Battle of Homildon Hill, 1402, Image by Andrew Spratt
Goaded beyond endurance by English archery, the Scots abandoned their position on the hill and charged down into a carefully prepared killing ground from which few escaped alive.
The last of the medieval confrontations between England and Scotland was not so much a battle as a slaughter. It was a battle in which leadership and tactical skill won out against muddle and indecision. Which is not to say that there was a lack of courage, as the events of the battle clearly show.
After his defeat at Otterburn, Harry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, heir to the Earl of Northumberland, craved revenge on the Scots. First, however, he took a hand in sorting out the internal unrest in England. King Richard II had ruled well for many years, but after the death of his beloved Queen Anne something snapped in his brain. He indulged in every luxury known at the time and gave himself over to gluttony and drink. He hired a large private army, not to fight the kingdom’s enemies, but to crush resistance to his heavy taxes and arbitrary whims. He ordered the murder of the Duke of Gloucester and personally beat the Earl of Arundel senseless. Other nobles and bishops were executed, thrown into prison or exiled. The economy was in a mess and the common people suffered terribly.
When Henry Duke of Lancaster raised a rebellion in the summer of 1399, the powerful Percy family joined immediately. Richard sent out the summons to raise the royal army, but nobody came. Abandoned and alone, Richard was captured and deposed. A few months later Lancaster announced that Richard was dead and took the throne as King Henry IV.
Almost immediately a man with a strong resemblance to Richard appeared at the court of King Robert III of Scotland. The Scots hailed him as the real King Richard and refused to deal with King Henry on the grounds that he was a usurper. The Scots stepped up the number and scale of their border raids. In July 1402, Henry led a large army into southern Scotland, but failed to capture any major cities or to bring the Scottish army to battle.
As soon as King Henry was gone, Archibald, Earl of Douglas mustered a force and marched south over the border. Like his grandfather in 1388, Archibald plundered Northumberland and Durham before turning back at the gates of Newcastle. He led his army, now laden down with a vast amount of plunder, north along the coast road. He turned inland to avoid the great fortress of Alnwick intending to pass through Wooler and cross back into Scotland at Coldstream.
The English had not been idle. The Earl of Northumberland had gathered an army and laid an ambush beside the ford at Milfield where Douglas would have to cross the River Till. Scottish scouts discovered the trap and Douglas halted just north of Wooler to decide his next move. The next morning, 14 September, the English army led by the Earl and his son Harry Hotspur advanced on the Scottish position. Battle was inevitable.
The Opposing Armies
Archibald, Earl of Douglas, had about 9,000 men with him when he camped on the slopes of Homildon Hill. The approaching English army under the Earl of Northumberland was smaller, probably about 7,000 strong. But the English were so confident of victory that Northumberland’s son, Harry ‘Hotspur’ suggested an immediate attack. His confidence was based on the different equipment and tactics of the two armies.
The Scottish troops were overwhelmingly infantry, who rode horses on campaign but fought on foot. These men were armed much as Scottish armies had been for the previous century. In addition to his infantry, Douglas had several hundred heavily armoured knights – though it is not known exactly how many. In theory these men were raised by traditional feudal levy, being expected to serve forty days at their own expense. In practice, however, the full levy was raised only when the king went to war on the grand scale. Noblemen, such as Douglas, could call out the levy of their estates for cross border raids, but they also hired men for cash payments called Bonds of Retinue, or for the promise of a share of any loot captured. It is thought that the Scottish army on this occasion was hired by Douglas and his fellow nobles on the basis of Bonds.
The English army at this battle was, essentially, the private army of the Percy family and other northern noblemen. The great wealth of these families gave them the money to hire and equip soldiers, while their spreading estates gave them a large reservoir of men who felt a direct loyalty to the noble family. The English had long ago abandoned the feudal levy and instead relied upon a minority of the men in the population who effectively worked as full time, professional soldiers. As a result the English armies of this time were consistently better trained and equipped than their Scottish rivals.
At Homildon Hill, the Percies brought an army accustomed to fighting on foot. About half the army was made up of archers, many of them Welshmen hired by the northern families to stiffen the bowmen of their own estates. At this date the longbow was at the peak of development. The best archers were those who began training as boys, for the years of practice as the body grew produced massively broad shoulders and overdeveloped arm muscles which together gave greater power in the shot arrow. The remainder of the troops in the English army were infantry equipped with more or less effective armour. Most men wore mail jackets and steel helmets and carried wooden shields bound with iron.
The English also had their heavily armoured knights encased in full plate armour. These men usually fought on foot alongside the men they had raised, using their extra weight to stiffen the battle line and their authority to give orders in the heat of battle. Some English knights chose to fight on horse at this time, but not at Homildon Hill.
Tactics
The early fifteenth century saw large battles fought with similar tactics to those of the fourteenth century. Battles tended to be won or lost by the formations of armoured infantry. Not until the enemy’s divisions were broken and in flight was the battle won.
To achieve this aim, the Scots and English employed quite different tactics. The English used the longbowmen to produce an arrow storm. The armoured infantry were held back while the archers did their work and were brought into play only if the enemy threatened to overrun the lightly armoured and vulnerable archers. At this point in the battle the archers could not shoot for fear of hitting their own men and the battle would become a mass of men engaged in bloody hand to hand combat. If the English were getting the worst of the encounter, they would seek to disengage again covered by archery or by mounted knights whose presence would deter too rash a pursuit. If it were the enemy who fell back, the English would use archery to inflict casualties until their targets were out of range, after which mounted men would take up the pursuit.
