the Scottish right wing, consisting of undisciplined Highlanders, commanded by Lennox and Argyle, was unable to sustain the charge of Sir Edward Stanley, and especially the severe execution of the Lancashire archers. The King and Surrey, who commanded the respective centres of their armies, were meanwhile engaged in close and dubious conflict. James, surrounded by the flower of his kingdom, and impatient of the galling discharge of arrows, supported also by his reserve under Bothwell, charged with such fury, that the standard of Surrey was in danger. At that critical moment, Stanley, who had routed the left wing of the Scottish, pursued his career of victory, and arrived on the right flank, and in the rear of James's division, which, throwing itself into a circle, disputed the battle till night came on. Surrey then drew back his forces; for the Scottish centre not having been broken, and their left wing being victorious, he yet doubted the event of the field. The Scottish army, however, felt their loss, and abandoned the field of bat tle in disorder, before dawn. They lost, perhaps, from eight to ten thousand men, but that included the very prime of their nobility, gentry, and even clergy. Scarce a family of eminence but has an ancestor killed at Flodden; and there is no pro vince in Scotland, even at this day, where the battle is mentioned without a sensation of terror and sorrow. The English lost also a great number of men, perhaps within one-third of the vanquished, but they were of inferior note.-See the only distinct detail of the field of Flodden in PINKERTON's History, Book XI.; all former accounts being full of blunder and in consistency

The spot, from which Clara views the battle, must be supposed to have been on a hillock commanding the rear of the English right wing, which was defeated, and in which conflict Marmion is supposed to have fallen.

Note XVI.

-Brian Tunstall, stainless knight.—P. 352.

Sir Brian Tunstall, called, in the romantic language of the time, Tunstall the Undefiled, was one of the few Englishmen of rank slain at Flodden. He figures in the ancient English poem, to which I may safely refer my reader; as an edition, with full explanatory notes, is about to be published by my friend Mr. Henry Weber. Tunstall, perhaps, derived his epithet of undefiled from his white armour and banner, the latter bearing a white cock about to crow, as well as from his unstained loyalty and knightly faith. His place of residence was Thurland Castle.

Note XVII.

View not that corpse mistrustfully,

Defaced and mangled though it be ;

Nor to yon Border castle high

Look northward with upbraiding eye.-Pp. 370, 371.

There can be no doubt that King James fell in the battle of Flodden. He was killed, says the curious French Gazette, within a lance's length of the Earl of Surrey; and the same account adds, that none of his division were made prisoners,

though many were killed; a circumstance. that testifies the desperation of their resistance. The Scottish historians record *many of the idle reports which passed among the vulgar of their day. Home was accused, by the popular voice, not only of failing to support the king, but even of having carried him out of the field, and murdered him. And this tale was revived in my remembrance, by an unauthenticated story of a skeleton, wrapped in a bull's hide, and surrounded with an iron chain, said to have been found in the well of Home Castle: for which, on inquiry, I could never find any better authority, than the sexton of the parish having said, that, if the well were cleaned out, he would not be surprised at such a discovery. Home was the chamberlain of the king, and his prime favourite; he had much to lose (in fact did lose all) in consequence of James's death, and nothing earthly to gain by that event: but the retreat, or inactivity of the left wing, which he commanded, after defeating Sir Edmund Howard; and even the circumstance of his returning unhurt, and loaded with spoil, from so fatal a conflict, rendered the propagation of any calumny against him easy and acceptable. Other reports gave a still more romantic turn to the king's fate, and averred, that James, weary of greatness after the carnage among his nobles, had gone on a pilgrimage to merit absolution for the death of his father, and the breach of his oath of amity to Henry. In particular, it was objected to the English, that they could never shew the token of the iron belt; which, however, he was likely enough to have laid aside on the day of battle, as encumbering his personal exer

tions. They produce a better evidence, the monarch's sword and dagger, which are still preserved in the Herald's College in London. Stowe has recorded a degrading story of the disgrace with which the remains of the unfortunate monarch were treated in his time. An unhewn column marks the spot where James fell, still called the King's Stone.

Note XVIII.

-fanatic Brook

The fair cathedral stormed and took.-P. 372.

This storm of Lichfield cathedral, which had been garrisoned on the part of the king, took place in the great civil war. Lord Brook, who, with Sir John Gill, commanded the assailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the visor of his hel met. The royalists remarked, that he was killed by a shot fired from St. Chad's Cathedral, and upon St. Chad's day, and received his death-wound in the very eye with which, he had said, he hoped to see the ruin of all the cathedrals in England. The magnificent church in question suffered cruelly upon this, and other occasions; the principal spire being ruined by the fire of the besiegers.

Upon revising the Poem, it seems proper to mention the following particulars :—

The lines in page 128,

Whose doom contending neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought,

have been unconsciously borrowed from a passage in Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton. The ballad of Lochinvar, p. 258, is in a very slight degree founded on a ballad called “Katharine Janfarie,” which may be found in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."

J. M'CREERY, Printer, Black-Horse-Court, London.

THE END.