Scottish Borders: The disaster that was Battle of Flodden

King James IV of Scotland had renewed the Auld Alliance with France and when Henry VIII went to France to start a war, James felt he had to honour his treaty with the French king Louis XII and prepared an army to invade the north of England. This was despite the fact that James was married to Margaret Tudor, Henry’s sister, and that the Pope of the time threatened him with excommunication for starting a war with England.

The English king sent a very undiplomatic letter to his brother-in-law via an emissary: “And now, for a conclusion, recommend me to your master and tell him if he be so hardy to invade my realm or cause to enter one foot of my ground I shall make him as weary of his part as ever was man that began any such business.

“And one thing I ensure him by the faith that I have to the Crown of England and by the word of a King, there shall never King nor Prince make peace with me that ever his part shall be in it. Moreover, fellow, I care for nothing but for misentreating of my sister, that would God she were in England on a condition she cost the Schottes King not a penny.”

READ MORE: SNP MP accuses Labour of 'colonial mindset' over Sue Gray envoy role

James IV utterly believed in chivalry and in keeping his promise to his allies, and despite Henry’s warning, began to prepare his army. He sent the English court notice of his intention to invade – all that did was to give England more time to prepare.

In early August a powerful noble, Lord Home, took hundreds of his Borderers, many of them Reivers, on a raid into Northumberland that was to become known as the “Ill Raid” as the English ambushed them and killed perhaps as many as 600 of the Scots.

With Henry in France, it was left to his northern commander, Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey, to organise an army to confront the Scottish invaders. James IV had been a bit spooked by the “Ill Raid” and decided on defensive tactics, with his army occupying a strong position at Flodden near Branxton just inside Northumberland.

In line with the chivalric code of the time, the sides agreed a date when they would fight, Friday, September 9. On a wet and windy afternoon, the two sides exchanged artillery fire, the first such barrages in British history.

The larger Scottish army – it numbered 30,000 men in all compared to 25,000 English troops – was divided into four, with Borderers and Highlanders fighting alongside each other. James led his troops on foot and some accounts say he was responsible for the Scots charging downhill, not realising the ground was marshy and treacherous. A contemporary Engloiush chronicle states what happened next: “The third batell [division] wherein was the King of Scots and most part of the noblemen of his realm came fiercely upon my said Lord of Surrey, which two battelles by the help of Almighty God were after a great conflict venquesshed [vanquished], overcome, beaten down and put to flight, and few of them escaped with their lives.

“Sir Edward Stanley being at the uttermost part of the said rerewarde [rearguard] on the East part, seeing the fourth batelles ready to relieve the said King of Scots battell, courageously and like a lusty and hardy knight, did set upon the same and overcame, and put to flight all the Scots in the said batell.

“And thus by the grace succour and help of Almighty God, victory was given to the realm of England, and all the Scottish ordenance won and brought to Ettell and Berwick in surety.”

IT was the worst military disaster in Scotland’s history. The body of King James IV was found by Lord Dacre. James had sustained an arrow wound to his jaw and deep gashes to his neck and body. The corpse was taken south and subsequently lost.

Scotland’s nobles were decimated. Some 10 earls died, dozens more lords and two bishops plus anywhere between 5000 and 17,000 Scottish troops. Their loss is remembered in the lament The Flowers of the Forest:

We’ll hae nae mair lilting,  at the yowe-milking,

Women and bairns are dowie and wae.

Sighing and moaning, on ilka green loaning,

The flowers of the forest are all wede awa.

Large numbers of Borderers died at Flodden, though we don’t know exactly how many. Of the contingent of 80 from Selkirk, only one man survived. He is known to history only as Fletcher. He managed to go back go the town carrying an English banner from Macclesfield and threw the banner onto the ground before collapsing off his horse.

The event is commemorated each year during Selkirk’s Common Riding – I’ll be writing more about Common Ridings when I come to look at individual towns in the Scottish Borders in the final part of this series next week.

I have frequently visited Selkirk and love the Fletcher Monument which was erected in 1913 to mark the 400th anniversary of Flodden. Designed and made by Thomas J Clapperton, it stands in front of the Victoria Halls and is well worth a visit. The figure of a bearded man in armour carrying a flag stands on a granite plinth with a brass plaque that reads: “This monument, embodying the spirit of the Selkirk tradition and erected to Commemorate the Four Hundredth anniversary of the battle of Flodden Field, was unveiled by the Earl of Rosebury, KG, KT. Andrew Lusk Allan Provost, 1913”.

I think it is one of the most striking statues in all of Scotland and it shows how the people of the Scottish Borders preserve traditions that were dearly won and dearly held.

