NORTHUMBERLAND 



The great steep wall of the Cheviot, rising here to 

 two thousand seven hundred feet, beautifully over- 

 hangs the flat vale of the meandering Till, and but a 

 mill or so distant from its course. The rugged hill 

 of Homildon is the first buttress of the range, rock- 

 ribbed and heath-crowned, where the long-bow 

 achieved probably the greatest triumph in its whole 

 history ; for here seventeen hundred trained archers, 

 mainly Welsh mercenaries under Hotspur, utterly 

 paralysed, disorganised, and finally routed a brave 

 Scottish army of ten thousand men, by their terrible 

 and disciplined shooting. In the meadows, too, by 

 the Till under Wooler lay the English army the night 

 before the eve of Flodden, soaked to the skin and out 

 of provisions. High above the river, seven miles to 

 the northward, the ridge of Flodden rears its fir- 

 crowned head, easily visible from here, as were the 

 camp-fires and tents of the Scottish army on its summit 

 to the victors of that immortal fight. And as we travel 

 down stream towards it for three miles, the Glen comes 

 winding in beside the wide woods of Ewart, planted 

 by Count Horace St. Paul, who, banished in youth for 

 killing a man in a duel, went from its peel tower manor- 

 house to achieve fame as a soldier and diplomatist in the 

 Austrian service, eventually returning to live and die 

 under its roof about a century ago. And lower down 

 still, where the river growing deeper and slower earned 

 from Scott its title of the ' Sullen Till,' we have Ford 

 castle, where King James slept before the battle of 

 Flodden, and where Surrey on the morning of the fight 

 crossed the swollen ford. And then, leaving on our 

 left the long slope of Branxton hill on which eighty 

 x 321 



