History of the house and race of Douglas and Angus

House of douglas. 303
Full companies, many of which were gone abroad into the
country and villages for spoil and booty, and so entered into
conflict. When the noise hereof was carried to the ears of
the foragers, they, for fear of losing what they had got, which
was a very rich and great prey, past directly into England,
without regarding what became of the two Earls. Hereby
the battle was lost by the English, but the loss of men, was al-
most equal on both sides. This victory did not a little recre-
ate the King, and so affrighted Donald and his islanders, that
he sent and submitted himself to the King, and was received
by him: neither was there any further insurrection within
the country: neither did the Earl Douglas without the coun-
try enterprise any thing by the aid of England, they being
distracted at home by the dissension of Lancaster and York,
during the days of this King, which were not many: for a-
bout two or three years after this, the King alone was slain
by the wedge of a piece of ordnance of his own, and with
him George Earl of Angus hurt amongst 30,000 of his army,
of whom none else was either slain nor hurt, at the siege of
the castle of Roxburgh, in the 29th year of his age, in Sep-
tember 1460, some eight years after the killing of Earl Wil-
liam in Stirling-castle, at which time he was about the age of
twenty-one or twenty-two years.
Neither hear we any mention of the Earl Douglas's stirring
in the next King's (James III.) time, either in his minority,
being but a child of seven or eight years of age at his corona-
tion, or in his majority, either in the dissensions betwixt
the Kennedies and the Boyds, or the dissention betwixt the
King and the nobility. Whether it be the negligence and
sloth of writers that have not recorded things, or whether he
did nothing indeed, through want of power, his friends,
dependers and vassals being left by him, and despairing of
him, having taken another course, and his lands being dis-
posed of to others; so it is, that for the space of twenty or
twenty-three years, until the year 1483, there is nothing but
deep silence of him in all histories: only we find that he was
made Knight of the most noble order of the Garter by King