130 Battle of Sark. 



chief captives were lodged in the castle. So ended one of the 

 greatest battles ever fought in Dumfriesshire. 



Buchanan assures us that the Englishmen, relying upon the 

 number and quality of their troops and the discords of the Scots, 

 had come as secure as if they were marching not to a battle but 

 to a triumph, so great was their self-confidence and so great their 

 contempt of the enemy. Hume of Godscroft was equally unable 

 to resist an opportunity for a chuckle at the English expense. 

 Redmane, "too confident of his own sufficiency," was —as indeed 

 Boece tells us — said to have stipulated as a reward for his services 

 for a grant of all the lands he could win from the Scots. " A 

 notable example," comments Godscroft, " to teach men not to be 

 over confident in things of such uncertain event as are the wars ; 

 and, as our proverb is, ' Not to sell the bear's skin before he be 

 slain.' " 



It was a battle serving, of course, no national purpose, with- 

 out so much as a respectable reason of State, probably begotten 

 of sheer pride, sudden and fierce as a storm of April hail, without 

 real cause, and with no result except that of probably inducing the 

 immediate peace that followed. But from the standpoint of Dum- 

 friesshire, as repelling an invasion, it was indeed a famous victory 

 in a sense other than the sarcastic poet's. The glory has never 

 been as exactly apportioned as doubtless the ransoms of the 

 prisoners and the shares of plunder were — according to the law 

 of the land. Godscroft is jealous for the renown of Ormond, the 

 gallant young Douglas, destined to die by the hands of the execu- 

 tioner within seven years' time. The Kirkconnell MS. History of 

 the Maxwells unblushingly claims all the laurel for Lord Maxwell, 

 telling how the Scots were all but utterly discomfited by the host 

 of England till "the said Lord Harbert came in with the rear 

 guard and wan that feild by his vallor." The old Scottish 

 historians with one voice, however, have remembered with 

 generous praise the services rendered by the laird of Craigie. 



Sir John Wallace, as we have seen, did not die on the field, 

 but " efter that he come hame throu misgovern ance." According 

 to Boece : — " Carried home on a litter he succumbed to the fates 

 in the third month after." Tertio post rnense ; the words prove 

 curiously illustrative. On 28th January, 1449, old style, that is 

 1450, Sir John made before a notary express confession and 

 acknowledgment that he had done divers wrongs to the monastery 



