HISTORIC SKETCHES. 



157 



HISTORIC SKETCHES. X VIII. 



MOW KNtil.AM) AM) SCOTLAND BECAME ONE.-PABT I. 

 " \\ IIII.K an hundred Soots are loft to resist, they will fight for 

 tin- Hi" Tty Unit is dearer to them than life." Thus spoke the 

 i n. it ion by the mouths of eight earls, thirty-one baron*, 

 :m.l nil i In- '-rreat officers of the Crown, assembled at Arbroath, 

 in Ajui'i, 1 iJO, when they sent a letter to the Pope of Rome 

 (,I..hii XXII.), in answer to his bull requiring them to yield obe- 

 to that English king (Edward II.), whom they had driven 

 with xhamo and confusion from Bannockburn. With words 

 expressive of the same indomitable liberty have the Scottish 

 people ever spoken, when it has been a question of their free- 

 ili'i-i. political, social, or religious ; and may the day be far dis- 

 tant when they shall abate cue iota of the high-mettled courage 

 which enabled them thus to speak to the most powerful and 

 most dreaded potentate at that time on the earth. Let us 

 examine the circumstances under which the words above- 

 mentioned were spoken, and then trace out the history of 

 the nation which spoke them, until it became blended in the 

 history of its southern neighbour, England. 



We have only to look at the earlier ballads of England and 

 Scotland to see how continuous and bitter was formerly the 

 hostility which existed between the two countries. The most 

 spirit-stirring of them are those in which the feats of arms of 

 favourite heroes on both sides are commemorated with how 

 much exaggeration on the one hand, and unfriendly depreciation 

 on the other, it is not necessary to say. When international 

 rancour, unmeaning as it was violent, ran high, and was handed 

 down from father to son as a sacred flame which was never to 

 bo allowed to go out ; when feuds were family property, and 

 were cherished with as much tenderness as the family honour, it 

 is only to be expected that some signs of them should find their 

 way into the popular songs and ballads. And in effect the 

 popular songs and ballads are full of such signs, of stories how 

 this chief " drove a prey " into Northumberland, and of how 

 " the stout Earl of Northumberland " returned the compliment 

 by harrying the border with aa many rough-riders as could 

 be induced to bear the loose discipline of the northern wars. 

 Who has not heard or read of Chevy Chase, of Otterbnrn, of 

 Adam Bell and Clym of the Clough, of William of Cloudesley, 

 and many more whose names are enshrined in the deathless 

 ballads of their respective countries ? These are all signs of 



he bygone times, of days which are happily past for ever ; 

 days of great trial and tribulation, but days also in which was 

 nursed with steady care that spirit of bold courage and of 

 fearless outspokenness which breathed in the words at the head 

 of this article. 



The two people contiguous, yet essentially distinct, it must 

 needs have been that in barbarous times their essential distinc- 

 tiveness should be shown barbarously. Springing from different 

 races, or at least from different branches of the same race, with 

 scarcely anything in common except their form of government 

 and their religion and even here there was not perfect 

 uniformity there must have been frequent occasions on which 

 the national feelings of hostility found vent. The histories of 

 England and Scotland for many years are taken up with little 

 else than detailed accounts of those scenes in which the heroes 

 commemorated in the ballads took part. The border land, 

 indicated by the Cheviot Hills, and extending from Berwick -on- 

 Tweed on the one side, to the Sol way Frith on the other, was a 

 theatre of never-ending war. The Scotch Earl Douglas was 

 guardian of the border on the Scottish side, and the Percys, Earls 

 of Northumberland, were wardens of the Marches on the English 

 aide ; and these noblemen, without waiting for any ceremonious 

 declaration of war, were wont, whenever they felt disposed to 

 the exorcise, to try conclusions for the honour of their country, 

 themselves, their lady-love, or anything or anybody else, to 

 open unexpectedly a little war on their own account. Thus 

 does Shakespeare make Prince Henry (afterwards Henry V.) 

 apeak of Percy, " The Hotspur of the north ; he that kills me 

 some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his 

 hands, and says to his wife, ' Fie upon this quiet life ! I want 

 work.' ' O my sweet Harry,' says she, ' how many hast thou 

 killed to-day P ' ' Give my roan horse a drench,' says he, and 

 answers ' Some fourteen,' an honr after ; ' a trifle, a trifle.' " 



