of Eccles by assault, and slew eight men in the abbey
and town, most part gentlemen of head sirnames; they also took several
prisoners, and burnt and spoiled the said abbey and town. On the same day
the garrison of Berwick brought out of the east end of the Mers six
hundred bolls of corn, and took prisoner Patrick Home, brother's son to
the laird of Ayton. November 5th, the men of the middle march burnt
Lessudden, in which were sixteen strong bastel-houses, slew several of the
owners, and burnt much corn. November 9th, Sir George Bowes and Sir Brian
Laiton burnt Dryburgh, a market town, all except the church, with much
corn, and brought away a hundred nolt, sixty nags, an hundred sheep, and
much other booty, spoilage, and insight-gear."[23]

This record is an instructive one. It shows how these merciless raiders
were dominated by the spirit of destruction and revenge. Nothing was
spared which it was possible for them to destroy. This invasion must have
proved peculiarly vexatious and disheartening to the Scottish Borderers.
Flodden had left them terribly crippled. The damage they had sustained was
not only of a material kind--the loss of men and resources--it was also,
to a certain extent, moral and intellectual. They had become utterly
disheartened, and it was some considerable time before they regained their
wonted confidence and intrepidity:

"Dool and wae for the order, sent our lads to the Border!
The English, for ance, by guile wan the day:
The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay.

"We'll hear nae mair lilting, at the ewe milking;
Women and bairns are heartless and wae:
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning--
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae."

The darkest part of the night precedes the dawn. Help was forthcoming from
an unexpected quarter. Henry had promised to give Eure a grant of all the
land he could conquer in Merse, Teviotdale, and Lauderdale, and it so
happened that the greater part of the district named belonged to Angus,
who was then in disgrace at the Scottish Court, and for some time had been
currying favour with the English King. When he learned what had taken
place, his indignation was unbounded. He swore that "if Ralph Eure dared
to act upon the grant, he would write his sasine, or instrument of
possession, on his skin with sharp pens and bloody ink." Scotland has not
unfrequently been deserted b