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The Raid
of Solway Moss.
Hear may
ye read full plain and clear,
Without excuse or gloss,
About the battle called whylere,
"The Raid of Solway Moss."
James V., as we have shewn,
though ready for war when it should he meet, was also ever ready for love,
when the time should serve : he suffered great persecution from the
Douglasses for a long time, but triumphed over them in the end; the civil
wars, which this family had not a little fomented, had reduced the state to
a pitiful condition of anarchy: but when the king succeeded in putting these
enemies down, he turned seriously towards a thorough amelioration of his
government. He was far from being deficient in parts; but discovered
courage, acuteness, presence of mind, and a good ability to fulfil his high
and responsible station; yet, at the same time, it must be conceded, that
his passions often drove him to commit vast acts of cruelty.
A great part of his reign was
troubled with the unchristian disputes in religion—an unmeet subject to
breed animosity. Romanism was, perhaps, as tyrannical, bigoted, and
intolerant in Scotland as in any country beneath the offended heavens. The
king himself favoured the established church of papacy: not so much because
in his conscience he believed it to be the purer, but because the Archbishop
of St. Andrews, the Pope's representative in his dominions, had formerly
rescued him out of the clutches of his foes; and the gratitude, which this
act had created towards the individual, became love to the individual; and
the love to the individual, by a natural extension, attached itself to the
religion, in his dominions, at the head of which the individual stood.
Time and experience have
proved, that persecution rather spreads and propagates a new opinion than
destroys it: it creates a curiosity to know what the new opinion can be that
is so treated,— and this very curiosity favours its growth. Nothing tended
to blazon all over Scotland this curiosity to know what Lutherism was, so
much as the burning of Patric Hamilton, Abbot of Feme, the first
particularly noticeable heretic : and, so far from this rigour effecting the
purposed end, it rather served to publish those very opinions which his
executioners were trying to stifle.
These ungentle thoughts were
turned aside in the year 1537, by the marriage of the king with the daughter
of Francis of France, and a happier train called up :—but his bride died a
few months after.
The next year James consoled
his widowhood by espousing Mary of Guise: and, by so doing, greatly offended
Henry VIII. of England, who was also a candidate for that lady's hand. Soon
after this, certain other matters befel between the two other monarchs,
which it was found impossible to accommodate, wherefore they both prepared
to decide their differences by the ultima ratio regum, namely, war:—Regibus
hie mos est.
Henry attacked and captured
twenty Scotch trading vessels on the high seas, and then threatened to
revive the ancient feudal right to the sovereignty of this part of the
island, so strongly asserted by Edward I.: he complained that James had
usurped his title of Defender of the Faith, to which he had added the word
Christian, implying that Henry must be van infidel; but the Pope had, some
time before, complimented the Scotch kings with that title. Henry had
declared himself sole monarch of Ireland at this juncture, but James
strenuously asserted that he had at least a right to one half of it, for all
the northern parts were peopled by his subjects or their offspring, and many
of the Irish chieftains had actually come over and sworn fealty to him; and
such being the posture of affairs, and the spirit of the two kings, nothing
was left but to fight.
The kingdom of Scotland was
now, owing to divers wise statutes and regulations which the parliament had
enacted, in a happier, more formidable, more enlarged, and more efficient
condition, than it had ever before been: its armies were numerous, its
militia well regulated, and its revenues abundant; so that victory and
success were looked for with confidence.
Several hostile encounters
took place on the borders and the Merse, in most of which the English were
either defeated or obliged to retreat; and albeit some signs of disaffection
had manifested themselves in James's soldiers, whereby they could not be
induced at all times to draw their swords against the English or enter their
country; yet, at last, they consented to invade England by the western
marches over the Sark and the Solway Moss.
Ten thousand men were
demanded for this purpose ; James sent them forward, purposing himself soon
to follow. Great discontent existed amongst the soldiers; for, owing to the
king's adherence to the Romish creed, which had by this time become
unpopular throughout the kingdom, and owing to divers unwise acts which he
had done in the cabinet, whereby he had so entirely estranged the affections
of his nobles as to have lost all confidence in their fidelity, he found
that it was not without many signs of mutiny that they could be brought to
consent to invading England at his commandment.
Disgusted at the turbulent
spirit which still continued to dislocate the unanimity of his army, he sent
a message when it had approached the Debateable Land, depriving the Lord
Maxwell of his commission, and conferring the command ori Oliver Sinclair, a
private gentleman, who was his minion.
However bad matters might
have been before this transaction, of a truth, it must be said, that they
were ten times worse afterwards.
On the 23rd of November,
1542, the Scotch began their march at midnight; and, having passed the Sark
and the Esk, all the circumjacent villages were seen in flames by the break
of day. Sir Thomas Wharton, the English warden of those marches, hastily
raised a few troops, in all not exceeding five hundred men, and drew them up
on an advantageous ground.
