Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/147

A.D. 1513.] the nobility were slain, had silently stolen away, and had made their way across the Tweed at Coldstream, or over the dry marshes to their own country.

And what ghastly, fearful, desolating tidings did these silent fugitives bear with them over every moor and mountain, to every town and village through the length and breadth of Scotland! When the battle-field came to be examined, there were found of the English few men of note fallen, but about 5,000 soldiers, chiefly of the ranks; but of the Scots, there lay the king and his son the Archbishop of St. Andrew's dead on the field, with two bishops, two mitred abbots, twelve earls, thirteen lords, five eldest sons of peers, fifty knights and chiefs, and of gentlemen a number uncalculated; there was scarcely a family in Scotland of any name in history which did not lose a member there. In the words of Scott—

The ballads and traditions of Scotland are yet full of the lamentations and desolation long produced there by this fatal battle, where



"The Scots," says Sir Walter Scott, "were much disposed to dispute the fact that James IV. had fallen on Flodden Field. Some said he had retired from the kingdom, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem: others