should do the boldest and most hazardous actions.-Vide "Tales of a Grandfather" (Scotland), vol. I. chap. ix. They were both with Bruce at Bannockburn (1314). On the death of Bruce his son David II. being only four years old, Randolph was Regent of Scotland: in this capacity Randolph was famed for the severity of his justice. He died at Musselburgh. His death was so great a loss to the Scottish nation (as is shown by the disturbances which followed it), that it was said that he had been poisoned by the English; but for this there is no foundation.

xx. 14. Wallace wight.] Cf. supra, III. xxv. 19, note.

15. Bruce.] Cf. supra, V. xvi, 7.

19. Flodden had been Bannockbourne,]-i. e., Flodden would, like Bannockbourne, have been a victory for the Scotch instead of the English. Bannockburn is the name of a village in Scotland, about two miles south-east of Stirling, on the River Bannock, near which a battle was fought on Monday, June 24, 1314, between the English forces under Edward II., amounting, it is said, to 100,000 men, and the Scotch troops under Robert Bruce, consisting of only 30,000 men. The Scotch won a very decisive victory, and thereby the independènce of Scotland was finally secured. The loss of the English was nearly as great as the number of the Scotch troops before the battle.

xxii. 12. Leat.] A little stream in Berwickshire, which joins the Tweed a very short distance above Coldstream. (Does the Leat flow in an artificial channel? Word so used in Devon. Cf. lead.)

28. Wet unharmed.] Cf. the account given in Stanley's "Memorials of Canterbury" of the Battle of Cressy, where the strings of the Italian bowmen "had been so wet by the rain that they could not draw them," and the English gained the battle chiefly through having "kept their bows in cases during the storm" (p. 136).

xxiv. 6.] "The English army advanced in four divisions. On the right, which first engaged, were the sons of Earl Surrey-namely, Thomas Howard, the Admiral of England; and Sir Edmund Howard, the KnightMarshal of the army. Their divisions were separated from each other; but, at the request of Sir Edmund, his brother's battalion was drawn very near to his own. The centre was commanded by Surrey in person; the left wing by Sir Edward Stanley, with the men of Lancashire and of the palatinate of Chester. Lord Dacre, with a large body of horse, formed a reserve."-S.

8. Brian Tunstall, stainless knight.] Of Thurland Castle, one of the few Englishmen of rank who fell at Flodden. He seems to have "derived his epithet 'the 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."-S.

xxv. 11. Fired his tent.] Probably in order to prevent the camp falling into the hands of the enemy.

19. Cf. the official account, given in the gazette of the battle, which will be found in Pinkerton's History (vol. ii. p. 456): "Les quelz Escossois descendirent la montaigne en bonne ordre en la manière que marchent les Allemands, sans parler, ne faire aucun bruit."

xxvi. 6. Sea-mew.] A sea-fowl, a gull. The appearance of these birds, called by sailors "Mother Carey's chickens," is regarded by them as the warning of an impending storm.

24. Highlandman.] In some editions, Badenoch-man. Badenoch, a district in the south-west of Inverness-shire, so called from a word meaning bushy, as it was, and still is in parts, a rough uncultivated mountainous tract. Robert II. gave it to his son Alexander, who was known as the Wolf of Badenoch.

26. The Scotch commanders were on the right wing, the Earls of Argyle and Lennox; on the left, the Earls of Huntly and Home. The left wing was chiefly composed of undisciplined Highlanders, whilst Home's men were principally Borderers.

xxix. 4. Hearts of hare!]-i.e. timid. Cf. Homer's "Iliad,” i. 225. Cf. "Harold Harefoot."

xxxii. 9. Cf. II. xi. 5.

xxxiii. 7-12. King Charles, the Great, usually called Charlemagne. It is better, however, to translate the name than to preserve the French form of it; for he was more of a Teuton than a Frenchman, reigning over France only as a conqueror. Cf. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire," chap. v. Gibbon (chap. xlix., which see) remarks that of all the princes who have been called great, "Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favour the title has been indissolubly blended with his name." That he deserved the title no one can deny, not only from the extent of his dominions, stretching from the Elbe to the Ebro, but from the variety and universality of his genius. (Cf. Hallam's "Middle Ages," chap. i. p. 12.) His titles to greatness are :-(1) as a conqueror; (2) as a legislator; (3) as the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, which he built on the pattern of the old Roman Empire of the West, and which, amidst various changes, lasted until the beginning of the present century. He was crowned, in A.D. 800, by Pope Leo III.

