428 Notes on Branxkolmt. By W. Eliott Lockhart. 



badges round their arms, and letters broidered on their caps, so 

 that, as they said, they might better know their fellows ; but of 

 which, as Patten suspected, the intention was that in conflict they 

 might know friends from foes, and spare each other. 1 On an 

 emergency they would even assume the red crosses, while at the 

 battle of Ancrum Moor they threw them away and joined their 

 own countrymen. 2 



On the other hand their courage was undoubted, and is borne 

 witness to by the Earl of Surrey, who, writing to Wolsey from 

 Berwick, 27th Sept. 1523, after giving an account of the storming 

 of Jedburgh, goes on to state : — 



" I assure your grace I found the Scottes, at this tyme, the boldest men, 

 and the hotest, that ever I sawe any nation, and all the jorney upon all 

 parts of th' armye, kept us with soo contynual skyrmyske, that I never 

 sawe the like. If they might assemble xlM. as good men as I now sawe 

 xvC. or ijM., it wold bee a harde encountre to mete theym." 3 



Their good faith was also proverbial, and on no account would 

 they betray any one who trusted them. No stronger evidence 

 could, be given of this than by Eobert Constable, himself a spy, 

 who in writing to Sir Ealph Sadler from Newcastle, 12th Jan. 

 1570, states: — 



" I promised to get them ij. gnidis that would not care to steale, and yet 

 they would not bewray any man that trusts in them for all the gold in 

 Scotland or France. They are my guidis and outlaws, and would not 

 bewray me — they might get their pardons and cause me to be hanged, but 

 I have tried them ere this." And further on, in the same letter, in 

 describing his having spent a night with the " Laird of Bedrowll," where, 

 finding there were none of them there of any name that held him in deadly 

 feud, he sat down and played for " hard heads " with them ; " where I hard 

 vox populi that the L. Regent would not, for his own honor nor for th'onor 

 of his country, deliver thearls (Northumberland and Westmoreland) if he 

 had them both, unlest it were to have the Quene delivered to him, and if he 

 would agre to make that change, the borderers wold stert up in his contrary 

 and reave both the Quene and the lords from him, for the like shame was 

 never done in Scotland, and that he durst better eate his own luggs then 

 come again to seke Farneherst, if he did he should be fought with ere he 

 came over Soutray Edge. Hector of Tharlows' hedd was wished to have 

 been eaten amongs us at supper." 1 



1 Dalyell's Fragments. Patten, Acct. of Somerset's Exped. 1547, p. 76. 



" Border Antiquities, Int. Ixxxvi-vii. •» 



3 Cotton, MSS. Caligula, B. n., f. 29 (verified by Mr Eobert K. Douglas, 

 British Museum) ; also Ellis' Letters, i., p. 214-8. This letter is given in 

 full in Border Minstrelsy, App. i. ; also quoted in Border Antiquities, Int. 

 Ixiv. : but in both cases the reference to the Calig. is erroneous. 



* Sadler's State Papers, vol. n.. p. 380-9. 



