While Warren, with inexpressible anxiety, beheld from the opposite bank the destruction of the flower of his army, the Steward of Scotland and the Earl of Lennox were seen approaching with a strong body of horse; but, as might be expected, instead of joining the English, they assisted their countrymen in pursuing and killing those who were attempting to save themselves. Sir Marmaduke Twenge gallantly cut his way to the bridge, and escaped.[117]
The panic now became general, and the face of the country was soon covered with a confused mass of terrified fugitives, hurrying on to avoid the swords of their conquerors, and increasing, as they fled, the disorder of their retreat, by throwing away their arms and their standards, in order to facilitate their flight.
Wallace having crossed the ford alluded to by Lundin, the pursuit was followed up with the most destructive perseverance. The day of retribution had arrived;--the butcheries of Berwick, the carnage of Dunbar, with a long list of national indignities and personal sufferings had now to be atoned for. Conscious of the provocation which had roused to frenzy the vengeance of an infuriated people, Warren turned with dismay from the scene of havoc, leaving twenty thousand of his soldiers to manure the fields of those they had so lately oppressed. Cressingham, the most detested of all the tools of Edward, was among the number of the slain;--and when Wallace came up, a party were employed in flaying the body. According to the MS. Chronicle of Lanercost, he is said to have ordered only as much of the skin to be taken off as would make a sword-belt; and his men, perhaps, imitating his example, might have appropriated the rest. This, says a respectable author,[118] is no doubt the origin of the tale told by Abercromby and some other historians, of the Scots having used it as girths to their horses. An order of this kind, given in the heat of the pursuit, was perhaps never thought of afterwards; at least, we have no account of Wallace ever wearing such an appendage. The circumstance, however, shows the deep-rooted detestation with which the individual was regarded.
Warren, who fled rapidly to Berwick, was most probably, like another English general of more modern times, the first herald of his own discomfiture. The consternation which his disaster occasioned among his countrymen in Scotland was so great, that few or none would venture to wait the approach of the enemy; but, abandoning their strongholds, they hurried southward with the greatest precipitation, justly conceiving that the terms they were likely to obtain from one who followed up his victories with so much energy, were hardly worth staying for. The loss on the part of the Scots was comparatively small; none of note having fallen, save the brave Sir Andrew Murray of Bothwell.[119]