y roused and
alarmed the rebels, against whom the royal name was as a strong tower.
That such men as Angus and the other great nobles of Scotland, who had
reduced their King to a puppet with such entire success, should now feel
it necessary to get possession of Prince James in order to confer
dignity, on their proceedings seems very strange; but perhaps when
rebellion comes to the dignity of a pitched battle its flags and
pretensions are of more importance than when it can so order matters as
to put on an appearance of acting in the King's own interests, as at
Lauder. And how far the Prince might be an independent actor in this
troubled drama there is no evidence to show. He had arrived at an age
when youths in these early-maturing days acted for themselves; even in
our own a lad of sixteen would scarcely allow his name to be employed
against his father without some protest, and could not be treated as a
child in a conflict so momentous. Therefore it is scarcely possible to
imagine that the Prince was entirely guiltless. And the spectator cannot
but enter with warmth into the feelings of the King when he discovered
what had been done, and that his heir was in the enemy's camp, giving
substance and reason to their rebellion.

There is a curious story told of how Lord Lindsay of the Byres, a fierce
and grim baron of Fife, presented on the very eve of the battle "a great
grey courser" to the King, assuring him that were he ever in extremity
that horse would carry him, "either to fly or to follow," better than
any horse in Scotland, "if well sitten"--a present which James accepted,
and which comes in as part of the paraphernalia of fate. On the morning
of the day of battle the King mounted this horse, and "rade to ane hill
head to see the manner of the cuming" of his enemies against him. He saw
the host defiling "in three battells," with six thousand men in each,
their spears shining, their banners waving, Homes and Hepburns in the
front, with Merse and Teviotdale and all the forces of the Border, and
the men of Lothian in the rear: while in the main body rose the ensigns
of all the great lords who had already beaten and humbled
him--Bell-the-Cat and the other barons who had hanged his friends before
his eyes--but now bearing his own royal standard, with his son among
them, the bitterest thought of all. James sat upon his fleet horse,
presented to him the night before with such an ominous recommendation,
and saw his enemies