Border Raids and Reivers

by Robert Borland

For Border matters, they are so shameful and inhuman as it would loathe a king’s heart to think of them. I have borne for your quiet too long, even murders committed by the hands of your own wardens, which, if they be true, as I fear they be, I hope they shall well pay for such demerits, and you will never endure such barbarous acts to be unrevenged.

I will not molest you with other particularities; but will assure myself that you will not easily be persuaded to overslip such enormities, and will give both favourable ear to our ambassador, and speedy redress, with due correction for such demeanour. Never think them mete to rule, that guides without rule.

Of me make this account, that in your world shall never be found a more sincere affection, nor purer from guile, nor fuller fraught with truer sincerity than mine; which will not harbour in my breast a wicked conceit of you, without such great cause were given, as you yourself could hardly deny; of which we may speed, I hope, ad calendas Græcas.

I render millions of thanks for such advertisements as this bearer brought from you; and see by that, you both weigh me and yourself in a right balance; for who seeks to supplant one, looks next for the other.”

These wise and weighty admonitions were no doubt received in a becoming spirit. But James was not prepared at once to comply with the demand that Buccleuch should be handed over to the tender mercies of his enemies. Buccleuch was a special favourite. He was disposed, therefore, to shield him as long as he could conveniently do so, with any degree of safety to himself and his own interests. Negotiations were carried on between the two governments for a period of eighteen months, and everything might have been amicably settled had the wardens, and others in authority, only conducted themselves with a reasonable amount of discretion. Scrope, especially was dying to be revenged on those who had subjected him to such great indignity; and consequently, a few months after the castle of Carlisle had been broken into by Buccleuch, he gathered together two thousand men and marched into Liddesdale, where he and his followers created great devastation. They burned, so the Scottish commissioners allege, “24 onsettes of houses, and carried off all the goods within four miles of bounds. They coupled the men their prisoners ‘tua and tua togeather in leashe like doggis. Of barnis and wemen, three or four scoore, they stripped off their clothis and sarkis, leaving them naked in that sort, exposit to the injurie of wind and weather, whereby nyne or tenne infantes perished within eight daies thereafter.’”

The answer of the English commissioners to this indictment indicates, at least, the grounds on which Scrope regarded himself as justified in undertaking this invasion of Liddesdale. The reasons adduced are plausible, if not always convincing. “It is no novelty,” they say, “but an ancient custom, for the English warden to assist his opposite, and the keeper of Liddesdale, to ride on and ‘herrie’ such thieves, and on occasion to do so at his own hand.... Buccleuch, besides (1) surprising the second fortress of the Queen’s Border; (2) slaying 24 of her subjects, including 16 of her soldiers; (3) has bound himself with all the notorious riders in Liddesdale, Eskdale, and Ewesdale, and after asserting that he paid ‘out of his own purse’ half of the sworn bill of Tyndale of £800, which the King commanded him to answer, joined himself with the Ellotts and Armstrongs, to plunder Tyndale for demanding the balance, slaying in their own houses 7 of the Charletons and Dodds the chief claimants. And being imprisoned by the King, he made a sporting time of it, hunting and hawking, and on his release did worse than ever, maintaining his ‘coosens’ Will of Hardskarth, Watt of Harden, &c., to murder, burn, and spoile as before.

The people under his charge, Ellotts, Armstrongs, Nicksons, &c., have of late years murdered above 50 of the Queen’s good subjects, many in their own houses, on their lawful business at daytime—as 6 honest Allandale men going to Hexham market, cut in pieces. For each of the last 10 years they have spoiled the West and Middle Marches of £5000. In short, they are intolerable, and redress being unattainable, though repeatedly demanded by the Queen and warden, the justifiable reprisal ordered by her Majesty in necessary defence of her own Border, cannot in equity be called an invasion, but rather ‘honourable and neighbourlike assistance,’ to maintain the inviolable amitie between the princes and realms, against the proud violaters thereof in eyther nation.... To conclude—this action of the Lord Scrope’s is to be reputed and judged a ‘pune,’ an ancient Border tearme, intending no other than a reprisall, which albeit of late years her Majesty’s peacable justice hath restrained.”

There is much in a name. This invasion of Liddesdale, resulting in the burning of numerous homesteads, the slaughter of many women and children, accompanied by barbarities of the most revolting description, is euphoniously described by the commissioners as “honourable and neighbourlike assistance.” The women and bairns, who were led in leashes like so many dogs, were no doubt duly grateful to my Lord Scrope and his minions for their kindly attentions! The absurdity of such a verdict is surely unique.

It would appear that Buccleuch’s enforced absence from the Borders, after the taking of Carlisle castle, was of brief duration. He was soon back in his old haunts, and at his old trade. What had happened in the interim was not likely to enhance his feeling of regard for Scrope, and those who were aiding and abetting him in this matter. He was determined to avenge the cruel raid which had been made upon Liddesdale. Along with Sir Robert Ker of Cessford, another renowned freebooter, he marched into Tynedale with fifty horse and a hundred foot, burned at noonday three hundred onsteads and dwelling houses; also barns, stables, ox houses, &c., to the number of twenty; and murdered “with the sworde” fourteen who had been to Scotland, and brought away their booty. The English warden was utterly helpless. He dare not lift a finger to stay the progress of the invaders. He gave vent to his feelings in a letter to Burghley, in which he says—“To defend such like incursions, or rather invasions, with sorrow as formerly I declare to your lordship the weak state of Tindale, for there was not 6 able horse to follow the fray ‘upon the shoute,’ though in daytime, and where as reported to me, there were 300 able foot, ‘or better,’ there was not a hundred of this following, ‘and those naked.’ This piteous state increases since my coming, and I cannot see how to amend it, leaving this to your wisdom, ‘wishing to God’ I had never lived to serve where neither her Majesty nor her officer is obeyed; fearing unless assisted by her Majesty’s forces, Tyndale will be laid waste as other parts of the March are.”[96]

One cannot restrain a certain feeling of commiseration for the English warden, who was so shamefully neglected by his government, and so miserably supported in the discharge of his duties by those dwelling within his wardenry. The complaint which Eure here makes is one which was often made by the wardens on the English Border. They were frequently left in a comparatively helpless condition, having neither men, horses, nor money sufficient for their purposes. The knowledge of this fact no doubt encouraged the Scots to pursue their nefarious calling with a boldness and persistency, which, at first sight, appear somewhat extraordinary.