Border Raids and Reivers

by Robert Borland

THE THIEVES DAUNTONED.

“Revenge! revenge! auld Wat ’gan cry; Fye, lads, lay on them cruellie! We’ll ne’er see Teviotside again, Or Willie’s death revenged sall be.”

he intermittent and ineffective manner in which the law was generally administered on the Borders was the occasion, if not the cause, of much of the turbulence and lawlessness which prevailed. The Border thieves were now and then placed under the most rigid surveillance, and their misdeeds visited with condign punishment; but for the most part they were left to work out their own sweet will, none daring to make them afraid.

This method of treatment could not be expected to produce beneficial results. It had exactly the opposite effect. Respect for the law was completely destroyed. Those who were called upon, as the phrase goes, “to underlie the law,” had no sense of shame when their wrongdoing was brought home to them. They no doubt felt the inconvenience of being punished, by fine or imprisonment, for their misdeeds; but there was no moral stigma attaching to imprisonment, or to almost any other form of punishment. That a man’s father had been hanged for cattle-stealing, or for the slaughter of those who had dared to resist him when he went on a foraging expedition, might engender a feeling of resentment, but it was not in the least likely to create a feeling of shame. Such incidents as these were regarded with philosophical indifference. We remember once hearing a distinguished Borderer remark that the ancient history of nearly all the great Border families had been faithfully chronicled in “Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials!” A careful study of that interesting and valuable compilation will go far to corroborate the remark. The “Family Tree” is a phrase which has an altogether peculiar significance on the Borders. It suggests ideas and reflections which are not usually associated with genealogy.

But when all has been said on this phase of the question which either envy or malice can suggest, every sympathetic and well-informed student of Border history will readily admit that the Borderers, bad as they were, were really more sinned against than sinning. Carlyle has somewhere remarked that a man’s first right is to be well governed. It is, perhaps, unusual to regard our rights from this point of view, yet there can be no doubt that good government is an essential requisite of society, and one of the greatest blessings of the individual life. This boon was one which, for many generations, the Borderers did not enjoy. They were encouraged to commit crime one day, and punished for it the next. This is doubtless a strong assertion, but we think it is one that can be amply proved. It was the policy of James VI., for example, to keep on the best possible terms with Queen Elizabeth, in order not to endanger his chance of succession, and consequently he was naturally anxious to keep his turbulent subjects on the Borders as well in hand as possible. But that he secretly sympathised with them, and encouraged them in their predatory incursions on the English Border, hardly admits of serious doubt. Sir John Foster, writing in 1586, says: “The King doth write to the Laird of Cessford to do justice, and yet in the meantime he appointeth others to ride and break the Border, and doth wink thereat.”[59] We find Hunsdon writing in the same strain. “I am at this present credibly advertised,” he says, “from one of good intelligence that what fair weather soever the King makes, he means no good towards her Majesty, nor her subjects, and that at this present, there is some practice in hand, whatsoever it is—and he doth assure me that those of Liddesdale, Ewesdale, Eskdale, and Annandale, being 400 horse that came to Hawden brigges where they took away the goods and burnt 4 houses, was not without the King’s knowledge, but not meant to be done in that place.”[60] In another communication, in which he alludes to the coming of the King to the Borders with a large army, ostensibly to punish the thieves, he remarks, that he thought it very strange that the King should come with so great a company for the suppressing of a few thieves, when there was not one of them, either in Liddesdale or Teviotdale, that he might not have had brought to him, had he so wished it. He hints that these great outrages would never have been attempted without the King’s “privitie”—“for it was given forth,” he says, “that the Earl Bothwell’s riding to Branksome and Hawick, where he holds as many of Liddesdale before him as it pleased him to send for, that it was to cause them of Liddesdale to be answerable to justice to England for such outrages as they had sundry times committed; but the sequel did manifest the cause of his going thither. For presently after, his said son-in-law, the Laird of Buccleuch, made a ‘roade’ with 300 horse into the West March at two of the clock in the after-noon, with a trumpet and gydon, and spoiled the country about Bewcastle in warlike manner till sun-set. The trumpet was my Lord Bothwell’s, and the goods was carried to Armitage at my Lord Bothwell’s officers’ commandment. So as I have just cause to think that this ‘roade’ was done by my Lord Bothwell’s appointment, and I am sure he durst not have done it without the King’s privity, I will not say commandment.”[61]

These are only a few of many illustrations of a similar kind which may be found scattered through the pages of the “State Papers,” and while we must be careful not to accept such statements as in every instance worthy of absolute credence, yet the circumstances would seem to warrant our regarding them, in many cases at least, as well founded. When the King and his lieutenants thus secretly connived at, and encouraged, the depredations of the reivers, we need hardly wonder that they engaged in the work of plundering with an almost total absence of compunction.

