REiPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1902 2*77 



Next day, the fateful day of battle, he divided his army into 

 two portions and sent one, the vanguard, under the command 

 of his son the Admiral by a great circuit to cross the Till 

 at Twizel Bridge, and thus arriving at Cornhill to interpose 

 themselves between James and Scotland, to menace his lines of 

 communication, and perhaps to ravage the fruitful Merse. 



Meanwhile old Surrey himself with the rest of his army 

 marched down the hill to Ford, crossed the river by one of 

 the fords which have given that place its name, and, not 

 "without difficulty, made their way through the expanse of 

 pool, marsh, and streamlet, which then lay between Crookham 

 and Pallinsburn. This division of Surrey's army was surely 

 a somewhat dangerous manoeuvre. A master of the art of 

 war, such as Napoleon, would probably have been delighted 

 to behold it. He would have struck right and left at the 

 Earl and the Admiral ere they had effected their junction, 

 and probably annihilated them both. With James IV., 

 however, for an antagonist there was no such risk ; and in 

 justice to the unfortunate king we should remember that 

 Galileo had not yet invented his "optic glass," and that 

 consequently a general had to trust to his own unaided vision 

 as to the movements of his opponents, and that moreover 

 there was constant rain falling, which obscured the air and 

 made the work of scouting along the slippery banks of the 

 swollen Till no easy task. 



Well : the junction was effected, the marsh safely crossed, 

 and by four o'clock in the afternoon the two armies were 

 joined in deadly encounter. King James, seeing the English 

 host thus interposed between him and his kingdom, was forced 

 to give up his vantage ground on Flodden Hill. He set fire 

 to the rubbish which had accumulated during his stay on 

 the hill, and the smoke of this burning, driven northward 

 by a strong south wind, is said to have partially hidden his 

 movements from his adversaries. It is not easy to locate the 

 scene of the battle very precisely from the accounts of the 

 chroniclers, none of whom seem to have been personally 

 acquainted with the ground. In front of Flodden Hill, between 

 it and the river Till, rises another hill almost equally high 

 (generally called Branxton Hill) which must have played an 

 important part in the movements of the troops, but of which 



