by Linda Porter
He finished with a flourish aimed at rekindling the ill feeling over Margaret’s legacy, claiming that ‘I care nothing but for misentreating of my sister, that would God she were in England on a condition she cost the Scottish king not a penny.’ Lyon Herald, however, knew Queen Margaret better. He retorted: ‘If your grace would give her your whole realm, she would forsake it to be entreated as she is.’ Henry did not believe him and further insulted James IV by asserting that he had, in effect, been bribed by Louis XII, ‘anointed with the crowns of the sun’, a literal translation of the French gold coin, the soleil d’or.13
So now there could be no backing down on either side. All Henry’s pent-up hostility, his resentment of his sister and her husband, can plainly be seen in these contemptuous words. The English king knew full well that if he died, Margaret would ascend his throne and her husband would become ruler of both Scotland and England. This truth was very raw. For his part, the King of Scots was goaded beyond endurance by his brother-in-law’s posturing and by the claim he made that, as king of England, he was also overlord of Scotland. Henry’s French adventure was the occasion, rather than the root cause, of the deep dislike that had taken hold between them. In truth, they aspired to be players on a wider European stage where both had limited influence. But their quarrel, heightened by personal animosity, would reach its climax far away from the larger conflict, on a hillside in north-eastern England, on a windy and wet autumn afternoon.
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AS PREPARATIONS for the campaign began in earnest, James IV visited Linlithgow to take his leave of Queen Margaret and Prince James. The palace there was one of his finest and had been much improved during his reign. Even today, with its roof long gone and its great hall and once splendid chambers open to the sky, it remains an impressive structure. The beautiful church of St Michael, where James prayed before his departure, stands close by. The queen may well have been nervous. Certainly the words attributed to her – ‘Ye go to fight a mighty people’ – are not implausible but it is unlikely that she brought any major pressure on her husband to desist. After ten years of marriage, she must have known him well enough to realize that he would not change tack merely to assuage her anxieties. We cannot be certain that she knew she was again pregnant when she and James parted, though by the time of the battle of Flodden this would have been confirmed. Perhaps she did remind him that their son, though reportedly ‘a right fair child, and large of his age’, was still less than two years old and that Scotland would be vulnerable if things went badly, but the king’s confidence was at its height. He was assembling a large force, adopting the latest continental military skills and tactics, all backed up with a formidable artillery train. He had no thought of failure. But he had made a will, as did most men going into battle in those days. In it, he named Margaret regent in the event of his demise, a sign of his confidence in her ability. They bade each other farewell and she remained at Linlithgow to await news of her husband’s expected success.
James returned to Edinburgh to supervise arrangements for the campaign. By 19 August 1513, all was ready in the capital. A signal gun was fired to mark the start of the march, followed by the command to move. The line of men moved forward out of Scotland’s capital, dragging twenty pieces of artillery behind them. This ordnance, much of it made of brass, the very latest innovation and much lighter than iron-cast guns like Mons Meg (left behind in Edinburgh), would, the king believed, be crucial to victory. Full of confidence, he took his men south, through Dalkeith and over the Lammermuir Hills, heading for the second mustering point at Ellem Kirk, where they joined another substantial force. Though estimates have varied wildly over the centuries, and cannot be verified because the official records are missing, the Scottish army that combined in Berwickshire was probably between 30,000 and 40,000 strong. But as many as 25 per cent of these men had deserted by the time they engaged the English force in September and although they still outnumbered their opponents, the numerical advantage had lessened. Accompanying James IV were most of the nobility of Scotland and their levies. It was still a feudal system but it produced the nearest thing to a national army that Scotland had seen.
