THE SIEGE OF THRAVE.
Well, then, to work; our cannon shall be bent
Against the brows of this resisting town;
Call for our chiefest men of discipline
To cull the plots of best advantages:
We'll lay before this town our royal bones,
Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's blood,
But we will make it subject to this boy.--KING JOHN.
The unfortunate Sir Patrick Gray knew the atrocities of which the
castle of Thrave had been the scene during the late earl's lifetime;
and he also knew the cruelty of which Achanna, his tool and minion, was
capable; thus the dying words of Douglas made his soul tremble with
terror for the safety of Murielle, in such butcherly and unscrupulous
hands. But how was she to be saved?
All the vassals of the crown were not numerous enough to penetrate into
Galloway and storm Thrave, amid a land of pastoral wilds and pathless
forests, swarming with freebooting lairds, fierce moss-troopers, and
half-savage Celts. Of venturing there _alone_, like a knight-errant,
his recent expedition had fully illustrated the danger, and after the
last terrible deed in Stirling the peril would be greater than ever.
That stern deed of the young king filled the Douglases with rage; but
it was not without a salutary effect upon their adherents, as it
evinced that he would no longer brook their insulting and rebellious
conduct.
Posterity can have little sympathy for the fate of Douglas, "whose
career from first to last," says Mr. Tytler, "had been that of a
selfish, ambitious, and cruel tyrant, who, at the moment when he was
cut off, was all but a convicted traitor, and whose death, if we except
the mode in which it was brought about, was to be regarded as a public
benefit."
His friends and his adherents, however, were not disposed to take this
calm view of the matter. His younger brother succeeded to his titles
and estates, and was styled "Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine;" and
he, with the earls of Murray, Ormond, Lord Balvenie, and others, all
Douglases, proposed to storm the castle of Stirling, and put all within
it to the sword, not even excepting James and his young queen, Mary of
Gueldres; but a little reflection convinced them of the peril of such
an enterprise, and, moreover, that they were without cannon or other
resources to attempt it.
However, six hundred nobles, barons, and gentlemen, of the house
of Douglas, mustered in full array, with all their vassals, within
the town of Stirling, on the 25th day of March--the feast of St.
Benedict--and dragged through mud and mire the king's safe conduct,
which they nailed on a wooden truncheon, and tied to the tail of a
sorry old jaded cart-horse. They then burned it publicly at the Market
Cross, where after four hundred horns and twenty brass trumpets had
proclaimed defiance, they stigmatized "the king, the lord Crichton, Sir
Alexander Livingstone, Sir Patrick Gray, and all who adhered to them,
as false and perjured traitors!"
They bade formal defiance to the royal garrison. Then, after completely
pillaging the town, they set it on fire in every quarter, and, leaving
it in flames and ashes, retired through the adjacent country, which
they filled with tumult and outrage. Having thus expended their fury on
all that came in their way, they retired each to his own fortress, to
prepare for what might follow.
Not long after this, the new earl, with his brothers, friends, and
kinsmen, daringly fixed on the doors of the parish churches a document,
in which they solemnly renounced their allegiance to the king "as a
perjured traitor, a violator of the laws of hospitality, and an ungodly
thirster after innocent blood."
The parliament now resolved to aid their justly-incensed monarch in
punishing these contumacious nobles, and in a short time he found
himself at the head of thirty thousand carefully-selected men, who
assembled on Pentland Muir, and with them he resolved to advance
against the Douglases. Sir Patrick Gray and the royal guard, of course,
accompanied him on this expedition.
The king had with him, William, the lord high constable, whom he
had just created earl of Errol, and leader of feudal cavalry; Lord
Crichton's son, whom he had created earl of Caithness and lord high
admiral of the kingdom; the lords Hailes, Fleming, Boyd, and many other
loyal nobles, with all their followers.
He had a fine train of artillery (as artillery was viewed in those
days), under Romanno of that ilk, the principal cannon being _the
Lion_, a great gun cast in Flanders and shipped at Bruges, for
Scotland, by order of his father, James I., in 1430. It was of polished
brass, covered by beautiful carvings and ornaments, and bore the
following inscription:--
"Illustri Iacobo Scottorum, principe digno,
Regi magnifico, dum fulmine castra reduco,
Factus sum sub eo, nuncuper ergo Leo."
The white or gaudily-striped and bannered tents of the royal army
covered all the great tract of land known as Pentland Muir, and
clustered by the margin of lonely Logan Burn, which flows through a
green sequestered vale, the solitude of which was now broken by the hum
of the camp, the hourly din of horn and trumpet, the clanging of the
hammers and anvils of the farriers and armourers; thus, the shepherd on
the Pentland slopes could see the red glow of many a forge and watch
fire reddening the sides of the hills by night, and in his shealing
he could hear the unwonted sounds, that scared his herds and hirsels
from their pasture, the eagle from its eyrie in Torduff, and broke the
silence of the pastoral waste:--
Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents
The armourers accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give note of dreadful preparation.
