Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/80

103 Unarmed, bewildered, and most of them intoxicated, the soldiery were unable to make any effectual resistance; and in this defenceless and hopeless state, many of them in the fury of the onset were slaughtered. The governor and a few others escaped into the keep or great tower, which they defended till the following day; but having sustained a severe arrow wound in the face, Gillemin de Fiennes thought proper to surrender, on condition that he and his remaining followers should be allowed safely to depart into England. These terms having been accorded, and faithfully fulfilled, Fiennes died shortly afterwards of the wound which he had received. This event, which fell out in the month of March, 1313, added not a little to the terror with which the Douglas name was regarded in the north of England; while in an equal degree, it infused spirit and confidence into the hearts of their enemies. Barbour attributes the successful capture of Edinburgh castle by Randolph, an exploit of greater peril, and on that account only, of superior gallantry to the preceding, to the noble emulation with which the one general regarded the deeds of the other.

The next occasion, wherein Douglas signalized himself by his conduct and bravery, was on the field of Bannockburn; in which memorable battle, he had the signal honour of commanding the centre division of the Scottish van. When the fortune of that great day was decided, by the disastrous and complete overthrow of the English army, Sir James, at the head of sixty horsemen, pursued closely on the track of the flying monarch, for upwards of forty miles from the field, and only desisted from the chase from the inability of his horses to proceed further. In the same year, king Robert, desirous of taking advantage of the wide spread dismay into which the English nation had been thrown, despatched his brother Edward and Sir James Douglas, by the eastern marches, into England, where they ravaged and assessed at will the whole northern counties of that kingdom.

When Bruce passed over with an army into Ireland, in the month of May, 1316, in order to the reinforcement of his brother Edward's arms in that country, he committed to Sir James Douglas, the charge of the middle borders, during his absence. The earl of Arundel appears, at the same time, to have commanded on the eastern and middle marches of England, lying opposite to the district under the charge of Douglas. The earl, encouraged by the absence of the Scots king, and still more, by information which led him to believe that Sir James Douglas was then unprepared and off his guard, resolved, by an unexpected and vigorous attack, to take this wily and desperate enemy at an advantage. For this purpose, he collected together, with secrecy and despatch, an army of no less than ten thousand men. Douglas, who had just then seen completed the erection of his castle or manor house of Lintalee, near Jedburgh, in which he proposed giving a great feast to his military followers and vassals, was not, indeed, prepared to encounter a force of this magnitude; but, from the intelligence of spies whom he maintained in the enemy's camp, he was not altogether to be taken by surprise. Aware of the route by which the English army would advance, he collected, in all haste, a considerable body of archers, and about fifty men at arms, and with these took post in an extensive thicket of Jedburgh forest. The passage or opening through the wood at this place&mdash;wide and convenient at the southern extremity, by which the English were to enter, narrowed as it approached the ambush, till in breadth it did not exceed a quoit's pitch, or about twenty yards. Placing the archers in a hollow piece of ground, on one side of the pass, Douglas effectually secured them from the attack of the enemies' cavalry, by an entrenchment of felled trees, and by knitting together the branches of the young birch trees with which the thicket abounded. He himself took post with his small body of men-at-arms, on the