According to the Spanish romances, King Charles fell in this struggle with the Saracens. History tells us that he died at his capital, Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), on January 28, A.D. 814, and was buried in the cathedral which he had built there. Milton, however, followed the romances ("Paradise Lost," I. 386):

"When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabia."

An account of this battle will be found in Lockhart's "Spanish Ballads," the " March of Bernardo del Carpio." Alfonso the Chaste had no son. He therefore invited Charles into Spain, proposing the succession to the crown as the price of the alliance. But Bernardo, the

illegitimate son of the Queen, stirred up the nobility to resist this proposal. Then Alfonso repented; and when Charles came to expel the Moors from Spain, he found that the conscientious Alfonso had banded himself with the infidels against him. As his army was passing through the Pyrenees, his rearguard was attacked in the pass of Roncesvalles, or Roncevaux, when Charles was defeated, and (according to the Spanish romances) slain, with many of his followers-amongst others, Rowland and Olivier.

Rowland, Roland, Rutland, or Orlando, the Paladin (vide Gloss.), possessed a magic horn, which could be heard thirty leagues distant, but which he refused to wind when attacked, until all his companions were slain, although King Charles was still within hearing, and might have rescued him. Roland is frequently celebrated in the early French romances, one of the earliest and best known of which, the "Chanson de Roland," relates this story. In the Augustinian Abbey of Roncevaille, the monks still show memorials of the illustrious Paladin.

On this action Gibbon remarks, in a note, that "the Spaniards are too proud of a victory which history ascribes to the Gascons, and romance to the Saracens ": whereupon Dean Milman adds: "In fact, it was a sudden onset of the Gascons, assisted by the Basque mountaineers, and possibly a few Navarrese."

Fontarabia, or Fuenterrabia, is a very ancient Spanish town on the mouth of the Bidassoa, once the boundary between Spain and France. It is in the province of Guipuzcoa, one of the three Basque or northern provinces of Spain.

Xxxv. 5. The French gazette which gives an account of this battle says that King James was killed within a lance's length of the Earl of Surrey. The Scotch peasantry, however, long refused to believe that he was dead. They expected his return to Scotland, as the Welsh expected the reappearance of Arthur, and the French peasantry of Napoleon. The Earl of Home was accused not only of failing to support the King on the battlefield, but of having conveyed him to his own Border castle, and there murdered him. Others said that James had gone upon a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in order to expiate his conduct towards his father, and the breach of his oath with Henry. It was objected also that the English could not show the belt which he always wore; they can, however, show his sword and dagger, which are still preserved in the Heralds' College in London. Moreover, his body was recognised on the field of battle, embalmed, and conveyed to the Monastery of Sheen, in Surrey, where Stow the historian afterwards saw it flung into a lumber-room.-Vide "Tales of a Grandfather" (Scotland), chap. xxiv.

xxxvi. 3. Lichfield Cathedral and thirty-one churches in the midland counties are dedicated to St. Chad. On Lichfield Cathedral, cf. Hawthorne's "Our Old Home," chap. v.

xxxvi. 8, 9. During the civil wars of the 17th century the Close of

Lichfield sustained no less than three sieges, alternately from Puritans and Cavaliers. "This storm of Lichfield, 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 musketball through the vizor of his helmet," by a gentleman named Dyott, who, from a battlement of one of the cathedral towers, saw his lordship directing a battery on the east gate of the close. "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." He had vowed the destruction of this hateful temple of episcopacy, and prayed for some especial token of God's favour upon his attempt. He had the token, said the Royalists, but not as he anticipated. "This magnificent church suffered cruelly upon this and other occasions, the principal spire being ruined by the fire of the besiegers."-S.

