The earliest appearance of John o the Side is, perhaps, in the list of the marauders against whom complaint was made to the Bishop of Carlisle “presently after” Queen Mary Stuart’s departure for France; not far, therefore, from 1550: “John of the Side (Gleed John).”
Mr R. B. Armstrong has printed two bonds in which John Armstrong of the Syde is a party, with others, of the date 1562 and 1563. History of Liddesdale, etc., Appendix, pp ciii, civ, Nos LXV, LXVI.
The earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, after the failure of the Rising in the North, fled first to Liddesdale, and thence “to one of the Armstrongs,” in the Debateable Land. The Liddesdale men stole the Countess of Northumberland’s horses, and the earls, continuing their flight, left her “on foot, at John of the Syde’s house, a cottage not to be compared to any dog-kennel in England.” At his departing, “my lord of Westmoreland changed his coat of plate and sword with John of the Syde, to be the more unknown:” Sussex to Cecil, December 22, 1569, printed in Sharp’s Memorials of the Rebellion, p. 114 f.
John is nephew to the laird of Mangerton in B 1, 3, 4, C 1, 3, and therefore cousin to the Laird’s Jock and the Laird’s Wat:[[318]] but this does not appear in A.
Sir Richard Maitland commemorates both John of the Syde and the Laird’s Jock in his verses on the thieves of Liddesdale:
He is weill kend, Johne of Syde,
A greater theife did never ryd:
He never tyres
For to brek byres,
Our muire and myres our guid ane gyde.