"Then they have grippit Hughie the Graeme,
And brought him up through Carlisle toun;
The lasses and lads stood on the walls,
Crying, 'Hughie the Graeme, thou 'se ne'er gae doun.'"
They tried him by a jury of men,
"The best that were in Carlisle toun,"
and although his guilt was open, "gude Lord Hume" offered the judge "twenty white owsen" to let him off, and "gude lady Hume" "a peck of white pennies," but it was of no avail, and Hughie went gallantly to his death.
For these Batables had their own code of right and wrong, and were, in their peculiar way, men of honour. There was Hobbie Noble, an English outlaw, who was betrayed by a comrade for English gold, and who, hanged at Carlisle, expressed on the gallows his execration of such conduct.
"I wad hae betray'd nae lad alive,
For a' the gowd o' Christentie."
The seizure of Kinmont Willie was hotly resented, even though his clan, the Armstrongs, who had built themselves strong towers on the Debatable Land, "robbed, spoiled, burned and murdered," as the Warden of the West Marches complained, all along upper Cumberland. The Armstrongs could, at one time, muster out over three thousand horsemen, and Dacres and Howards strove in vain to bring them under control. Yet there was "Border law," too, one of its provisions being that on the appointed days of truce, when the "Lord Wardens of England and Scotland, and Scotland and England" met, each attended by a numerous retinue, at a midway cairn, to hear complaints from either side and administer a rude sort of justice in accordance with "the laws of the Marches," no man present, not even the most notorious freebooter, could be arrested. But William Armstrong of Kinmont was too great a temptation; he had harried Cumberland too long; and a troop of some two hundred English stole after him, as he rode off carelessly along the Liddel bank, when the assemblage broke up, overpowered him, and brought him in bonds to Carlisle.
"O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde?
O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope?
How they hae ta'en bauld Kinmont Willie,
On Haribee to hang him up?