Source.—Richard of Hexham, De gestis regis Stephani, ed. Hewlett, vol. iii., p. 159. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.)

The king (of Scotland) passing by Durham with his army wasted the crops as far as the river Tees, and after his custom broke into, plundered and burned the towns and churches which he had earlier left untouched; and crossing the Tees also, he began to work the same havoc. But the pity of God, stirred by the tears of innumerable widows, orphans and wretched men, suffered him no longer to practise impiety so great without punishment. The preparations of him and his men for such wickedness, all his stores, and what he intended to do and whither to go, did not escape the men of Yorkshire. So the barons of that county, to wit, archbishop Thurstan, who, as will appear later, was a prime mover in this business, and William de AumÂle, Walter de Ghent, Robert de Bruce, Roger de Mowbray, Walter Spec, Ilbert de Lacy, William de Percy, Richard de Courcy, William Fossard, Robert de Stutevill, and the other mighty and learned men, assembled at York and discussed eagerly among themselves what plan to adopt in this crisis. And since many hesitated, suspecting the treason of others and mutually distrustful, and since they had no commander and leader in war, for king Stephen their lord was overwhelmed at that season with equal difficulties in the south of England and could not come to them at present, and since they feared to oppose their slight forces to numbers so superior, it seemed as if they would altogether abandon the attempt to defend themselves and their country; but Thurstan, their archbishop, a man of great persistence and worth, encouraged them with his speech and counsel. For he was the pastor of their souls, and unlike the hireling, regarded not his own safety by flight from the ravaging wolf, but rather was torn by the keenest compassionate grief at the scattering and undoing of his flock and the destruction of his country, and left no step untried, no stone unturned, to find a remedy for such monstrous evils. Wherefore, both by the divine authority entrusted to him and by the royal power then committed to him in this matter, and by their fealty and honour, he faithfully admonished them not to allow themselves through cowardice to be overthrown in a single day by the worst sort of barbarism.... He also promised them that he would cause the priests of his diocese to march together with them to battle, with their crosses and their parishioners, and purposed himself, God willing, to be present at the fight. At the same troubled season Bernard de Balliol, one of the chief men of that district, came to them from the king with a large body of knights, and both on the king’s and his own behalf inflamed their hearts to the same purpose. Urged therefore by the commands both of their king and of their archbishop, they were all with one accord confirmed in one same purpose, and each returned to his home. Soon after they all reassembled at York with their munitions and arms ready for war. So when they had done penance privately, the archbishop enjoined on them a three-days’ fast with alms, and thereafter solemnly gave them absolution and God’s and his own blessing, and though by reason of great infirmity and the weakness of old age he was carried in a litter wherever he was needed, yet to arouse their courage he determined to go with them. But they forced him to remain, beseeching him to be content to intercede for them by prayer and alms, watching and fasting and by other godly works; they would gladly fight the enemy for God’s church and for His minister, as He should deign to help them, and as their order demanded. Thereupon he delivered to them his cross and the banner of St. Peter and his own men; and they went to the town of Thirsk. Thence they sent Robert de Brus and Bernard de Balliol to the king of Scotland, who was now wasting the land of St. Cuthbert, as was said above; they begged him, with the greatest deference and friendliness, to desist thenceforth from his cruel measures, and promise faithfully to ask the king of England to confer on Henry, son of the king of Scotland, the county of Northumberland, which that king had demanded. But he and his men hardened their hearts, rejected their overtures, and treated them with scornful contempt. So Robert abjured the homage he had done to him, and Bernard the fealty which he had once sworn, when captured by him, and both returned to their fellows. Thereupon all the chief men of that county, and William Peverel and Geoffrey Halsalin from Nottinghamshire, and Robert de Ferers from Derbyshire, and other weighty and wise men, bound and fortified themselves in turn with oaths, that none of them would desert the others in this business, so long as they could each render mutual aid, and so all would either die or conquer together. At the same time the archbishop sent to them Ralph Novellus, bishop of Orkney, with one of his own archdeacons and other clerks, who in his stead should enjoin penance and give absolution to the bands of people daily flocking thither from all quarters. He also sent to them the priests with their parishioners, as he had promised them.

