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But I conjure you in the name of God and the King, I conjure you to announce in your own lofty language, that there shall be a stop put to this conspiracy, which I fear might have the effect of springing a mine that would blow up your administration. This letter 'hastily written upon the spur of the occasion is already too long, yet he calls upon his countrymen to allow him to 'indulge a little more my own egotism and vanity, the indigenous plants of my own mind. His whole genealogy, Flodden and all, we hear over again.
Pending these charges the Earl of Surrey, the joint-victor with his father at Flodden field, was despatched to Dublin in his stead, with the title of Lord Lieutenant. Kildare, by the advice of Wolsey, was retained in a sort of honourable attendance on the person of the King for nearly four years.
With one exception that of James IV., the hapless hero of Flodden field. It was a full-length portrait, life-sized, and full of fire. Claudia stood and gazed upon it with delight. She was charmed by its beauty and by the lines that it brought distinctly to her recollection.
Bannockburn is an incident in English history, but it is the great turning-point in the story of Scotland; the historian cannot regard Flodden as more than incidental to both. When James V succeeded his father he was but one year old, and his guardian, in accordance with the desire of James IV, was the queen-mother, Margaret Tudor.
These romantic tales of heroic battles, thrilling incidents, and love adventures, are told in fresh, vigorous verse, which breathes the free air of wild nature and moves with the prance of a war horse. Outside of Homer, we can nowhere find a better description of a battle than in the sixth canto of Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field:
More than a hundred years after this, the last, and in many respects the greatest, battle ever fought on Northumbrian soil took place at Flodden.
But, having once made up his mind to make a hero of Henry, he goes on with it bravely to the end. He hides nothing, he excuses nothing, he extenuates nothing. Neither the death of the aged Countess of Salisbury or of the gallant Earl of Surrey, nor the illegal imprisonment of the aged Norfolk, the hero of Flodden, shakes his faith in his hero-king.
His was the dilemma of his father before Flodden. How, against the perfidious ambition, the force in war, and the purchasing powers of Henry VIII., was James to preserve the national independence of Scotland?
Many a year ago, when we were younger, I stood by you on Flodden Field when Sir Edward, Christopher Harflete's father, was killed at our side, and those red-bearded Scotch bare-breeks pressed us hard, yet I never itched to turn my back, even after that great fellow with an axe got you down, and we thought that all was lost.
But I would not have him backward in these, either. We English, thank God, have not had much occasion to draw a sword since we broke the strength of Scotland on Flodden Field; and in spite of ordinances, we know less than we should do of the use of our weapons. Even the rules that every lad shall practise shooting at the butts are less strictly observed than they should be.
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