To counter these tactics, the Scots came up with a number of ploys designed to neutralize the arrow storm and get to close quarter fighting. The Scots might attack at dawn, as at Bannockburn, or launch a surprise attack from a forest, as at Otterburn. Alternatively they could launch a swift cavalry charge to ride down the archers, or at least mask their aim and enable the infantry to get to grips. If none of these tactics looked possible, the Scots usually preferred to avoid a pitched battle and rely on ambush, raid and sieges to grind down the English campaign.
The Battle
As the English army advanced and deployed for battle, the Scots realized they had a problem. Encumbered by a large train of wagons and pack animals, loaded down with plunder, they could not march as quickly as the English and so avoid a battle. Nor could they scramble up the steep slopes of the hills at their back where their height would render the longbowmen far below almost useless. Nor would the Scots abandon their plunder and flee. Uncertain what to do, Douglas did nothing.
The Earl of Northumberland agreed with his son that an immediate attack was needed, but the wily old man ignored Hotspur’s calls for a frontal assault. Instead Northumberland drew up his armoured infantry on level ground directly in front of the Scots and halted. The front rank of this battle line was filled with archers. A strong body of archers, perhaps 2,000 strong, was then sent out to the right wing. If the Scots tried to attack, the archers could scamper back to the cover of their armoured support.
As the archers moved forward, Douglas did nothing.
Once in position, the archers let fly a deadly arrow storm. Some 12,000 arrows a minute plunged into the Scottish army. Wounded horses screamed in agony and fell to the ground lashing out with their hooves. Men raised their shields, but were hit nonetheless, the arrows tearing into flesh and shattering bones. Hundreds of Scots fell wounded or dead.
Still, Douglas did nothing. Perhaps he panicked, perhaps he was frightened. Whatever the reason, the inactivity of the Scottish commander was condemning his men to death.
Suddenly a lone knight rode out in front of the Scottish army. It was Sir John Swinton, a champion jouster at Scottish tournaments. He turned to face the army and shouted angrily ‘What has bewitched you today? Why do you not attack these men who hurry to destroy you with their arrows as if you were deer? Those who are willing should come with me and we shall strike our enemies to save our lives, or at least to fall as knights with honour.’ At least that is what a chronicler wrote down some time later.
Whatever Sir John actually said, it was enough. His chief rival on the tournament field, Sir Adam Gordon, spurred forwards and shouted ‘Indeed, you are the finest knight in Scotland. Let us ride together.’ The two young men flourished their lances and spurred down the hill at the English army waiting below. A hundred or so mounted knights followed, surging down the slope.
Seeing the charge, Douglas at last took action. He picked up his lance and ordered a general advance, charging forwards in the wake of Swinton and Gordon.
Seeing the Scots army at last in movement, Northumberland ordered his main body to fall back. But he was not retreating, merely luring the Scots into a prepared killing ground at the foot of the slope. The Scottish knights reached the flat ground first and were instantly deluged with an arrow storm from the English main body as well as from the flanking archers. Their horses killed or wounded, the knights crashed to the ground to be peppered with arrows themselves. The few dozen who remained mounted veered to the right and fled.
Seeing their social superiors effectively wiped out, the Scottish infantry abandoned the advance and ran. They were pursued by English arrows, which cut down more Scots, and then by cheering Englishmen who sprung to their horses to give chase. Most of the Scots got across the River Till, but the Tweed was running high. Many Scots, too tired to face the torrent, surrendered. Others dived in. For days afterwards hundreds of bodies were found floating down stream. It is thought that less than half the Scottish army got home.
Aftermath
Once the killing was over, the English moved into the field and up the slopes where the Scots had been mown down by the archers. Most of the heavily armoured nobles and knights were still alive. Thrown by wounded or dying horses and injured by the arrow storm they lay prostrate awaiting capture. The Earl of Douglas himself was hauled from beside his horse with five arrow wounds, including one that cost him his eye. Three other earls were taken together with nearly 100 knights and lesser barons. Even Murdoch Stewart, the king’s nephew, was taken alive.
The Percies were jubilant. They had got their revenge for the disgrace of Otterburn and gained great fame. More lucrative, they had a clutch of wealthy prisoners who, according to the rules of war of the time, could be held for ransom.
There was a complex set of rules about the treatment of noble prisoners at this time. In theory the ransom was to be paid to the person who captured the prisoner, but equally the prisoner expected to be kept in the luxury usual for his station. If a humble foot soldier captured an earl, it was obvious such luxury could not be afforded. It was normal, therefore, that a prisoner would be sold on to somebody able to bear the costs of captivity. In this way the man who made the capture would become instantly wealthy, while the nobleman who ‘bought’ the prisoner would get the eventual ransom, which was usually more than had been paid for the prisoner.
This system was well understood, but in the wake of Homildon Hill it went badly wrong. King Henry IV of England was insecure on his throne and in desperate need of money. He therefore instructed the Percies to hand over the prisoners taken at Homildon Hill and offered them a derisory fraction of the expected ransom in return. The Percies were furious. They argued, they delayed, they pleaded and in the end they rose in revolt and England was plunged into civil war.
Scotland, meanwhile, had its own troubles. Robert III died in 1406 and left the throne to his infant son James I. The nobles fell to squabbling, taking power that rightfully belonged to the crown. It was not until James III became king in 1488 that internal peace came to Scotland. James III was too busy repairing the damage caused by the years of civil strife to feel the need to go to war with England. The English, meanwhile, were bleeding themselves white in the bloodbath known as the Wars of the Roses.
There were, of course, border raids. Some of them led to substantial fights such as that at Wark in 1435. The Earl of Northumberland was driven off by the Earl of Angus and another English defeat, this time at the hands of the new Earl of Douglas, in 1448. But these were relatively small affairs. Both nations were far too busy with their internal troubles to put a large army in the field.
