Battle of Flodden - Casualties

Casualties

Surrey's army lost 1,500 men killed. There were various conflicting accounts of the Scottish loss. A contemporary French source, the Gazette of the Battle of Flodden, said that about 10,000 Scots were killed, a claim made by Henry VIII on 16 September while he was still uncertain of the death of James IV. William Knight sent the news from Lille to Rome on 20 September, claiming 12,000 Scots had died with less than 500 English casualties. Italian newsletters put the Scottish losses at 18 or 20 thousand and the English at 5000. Brian Tuke, the English Clerk of the Signet, sent a newsletter stating 10,000 Scots killed and 10,000 escaped the field. Tuke reckoned the total Scottish invasion force to have been 60,000 and the English army at 40,000. George Buchanan wrote in his History of Scotland (published in 1582) that, according to the lists that were compiled throughout the counties of Scotland, there were about 5,000 killed. A plaque on the monument to the 2nd Duke of Norfolk (as the Earl of Surrey became in 1514) at Thetford put the figure at 17,000. Edward Hall, thirty years after, wrote in his Chronicle that "12,000 at the least of the best gentlemen and flower of Scotland" were slain.

As the nineteenth century antiquarian John Riddell supposed, nearly every noble family in Scotland would have lost a member at Flodden. The dead are remembered by the song (and pipe tune) "The Flowers of the Forest";

We'll hae nae mair lilting, at the yowe-milking,

Women and bairns are dowie and wae.

Sighing and moaning, on ilka green loaning,

The flowers of the forest are all wede away.

Contemporary English ballads also recalled the tragedy of the Scottish losses;

To tell you plaine, twelve thousand were slaine,

that to the fight did stand;

And many prisoners tooke that day,

the best in all Scotland.

That day made many a fatherlesse childe,

and many a widow poore;

And many a Scottish gay Lady,

sate weeping in her bowre.

A legend grew that while the artillery was being prepared in Edinburgh before the battle, a demon called Plotcock had read out the names of those who would be killed at the Mercat Cross on the Royal Mile. According to Pitscottie, a former Provost of Edinburgh, Richard Lawson, who lived nearby threw a coin at the Cross to appeal from this summons and survived the battle.

Branxton Church was the site of some burials from the battle of Flodden.

After Flodden many Scottish nobles are believed to have been brought to Yetholm for interment, as being the nearest consecrated ground in Scotland.