I m Bruce Fummey and I m on a history tour of the Scottish English border.
Today I m setting off from our campsite in the picturesque English town of Wooler
on a short journey to a battlefield... One of the less well informed of our southern
neighbours once quipped in the comments section: You might have won Bannockburn, but we won
Culloden. It s not the first leg it s the final that counts
something like that. Now everyone that knows
anything knows that Culloden wasn t a battle between Scots and English
in fact technically Bannockburn It doesn t matter
If he wanted a more accurate and to be honest desperately sad battle for his joke.
Today s might have been it. If you re interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you a story
On 8th September 1513, just like me, an English army broke camp at Wooler
It was the first use of campervans in medieval warfare.
Actually this battle would be the location of other firsts
and lasts. Some historians say
it marked the end of the Middle Ages in the British Isles.
It was the first time there was a proper artillery exchange on the battlefield.
In terms of numbers it was the biggest ever battle between Scotland and England.
It was the last time a British monarch was killed in battle.
It was an end to chivalry though some might see traces of that in the battle of Pinkie.
The English army moved north but why were they here?
like in their own country and that.
I suppose we have to go back to the treaty of perpetual peace between Scotland and England
When James IV married Margaret Tudor, this marriage of the thistle and rose meant
everything in the garden was well prickly I guess
That treaty of perpetual peace had been 11 years ago. A lot has changed since then.
The new English king, Henry VIII, has gone to war with France
he s also asserting overlordship of Scotland. I m sure his English supporters would say all
this was for the most noble of reasons, but, of course, this is Scotland history tours
They re the baddies remember. Border reiving back and forth
can t have helped matters any on either side, but the key point was
that James was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The rock was that treaty of perpetual peace he d signed with his wife s dad Henry VII,
and the hard place was the generations of treaties signed by numerous
Scottish kings with the French. After frantic shuttle diplomacy
to try to calm things down and avoid war, James concluded that chivalry demanded that
he honour the French treaty and invade England but he d send them notification of the invasion
a month in advance Noo are you mental!
Creep up behind them and knock them on the heid! Don t tell them that your coming.
But no, James very chivalrously besieged and bombarded Norham Castle
on the English side of the Tweed. Wark Castle further up the river
and was even more chivalrous at Ford Castle where there was a lady in occupancy.
With Henry at war in France The Earl of Surrey led the English force from
Wooler north up the road we ve come. What he saw must have horrified him.
Camped on this hill was the biggest Scottish army that had ever taken to the field.
42 000 Scots had crossed the border at Coldstream.
Even with sickness and desertion there were still well over 30000 Scots
looking down on a much smaller English force. What s more they were well dug in on this hill
with marshland either side to protect their flanks.
Surry looked up and described this as a fortress.
He had two choices: advance up the hill to certain defeat and death,
or flee to certain humiliation and, knowing Henry VIII,
maybe a wee bit of death as well. Which would you choose?
Now he sent a letter to James to say: How about you come down the hill and
fight on the plain? James said: Naw
Now it turns out that one of the local gentry was known as The Bastard Herron.
The epithet bastard suggests that he was born out of wedlock.
With the name Herron he certainly wasn t delivered by a stork.
The Bastard Herron had a plan. As the day went on the Scots
watched the English army head in that direction towards Berwick on Tweed.
Were the short rationed English going to re-supply?
What were they up to? They camped out of sight
up there to the north east, Then at 5 O clock on the morning of Friday,
9 September, after a damp night on half rations and having to drink water from streams because
beer had run out, Surrey's men came westwards. They d taken the long road round and ten
miles north in that direction . Just south of where it flowed into
the River Tweed and the border, the River Till was spanned by the Twizzle Bridge.
The original bridge, now replaced by a modern one, had only been erected two years before.
Their aim was to cross the River Till and come back south to Branxton Hill, which you
can hopefully see less than 2 miles that way. The English were heading for that high ground.
Quickly James had his men break camp and head for that hill to the north,
as the English came south. It was now a race
Are you coming? The Scots got here first
We were still in a commanding position. As we looked north we still significantly
outnumbered the English force. There were two things that weren t so good.
Whilst the English had small bore, manoeuvrable cannon with the men to use it.
We had brought massive siege cannon from Edinburgh Castle.
That needed time and levelling to properly set up and organise
and in the rush from that hill to this there had been no time.
So when the back and forth of artillery started our big guns were ineffective
whereas The Scots were in four battles from left to right
looking down the hill and they set off in turn. The first battle on the left marched down
the hill in a silent, well-ordered unit. Now this might seem strange, given that it
contained highlanders and Borderers, the two areas that you might imagine
as undisciplined clansmen. The armoured men in the front ranks
made the English arrows ineffective and they pushed the English back.
Surrey even had to send in a rescue party of cavalry
to rescue his son as some of the English fled.. It was when the second battle marched that
the second of the problems caused by moving to this hill became clear.
You see the Scots hadn t reconnoitred this as a battlefield.
So it was only as the second battle reached the bottom of the hill
they discovered how boggy and marshy it was. The French had supplied the Scots with 5
metre long pikes . which had proved devastating in continental Europe,
but needed training, discipline and suitable ground to use effectively
on dry ground in manoeuvrable conditions where they could operate as a unit,
nae bother but as the quagmire combined with
their lack of training with the equipment, the shorter English bill hooks were more effective,
cutting down the Scots. So much so that a lot of the
Scots threw away their long pointless poles and took to small arms of swords and axes
which just made things worse. If you had a long pointless pole
there was even less cohesion, but if you changed to sword and axe
the English billhooks had more reach. Then for the third problem of the day.
The Scots were fighting in the old style of noblemen leading form the front,
meaning they were less able to see what was going on in the field than their English counterparts.
The third battle, further to the right, was led by James IV himself,
who said he should put himself in the same danger that he asked of his men.
Very chivalrous. Very noble,
but it meant that he marched his men into the same quagmire that the second battle had faced.
The fourth battle held back waiting for orders from James,
who was stuck in the midst of the fighing. The first battle led by Hamilton and Hume,
having been successful stood off as well. Border reivers being notorious for holding back
when fighting for nation rather than family name,
Hume famously said "the man does well this day who saves himself:
we fought those who were opposed to us and beat them;
let our other companies do the same!".
In the centre James valiantly led his men in spite of difficulties and they fought
their way to Surrey's bodyguard, but as successes elsewhere released
English troops they concentrated reinforcements around James s battle
with instructions that no prisoners were to be taken.
Finally James himself fell. His body was found surrounded
by the corpses of his bodyguard The Archers' Guard, from the Forest of Ettrick
which gives us the haunting lament "The Flowers of the Forest"
Not just a lament for a king but for the lives of the many that followed.
This disaster was far worse than Culloden. Down there is Brankston church
A lot of the church has been renewed and replaced,
but there are still 12th Century parts that would have been here
when it was used as a field hospital and mortuary on the day.
Some say that James s corpse was laid out here in the church before being taken south
though there are other versions that I relate in my video:
The King Who Never Died Inside are memorial doors using locally grown
wood with carvings of English Oak and Scots pine and a river appearing to symbolise unity.
The flowers of the forest will have brought tears to the eyes of many at the graveside
when Scots and English have fought together. Of course it s difficult these days to say
anything about unity or self-determination without it sounding political.
Maybe instead of the Bannockburn/Culloden football analogy our commentator offered with
the pub landlord joke at the start we should remember that in rugby,
even if you re different teams on the field we re still friends in the bar.
I d rather that than this
If you d like to hear more stories from the Scotland England Border there s a video
coming on screen now. Tha mi and dochas