Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/148

134 that in the twilight, when the fight was nigh ended, four tall horsemen came into the field, having each a bunch of straw on the point of their spears as a token for them to know each other by. They said these men mounted the king on a dun hackney, and that he was seen to cross the Tweed with them at nightfall. Nobody pretended to say what they did with him, but it was believed that he was murdered in Home Castle, and I recollect, about forty years since, there was a report that, in cleansing the drawwell in that ruinous fortress, the workmen found a skeleton wrapped in a bull's hide, and having a belt of iron round the waist, for which, on inquiry, I could never find any better authority than the sexton of the parish having said that if the well were cleaned out, he should not be surprised at such a discovery. These are idle fables, and contrary to common sense. Home was the chamberlain of the king, and his prime favourite; he had much to lose, in fact, did lose all, in consequence of James's death, and nothing whatever to gain by that event; but the retreat or inactivity of the left wing, which he commanded, after defeating Sir Edmund Howard, and even the circumstance of his remaining unhurt, and loaded with spoil, from so fatal a conflict, rendered the propagation of any calumny against him easy and acceptable.

"It seems true that the king usually wore the belt of iron, in token of his repentance for his father's death, and the share he had in it. But it is not unlikely that he would lay aside such a cumbrous article of penance in a day of battle, or the English, when they despoiled his person, may have thrown it aside as of no value. The body, which the English affirm to have been that of James, was found on the field by Lord Dacre, and carried by him to Berwick, and presented to Surrey. Both of these lords knew James's person too well to be mistaken. The body was also acknowledged by his two favourite attendants. Sir William Scott and Sir John Forman, who wept at beholding it."

The fate of these renes was singular and degrading. Stowe, in his "Survey of London," gives this account from his own knowledge: "After the battle, the bodie of the same king being found, was closed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and to the monasterie of Sheyne, in Surrey, where it remained for a time in what order I am not certaine; but since the dissolution of that house, in the reygne of Edward the Sixt, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolke, being lodged and keeping house there, I have been shewed the same bodie so lapped in lead, close to the head and bodie, throwne into a waste room amongst the old timber, lead, and other rubble, since the which time, workmen there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head, and Launcelot Young, master glazier to Queen Elizabeth, feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and yet the form remaining, with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London, to his house in Wood Street, where for a time, he kept it for the sweetness, but, in the end, caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out of their charnel."

That the body which the English had thus secured and brought to London for so singular a fate, was the real body of James, was incontestibly proved by the monarch's well-known sword and dagger found upon it, and turquoise ring on his finger, supposed to be the same sent to him by the Queen of France. These are still preserved in the Herald's College in London. An unhewn column marks the spot where James fell, still called the King's stone.

The guns which were captured on this occasion, are related to have been of a very superior kind, and, according to an official report, "the neatest, the soundest, the best-fashioned, the smallest in the touch-hole, and the most beautiful of their size and length that were ever seen," especially a fine train of seven pieces, called the Seven Sisters, cast by the same Robert Borthwick, the Master of Artillery, who implored James to allow him to destroy Twisell Bridge with it, and who immediately afterwards perished while directing the operations of the cannon.

On his way northward, Surrey had prepared posts all the way for the rapid conveyance of intelligence, and, by these, he announced in brief time to Queen Catherine, who was at Woburn, the great and decisive victory. Catherine was in the same fortunate position as Queen Philippa while Edward III. was on his campaign in France, and though she did not hasten over herself with the news, she wrote an able letter of gratulation, in which she said he would see how she had kept her promise of protecting the kingdom in his absence, and she accompanied it by the coat of the King of Scots, that Henry might convert it into a banner, adding, that she thought of sending his body, but that English hearts would not permit it. What is more to Catherine's credit is, that she pleaded tenderly and earnestly for forbearance towards James's widow and infant son, Henry's own sister and nephew. Some historians have praised Henry's wonderful magnanimity in conceding this forbearance, but to say nothing of the determined attitude of defence which the Scotch, in the midst of their sorrows, assumed, and the heavy losses of the English, which occasioned Surrey to attempt no further advantages, but to put sufficient troops into the border garrisons, and then disband the rest, Henry must have become more of a monster than he was, at that period of his life, to have sought to commit more evil than he had done. His empty triumphs in France might be excused, for conquest and military glory have been the world's gospel in all ages, and are too much so still; but a dispassionate and philosophical view of his conduct to Scotland, must show it to have been at once as barbarous and wicked as it was impolitic.

James IV., who fell at Flodden in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his reign, was a prince of a quick, generous, and chivalric character. Though of only the middle height, he was remarkably strong and agile; and by continual exercise he made himself capable of enduring any amount of labour, cold, thirst, or hunger. His face was sweet and amiable in expression, and if he had not great command of his passions, he had of his countenance, so that he seldom changed colour on the most sudden tidings of good or evil. He was easy of access, dignified and affable in his deportment, and never used severe and harsh terms, even when most offended; his sense of honour was high, and he possessed even to a degree of romance all the spirit of ancient chivalry. His courage was daring, even to rashness. Like his father, he had a taste for the arts, particularly those of civil and naval architecture; he built the great ship St. Michael, and several churches, and maintained a Court far superior in its elegance and refinement to that of any of his