On what authority does Mr. Tytler (_History of Scotland_, vol. iii. pp.
45--53.), in his otherwise very fair account of this celebrated battle,
assert that the Earl of Douglas was a younger man than Hotspur? I have no
doubt that he found it so recorded somewhere, and willingly believed that
his countrymen had prevailed, not only over superior numbers of the enemy,
but also over greater experience on the part of the hostile general; but a
little more investigation would have shown him that the difference of age
lay the other way. Henry Percy, by his own account (in the Scrope and
Grosvenor Controversy), was born in 1366, and was therefore twenty-two when
the battle was fought. I do not know that there is any direct evidence to
Douglas's age, but the following considerations appear to me decisive as to
his being much older than his rival.
1. Froissart's visit to Scotland was undoubtedly prior to 1366 (although
the exact date is not given), and during his stay of fifteen days at
Dalkeith, he saw much of the youthful heir of that castle, the future hero
of Otterburn, and describes him as a "promising youth."
2. Hotspur, in his deposition above mentioned, says that he first bore arms
at the siege of Berwick in 1378; but his antagonist must have commenced his
military career long before, as Froissart mentions him as knighted on the
occasion of the battle fought a few days after the surrender of that place,
between Sir Archibald Douglas and Sir Thomas Musgrave; none but kings' sons
were knighted in childhood in those days, or without undergoing a long
previous probation in the inferior grades of chivalry.
3. An early and constant family (if not general) tradition asserts that
Douglas had a natural son {349} (ancestor of the Cavers family), old enough
to bear his father's banner in the battle; on this, however, I lay little
stress, as Froissart distinctly assigns that honourable post to another
person, David Campbell, who was slain by the side of his lord.
Mr. Tytler is also evidently wrong in placing, on the authority of
Macpherson's _Notes on Winton_, this battle on the 5th of August, 1388.
Froissart gives the date as the 19th of August, and as the moon was full on
the 18th, the combatants would have bright moonlight all night, which
agrees with all the narratives; on the 5th they would have little
moonlight, and would have lost it soon.
Though not very germane to the matter, except as being a point of
chronology, I may add here that the remarkable solar eclipse, long
remembered in Scotland by the name of the "Dark Hour," did not occur, as
stated by Mr. Tytler, on 17th June, 1432, but on the same month and day of
the following year.