natural son by the fair Rosamond, found it difficult to
defend himself on all quarters from so many open and concealed
enemies. The more to augment the confusion, the King of Scotland, on
the expiration of the truce, broke into the northern provinces with a
great army [h] of eighty thousand men; which, though undisciplined and
disorderly, and better fitted for committing devastation than for
executing any military enterprise, was become dangerous from the
present factious and turbulent spirit of the kingdom. Henry, who had
baffled all his enemies in France, and had put his frontiers in a
posture of defence, now found England the seat of danger; and he
determined by his presence to overawe the malecontents, or by his
conduct and courage to subdue them. [MN 8th July. Penance of Henry
for Becket's murder.] He landed at Southampton; and knowing the
influence of superstition over the minds of the people, he hastened to
Canterbury, in order to make atonement to the ashes of Thomas a
Becket, and tender his submissions to a dead enemy. As soon as he
came within sight of the church of Canterbury, he dismounted, walked
barefoot towards it, prostrated himself before the shrine of the
saint, remained in fasting and prayer during a whole day, and watched
all night the holy relics. Not content with this hypocritical
devotion towards a man whose violence and ingratitude had so long
disquieted his government, and had been the object of his most
inveterate animosity, he submitted to a penance still more singular
and humiliating. He assembled a chapter of the monks, disrobed
himself before them, put a scourge of discipline into the hands of
each, and presented his bare shoulders to the lashes which these
ecclesiastics successively inflicted upon him. Next day he received
absolution; and departing for London, got soon after the agreeable
intelligence of a great victory which his generals had obtained over
the Scots, and which being gained, as was reported, on the very day of
his absolution, was regarded as the earnest of his final
reconciliation with Heaven and with Thomas a Becket.
[FN [h] Heming, p. 501.]

William, King of Scots, though repulsed before the castle of Prudhow,
and other fortified places, had committed the most horrible
depredations upon the northern provinces: but on the approach of Ralph
de Glanville, the famous justiciary, seconded by Bernard de Baliol,
Robert de Stuteville, Odonel de Umfreville, William de Ve