Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/183

1569.] THE RISING OF THE WORTH. 169 might liave foreseen the answer to such an application. Nevertheless, for the sake of the good cause, with a half- consciousness that he was sealing his fate in doing so, he determined to brave the popular feeling, and if he could not give up the Earls, at least to make them prisoners. Lady Northumberland had been left behind in the first haste of the flight. Her husband wished to rejoin her, and Hector Armstrong, Hector of Harlaw, whose name was ever after infamous in Border story, undertook to guide him. The Regent had notice where to look for him, and a party of horse were on the watch. He was taken somewhere in Liddisdale, not without a struggle. Some English borderers tried to rescue him, and Captain Borthwick, who commanded the Regent's troops, was killed, but the men did their duty, and the Earl was brought safely into Jedburgh. Westmoreland and the Nortons, it might be thought, could have been taken more easily, for they were close under Murray's hand. Two miles up the valley through which the stream runs from which Jedburgh takes its name, on the crest of a bank which falls off precipitously to the water, stand the remains of Fernihurst, then the stronghold of the Kers. It was on a scale more re- sembling the feudal castles of the English nobles than the narrow towers in which the lords of Scotland com- monly made their homes ; and although the bugle -note blown upon the battlements could be heard in the mar- ket-place of the town, the laird of Fernihurst offered an asylum to the fugitives, and there the whole party, ex- cept Northumberland, was soon collected. The Regent sent to demand them. Fernihurst answered that if he