408 The Pile as a Scottish Weapon. By James Hardy. 



" With Drury came the old bands of Berwick, the scarred veterans of the 

 English wars — men inured to toil, and the stern duty of garrisoning a 

 frontier town in the midst of a country subject to the raids and forays of 

 the fierce mosstroopers of the Scottish border. All old and thorough 

 soldiers they were, skilful in the use of the pike, and harquebuss, and 

 accustomed to the weight of their armour." [Grant's Life of Kirkaldy of 

 Grange, p. 331]. Crawfurd (Memoirs, p. 265), says the numbers were " 500 

 musqueteers and 140 pikes." — Tytler says this army consisted of " 1200 

 foot and 400 horse." (Hist. Scot! in., p. 328 : edition 1864). 



Entering on the period of the great civil war, when Charles I. 

 arrived in Edinburgh 1633, pikes figure in the pageantry dis- 

 played on the 1 5th of June to welcome the king. 



" As his majestie is going up the Over Bow, thair came ane brave 

 company of tonnes soldiouris, all cled in white satein doubletis, blak veluot 

 breikis, and silk stokingis, with hatis, fedderis, scarfis, banrlis, and the rest 

 correspondent. Thir gallantis had dayntie moscates, pikis, and gilded 

 partisanis and snche like, who gairdit his majestie, haveing the partisanis 

 narrest to him fra place to place while he cam to the Abbay.'" (Spalding's 

 Memorialls, i-, p. 34.) 



On the 20th June, in the Riding of the Parliament, '"that none micht 

 hynder the Kyngis passage thair wes, within thir ravellis, ane strong 

 garde of the townsmen with pikis, partisanis, and moscattes, to hold of 

 the people, and with all the kings own English foot gaird, with partisanis 

 in their handis, wes still about his persone, ryning and partisanis in their 

 handis." (Ibid. p. 38.) 



In a few years a more stern use was to be made of pikes for 

 approaching warfare. In Juty 1638, an alarm arose that the 

 king intended to land forces on the west coast of Scotland, and in 

 Fife or Lothian, and that commissioners had been appointed to 

 provide 25 thousand swords, with a proportionable number of 

 pikes and musket for this enterprise. (Stevenson's Hist, of 

 Church, p. 236). 



In the county of Argyle, at this period (1638), among the 

 articles prepared by the barons and gentlemen, provision was to 

 be made " of guns, bows, swords, targes ; and 6 or 700 pikes to 

 be distributed among the gentlemen of the shires." (Cosmo Innes's 

 Sketches of Early Scotch History, p. 383). 



In 1638, the Earl of Traquair, the treasurer, had caused 60 

 barrels of powder, some hundreds of pikes, and several chests 

 full of muskets and matches, intended to supply the castle of 

 Edinburgh, and landed from a ship belonging to Leith, to be laid 

 up in the house of Dalkeith; but in 1639, the reformers scaled 

 the castle, at that time one of the king's houses, and seized the 

 whole of this ammunition. (Stevenson's Hist. pp. 225, 361). 