The wiry music of the harp might also be heard at times amid the camp,
for many minstrels accompanied the king's army. The _last_ time its
notes were heard in a Scottish host was when Argyll marched to the
battle of Benrinnes, in 1594.
After hearing solemn mass said in the old rectory kirk of Pentland,
where whilom was a settlement of the _Gillian Chriosd_ (followers of
the Lord)--whence comes the name of Gilchrist--the order was issued
by James to strike the tents, and then the whole army marched against
the Douglases. The king wore at his helmet the glove of his beautiful
Mary d'Egmont, and a knot of her neck-ribbons decorated his lance. The
task his troops had undertaken was somewhat arduous, as they had to
penetrate into wild districts destitute of roads, where every laird and
peasant, every yeoman and hind, felt it his duty to defend his chief
against all mankind, even the king, if he came in a hostile guise.
With the ghastly smile of the dead earl yet before him, and the
terrible words he had uttered yet lingering in his ear, Sir Patrick
Gray longed to be at Thrave; and his heart sickened with impatience
during the tardy passage of the king's army through Ettrick Forest
and Annandale, the home of powerful and predatory Border clans, into
Galloway; for malcontents and marauders were to be punished on every
hand; the growing cornfields were swept by fire; towers were stormed
and castles dismantled, by having their gates unhinged and their
battlements thrown down.
Many of the Douglas adherents, on seeing the determination of James and
the number of his host, implored forgiveness; and he, being by nature
too fiery and impetuous to be vindictive, pardoned them; but the young
earl had fled, no one knew whither save his own friends.
At last the king approached the banks of the Dee, and saw before him
the famous stronghold of Thrave. The vanguard of his army, the vassals
of Lord Glammis, gave a shout when they first came in sight of it,
and that shout found an echo in the heart of Gray, as it did in the
hearts of the Douglas garrison; for in Thrave, at least a thousand men,
under Sir Alan Lauder, prepared to defend themselves to the last, and
literally to fight with ropes around their necks.
When the vanguard halted, and the army began to encamp, the king,
accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray, Lord Crichton, and others, rode
forward to examine this strong and spacious castle, on which the
Douglas banner was waving, and all the ramparts of which, from the
outer barbican wall to the summit of the keep, seemed full of armed
men, glittering, moving, and instinct with animation, all save one who
hung from the gallows knob, and he was still enough.
The mighty fabric, with its moat and bridge, its grated windows
and battlements bristling with steel pikes, brass sakers, and long
arquebuses, was as grim, as gloomy, as dark and stern as ever, and its
shadow was cast by the evening sun far along the surface of the Dee.
A white puff of smoke floated suddenly from the keep in the sunshine,
and with the sharp report of a culverin, souse came an iron ball, which
struck the earth beneath the forefeet of Sir Patrick's horse, causing
it to rear wildly.
"A narrow chance of death," said he, with a dark smile.
"There are some chances that do not happen _twice_ in a man's
lifetime," said the king laughing; "so we had better change our ground."
As they rode towards the three thorn trees at the Carlinwark (one of
which still survives, though gnarled, knotted, and old, with the lapse
of, perhaps, ten centuries), a shout rose from the half-formed camp,
and the soldiers began to rush to their standards, for now a large
body of troops were seen debouching from the woods in their rear, and
a rumour instantly spread that they were English forces under the
young earl of Douglas, advancing to raise the siege. But the momentary
alarm was soon quelled on the return of Lord Glammis and the Master
of Crichton, who, by the king's order, had advanced to meet them and
reconnoitre.
"They are fresh troops from Ayr, who are come to join your highness,"
said Glammis, "the men of the three Baileries of Kyle, Carrick, and
Cunningham."
"Under whom?"
"The Lord Montgomerie of that Ilk and Sir Robert of Kilmaurs, who
request permission to kiss your hand."
"Good--'tis well."
"And better still, there have come in with them, the three Wards of
Etterick, Yarrow, and Tweed."
"The archers of our old Royal Forest of Selkirk! Thank Heaven, despite
this Douglas war, there are loyal and true hearts in Scotland yet!"
exclaimed the king. "And now to summon this devil of a fortress. Who
will ride forward with the sign of truce?"
"That will I, readily," said Gray.
Others who were of higher rank might have claimed the perilous service;
but all knew how Sir Patrick was situated, or connected with the family
then in rebellion against the throne, so none came forward to dispute
the errand with him.
"I thank you my faithful friend," said James. "You know the terms I
offer; instant surrender, and that if the garrison resist, every man
found within the walls shall suffer by the edge of the sword."