Battle of Flodden

The Battle of Flodden or Flodden Field or occasionally Battle of Branxton was fought in the county of Northumberland in northern England on 9 September 1513, between an invading Scots army under King James IV and an English army commanded by the Earl of Surrey. It ended in victory for the English army, and was the largest battle (in terms of numbers) fought between the two nations. James IV was himself killed in the battle, becoming the last British monarch to suffer such a fate.

Background
This conflict began when James IV, King of Scots declared war on England to honour the Auld Alliance with France by diverting Henry VIII's English troops from their campaign against the French king Louis XII. Henry VIII had also opened old wounds by claiming to be the overlord of Scotland which angered the Scots and the King. At this time England was involved in the War of the League of Cambrai – defending Italy and the Pope from the French (see Italian Wars) as a member of the "Catholic League".

Pope Leo X, already a signatory to the anti-French treaty of Mechlin, sent a letter to James threatening him with ecclesiastical censure for breaking his peace treaties with England on 28 June 1513, and subsequently James was excommunicated by Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge. James also summoned sailors and sent the Scottish navy, including the Great Michael to join the ships of Louis XII of France.

Henry was in France with the Emperor Maximilian at the siege of Thérouanne. Catherine of Aragon was Regent in England and, on 27 August she issued warrants for the property of all Scotsmen in England to be seized.

Invasion
Using the pretext of revenge for the murder of Robert Kerr, a Warden of the Scottish East March who had been killed by John "The Bastard" Heron in 1508, James invaded England with an army of about 30,000 men in 1513. In keeping with his understanding of the medieval code of chivalry, King James sent notice to the English, one month in advance, of his intent to invade. This gave the English time to gather an army and, as importantly, to retrieve the banner of Saint Cuthbert from the Cathedral of Durham, a banner which had been carried by the English in victories against the Scots in 1138 and 1346. After a muster on the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, the Scottish host moved to Ellemford, to the north of Duns, and camped to wait for Angus and Home, and then crossed the River Tweed near Coldstream. By the 29 August, Norham Castle was taken and partly demolished. The Scots moved south capturing the castles of Etal and Ford. A later chronicler, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, tells the story that James wasted valuable time at Ford enjoying the company of Lady Heron and her daughter.

Battle
The battle actually took place near the village of Branxton, in the county of Northumberland, rather than at Flodden &mdash; hence the alternative name is Battle of Branxton. The Scots had previously been stationed at Flodden Edge, to the south of Branxton. The Earl of Surrey, writing at Wooler Haugh on Wednesday 7 September, compared this position to a fortress in his challenge sent to James IV by Thomas Hawley, the Rouge Croix Pursuivant. He complained that James had sent his Islay Herald agreeing that they would join in battle on Friday between 12.00 and 3.00 pm, and asked that James would face him on the plain at Milfield as appointed.

Next, Surrey moved to block off the Scots' route north and so James was forced to move his army and artillery 2 miles to Branxton Hill. The Scottish artillery included 5 great curtals, 2 great culverins, 4 sakers, and 6 great serpentines. When the armies were within 3 miles of each other Surrey sent the Rouge Croix pursuivant to James who answered that he would wait till noon. At 11 o'clock Lord Howard's vanguard and artillery crossed the Twissell Bridge. (Pitscottie says the king would not allow the Scots artillery to fire on the vulnerable English during this manouevre.) The Scots army was in good order in 5 formations, after the Almain (German) manner. On Friday afternoon the Scots host descended without speaking any word to meet the English.

According to English report, first the groups commanded by the Earls of Huntly and Crawford totalling 6000 men engaged Lord Howard and were repulsed and mostly slain. Baron Dacre's company fought Huntly and the Chamberlain Lord Home's men. Then James IV himself leading a great force came on to Surrey and Lord Darcy's son who bore the brunt of the battle. Lennox and Argyll's commands were met by Sir Edward Stanley.



After the artillery fire ended, according to the English chronicler Edward Hall, "the battle was cruel, none spared other, and the King himself fought valiantly." James was killed within a spear length from Surrey and his body taken to Berwick upon Tweed. Hall says the King was fatally wounded by an arrow and a bill. The Earl of Surrey captured the Scottish guns, including a group of culverins made in Edinburgh by Robert Borthwick called the 'seven sisters,' which were dragged to Etal Castle. The Bishop of Durham thought them the finest ever seen.

