Henry’s negotiations for the kidnapping of James were of April of the same year.  Margaret, the young queen, after her marriage, was soon involved in bitter quarrels over her dowry with her own family; the slaying of a Sir Robert Ker, Warden of the Marches, by a Heron in a Border fray (1508), left an unhealed sore, as England would not give up Heron and his accomplice.  Henry VII. had been pacific, but his death, in 1509, left James to face his hostile brother-in-law, the fiery young Henry VIII.

In 1511 the Holy League under the Pope, against France, imperilled James’s French ally.  He began to build great ships of war; his sea-captain, Barton, pirating about, was defeated and slain by ships under two of the Howards, sons of the Earl of Surrey (August 1511).  James remonstrated, Henry was firm, and the Border feud of Ker and Heron was festering; moreover, Henry was a party to the League against France, and France was urging James to attack England.  He saw, and wrote to the King of Denmark, that, if France were down, the turn of Scotland to fall would follow.  In March 1513, an English diplomatist, West, found James in a wild mood, distraught “like a fey man.”

Chivalry, and even national safety, called him to war; while his old remorse drove him into a religious retreat, and he was on hostile terms with the Pope.  On May 24th, in a letter to Henry, he made a last attempt to obtain a truce, but on June 30th Henry invaded France.  The French queen despatched to James, as to her true knight, a letter and a ring.  He sent his fleet to sea; it vanished like a dream.  He challenged Henry through a herald on July 26th, and, in face of strange and evil omens, summoned the whole force of his kingdom, crossed the Border on August 22nd, took Norham Castle on Tweed, with the holds of Eital, Chillingham, and Ford, which he made his headquarters, and awaited the approach of Surrey and the levies of the Stanleys.  On September 5th he demolished Ford Castle, and took position on the crest of Flodden Edge, with the deep and sluggish water of Till at its feet.  Surrey, commanding an army all but destitute of supplies, outmanoeuvred James, led his men unseen behind a range of hills to a position where, if he could maintain himself, he was upon James’s line of communications, and thence marched against him to Branxton Ridge, under Flodden Edge.

James was ignorant of Surrey’s movement till he saw the approach of his standards.  In place of retaining his position, he hurled his force down to Branxton, his gunners could not manage their new French ordnance, and though Home with the Border spears and Huntly had a success on the right, the Borderers made no more efforts, and, on the left, the Celts fled swiftly after the fall of Lennox and Argyll.  In the centre Crawford and Rothes were slain, and James, with the steady spearmen of his command, drove straight at Surrey.  James, as the Spaniard Ayala said, “was no general:  he was a fighting man.”  He was outflanked by the Admiral (Howard) and Dacre; his force was surrounded by charging horse and foot, and rained on by arrows.  But