Henry VIII was not done with Scotland. He declared war after the Scottish Parliament refused to confirm the Treaty of Greenwich of 1543 which would have seen the infant Mary, Queen of Scots married to Henry’s son and heir, the future Edward VI.

In what became known as the Rough Wooing, in 1544 Henry sent his army north under his brother-in-law Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, to burn Edinburgh and Leith and on the way home they ransacked the Borders, burning the abbeys at Jedburgh and Kelso.

It did not help that there was almost a civil war in Scotland as the aristocrats fought among themselves for power.

The following year the English moved into the Borders again, and virtually destroyed Melrose Abbey. Led by the notably cruel Sir Ralph Eure or Evers, they committed atrocities including the burning of Brumehous Tower with the lady of the house and her children inside.

But this time the Scots united against the common enemy and won a stunning victory at the Battle of Ancrum Moor north of the village of that name which lies now on the A68 north of Jedburgh.

I have written before about this battle which for some reason – because the English lost? – is often ignored in the history books. Yet it was important because with Ralph Eure among the hundreds of slain English solders, the Rough Wooing was temporarily halted, and the Scottish Borders were secured again.

(Image: Archant)

There was a curious postscript to the battle at the site which is also known as Lilliard’s Edge. A legend grew up about a woman called Lilliard joining in the battle after her lover was killed. More myth than legend, and it’s doubtful if she ever existed, the following verse is inscribed on a nearby memorial:

Fair maiden Lilliard

lies under this stane

little was her stature

but muckle was her fame

upon the English loons

she laid monie thumps

and when her legs were cuttit off

she fought upon her stumps.

As I always say about apocrypha, believe it if you want.

Another Borders battle which gets ignored is the Raid of the Redeswire in 1575 which has gone down in history as the last battle between the Kingdoms of Scotland and England.

It began with a meeting between Scotland’s Lord Warden of the Marches, Sir John Carmichael, and the English Warden of the Marches, Sir John Forster. The meeting took place at Red Swire – Redeswire in Scots – just over the Border and it descended into violence with two Scots killed. The English would later acknowledge that Forster started the skirmish.

The Scots retreated but met with a contingent of armed horse troops from Jedburgh and together they confronted Forster’s troops, killing up to 30 of them and capturing Forster and others.

They were soon released because the Regent for James VI, James Douglas, the 4th Earl of Morton, did not want a fight with Elizabeth I of England, not least because the King’s mother Mary, Queen of Scots, was then in captivity in England.

The Raid and Jedburgh’s role in it is commemorated in the town’s annual Common Riding, as we shall see next week.

The major event of the 16th century for most Scots was the Reformation in the 1560s, when virtually overnight Scotland rejected the Roman Catholic Church and became a Protestant country with Presbyterianism as preached by John Knox eventually becoming the principal religion.

Tales are told of how Catholics on both sides of the Border would go back and forth to keep practising their religion in safe places, while some major Borders families such as the Maxwells stuck to their original faith.

As with the rest of Scotland, the Scottish Borders switched to the new order and Catholic religious institutions which had once been so important in the region simply closed down with none of the great abbeys being rebuilt.

As we saw last week, James VI became James I of England and ordered the pacification of the Borders while many Borderers emigrated, or were forced to emigrate, to what is now Northern Ireland where they formed the core of the Ulster-Scots who were to have such an influence in the US in particular.

George MacDonald Fraser, in his book The Steel Bonnets, wrote of a photograph of the inauguration of President Richard Nixon in which he is flanked by former President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the evangelist Billy Graham, all names common in the Scottish Borders.

READ MORE: John Curtice issues verdict on who will win 2026 Holyrood election

And of course the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong was very proud of his ancestry in Langholm, of which he was a Freeman.

One very sad aspect of 17th-century life in the Borders was the persecution of people accused of witchcraft.

The historian Mary Craig has written an excellent account of what happened in her book Borders Witch Hunt and anyone wanting to know about those terrifying events should consult her writings.

Suffice to say that, along with much of the rest of the country, this was not an edifying time in the life of the Scottish Borders which sadly became the region with the most executions for witchcraft in the 1600s.

Egged on from the start by King James VI and I and then by numerous Presbyterian Kirk ministers, the authorities reacted to any accusation of witchcraft by torturing confessions from the men and women – it was mostly women – whose “crime” was often just being different from the norm.

Craig writes of the horrendous events at Peebles in 1629, when 27 people were tried for witchcraft, and being found guilty on confessions gained by torture or accusations made by “witchfinders”, they were executed.

Similar events occurred all over the Scottish Borders. I know there is a plan to build a national memorial for all those victims of the witch hunts between 1563 and 1736, but perhaps the Scottish Borders should have its own memorial.