The biggest error the Scots made was placing their officers in the front line, medieval style. A Scottish letter of January 1514 contrasts this loss of the nobility with the English great men who took their stand with the reserves and at the rear. The English generals stayed behind the lines in the Renaissance style. The loss of so many Scottish officers meant there was no one to coordinate a retreat.

Weaponry
Flodden was essentially a victory of bill used by the English over the pike used by the Scots. As a weapon, the pike was effective only in a battle of movement, especially to withstand a cavalry charge. The Scottish pikes were described by the author of the Trewe Encounter as "keen and sharp spears 5 yards long." Although the pike had become a Swiss weapon of choice and represented modern warfare, the hilly terrain of Northumberland, the nature of the combat, and the slippery footing did not allow it to be employed to best effect. Bishop Ruthall reported to Wolsey, 'the bills disappointed the Scots of their long spears, on which they relied.' The infantrymen at Flodden, both Scots and English, had fought in a fashion that in essence would have been familiar to their ancestors, and it has rightly been described as the last great medieval battle in the British Isles. This was the last time that bill and pike would come together as equals in battle. Two years later Francis I defeated the Swiss pikemen at the Battle of Marignano, using a combination of heavy cavalry and artillery, ushering in a new era in the history of war. An official English diplomatic report issued by Brian Tuke noted the Scots' iron spears but concluded: 'the English halberdiers decided the whole affair, so that in the battle the bows and ordnance were of little use.'

Despite Tuke's comment (he was not present), tactically, this battle was one of the first major engagements on the British Isles where artillery was significantly deployed. John Lesley, writing sixty years later, noted the Scottish bullets flew over the English heads while the English cannon was effective, the one army placed so high and the other so low. The battle is considered the last decisive use of the longbow, yet through the 16th century the English longbowmen continued to have success, as in the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Many of these archers were recruited from Lancashire and Cheshire. Sir Richard Assheton raised one such company from Middleton, near Manchester. In gratitude for his safe return, he rebuilt St. Leonard's, the local parish church. It contains the unique "Flodden Window" depicting each of the archers, and the priest who accompanied them, by name in stained glass. The success of the Cheshire yeomanry, under the command of Richard Cholmeley, led to his later appointment as Lieutenant of the Tower of London.



Honours
As a reward for his victory, Howard was subsequently restored to the title of "Duke of Norfolk", lost by his father's support for Richard III. The arms of the Dukes of Norfolk still carry an augmentation of honour awarded on account of their ancestor's victory at Flodden, a modified version of the Royal coat of arms of Scotland with an arrow through the lion's mouth.

Legends of a lost king
Thomas Hawley, the Rouge Croix pursuivant, was first with news of the victory. He brought the 'rent surcoat of the King of Scots stained with blood' to Catherine of Aragon at Woburn Abbey. She sent news of the victory to Henry VIII at Tournai with Hawley, and then sent James's coat (and iron gauntlets) on 16 September, with a detailed account of the battle written by Lord Howard. Brian Tuke mentioned in his letter to Cardinal Bainbridge that the coat was lacerated and chequered with blood. Catherine suggested Henry should use the coat as his battle-banner, and wrote that she had thought to send him the body too, but 'Englishmen's hearts would not suffer it.'

James's body was taken first to Berwick on Tweed, where according to Hall's Chronicle, it was viewed by the captured Scottish courtiers William Scott and John Forman who acknowledged it was the King's. The body was then embalmed and taken to Newcastle upon Tyne. From York, a city that James had promised to capture before Michaelmas, the body was brought to Sheen Priory near London. James's banner, sword and his cuisses, thigh-armour, were taken to the shrine of Saint Cuthbert at Durham Cathedral. Much of the armour of the Scottish casualties was sold on the field, and 350 suits of armour were taken to Nottingham Castle. A list of horses taken at the field runs to 24 pages.

Soon after the battle there were legends that James IV had survived; a Scottish merchant at Tournai in October claimed to have spoken with him, Lindsay of Pitscottie records two myths; "thair cam four great men upon hors, and every ane of thame had ane wisp upoun thair spear headis, quhairby they might know one another and brought the king furth of the feild, upoun ane dun hackney," and also that the king escaped from the field but was killed between Duns and Kelso. Similarly, John Lesley adds that the body taken to England was "my lord Bonhard" and James was seen in Kelso after the battle and then went secretly on pilgrimage in far nations.