The king did not appoint a second-in-command and he has been criticized for this omission. In reality, it did not sit well with his own, or his people’s, view of himself as a military leader and might have led to ill feeling among the Scottish lords who had answered their sovereign’s call because he was a powerful king and because England was the traditional enemy, but who would not necessarily have taken kindly to any one of them being singled out above the others. The most important of the aristocrats who rode with James in the Flodden campaign were the Border chieftain Lord Alexander Hume; the northern magnate Alexander Gordon, the earl of Huntly; Matthew Stewart, the earl of Lennox; Archibald Campbell, the earl of Argyll and Adam Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell (Patrick Hepburn’s son). All these men wielded tremendous local power and influence in the regions of Scotland. But when it came to assigning them roles in the order of battle itself their rivalries could yet turn out to be counterproductive. The presence of a European commander might have alleviated some of these tensions and given James a more detached perspective but his foreign advisers were gone with the fleet across to France. He had followed their training methods and military advice, believing that this would give him the advantage of the newest techniques, but how effectively these could be put into practice remained to be seen. But though they may have disliked one another, the personal bravery of his nobility and the vast majority of their men was never in doubt.
In persistently damp weather, the Scottish host crossed the river Tweed, the border with England, at Coldstream on 22 August, making for the bishop of Durham’s fortress at Norham. James had been this way before and knew the country. Norham Castle itself had been the scene of many attacks over the centuries and though it was probably lightly manned at this time, its Constable, John Ainslow, held out for six days of heavy barrage by Scottish guns before surrendering on 29 August. James won his first victory of the campaign and as his soldiers plundered the supplies and costly furnishings of Norham, he turned his thoughts to further successes. There was, as yet, no sign of an opposing English force, and the Scots were able to take the castles of Etal and Wark easily. James moved on to Ford Castle, defended by Lady Elizabeth Heron, whose husband was being held hostage in Scotland for the murder of the Scottish warden of the East Marches, Sir Robert Ker, by a bastard relative. Lady Elizabeth surrendered the castle to the Scottish king on 1 September and for the next four days he made it his headquarters. The subsequent scurrilous tales of James’s dalliance with Lady Heron, and of a similar liaison involving her daughter and James’s son, the archbishop of St Andrews, have no contemporary corroboration. James was certainly a womanizer but we have no way of knowing how tempting Lady Heron actually was and, besides, James had more serious preoccupations while he waited at Ford Castle. His own troops were growing tired and increasingly hungry, worn down by the relentless rain and strong winds, and he was obliged to send back to Edinburgh for supplies of ammunition and new wheels for his guns as well as fresh oxen to pull them. And now he had to deal with a much greater threat than relatively defenceless Border castles. The English army, commanded by the earl of Surrey, the man who had brought him his bride ten years earlier, was fast approaching.
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SURREY WAS, at first, devastated to have been left behind in England while almost every other commander of note accompanied Henry VIII across the Channel to wage war on Louis XII. Now seventy years old, his entire life had been one of military service and it seemed he was to be denied a brilliant finale in France. Being charged with the defence of northern England was insufficient compensation and early reports of the size and equipment of the Scottish army were scarcely encouraging. The earl was at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire when the Scottish host was being assembled but he had begun his own preparations already. As Commander of the North, he was responsible for organizing the levies of m
en and mobilizing the English lords and gentry who would form the backbone of his troops. When he set off for northern England he had already arranged for his artillery to be sent up from London to Durham. A further source of assistance was likely to be the English fleet once it returned from escorting Henry VIII to France. Surrey’s elder son, also called Thomas, was Lord Admiral and could be counted on to provide well-trained men and sailors.14
The government of England had been left in the hands of Queen Katherine, advised by a council led by the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham. Officially, Surrey answered to Katherine, who took a keen interest in the preparations and was ready to lead a second army up from the south in person if necessary. The queen’s warlike demeanour may have been a conscious copy of her mother, Isabella of Castile’s, militant spirit but her role in the war of 1513 has probably been overemphasized. In the event, she never got further than Buckinghamshire with her troops.
