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Cuthbert’s banner, Surrey planned to inspire his men by that famous victory, known as the Battle of the Standard.
    Before there was any fighting in 1513, Surrey had to discover the Scots’ strength and tactical intentions. He sent Thomas Hawley, Rouge Croix herald, with a trumpeter to James with two letters, one written in his own hand, and the other from his son, Lord Howard, who had now arrived safely. Surrey told the Scottish king that he
    unnaturally, against all reason and conscience, [had] entered and invaded his brother’s realm of England and done great hurt . . . in casting down castles, towers and houses, burning, spoiling and destroying of the same and cruelly murdering the [king’s] subjects.
    Wherefore the said earl will be ready to try the rightfulness of the matter with the king in battle by Friday next coming at the farthest.
    Time was running out for the English general. Surrey needed to destroy the Scots before his army melted away. Food supplies were dangerously low and for two days his troops had quaffed no beer, only ‘water and could scarce get any other sustenance for money’. 57
    His son’s letter was more provocative and more personal. It boasted that, during his voyage north, ‘he had sought the Scottish navy, then being at sea, but he could not meet with them, because they were fled to France, by the coast of Ireland’. James had
    many times [sought Howard] to make redress for Andrew Barton, a pirate of the sea . . . he was now come in his own person to be in the vanguard of the field to justify the death of [Barton] against him and all his people.
    Howard pledged that neither he nor his soldiers would take any Scottish nobleman prisoner, ‘but they should die if they come in his [reach], unless it was the king’s own person, for he trusted to no other courtesy at the hands of the Scots’. This fighting talk was deliberately designed to antagonise James IV and force him into battle: if he retreated, he would be dishonoured as a coward. 58 The English commanders were not alone in disparaging their foes: among the Scots, Lord Patrick Lindsay dismissed Surrey as ‘an auld crooked earl lying in a chariot’ - a snide, sniping reference to his arthritis.
    Rouge Croix returned with James’s agreement to wait for battle until noon on Friday 9 September. All the bonhomie and boisterous goodwill of the wedding of his queen, Margaret Tudor, a decade before had vanished. The Scottish king contemptuously dismissed Surrey’s letter as being unseemly for an earl to challenge a prince. 59 The herald also brought disturbing intelligence - that the Scottish army was positioned
    on a high mountain called Flodden on the edge of Cheviot, where was but one narrow field for any man to ascend up the hill . . . to him and at the foot of the hill lay all his ordnance.
    On the one side of his army was a great marsh, encompassed with the hills of Cheviot, so he lay too strong to be approached on any side . . . except that the Englishmen would have temerariously run on his ordnance. 60
    The Scots had chosen a formidable position and would quit it at their peril to fight on level ground. They clearly hoped to force Surrey to launch a suicidal uphill assault upon them, in the face of overwhelming artillery fire.
    But the earl was too wily a general to sacrifice his hungry army on those steep slopes. On 8 September, just after noon, the 23,000 men of the English army struck camp at Milfield, south-west of Flodden Edge, and began a long march behind and around the Scottish flank. Their unexpected manoeuvre threw the Scottish commanders into confusion: were the English now invading Scotland? Were they going to attack them from the rear? Was their road back home now cut off? By the next day, James had to counter-march his forces north across Branxton Moor to deny the English the heights behind him. Surrey had lured the Scots out of their fortress-like prepared positions and neutralised their enormous tactical