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THE EURES. 143
Sir Thomas Carlton, of Carlton Hall, 1547, gives a most placid report
of spoliation and barbarities committed by him in a raid through Teviotdale
and Dumfries.
Robert Bruce, in 1312, entered Cumberland by the Solway Firth,
ravaged Gillesland to the value of ,2,000, and pillaged the abbey of
Lanercost. In Haines's State Papers a record is given of a raid in 1543,
when 10,386 horned cattle, 12,492 sheep, and 260 nags were "lifted," besides
192 buildings destroyed, 403 Scots slain, and 816 prisoners taken.
In 1545 the Earl of Hertford boasts of having destroyed 7 monasteries,
25 castles, 5 towns, 243 villages, 13 mills, and 3 hospitals.
In the Annals of the House of Percy (vol. ii. p. 197) there is a letter
(too long to transcribe here) from Lord Eure to the Earl of Northumberland,
giving a lamentable account of an onslaught by the Burnes, Younges, and
Mawes upon two of his tenants ;
and the state of expectation and preparation
for such events in which they lived, is graphically
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, where (canto i)
"Nine and twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall ;
Nine and twenty squires of name
Brought their steeds to tower from stall ;
Nine and twenty yeomen tall
Waited duteous on them all.
Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel ;
They quitted not their armour bright
Neither by day nor yet by night.
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.
Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the wardens ten :
Thirty steeds both fleet and wight.
Stood saddled in stable day and night.
Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow.
And with jedwood axe at saddle-bow ;
A hundred more fed free in stall ;
And such was the custom in Branksome Hall.
Why do these steeds stand ready dight ?
Why watch these warriors armed by night ?
They watch to hear the bloodhound baying,
They watch to hear the war-horn braying ;
To see St. George's red cross streaming,
To see the midnight beacon gleaming.
They watch 'gainst southron force and guile,
Lest Scroop, or Howard, or Percy's powers,
Threaten Branksome's lordly towers,
From Warkworth, or Naworth, or merry Carlisle."
set before us in