The Battle of Flodden Field in September 1513, in which an English army under the Earl of Surrey defeated a Scottish invasion force and killed James IV of Scotland along with much of the Scottish nobility, was one of the most catastrophic defeats in Scottish history. The battle was fought near Norham Castle, a great English border fortress on the Tweed; the Scottish army had besieged Norham only days before. The loss of James IV and his lords devastated Scottish cultural patronage and ended the great age of the Scottish Renaissance court.

Flodden produced some of the most powerful lament poetry in Scottish literary history. The 'Flowers of the Forest', a traditional lament whose most famous version was set to words by Jane Elliot in 1756, mourned the dead of Flodden with extraordinary restraint and power. Walter Scott opened Marmion (1808) with a vision of Flodden and Norham Castle, making the border fortress central to his narrative of chivalric tragedy. The battle's connection to castle warfare gave its literary memory a specifically architectural dimension.