Anniversary Address. 7 



burgesses and Forest bowmen as they set out for the king's 

 army on the Border ; followed ere long by the wail of 

 women for husbands, sons, and fathers lymg stiff on the 

 field of Flodden. Twenty years later, up rides the Queen- 

 Dowager with 60 horsemen and 24 foot runners to hold 

 court in her dowry manor of Newark ; but, sister of proud 

 King Henry though she be, she is daunted by Buccleuch, 

 and rides back to Edinburgh in a royal rage. Then comes 

 a terrible time of fire and rapine, when Kers join with the 

 English to plunder and destro}-, the town of Selkirk being 

 twice burned in one year. 



In the autumn of 1566, a spectator on this same 

 Linglee Hill might have seen a lady with a great retinue 

 cross the Ettrick a little lower down, and disappear 

 over the bank in the direction of Lindean. It was the 

 infatuated, hapless Mary on her way to Both well, lying 

 wounded at Hermitage. What need to describe the forays 

 and counter-forays, the musters of Joyal men and of 

 rebels, visible from our coign of vantage ? Yet that must 

 have been a fine spectacle — the banished lords and their 

 men, to the number of 7000, leaving Selkirk on their 

 victorious march to Stirling. Pictures crowd upon the 

 inner eye. One sees the fearless son-in-law of him " who 

 never feared the face of man" at his ungrateful task, 

 labouring to win the people from the toils of Papacy, and 

 ultimately forced to leave the town, his horse bleeding froni 

 wounds inflicted by bigots of the ancient faith. Montrose's 

 jaded squadrons camp at our very feet ; behind us Leslie's 

 stout dragoons creep, hidden in the morning mist, to fall on 

 their unwary foes. We see the Roj'alist leader's mad rush 

 to the battlefield, glow to watch his last despairing charge, 

 and marvel to see him cut his way to open country. Psalms 

 of the Covenanters rise from hollows in the hill close beside 

 us. Handsome Claverhouse urges his hell-bred horse up 

 the steep cleughs and hills. Anon, it is the turn of the 

 other side, and Boston, of tender heart, yet unrelenting 

 vigour, persecutes Papists in their turn. There is but a 

 hint of the '15 visible from our stance ; but in the '45 a 