A legend arose that James had been warned against invading England by supernatural powers. While he was praying in St Michael's Kirk at Linlithgow, a man strangely dressed in blue had approached his desk saying his mother had told him to say James should not to go to war or take the advice of women. Then before the King could reply, the man vanished. David Lindsay of the Mount and John Inglis could find no trace of him. The historian R. L. Mackie wondered if the incident really happened as a masquerade orchestrated by an anti-war party: Norman MacDougall doubts if there was a significant anti-war faction.

Scotland after Flodden
The wife of James IV, Margaret Tudor, is said to have awaited news of her husband at Linlithgow Palace, where a room at the top of a tower is called 'Queen's Margaret's bower.' Her 17 month old son became King James V. The Parliament of Scotland met at Stirling on 21 September 1513, where the infant King was crowned. Margaret Tudor was guardian or 'tutrix' of the King, but not made Regent of Scotland. Instead, John Stewart, Duke of Albany, a grandson of James II of Scotland who lived in France was invited to be Regent in December. Margaret gave birth to James's posthumous son Alexander in April 1514.

Casualties
Surrey's army lost 1,500 men killed. There were various conflicting accounts of the Scottish loss. A contemporary French source, the Gazette of the Battle of Flodden, said that about 10,000 Scots were killed, a claim made by Henry VIII on 16 September while he was still uncertain of the death of James IV. William Knight sent the news from Lille to Rome on 20 September, claiming 12,000 Scots had died with less than 500 English casualties. Italian newsletters put the Scottish losses at 18 or 20 thousand and the English at 5000. Brian Tuke, the English Clerk of the Signet, sent a newsletter stating 10,000 Scots killed and 10,000 escaped the field. Tuke reckoned the total Scottish invasion force to have been 60,000 and the English army at 40,000. George Buchanan wrote in his History of Scotland (published in 1582) that, according to the lists that were compiled throughout the counties of Scotland, there were about 5,000 killed. A plaque on the monument to the 2nd Duke of Norfolk (as the Earl of Surrey became in 1514) at Thetford put the figure at 17,000. Edward Hall, thirty years after, wrote in his Chronicle that "12,000 at the least of the best gentlemen and flower of Scotland" were slain.

As the nineteenth century antiquarian John Riddell supposed, nearly every noble family in Scotland would have have lost a member at Flodden. The dead are remembered by the song (and pipe tune) "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 away.

Contemporary English ballads also recalled the tragedy of the Scottish losses;


 * To tell you plaine, twelve thousand were slaine,
 * that to the fight did stand;
 * And many prisoners tooke that day,
 * the best in all Scotland.


 * That day made many a fatherlesse childe,
 * and many a widow poore;
 * And many a Scottish gay Lady,
 * sate weeping in her bowre.

A legend grew that while the artillery was being prepared in Edinburgh before the battle, a demon called Plotcock had read out the names of those who would be killed at the Mercat Cross on the Royal Mile. According to Pitscottie, a former Provost of Edinburgh, Richard Lawson, who lived nearby threw a coin at the Cross to appeal from this summons and survived the battle.

Notable men who died included: • 2

Battlefield today
The battlefield still looks much as it probably did at the time of the battle, but the burn and marsh which so badly hampered the Scots advance is now drained. A monument, erected in 1910, is easily reached from Branxton village by following the road past St Paul's Church. There is a small car park and a clearly marked and signposted battlefield trail with interpretive boards which make it easy to visualise the battle. Only the chancel arch remains of the medieval church where James IV's body was said to have rested after the battle – the rest is Victorian, dating from 1849 in the "Norman" style.

500th Anniversary
Since 2008, there have been plans afoot to mark the Quincentennial of the battle on, and before the 9th September 2013.

In fiction

 * "Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field" (1808), an epic poem in six cantos by Sir Walter Scott
 * The Battle of Flodden Field, told from several different perspectives, is the subject of the novel, "Flodden Field", by Elisabeth McNeill, pub.2007
 * The Flowers of the Forest, a historical novel by Elizabeth Byrd, chronicles the life of Queen Margaret Tudor of Scotland and culminates in the Battle of Flodden
 * Arthur Sullivan wrote an overture, his Overture Marmion (1867), inspired by the Scott poem.
 * There is no historical record of anyone from the Clan Munro taking part in the Battle of Flodden Field, however there is an old tradition that the Munros of Argyll are descended from a Flodden survivor. One of these descendants was Neil Munro (writer).