the nobility were slain, had silently stolen away, and had made their way across the Tweed at Coldstream, or over the dry marshes to their own country.
And what ghastly, fearful, desolating tidings did these silent fugitives bear with them over every moor and mountain, to every town and village through the length and breadth of Scotland! When the battle-field came to be examined, there were found of the English few men of note fallen, but about 5,000 soldiers, chiefly of the ranks; but of the Scots, there lay the king and his son the Archbishop of St. Andrew's dead on the field, with two bishops, two mitred abbots, twelve earls, thirteen lords, five eldest sons of peers, fifty knights and chiefs, and of gentlemen a number uncalculated; there was scarcely a family in Scotland of any name in history which did not lose a member there. In the words of Scott—
"Their kings, their lords, their mightiest low,
They melted from the fields as snow.
When streams are swollen and south winds blow,
Dissolves in silent dew
Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash,
While many a broken band,
Disordered, through her currents dash,
To gain the Scottish land:
To town and tower, to down and dale,
To tell red Flodden's dismal tale,
And raise the universal wail.
Tradition, legend, tune, and song,
Shall many an age that wail prolong;
Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife and carnage drear
Of Flodden's fatal field,
Where shivered was fair Scotia's spear,
And broken was her shield."
The ballads and traditions of Scotland are yet full of the lamentations and desolation long produced there by this fatal battle, where
"The flowers of the forest were a' wede away."
The Shrine of Prince Arthur, brother of Henry VIII., in Worcester Cathedral.
"The Scots," says Sir Walter Scott, "were much disposed to dispute the fact that James IV. had fallen on Flodden Field. Some said he had retired from the kingdom, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem: others pre-