Now then did Oliver Sinclair
arise in his true puissance: he ordered the royal banner to be unfurled over
his head, by way of calling respect and attention to his estate, and then
mounting aloft on the shoulders of two tall men, so as to be seen of all
eyes, he read aloud his commission.
Presumptuous is the pen that
tries to describe the scene that hereupon ensued ; wonderment, rage, and
consternation, all burst forth like so many contending whirlwinds: the
military beauties of rank and file were immediately obliterated from the
host: and the commanders first, and then the soldiers, every one declared,
without a dissentaneous voice, that they would liefer all surrender
themselves prisoners to their foes, than submit to the commandment of such a
general as Sinclair.
Everything in an instant was
dissorder, tumult, and confusion: horse and foot, bowmen and halberdiers,
hand-gunners and hagbut-men, noblemen and camp scullions, regulars,
stragglers, hangers-on and country peasants, all formed one motley and
heterogeneous comminglement.
Some philanthropists affirm
that, in the ordinary dealings of life with our fellow men, it is ignoble
for one to take an undue advantage of another; but in war, which at best is
but a satanic game, this amiable principle is not always respected. Certain
it is, the English made no hesitation at taking the Scots at a disadvantage
on this occasion. They perceived the disordered state of the ten-thousand,
and not impossibly divined its cause, since their emissaries had advertised
them fully of all circumstances touching King James's impolicy; and a
hundred light-horse had already advanced to the charge. These met with but
very little resistance, and had scarce any work to try the strength of their
arms. The rest of the English now advanced: the confused Scotch, being in no
fensible condition, and in no good mind to defend themselves, hastily
eschewed the presence of their guests by having regard to what in more
modern ages has been designated "leg bail:" and, if it really be, that the
term itself did not then exist on men's tongues, this true record at least
instructs us, that the practice in men's legs certainly did.
To the deep thinker, and to
the natural philosopher, these facts and haps are not without instruction ;
for they will induce us into the knowledge of certain remarkable
circumstances in the physiology of the human species, amongst the chief of
which is this, videlicet,—that valour dwells above the waist-band girded
round the body, but that fear has its habitation below. For, whereas he who
is possessed of goodly courage, a stout heart, and plenty of that same
courage, sticks well to it when he meets his foe, stands upon his legs, and
keeps them still, throwing all his strength vigorously into his arms with
which he valiantly defends himself: but, on the other hand, he who is
stricken with terror when he meets his foe, immediately drops his arms as of
no use, and, speedily putting all his vigour into his legs below his girdle,
turns about and runs for it.
Such was the vigour of the
Scots below their waist-bands, that they fled away over the Debate-able Land
and Gratney like the wind, even trampling each other under foot in their
expedition ; and such was their perplexity, derangement, and panic, that
they drew their claymores from their sides, friends madly piercing friends,
and countrymen unwittingly slaying countrymen with their own hands. Their
fear was so excessive, and so helpless had they become through its mastery,
that the very women and boys of the English camp came up and made prisoners
of the soldiers without difficulty.
Such was the Raid of Solway
Moss.
When the consummation of this
untoward affair was reported to James, he fell into a grievous state of
distraction; rage against his commanders, who he thought had betrayed him;
some severe stings of his own conscience, which arose upon him at the
remembrance of many of his past follies; divers curee edaces, which had long
been eating into his constitution; and, finally, this shameful defeat, all
together brought such an accumulation of woes upon his head at one fell
swoop, that, being unable to endure them any longer, he died on the 14th of
December, 1542.
He left his infant daughter
Mary, then only a week old, and afterwards Queen Elizabeth's victim at
Fothcringay, sole heiress to his dominions: and under these circumstances,
Henry VIII. strove to unite both kingdoms together, by proposing a union
between her and his son Edward, now five years of age. Albeit, from
prudential motives, the Scotch acceded to this proposition, yet, shortly
afterwards fresh disputes arose which prevented its ultimate accomplishment;
for "the Yrische lordes of Scotland, commonly callit the Redd-shanckes, and
by historiographouris, Pictis," would not listen to anything of the sort,
when they found themselves strong enough to resist it.
About this time there was one
John Elder, whom we have above quoted, somewhat of a scholar and much of a
schemer, who busied himself and his pen by writing to Henry, cunningly
setting forth and devising certain plans for effecting the wished-for union
; and to the influence of his arguments thus conveyed to the king, are
ascribed those secret cabals, those deviseful measures, the existence of
many unknown emissaries, who prowled over many parts of Scotland, and
insinuated their way into the society of both nobles and gentles, those
political plots, those reiterated negotiations, and those off-and-on
stipulations, which annoyed the regency in Scotland for a series of years
afterwards.
They ended in nothing, and
Mary became sole Queen. |
