Otterburn,

Otterburn, a small village in Redesdale, Northumberland, about 16 miles south of the Border, and 32 miles from Newcastle, on the benty uplands a little to the west of which was fought, during the moonlit night of 19th August 1388, what Froissart calls 'the hardest and most obstinate battle that was ever fought.' Of a Scottish army of 50,000 men which had mustered on the Border, the greater part invaded England by Carlisle, while 2000 foot and 300 lancers under the Earls of Douglas, Dunbar, and Moray remained to carry fire and sword through Northumberland and Durham. On the march back, laden with spoil, they lay three days before Newcastle, and in one of the frequent passages of arms that occurred Douglas carried away Hotspur's pennon, and declared that he would plant it on his castle of Dalkeith. 'By God, Earl of Douglas,' said Hotspur, 'you shall not even bear it out of Northumberland.' The Scots marched up Redesdale, and, after failing in an attempt on Otterburn Tower, by the desire of Douglas entrenched themselves on a hill slope near, the exact site of which is somewhat uncertain, in order to give Percy an opportunity of coming to claim his pennon. The chivalrous Hotspur hastened after them with 600 horse and over 8000 foot, and came up while the Scots were at supper, whereupon a desperate hand-to-hand fight at once began. Douglas was greatly overmatched in numbers, and, seeing his men forced back, grasped his ponderous mace in both hands and hewed a way before him until he was borne down mortally wounded by three spear-thrusts. To some of his kinsmen anxiously asking how he did, Hume of Godscroft tells us the dying hero made answer, 'I do well, dying as my predecessors have done before; not in a bed of languishing sickness, but in the field. These things I require of you as my last petitions: first that ye keep my death close both from our own folk and from the enemy; then that ye suffer not my standard to be lost, or cast down; and last, that ye avenge my death, and bury me at Melrose with my father. If I could hope for these things, I should die with the greater contentment; for long since I heard a prophecy that a dead man should win a field, and I hope in God it shall be I.' Towards morning the Scots gained a complete victory, losing 300 men, while the English lost 1880, and among the prisoners both Hotspur and his brother Ralph. The Scottish ballad of 'Otterburn' is almost as historical as Froissart's glowing narrative; the English 'Ballad of Chevy Chase' is a glorious effort of the imagination, which still stirs a modern reader, as it did Sir Philip Sidney, more than the blast of a trumpet. See Robert-White's monograph, History of the Battle of Otterburn (1857).