The two main bodies of the armies were now only left where James and Surrey were contending at the head of their troops, but with this difference, that the Scottish right and left were now unprotected, and those of James's center were attacked on each side by the victorious right and left wings of the English. On one side Sir Edward Stanley charged with archers and pikemen, on the other Lord Howard, Sir Edmund Howard, and Lord Dacre, were threatening with both horse and foot.
James and all his nobility about him in the main body were fighting on foot, and being clad in splendid armour, they suffered less from the English archers, who were opposed to them in the ranks of Surrey. On James's right hand fought his accomplished natural son, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's. Soon the combatants became engaged hand to hand in deadly struggle with their swords, spears, pikes, and other instruments of death. Whilst hewing and cleaving each other down in furious strife, face to face, life for life, showers of English arrows fell amid the Scottish ranks, and dealt terrible destruction to the less stoutly panoplied. When the Earls of Bothwell and Huntley rushed to the support of the main body on the one side, and Stanley, the Howards, and Dacre came to the aid of Surrey on the other, the strife became terrible beyond description, and the slaughter awful on every side of the environed Scots. Before the arrival of the reserves the Scots appeared at one time to have the best of it, and to be on the very edge of victory; and even after that James and the gallant band around him seemed to make a stupendous effort, as if they thought their sole hope was to force their way to Surrey and cut him down. James is said to have reached within a spear's length of him, when, after being twice wounded with arrows, he was dispatched by a bill.
Great Ship of King Henry VIII. From an original drawing by Holbein.
Still the battle raged on. In the centre it was like the heart of a glowing furnace, all heat and deadly rage; whilst all round the extremities of the Scottish host, a bristly circle of protruded spears pushed back the murderous foes. Neither side gave quarter. Lord Howard and his followers savagely maintained their vow; and the Scots, says Haslewood, were so vengeful and cruel in their fighting, that the English, when they had the better of them, would listen to no ransom, though the Scots often offered great sums. Night, which alone could part the maddened host, at length came down upon them, and compelled them to cease their fighting, though it could not induce them to quit the ground. They rested on their arms, but stood as if they would wait the first dawn of light to again renew the sanguinary conflict. The Scottish and the English centres stood doggedly on their guard; Home and Dacre with their cavalry sternly held each other at bay. But when the morning at length dawned, it was discovered that the Scots, having had time to become aware of their immense loss, and having learnt that not only their king but almost all
