Hertford who led the invasion in the year 1544, had arrived at Newcastle on the 27th of August at the head of fourteen thousand two hundred Englishmen and many foreign auxiliaries, with fifteen pieces of cannon drawn by horses, and nine hundred waggons laden with stores. Sir Francis Fleming was master of the ordnance, and had fourteen hundred pioneers, under Captain John Brem, to clear the way before the guns, to build fascines, and so forth. Master William Patten, who accompanied this army in the quality of judge marshal, a post to which, he had been advanced by the interest of Edward Shelly, in his history[*] of the "Expedition," has given us a minute account of the campaign, and an accurate list of all the commanders in the Protector's army, to aid which thirty-four ships of war and thirty-two transports, under the pennon of Edward Lord Clinton and Say (afterwards high admiral of England) and Sir William Woodhouse, anchored at the mouth of the Tyne.
[*] "The Expedition into Scotland, of the most worthely fortunate Prince Edward, Duke of Somerset, &c., made in the first yere of his Maiestes most prosperous reign, and set out by way of diarie by W. Patten, Londoner. Vivat Victor! Out of the Parsonage of St. Mary Hill in London, this xxviii of January, 1548."
Lord Grey of Wilton, lieutenant of Boulogne, was high marshal and captain-general of the horse, who were all cap-a-pie in full armour, but of a light fashion. Sir Ralf Vane commanded four thousand men-at-arms and demi-lances; and Sir Francis Bryan (in the following year chief governor of Ireland) was captain of two thousand light horse. Sir Thomas Darcy led King Edward VI.'s band of pensioners.
Sir Peiter Mewtas was commander of the Almayners, or German infantry, who were all clad in buff coats and armed with arquebuses.
Don Pedro de Gamboa led the mounted Spanish arquebusiers; and these foreigners, being trained soldiers of fortune, who had served in many wars, were the flower of Somerset's forces. Many of them were veterans who had fought at the siege of Rhey, in 1521, when muskets were first used by the Spaniards, whose infantry were then deemed the finest in Europe.
Edward Shelly led the men-at-arms of Boulogne, who, like the mercenaries, were all trained and veteran soldiers, but dressed in blue doublets, slashed and faced with red. The celebrated Sir Ralf Sadler (whose papers were edited by Sir Walter Scott) was treasurer of this well-ordered army, and Sir James Wilford was provost-marshal.
On the 2nd September the Duke of Somerset entered Scotland, and marched along the eastern coast, keeping carefully in view of his fleet of sixty-four sail, which accompanied him towards the Firth of Forth. Unopposed, he reached that tremendous ravine, the Peaths, which is now spanned by a bridge that is perhaps the greatest in Europe, as it is two hundred and forty feet high by three hundred feet in length. Abrupt, precipitous, and narrow, this ravine formed one of the great passes into Scotland; and, being of easy defence, was deemed "a kind of sluice, by which the tide of war could be loosened or confined at pleasure."
For, an entire day Sir Francis Fleming and his gunners, and Captain Brem with his pioneers, toiled in that narrow and savage gorge to drag through the English artillery and waggons, while the Protector was busy storming several fortresses in the neighbourhood. Among these were the castles of Thornton and Dunglass, belonging to the Lord Home; and Inverwick, a house of the Hamiltons. These strongholds were blown up by gunpowder; but, "before we did so," saith Master Patten, "it would have rued any good housewife's heart to have beholden the great and unmerciful slaughter our men made of the brood geese and good laying hennes, which the wives had penned up in the holes and cellars of the castle [of Dunglass]. The spoil was not rich, to be sure; but of white bread, oaten cakes, and Scottish ale, was indifferent good store, and soon bestowed among my lord's soldiers accordingly."
The English marched in three great columns; each was flanked by horse and artillery; and each piece of cannon had a band of pioneers to guard it and clear the way before it. Somerset led the main body; Warwick still had the vanguard; and Thomas Lord Dacres of Gillesland, Knight of the Garter, led the rear.
Leaving Dunbar on his right, the duke pushed forward through East Lothian to the Tyne, which he crossed by the same old narrow bridge that spans it still; but there not unopposed, for the vassals of the house of Hepburn opened a cannonade of falcons and culverins from the ramparts of Bothwell's castle of Hailes, while a brisk assault was made upon the defiling columns by a famous border marauder named Dandy Kerr, of the house of Fernyherst, whose moss-troopers, after a rough encounter, were routed by the heavily-mounted men-at-arms of Warwick; then, laying the whole country in flames as they advanced, the English marched on until the 7th of September, when they halted at Long Niddry, in Haddingtonshire. There the coast is flat and low; and thus Somerset was enabled to communicate with his fleet, which came to anchor in the roads of Leith.
Somerset now became aware that a Scottish army was concentrated in the neighbourhood, as bands of their prickers, or light-armed horse, were seen galloping along all the eminences, hallooing and brandishing their long and slender spears in defiance. Despite these hostile appearances, the Lord Clinton was brave enough to come on shore and attend a council of war, at which it was arranged that he should anchor the fleet near the mouth of the Esk, to co-operate with the land forces, which Somerset proposed to halt finally eastward of Musselburgh, on the green links of that town, and in the parks of Wallyford and Drumore, where, on the evening of Friday, the 8th, he came in view of the camp of the Scots, thirty-six thousand strong, covering all the long green hill named Edmondstone Edge, at the base of which flowed the Esk.