On 25 August, word was brought to Surrey that the invading Scottish host had crossed the Tweed into Northumberland. The next day, having sent out a signal for the northern levies to be amassed, he moved to York, where the Lord Mayor called out the city’s defenders and provided him with a generous war chest of over £4 million, in today’s money, to fund his expenses. In atrocious weather, the earl reached Durham on 29 August. He stayed overnight and when he left for Newcastle he took with him the banner of St Cuthbert, kept in the city’s cathedral and regarded with awe as a surety of victory since it had been used in the great defeat of the Scots in 1138. Here was a move clearly intended to inspire and unite the English forces.
When Surrey got to Newcastle the next day, he found the northern commanders waiting for him as arranged: Lord Dacre, with his elite force of cavalry well used to fighting in the Borders, Sir William Bulmer, who had already given Lord Hume a bloody nose when the latter ill-advisedly undertook a raid of his own into England before James IV had even left Edinburgh, and Sir Marmaduke Constable. The weather remained so bad, with gale-force winds, that Surrey feared for the fate of his son, the admiral, still at sea. Thomas Howard managed to ride out the storm and eventually joined his father on 4 September, greatly raising Surrey’s spirits.
He had moved out of Newcastle the previous day, realizing that he could wait no longer. When he raised his standard at the village of Bolton-in-Glendale, near Alnwick in Northumberland, he may have had as many as twenty-six thousand men, brought together from across the shires of northern England. As with the Scottish host, we cannot be certain of the figures, but Surrey was definitely outnumbered. He was not, however, outwitted. And he knew that he must make some quick decisions if he was to gain the initiative.
The English war council reviewed their options on 4 September. It was decided that their best hope lay in engaging the Scots while the English forces were still fresh. There were few supplies to be found in the bleak countryside and rations would be running out by 9 September. Better, then, to challenge James to fight by that date. It was a risky strategy but it held the attraction that, at the very worst, it would inflict considerable inconvenience and some losses on the invaders. Surrey would have been content with harassing his opponent and causing James to withdraw. He believed he could do this without suffering outright defeat, even if he could scarcely anticipate full-scale victory. Nor would he put himself at risk. He would command the rearguard. James IV, however, was determined to lead from the front.
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SURREY HAD the advantage of knowing the King of Scots already. During his time in Scotland, they had seen much of each other (too much, it will be recalled, for Margaret Tudor’s liking) and the earl had the measure of James. He believed he would not refuse a challenge. This was issued by Surrey’s Herald, Rouge Croix, who went to Ford Castle on 5 September to deliver it to James. Surrey did not yet know that the Scottish king had already moved his army across the river Till, a tributary of the Tweed, to take up a commanding position on Flodden Hill and James was not about to reveal this by letting the English herald return immediately with such crucial strategic information. Rouge Croix remained with the Scots and Islay Herald, his Scottish counterpart, was detained by the English.
James could not let Surrey’s challenge, and the accusation that he had ‘unnaturally, against all reason and conscience … entered and invaded this his brother’s realm of England, and done great hurt to the same, in casting down castles, towers and houses, burning, spoiling and destroying of the same, and cruelly murdering the king of England his brother’s subjects’ go unanswered.15 He was further angered by a much more strongly worded missive from the younger Thomas Howard, taunting him that the Scottish navy had fled before his ships and asserting that he would take no Scottish nobles, except for the king himself, as prisoner when battle was joined. This provocative claim ran counter to accepted forms of diplomacy at the time and would have caused great indignation among the Scots.16
Surrey’s challenge named Friday, 9 September 1513 as the proposed date of battle. James, however, was not minded to budge from a nigh impregnable position on Flodden Hill. At this point he and his advisers may well have considered the possibility that they did not need to fight at all. So they stayed put and waited for Surrey’s next move. It was not long in coming. Frustrated by James’s unresponsiveness to his challenge, Surrey and his commanders decided to play on the King of Scots’ sense of honour, one of the key aspects of his character. They would lure him off Flodden by suggesting that his behaviour, his refusal to meet Surrey’s challenge, was unchivalrous. James was furious. ‘Show to the Earl of Surrey,’ came the reply, delivered by one of his gentlemen, ‘that it beseemeth him not, being an Earl, so largely to attempt a great prince. His grace will take and hold his ground at his own pleasure and not at the assigning of the Earl of Surrey.’ He remained true to his word, forcing Surrey to take the initiative. But if he thought the earl would be cowed, he was wrong. Surrey could not face the prospect of withdrawal and Henry VIII’s displeasure. In the end, it was he who brought matters to a head. On 8 September, the day before the suggested date of battle, he made an inspired move. Starting at noon, he took his entire army across to the eastern bank of the Till and marched north and west through the ceaseless rain, arriving the following afternoon at the foot of Branxton Hill. Hidden by the terrain from the sight of the Scottish army, Surrey had outflanked them and cut off their retreat to Edinburgh. James would now be compelled to fight.