10. Ceadda, or Chad, was the first Bishop of Lichfield. He had been a pupil of St. Aidan, at Lindisfarne. He was consecrated to the see of York, but resigned it shortly afterwards, because Wilfrid had by some mistake been also consecrated to it. He then went to live near the village of Lichfield, where his fame soon became widely extended. It was there that he accomplished the conversion of Wulfhere, King of Mercia, a determined pagan and persecutor of the Christians. The legend runs that St. Chad converted him by the strange miracle of hanging a cloak on a sunbeam. When the great see of Mercia was divided into five separate sees, the hermit Chad was made the first Bishop of Lichfield. He died of the plague three years later.

21. Ettrick woods,] or Ettrick Forest. A beautiful pastoral district in the county of Selkirk in Scotland, called Ettrick, because watered by the River Ettrick and its tributary the Yarrow; and Forest, because it once formed part of the great Caledonian Forest. Although now it is almost entirely divested of trees, it retains its name. Ettrick is also the name of a parish and village near the source of the River Ettrick, which gave a name to James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd.

The district (vide next note) lost a great many inhabitants at Flodden, and has since been still more depopulated.

Cf. Introduction to Second Canto (in this edition omitted) :

xxxvi. 23.

"The scenes are desert now, and bare,

Where flourished once a forest fair."

"One of those flowers, whom plaintive lay
In Scotland mourns as 'wede away.'
993

The lay to which allusion is made is called "The Flowers of the Forest," and is given by Sir Walter Scott in his "Border Minstrelsy" (vol. iii. p. 333), with some account of the poem, the authorship being assigned to a lady, whose name Mr. Palgrave ("Golden Treasury," p. 118) gives as Jane Elliott :

"I've heard them lilting, at the ewe milking,

Lasses a' lilting before dawn of day;

But now they are moaning, on ilka green loaning;
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae."

And later, referring to Flodden Field :

"Dool and wae for the order, sent our lads to the Border!
The English, for once, by guile won the day:

The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay."

Sir Walter says that the first and fourth lines of the first stanza are ancient. The poem is due "to the remembrance of the fatal battle of Flodden, in the calamities accompanying which the inhabitants of Ettrick Forest suffered a distinguished share, and to the present solitary and desolate appearance of the country."

xxxviii. 9. Hollinshed or Hall.] English chroniclers, who lived about half a century after Flodden. We know very little about the early or private life of Raphael Holinshed (usually spelt with one 1). He was editor and chief author of a series of chronicles which go under his name. His share of the work has been reprinted in recent times. Edward Hall, an English lawyer and historian, but apparently of foreign extraction; educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge; serjeantat-law, of Gray's Inn. His chronicle, called "The Union of the Houses of York and Lancaster," has been reprinted lately. Its character seems doubtful. Hearne says it is written in an elegant and masculine style, whilst Bishop Nicholson speaks of it as only a record of the fashions of clothes.

Lingard says that we have four contemporary and detailed accounts of the Battle of Flodden-(1) by Hall, xlii.; (2) by an Italian historian, Giovio; (3) by Lord Thomas Howard, in Pinkerton; (4) in Galt's "Life of Wolsey." It will be observed that there is none by Holinshed.

21. Wolsey.] Cf. supra, V. xxiv. 15.

22. More.] Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII., and one of the most illustrious of the men who have held that office. It has been said that he was the first layman in that position; and, though this is not the case, it was then generally held by an ecclesiastic. He differed from the

King on the matter of his divorce from Katharine of Arragon, which opposition, as might be expected, did not endear him to her successor, Anne Boleyn. This was the reason why he resigned his chancellorship, and his language on the same subject led afterwards to the loss of his head. He was remarkable for his learning, integrity, and magnanimity; no time-server-as is shown not only in his opposition about the King's divorce, but also in his refusal to accept the Reformation. Though its power was manifestly growing, his learning and character were on the other side

"Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."