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at the mission, preferring to win his glory instead on a French battlefield. When Henry embarked at Dover in June, he took Surrey’s hand, and told him: ‘My lord, I trust not the Scots, therefore I pray you not be negligent.’ An order is an order, and the earl replied:
    I shall do my duty and your grace shall find me diligent and to fulfil your will shall be my gladness. 51
    He said of the Scottish king:
    Sorry may I see him ere I die, that is the cause of my abiding behind. If ever he and I meet, I shall do that in me . . . to make him as sorry [as] I can 52
    and he marched north on 22 July, gathering troops en route. He imposed strict discipline on his troops, issuing orders forbidding the playing of dice or cards by common soldiers, but allowing noblemen and captains ‘to play at their pleasures within their own tents’. 53
    The king’s instincts proved entirely correct.
    On 11 August 1513, the Scottish herald Sir William Cumyng of Inverallochy, Lyon King of Arms, arrived at Henry’s camp outside the French town of Thérouanne in the Pas-de-Calais and delivered a bleak ultimatum from his master, James IV. The ‘Auld Alliance’ between France and Scotland was alive and well. James demanded that the English monarch
    desist from further invasion and utter destruction of our brother and cousin, the Most Christian King [Louis XII], to whom . . . we are bounden and obliged for mutual defence, the one of the other, like as you and your confederates be obliged for mutual invasions and actual war; certifying you we will take part in defence of our brother . . . And we will do what thing we trust may cause you to desist from pursuit of him. 54
    Predictably, Henry lost his temper and shouted at the herald: ‘I am the very holder of Scotland - he holds it of me by homage.’
    The Scots were already prepared for war, with ample French military assistance, and their 35,000-strong army crossed the River Tweed at Coldstream eleven days later, on 22 August. They attacked Norham Castle and James’s newly acquired heavy bronze guns smashed the walls of the gatehouse. This artillery bombardment was followed by:
    three great assaults, three days together, and the captain [John Anislow] valiantly defended . . . But he spent vainly so much of his ordnance, bows and arrows and other munitions that at last he lacked . . . and so [on] the sixth day, [the shortages] compelled to yield him simply to the king’s [James] mercy.
    This castle was thought impregnable . . . 55
    The Scottish host marched eight miles (13 km.) further south and occupied a five hundred foot (152.4 m.) high, three-peaked hill called Flodden Edge, in Northumberland, erecting earth ramparts and digging trenches to defend their camp on its crest.
    Surrey had reached Pontefract, Yorkshire, on his progress north and heard of the Scottish invasion on 25 August. Despite his age - he was now seventy - he hastened on towards Newcastle, sometimes travelling by carriage, as he was troubled with rheumatism or arthritis. The next day,
    was the foulest day and night that could be, and the ways so deep . . . that his guide was almost drowned before him, yet he never ceased, but kept on his journey to give example to them that should follow.
    His eldest son Thomas, Lord Howard, was bringing a contingent of 928 veteran soldiers and sailors up by ship: ‘All that night the wind blew courageously, whereof the earl doubted least that . . . his son . . . should perish that night on the sea.’ 56 Surrey heard Mass in Durham Cathedral and asked its prior to allow him to take into battle a local relic, St Cuthbert’s banner. His request was an act of heavy symbolism: the banner had been carried at the Battle of Northallerton, Yorkshire, on 22 August 1138, during the first major engagement between the English and Scots since the Norman Conquest. That day, the Scots’ king David I’s invading army was routed in just two hours by the outnumbered English militias. By bringing