In the year 1174, William, King of Scotland, dissatisfied with the conduct of Henry II. of England, invaded Northumberland, instigated thereto by a sense of his own wrongs, real or imaginary, and those discontented barons who wished to place the young King on the throne,--an ambitious youth, whom his father had imprudently allowed to be crowned during his own lifetime. While the numerous army of William was spread over the adjacent country, wasting, burning, and slaying with that indiscriminate recklessness peculiar to the age; he, with a chosen band of his followers, besieged the Castle of Alnwick. The devastations committed by the marauding army of the Scots inflamed the minds of the Barons of Yorkshire with a generous indignation; and they determined to exert themselves for the relief of their distressed countrymen. Having congregated at Newcastle to the number of four hundred horsemen, encased in heavy armour; they, though already fatigued with a long journey, pressed forward under the command of Sir Bernard de Baliol; and, by travelling all night, came in sight of the battlements of Alnwick Castle by daybreak. William, it would seem, had been abroad in the fields, with a slender escort of sixty horse; and, mistaking the English for a detachment of his own troops, he was too far advanced to retire, before he became sensible of his danger. “Now it will be seen who are true knights,” said the intrepid monarch, and instantly charged the enemy. His efforts, however, were unavailing; he was soon overpowered, and, along with his companions, made prisoner.
The chivalry of Yorkshire thus secured for their monarch a valuable prize. The magnanimity of Henry, however, was not equal to the gallantry of his subjects; for, on getting possession of the unfortunate prince, he inflicted on him every possible mortification. Not satisfied with exhibiting his rival, like a felon, with his feet tied under his horse’s belly, to the rude gaze of the vulgar; he summoned all his barons to Northampton, to witness “the humiliating spectacle of a sovereign prince exposed in public to a new-invented indignity.”[28]
It may appear difficult to account for this treatment of a Royal Captive, taken under such circumstances, in an age when the honours of chivalry were eagerly sought after by all the crowned heads of Europe. When we reflect, however, that on the Thursday preceding the capture of William, Henry himself had been ignominiously scourged at the tomb of his formidable enemy, Thomas à Becket, his lacerated feelings might, perhaps, have found some relief in this public exhibition of his power to inflict, on a brother monarch, something of a similar degradation.