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THE BATTLE which ensued actually took place on the slopes of Branxton Hill and contemporaries often referred to it by that name. Over the centuries, it became known by the name of James IV’s first encampment at Flodden. Today it is peaceful farmland, in a remote and beautiful corner of England, about four miles from the town of Coldstream and an hour and a half’s drive from Edinburgh. It has been claimed that the battlefield is one of the best preserved of its period in Europe.* The position of the various English and Scottish divisions, or ‘battles’, as each individual unit was then known, are clearly shown on markers that explain the course of the fighting. On a clear day it seems a tranquil spot, with little trace of the terrible events that took place there five hundred years ago.
But on the afternoon of 9 September 1513 the weather was atrocious, as it had been for weeks, and the hillside was blanketed in low, swirling cloud and smoke from the fires set when the Scots had abandoned their first camp, all blown about by a blustery wind as the rain continued to fall. Atop Branxton Ridge was the entire Scottish army, having swiftly moved the mile and a half from Flodden Hill to meet Surrey’s threat. Though the ground was not of James IV’s original choosing, his larger numbers and commanding position should have given him the advantage. His guns had been hurriedly dragged over the wet ground and now stood ready to fire at his command. The Scots were compelled to react quickly to Surrey’s bold seizing of the initiative but they did not lack confidence as they peered downhill at the smaller English force.
At the Scottish army’s centre, commanding the la
rgest division, was the king himself. There would be no place in the rearguard for James Stewart. The counsel of some of his commanders that, for the sake of his kingdom, he should stay back until the course of the fighting became clear, was angrily dismissed. James believed that he must be visible to his soldiers and he may have had some concerns about the reliability of the Highland and Border troops. There had been a significant number of desertions after the fall of Norham Castle. His presence would unite and, he hoped, inspire the entire Scottish force. More fundamentally, his character and the principles by which he had always lived, the very fabric of his belief in kingship, would not allow him to skulk in the rear. He believed that his honour would be forever diminished if he did not enter the combat with his troops. Surrey had read him well.
James and his commanders drew up their troops in a diamond formation, ‘four up and one in reserve, with each of the forward units just a bowshot distance from its neighbour’. On the left were ten thousand men commanded by Lord Hume and the earl of Huntly, a combined force of Highlanders and Borderers, with the latter more numerous. In the left centre three earls, Errol, Crawford and Montrose, commanded seven thousand men from central Scotland and the Lowlands. The main ‘battle’, fifteen thousand strong, was to their right and led by James IV himself, with the royal household troops at their core, fighting under the banners of St Andrew and St Margaret. To the king’s right were five thousand men commanded by Argyll and Lennox, Highlanders and their chieftains, and a small group of Frenchmen. In reserve, and originally on the extreme right but eventually moved behind the king, were five thousand men from the Lowlands and Borders led by the earl of Bothwell.17 It was as impressive an array of unity behind their sovereign as Scotland would ever see.