Les?er chiefs, living in strongholds, some of which remain to 

 this day, followed suit ; and, moved by less noble instincts by 



hunger, by greed, by bloodthirstiness par* and simple inflicted 

 enormouH injury in thuir expedition*, which often extended far 

 into the limit* of either country. The damage done by thtso 

 freebooters was not confined to the death and destruction 

 which ever marked their advance or retreat ; it was impossible 

 that any sense of security, or that any of those national blessings 

 which are attendant upon it, could hare place while snob things 

 were done ; and each new raid only famished material for 

 new disturbances by arousing in the minds of the spoiled a 

 spirit of revenge and a sort of last for retaliation, which were 

 the fruitful source of bitter troubles to be. There was always 

 war upon the border, which was a nursery for soldiers, nnd 

 where the discipline among those who were nominally in the 

 king's service must have been pretty severe. At least it most 

 have been so in the time of Henry VIII., if we may judge from 

 the order which was sent from the Privy Council to the general 

 commanding in the north, when the Council wanted to punish 

 Alderman Reed, citizen of London, for refusing to subscribe to a 

 forced loan. The alderman was sent down to Sir Ralph Ewer, 

 Henry's general, with a letter in which Sir Ralph was directed, 

 in order to punish the man for resisting an illegal tax, to subject 

 him to " the strong discipline militar of the northern war." 



Though war was constantly going on at the border, it was, 

 unfortunately, not confined to it. Whenever the Plantagenet 

 kings of England had time ; whenever they had no other big foe 

 on hand no Frenchmen, Flemings, or Spaniards to fight ; when- 

 ever they had an exchequer that would bear the cost ; whenever 

 they wanted to divert into a foreign channel activity and energy 

 that would have been troublesome to them at home, they picked 

 a quarrel with the King of Scotland, and invaded his kingdom. 

 Pretexts were never wanting, whether they arose out of inci- 

 dents connected with the border warfare, or whether they had 

 an origin more general and national ; and the war, when under- 

 taken, was always of the bloodiest and most ruinous kind, both 

 to assailant and defender. One pretext there was to which a 

 semblance of right attached, after the treaty made at Falaise in 

 Normandy, in December, 1174, between King William of Scot- 

 land and Henry II. of England, a pretext of which the kings of 

 England always availed themselves when all other excuses failed. 

 The Scottish kings were nominal lords of Cumberland and 

 Northumberland, by virtue of a grant made in Anglo-Saxon 

 | times by the earl of those parts, and for the two counties the 

 | king of England required his royal neighbour to do homage 

 and swear to be his liegeman. Whenever this demand, 

 because made roughly by design, or because it was disputed, 

 was not complied with, the English king declared his vassal 

 contumacious, and led an army into his territory to reduce him 

 to obedience. Sometimes the fortune of war inclined to one 

 side, sometimes to the other ; but the more frequent course was 

 for the English king or his lieutenant to march a certain dis- 

 tance into Scotland, killing, burning, and destroying en route, 

 and then the Scotch having taken to the hills, whither the 

 enemy could not follow them, but from which they could easily 

 annoy and harass the enemy, the English troops would return, 

 with little to compensate them for having gone so far into a 

 poor and nnsubduablo country. Sometimes the Scotch king 

 procured that the English should retreat by conceding the point 

 which by right ho should never have questioned the English 

 king's right to homage for the English honours held by the 

 Scottish king. But thia pretext for invasion was unhappily 

 much strengthened by the disgraceful treaty of Falaise, already 

 mentioned. 



Up to December, 1174, there had never bten a question ef 

 homage for more than the Anglo-Scotch possessions, but in 

 that year Henry II. of England took ample revenge for the 

 injury William the Lion had done him by fomenting his 

 domestic troubles, and by entering into engagements with the 

 King of France adversely to the interests of England. William 

 was captured in a foolhardy combat into which his courage 

 precipitated him at Aln wick, and being brought to Northampton, 

 was kept close prisoner till ho would agree to the terms imposed 

 by Henry. These terms included not only the render of homage 

 for Northumberland and Cumberland, but for the whole of 

 Scotland, over which kingdom Henry was to be acknowledged 

 lord paramount. At York the homage was rendered, so eager 

 was the Scotch king to bo free, so eager was the Scotch nation 

 to see him so. Soon after Henry XL's death, Richard Coeur do 

 Lion renounced the claim which had been wrung from William 