While, then, they were looking for the coming of the Scots, the scouts, whom they had sent in advance, returned, reporting that the king had already crossed the river Tees with his army, and after his custom was now devastating their district. So they went to meet him with the utmost haste, and passing through the town of Northallerton, reached at break of day a field two miles distant therefrom. Forthwith some of them set up the mast of a ship in the middle of a scaffold which they had brought, and called it the Standard.... On the top thereof they hung a silver box containing the body of Christ, and the banners of St. Peter the Apostle, and St. John of Beverley and St. Wilfred of Ripon, confessors and bishops. This they did that Jesus Christ our Lord, by the presence of His body, might be their leader in the war which they had undertaken for the defence of His church and their country, at the same time providing hereby that, if any of them should be by chance separated from their fellows and scattered, they would have a sure signal by which to return to them and there find assistance. They had hardly equipped themselves with arms for the fight, when the king of Scotland was reported to be at hand with the whole of his army ready and arrayed for battle. Therefore a great part of the knights left their horses and became footmen, and the choicest of them were arrayed with archers and set in the front rank, the rest, except the ordainers and directors of the battle, being packed about the Standard in the centre of the position, while the remainder of the troops were massed around them on every side in a dense rampart. The band of horsemen and the horses of the knights were withdrawn a little farther, that they might not take fright at the noise and clamour of the Scots. In like manner among the enemy the king himself and almost all his men became footmen and their horses were kept farther back. In the forefront of the battle were the Picts, in the middle the king with his knights and Englishmen; and the rest of the barbarous horde pressed around on all sides. While they marched to battle in such order, the Standard with its banners was seen not far away, and at once the hearts of the king and his followers were struck with a mighty fear and terror. But hardened in their malice, they yet strove to fulfil the evil work begun by them. So on the octave of the Assumption of St. Mary, 22 August, between the first and third hours, the strife of this battle began and ended. For straightway at the first onset innumerable Picts were slain, and the rest threw down their arms and basely took to flight. The field was choked with corpses, large numbers were captured, and the king and all the residue fled. Of that great army, all were either killed or captured or scattered like sheep whose shepherd is smitten down, and in wonderful wise, as if deprived of their sense, they fled as much away from their own land into the neighbouring parts of their enemies’ country, as towards their native land. But wherever they were found, they were killed like sheep for slaughter; and so by the righteous judgment of God, those who had woefully slain and left the dead unburied were themselves more woefully cut to pieces, and found no burial after the fashion of their own or the foreigners’ land, but were exposed to dogs, birds and wild beasts, or torn and dismembered, or left to decay and putrefy under the open sky. The king also, who a short time before in his excessive pride of heart and in the magnitude of his army seemed to have raised his head among the stars of heaven, and therefore threatened to destroy utterly the whole or the greatest part of England, was now shorn of his glory, and accompanied by but a few, and covered with the utmost shame and disgrace, scarcely escaped alive.

The degree of the divine vengeance appeared most clearly in the fact that the army of the vanquished was beyond estimation larger than that of the conquerors; nor could the number of the slain be counted by any man. For, as many bear witness, of the army which left Scotland alone, more than ten thousand are reckoned to have been missing from the ranks of those who returned, for throughout divers parts of Deira, Bernicia, Northumberland, Cumberland and other districts, many more were cut off after the battle than were slain in the battle. The English army, on the other hand, lost few of its numbers, speedily gaining a victory by God’s aid; and dividing the booty which was found there in great quantities, in a short while almost wholly broke up, and every man returned to his own home, restoring to the churches with joy and thanksgiving the banners of the saints which they had received. Verily they had marched to this battle in their finest array and all their wealth, as it had been to a royal marriage feast.