Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/29

 himself incautiously to the weapons of the garrison, in order to revenge the murder of his father) compleated their triumph, and insured their safety; for the Scotch army, in despair at their twofold loss, quitted the siege, and marched directly home. But the laurels of Caledonia were doomed to experience another rude blow before the towers of Alnwick-Castle; where, in the twelfth century, her king William III. surnamed the Lion, was taken prisoner while laying siege to it; and condemned to deplore his ill success in a prison of Normandy, whither he was sent to King Henry II.

Situated so near those scenes of perpetual animosity and bloodshed, the bordering counties, Alnwick-Castle partook largely of the confusion which characterized that district, until the advancement of James I. to the English throne created a sort of union between the two countries, which lessened the frequency, and weakened the violence, of the contentions on the borders. Its annals record a variety of military adventures, of which it was the theatre; but none more remarkable than the removal of a whole garrison, consisting of three hundred Lancastrians, to the extreme disappointment and surprise of the army of Yorkists, who were in investing the fortress, with the certainty of its falling into their hands.