Flodden 500 Years On: The Flower of Scotland, Lying Cold in the Clay

As best I can tell it is not permissable to talk or write about the battle of Flodden without first asking why it is not talked about more frequently? But of course there are good reasons why this calamity (a matter of perspective, I grant you) as slipped from mind. In the first place, contemporary Scotland feels less need to remember disaster. Or even, cynics might suggest, history. Secondly, for the English it was just another occasion on which they hammered the Scots. And they did it with their reserves, so to speak, commanded by the Earl of Surrey while Henry VIII was away battling the French.

Nevertheless, Flodden was a catastrophe for Scotland, the single greatest military defeat in the country’s history. Not until 1914 would the country be as sorely afflicted by martial loss as it was in autumn 1513. (The 400th anniversary commemorations were, in general, more lavish than those that have marked the 500th.