Had the sphere of their operations been always strictly confined to the English Border, the likelihood is that neither King, nor Regent, would have sought to “daunton” them. But there were times when it was difficult for the Scottish reivers to earn a decent livelihood by harassing and spoiling “the auld enemy,” owing to the watchfulness and strength of those dwelling within the opposite Marches; and as there was a danger of their talents becoming feeble through disuse, they naturally turned their attention to their own more wealthy neighbours and friends. That there is “honour among thieves” is a proposition that is sometimes called in question; but we find that the spirit of a really helpful friendship occasionally manifested itself in curious ways. When a family, or clan, contemplated a raid upon a neighbour’s property, it was customary to secure the assistance of the thieves on the opposite Border. In “Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials” there are numerous allusions to the prosecutions of famous Scottish reivers for the inbringing of Englishmen to assist them in the work of plunder. This was one of the offences charged against Cockburn of Henderland, and which, no doubt, weighed heavily with his judges in consigning him to the gallows.

When the reivers thus turned their attention to their own countrymen, and with the assistance of English allies began to despoil them, it was felt that strong measures must be adopted for their suppression and punishment. The Border reivers regarded the law with a feeling akin to contempt. They were disposed to look upon the statutes of the realm as so many old wives’ fables; and, truth to speak, they were often of not much more account. The policy of the wardens was too frequently one of mere self-aggrandizement, and so long as their individual interests were not imperilled they looked on with a kind of placid indifference at the misdoings of those whom it was their duty, if not their interest, to control. When James VI. came to Dumfries, to “daunton the thieves” in that district of the country, his time was mainly occupied in meting out summary punishment to men of high social position, whose “thefts, herschips, and slaughters” had become notorious, and cried aloud for vengeance. There were, no doubt, many of the commonality as well, who at this time were made to suffer for their crimes, but as these cases were generally dealt with by subordinate officials, they do not come so prominently before us. “Nothing is more remarkable,” says Sir Herbert Maxwell, “than the light thrown on the social state of Scotland at this time by the justiciary records. By far the larger part of the criminals dealt with at the King’s ‘justice aires’ were men of good position, barons and landowners, burgesses or provosts of burghs. The humbler offenders were dealt with by the sheriff or at the baron’s courts, and do not appear; but the following extracts from the records of the short reign of James IV., in which the culprits are all landowners, or members of their families, in Dumfriesshire or Galloway, illustrate the difficulty of maintaining order when the upper classes were so unruly.” Here a list of names is appended, in which such well-known personages as Murray, Jardine, Herries, Bell, Dinwoodie, Lindsay, Douglas, &c., appear. These men stand charged with high treason, forethought—felony, slaughter, horse-stealing, and other heinous offences. Some were pardoned, others respited, the horse-stealer was called upon to make restitution,—a severe sentence,—and Lindsay of Wauchope, who had slain a messenger-at-arms, was condemned to death, and his estates forfeited. In the accounts of expenditure incurred by the King during this visit to Dumfries some curious items appear. Here are a few samples. Item, to the man that hangit the thieves at the Hallirlaws,—xiiijs. Item, for ane raip to hang them in ...—viijd. Item, to the man that hangit the thieves in Canonby, be the King’s command ...—xiiijs. But all the details are not of this gruesome character. The work of hanging, needful as it was, could give but “sma’ pleasure” even to a King, and so we find that entertainment of another kind was plentifully provided for the youthful monarch. “He was attended in his progress,” says Tytler, “by his huntsmen, falconers, morris dancers, and all the motley and various minions of his pleasure, as well as by his judges and ministers of the law; and whilst troops of the unfortunate marauders were seized and brought in irons to the encampment, executions and entertainments appear to have succeeded each other with extraordinary rapidity.”[62]

Not long after the King made another visit to the Borders, coming on this occasion also with a considerable following, to the Water of Rule, to “daunton” the Turnbulls, whose excesses had filled the minds of the more peaceful inhabitants with a feeling of terror. Leslie, in his own quaint and picturesque style, thus describes the incident:—“The King raid furth of Edinburgh, the viij. of November one the nycht, weill accumpaneit to the watter of Roulle, quhair he tuik divers brokin men and brocht thame to Jeduart; of quhom sum was justifyeit, and the principallis of the trubillis [Turnbulls] come in lyning claythis, with nakitt sordis in thair handis and wyddyis [ropes] about thair neckis, and pat thame in the Kingis will; quha wes send to divers castells in ward, with sindrie utheris of that cuntrey men also, quhair throchout the bordouris wes in greiter quietnes thairefter.”[63]