ready boun to cause take him, as is before rehearsed.  Then the Earl of Angus past hastily to the door, and with him Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven, there to receive in the Earl of Mar, and go many of his complices who were there, as they thought good.  And the Earl of Angus met with the Earl of Mar, as he came in at the door, and pulled the golden chain from his craig, and said to him, a tow1 would set him better.  Sir Robert Douglas syne pulled the blowing horn from him in like manner, and said, “He had been the hunter of mischief over long.”  This Cochran asked, “My lords, is it mows2, or earnest?” They answered, and said, “It is good earnest, and so thou shalt find; for thou and thy complices have abused our prince this long time; of whom thou shalt hare no more credence, but shalt have thy reward according to thy good service, as thou hast deserved in times bypast; right so the rest of thy followers.” -------------------------------------
           1rope. 2jest.
------------------------------------- ’Notwithstanding, the lords held them quiet till they caused certain armed men to pass into the King’s pallion, and two or three wise men to pass with them, and give the King fair pleasant words, till they laid hands on all the King’s servants and took them and hanged them before his eyes over the bridge of Lawder.  Incontinent they brought forth Cochran, and his hands bound with a tow, who desired them to take one of his own pallion tows and bind his hands, for he thought shame to have his hands bound with such tow of hemp, like a thief.  The lords answered, he was a traitor, he deserved no better; and, for despight, they took a hair tether3, and hanged him over the bridge of Lawder, above the rest of his complices.’—­Pitscottie, p. 78, folio edit. -------------------------------------
            3halter.
------------------------------------- line 400.  Hermitage Castle is on Hermitage water, which falls into the Liddell.  The ruins still exist.

line 402.  Bothwell Castle is on the right bank of the Clyde, a few miles above Glasgow.  While staying there in 1799 Scott began a ballad entitled ‘Bothwell Castle,’ which remains a fragment.  Lockhart gave it in the ‘Life,’ i. 305, ed. 1837.  There, as here, he makes reference to the touching legendary ballad, ’Bothwell bank thou bloomest fair,’ which a traveller before 1605 heard a woman singing in Palestine.

line 406.  Reference to Cicero’s cedant arma togae, a relic of an attempt at verse.

line 414.  ’Angus was an old man when the war against England was resolved upon.  He earnestly spoke against that measure from its commencement; and, on the eve of the battle of Flodden, remonstrated so freely upon the impolicy of fighting, that the King said to him, with scorn and indignation, “if he was afraid, he might go home.”  The Earl burst into tears at this insupportable insult, and retired accordingly, leaving his sons, George, Master of Angus, and Sir William of Glenbervie, to command his followers.  They were both slain in the battle, with two hundred gentlemen of the name of Douglas.  The aged Earl, broken-hearted at the calamities of his house and his country, retired into a religious house, where he died about a year after the field of Flodden.’—­Scott.