Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/359

A.D. 1314.] The manner in which Douglas surprised several of the most formidable castles of Scotland has all the wonder of romance about it. The castle of Roxburgh, which now fell into his hands, was only five miles from the English border, numerously garrisoned, and vigilantly watched, from the suprising successes of the Scots of late against such places, and Douglas was known to be in the neighbourhood. It was a holiday again, as at Douglas Castle; not now Palm Sunday, but Shrovetide. The soldiers were carousing, but had taken care to set watches on the battlements.

An Englishwoman, the wife of one of the officers, was sitting on the battlement with her child in her arms. She was looking out over the fields below, when she saw some black objects creeping along near the foot of the tower. The sentinel to whom she pointed them out said, "Pooh, they are only black cattle." So the lady sat still, and in a while began to sing to her child—

"You are not so sure of that," said a voice close beside her, and at the same time she felt her arm grasped by an iron glove, and, looking round in affright, she saw a tall, dark, powerful man—the Black Douglas himself. Another man was at the moment coming over the wall near the sentinel; this was one Simon Ledehouse. The sentinel perceiving him rushed at him with his lance, at the same time shouting an alarm. Ledehouse put aside the lance, and struck down the sentinel with his dagger. The Scots now came pouring pell-mell over the walls, and the castle was taken; but the Douglas protected the woman and child.

Still more remarkable was the surprise of the castle of Edinburgh only a week afterwards. Any one who has seen the lofty precipice on which this castle was situated would regard the scaling of that cliff as next to impossible, especially while a strong garrison was watching above. Tot this was done by Thomas Randolph—that same Randolph, the nephew of Bruce, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Methven, and who had now become Earl of Moray, and afterwards was regent of the kingdom. Randolph was informed by a man of the name of Francis that, in his youth, he had frequently descended, when a soldier in the garrison, by a secret path, to visit a girl that he was in love with in the Grass Market. He offered to show Randolph the way, who at once resolved to make the attempt, though a more perilous one could not be conceived, for if discovered by the garrison above while ascending the cliff, not a man of them would be left alive.

The brave Randolph selected thirty men for the enterprise, and came to the foot of the cliff on a dark night. Francis led the way; and a perilous way they found it—"a path," says Sir Walter Scott, "fitter for a cat than a man." A falling stone, or a word uttered, would have alarmed the watchmen, and brought instant destruction upon them. They, therefore, were obliged to creep on with the utmost caution; and when they had nearly reached the castle wall they could hear the guards going their rounds, and were obliged to lie close to escape attention. And hero they were startled by a man suddenly throwing a stone from the wall, and crying out, "Aha! I see you well." They believed they were discovered, but lay firm, and close, while the stone thundered down over their heads, and passed on. One movement, and they had been utterly destroyed, for the guard, only by throwing stones down, must have killed every one of them. But they were chosen as men who were prepared for anything. They lay quiet as the rocks themselves. The English soldier, as it proved, only did it in joke to alarm his comrades, and they, knowing that, all passed on. Then Randolph and his brave men, headed by Francis their guide—who proved himself a stout soldier—and Sir Andrew Grey, speedily fixed thou scaling ladders to the walls, which at that place were only about twice a man's height, suprised, and very easily destroyed the garrison, who, except the sentinels, were asleep and unarmed.

By such daring courage, and by a variety of stratagems, the strongest castles fell rapidly into their hands. Dumfries, Butel, Daiswinton, and Linlithgow swelled the list. The last was taken by the assistance of a farmer of the name of Binnock, or Binny, who used to supply the garrison with hay. This man concerted with the soldiers, his countrymen, that he should cut his soame—a yoke which fastened the horses to the cart—just as his loaded cart was in the gateway, and then crying, "Call all, call all!" the soldiers should rush in, as they did.

While Douglas, Randolph, and their heroic compeers were thus performing the most surprising feats of daring and of heroism, Bruce, who had now an effective army, marched to every point of the country where the enemy was to be found, defeating and chasing them away. He did not neglect to make a visit to the north, to the country of the Comyns, who had pursued him with peculiar animosity on account of his killing their relative, the Red Comyn, and who had joined the English with all their forces. Robert Bruce now ravaged their district, and slew them remorselessly, as the enemies of their country, causing more than thirty of them to be beheaded in one day, and thrown into a pit, called ever after "The grave of the headless Comyns." Neither did he forget John of Lorn, who had joined with the Comyns and the English, and had hunted him with bloodhounds. He penetrated into the very heart of Argyll, Lorn's country, beset him in the mountains, and was very near securing Lorn himself. He managed with difficulty to escape in a boat; but King Robert did not suffer his country to escape, for he bestowed a large portion of it on his own nephew. Sir Colin Campbell, and thus founded the great ducal family of Argyll.

Thus it came at last to the pass that, as we have described, the English had only the castle of Stirling left in all Scotland; and Sir Philip Mowbray, after a brave defence, had agreed to deliver that up if not relieved by a certain day. He had, as we have said, arrived in London with this message. Perhaps oven such a message as this, full of national disgrace, might not have moved Edward out of his epicurean listlessness, but it aroused the nobles. They exclaimed unanimously that it would be an eternal shame thus to let the great conquest of Edward I. fall out of their hands without a blow. It was therefore resolved that the king should lead an army to the rescue.

A royal summons was issued for all the military force of England to meet the king at Berwick on the 11th of