The cold was intense; and the same white frost that powdered the grassy lawns and leafless trees encrusted the iron helmets and corslets of the soldiers, whose breath curled from their close ranks like smoke from a fire. To Scotsmen even the most hilly parts of the landscape appeared almost a dead level, where Ely, with its fine cathedral and street, that straggled on each side of the roadway, seemed floating in a sea of white mist, through which the Ouse wound like a golden thread. Shorn of its beams by the thick winter haze, the morning sun, like a luminous ball of glowing crimson, ascended slowly into its place, and the great tower and pinnacles of Ely Cathedral gleamed in its light as if their rich Gothic carving had been covered with the richest gilding, and the tall traceried windows shone like plates of burnished gold.
The Reverend Dr. Joram, who had dashed forward with cocked pistols to reconnoitre, returned to report, with military precision, that "it was a fair city, open, without cannon or fortifications of any kind; and that, if it contained soldiers, they kept no watch or ward. And I pray Heaven," he added, "we may get wherewith to break our fast."
"We will march in with drums beating," said the Earl. "Allons, mon tambour Major! Give us the old Scottish march, with which stout James of Hepburn so often scared the Imperialists in their trenches on the Oder and the Maine."
With drums beating, standards displayed, and matches lighted, the solid column marched into the little city of Ely just as the tenth hour rang from the cathedral bells, and halting, the Earl sent to the affrighted mayor to demand peaceably three hours' quarters and subsistence for 1,500 Scots in the service of King James. The mayor, who on the previous night had dispatched a most loyal address to the new King William, was considerably dismayed to find the city so suddenly filled by the soldiers of a nation he equally feared and detested: but to hear was to obey. The determined aspect of young Walter Fenton, with his features flushed and red by the long and frosty night march, his drawn rapier, and Scottish accent and fashion of armour, made the mayor use every exertion to get his unwelcome visitors peaceably billeted on the terrified citizens, who expected nothing less than immediate sack and slaughter.