Around the camp of Somerset, who pitched his own tent near the village of Saltpreston, the whole country was laid desolate by fire; and all who failed to escape perished by the sword. The tall square tower of Preston was soon stormed from a few old men and boys, who were headed by Mungo Tennant, and made a desperate resistance; but they were all slain; then the house was sacked by the English band of pensioners, and committed to the flames. The village of Tranent was burned, and its pretty little vicarage was gutted and destroyed; while in the church the altars and the tombs of the Fawsides were defaced and overthrown. Father John had fled no one knew whither; and for three days the whole landscape was shrouded in the smoke of burning hamlets, granges, mills, and stackyards. Amid this wicked devastation the old tower of Fawside, perched on the summit of its hill, escaped unscathed; but its time was coming.
All this destruction was visible from the Scottish camp, which consisted of four long rows or streets of white tents, that lay from east to west along the green slope of Edmondstone, surmounted by the many-coloured banners of chiefs, nobles, and burghs; and from amid these tents the weapons and armour of so many thousands of men caused a glittering that seemed incessant to the eyes of the English, as they surveyed the vast extent of ground occupied by the army of Arran. As at the battle of Falkirk in 1296, at that of Dunbar in 1650, and other fields, which the Scots have lost by the treason of their nobles or the imbecility of their preachers, the first position of the regent was strong and skilfully chosen.
In front flowed the beautiful Esk, between its steep rocky and wooded banks, from which the feathery ash, the green alder, and the wild rose-tree drooped to kiss the gurgling waters, which were deeper, broader, and more rapid than now. The old Roman bridge, so worn by war and time, which still spans the stream, and which formed the only avenue to their position, Arran had manned by archers and mounted with cannon. The left flank, towards the sea, was defended by an intrenchment of turf, also mounted with cannon and lined by arquebusiers; while a deep and pathless morass, through which nor horse nor man might march, covered the right.
Such was the position of the Scots before the disastrous field of Pinkey, or Inveresk—a battle, the issue of which was awaited breathlessly by Mary of Lorraine, at Edinburgh. By its strength, Somerset found himself completely baffled. To have assailed it would have been a hopeless task, which he saw would only end in a retreat that would cover his army with disgrace, if not with ruin and slaughter.
Arran surveyed the approach of the foe with a confidence in which our hero did not share; for he knew that the Scottish camp was filled by titled traitors, and that the auxiliaries under D'Essé had not yet left the coast of France. He had but one thought—to join Madeline, whom he believed to be in heaven, and to perish in the coming defeat—for what hope was there of victory for an army led by peers who in secret were the tools of Somerset!
From the slope of Edmondstone the Scots could see the high-pooped, low-waisted, and gaily-painted caravels of England coming in succession to anchor, by stem, and stern, off the mouth of the Esk, with their red ports open, and their brass cannon pointed to the shore. All bore the red cross of St. George, together with the banner of Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudley, K.G., high-admiral of England, Ireland, Calais, Boulogne, and the marches thereof; Normandy, Gascony, and Acquitaine; captain-general of the navy and seas—all of which high-sounding titles, did not save him from having his head ignominiously chopped off on the 20th January, 1549.
Amid the clamour, hurry, and bustle of the camp, Florence found but little relief from the agony that preyed upon his spirit. In the prospect of the coming battle, lay all his hope of relief—by plunging into the strife as into a raging sea, to drown his care, his sorrows past and present.
On the evening before the English halted in sight of the Scottish camp, he had left the hospitable mansion of bluff Dick Hackerston, for the last time; and the earnest and tender farewell which that good citizen took of his buxom wife, who laced on his mail with her own trembling hands and placed as an amulet round his neck a holy medal which an old grey friar had brought from Bethlehem; and the kisses which he bestowed again and again on his laughing and chubby-cheeked little ones, with the blessing which he knelt down to receive from his blind father—a frail old man, who for the last few years had vegetated in a huge leathern chair in the ingle-nook of the dining-chamber,—all formed a strong contrast in the mind of Florence to his desolate and friendless condition.
On this evening the old blind man was telling his beads,—for though he had heard Knox preach, and seen Friar Forest burned, he was still a devout Catholic; and by turns his withered fingers would quit the cedar-wood rosary, to play with the iron hilt of a large sword, which hung upon a knob of his chair. When his son knelt before him, he placed a hand upon his head, and a stern smile passed over the old man's face, when he felt the cold steel of Dick's helmet.
"Take this sword, my bairn," said he, "and go forth, believing that thine auld mother, who is now with the saints in heaven, is praying for thee and for thine. She lies in her grave in the kirkyard of St. Giles; but she bore me sax braw sons, Dick, beside thee; three fell by my side at Flodden, two at Ancrumford, and one at Haldonrig—all sword in hand for Scotland and her king. 'Tis but the tale that owre mony hae to tell. Ye were our last, Dick—born unto me in auld age, even as Isaac was born unto Abraham; but go forth—take this sword, and use it as I would use it again had my years been few as thine. Go—God and St. Mary bless you! Die if it be your weird; but turn not in battle, Dick Hackerston, lest the curse of thine auld blind father fall upon thee!"
And in this spirit did our people go forth to battle, like the Spartans of old!