Annals Of The Moss-Troopers.
Outlawry was never carried to a greater degree of systematic organization, or practised on a larger and more dignified scale, than during the centuries of Border warfare between the English and Scottish chieftains. The only parallel to this warfare was furnished by the raids of the Free Companions in mediæval Italy; but the mercenary element in the organization of those formidable bodies of professional marauders destroys the interest which we might otherwise have felt in their daring feats of arms. The warfare of the Border was essentially a national outburst; the “moss-troopers,” although trained soldiers, were also householders and patriarchs. Their stake in the country they alternately plundered and defended was a substantial one. The field of their prowess was never far from home. Each retainer, insignificant as he might be, humble as his position in the troop might be, had yet a personal interest in the raid; and revenge, as well as plunder, was the avowed object of an expedition. There was never any changing of allegiance from one side to the other; the tie of blood and clanship welded the whole troop into one family. The Border, or debatable land between the rival kingdoms of England and Scotland, bristled with strongholds, all of historical name and fame: Newark and Branxholm (which Sir Walter Scott in his Lay of the Last Minstrel has euphonized into Branksome), held by the all-powerful Scotts of Buccleugh; Crichtoun Castle, the successive property of the Crichtouns, the Bothwells, and the Buccleughs, and, while in the hands of its original owners, the haughty defier of King James III. of Scotland; Gifford or Yester (it bears either name indifferently), famous for its Hobgoblin Hall, or, as the people call it, “Bo-Hall,” a large cavern formed by magical art; Tantallon Hold, the retreat of the Douglas, in which the family held out manfully against James V. until its chief, the Earl of Angus, was recalled from exile. Of this expedition it is related that the king marched in person upon the castle, and, to reduce it, borrowed from the neighboring Castle of [pg 223] Dunbar two great cannons whose names were “Thrawn-mouthed Meg and her Marrow”; also two great bolcards, and two moyan, two double falcons and two quarter-falcons, for the safe guiding and redelivery of which “three lords were laid in pawn at Dunbar.” Notwithstanding all this mighty preparation, the king was forced to raise the siege. The ruin of Tantallon was reserved for the Covenanters, and now there remains nothing of it save a few walls standing on a high rock overlooking the German Ocean and the neighboring town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Ford Castle, the patrimony of the Herons, had a better fate, and stands in altered and modernized guise, the centre of civilizing and peaceful influences, the residence of a model Lady of the Manor, overlooking, not the wild ocean, but a pretty village, faultlessly neat, and a Gothic school filled with frescos of Bible subjects, executed by the Lady Bountiful, the benefactress of the neighborhood. Yet Ford Castle had a stormy, stirring past, and stands not far from the historic field of Flodden, where tradition says that, but for the tardiness of the king's movements—an effect due to the siren charms of Lady Ford—James IV. might have been victorious. In the castle is still shown the room where the king slept the night before the battle, and only five or six miles away lies the fatal field, on which, Marmion in hand the curious traveller may still make out each knoll, the Bridge of Twisel, by which the English under Surrey crossed the Till, the hillock commanding the rear of the English right wing, which was defeated, and in conflict with whom Scott's imaginary hero, Marmion, is supposed to have fallen.
Very curious are the accounts of the various fights and forays given by the chroniclers of the middle ages, especially in their utter unconsciousness of anything unusual or derogatory in this almost internecine warfare. Their simplicity in itself presents the key to the situation. In reading their graphic, matter-of-fact descriptions, one needs to transport one's self into a totally different atmosphere. We must read these racy accounts in the same spirit in which they were written, if we would understand aright the age in which our forefathers lived. We are not called upon to sit in judgment over the irrevocable past, but to study it as a fact not to be overlooked, and a useful storehouse of warning or example. The possession of the king's person was sometimes the origin of terrible clan-feuds among the warlike Scottish imitators of the Frankish “Maires du Palais.” Thus, on one occasion, in 1526, the chronicler Pitscottie informs us that James V., then a minor, had fallen under the self-assumed guardianship of the Earl of Angus, backed by his own clan of Douglas and his allies, the Lairds of Hume, Cessfoord, and Fernyhirst, the chiefs of the clan of Kerr.[59] “The Earl of Angus and the rest of the Douglases ruled all which they liked, and no man durst say the contrary.” The king, who wished to get out of their hands, sent a secret letter to Scott of Buccleugh, warden of the West Marches of Scotland, praying him to gather his kin and friends, meet the Douglas at Melrose, and deliver him (James) from his vassal's power. The loyal Scot gathered about six hundred spears, and came to the tryst. When the Douglases and [pg 224] Kerrs saw whom they had to deal with, they said to the king, “Sir, yonder is Buccleugh, and thieves of Annandale with him, to unbeset your grace from the gate (i.e., interrupt your passage). I vow to God they shall either fight or flee, and ye shall tarry here on this know (knoll), and I shall pass and put yon thieves off the ground, and rid the gate unto your grace, or else die for it.” Scant courtesy in speech used those Border heroes towards one another! So an escort tarried to guard the king, and the rest of the clans went forward to the field of Darnelinver now Darnick, near Melrose. The place of conflict is still called Skinner's Field, a corruption of Skirmish Field. The chronicler tells us that Buccleugh “joyned and countered cruelly both the said parties ... with uncertain victory. But at the last the Lord Hume, hearing word of that matter, how it stood, returned again to the king in all possible haste, with him the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst, to the number of fourscore spears, and set freshly on the lap and wing of the Laird of Buccleugh's field, and shortly bare them backward to the ground, which caused the Laird of Buccleugh and the rest of his friends to go back and flee, whom they followed and chased; and especially the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst followed furiouslie, till at the foot of a path the Laird of Cessfoord was slain by the stroke of a spear by one Elliott, who was then servant to the Laird of Buccleugh. But when the Laird of Cessfoord was slain, the chase ceased.” The Borders were infested for many long years afterwards by marauders of both sides, who kept up a deadly hereditary feud between the names of Scott and Kerr, and finally, after having been imprisoned and had his estates forfeited nine years later for levying war against the Kerrs, the bold Buccleugh was slain by his foes in the streets of Edinburgh in 1552, twenty-six years after the disastrous fight in which he had failed to rescue his sovereign. It was seventy years before this Border feud was finally quelled.
On the English side of the Marches the same dare-devilry existed, the same speed in gathering large bodies of men was used, the same quickness in warning and rousing the neighborhood. Equal enthusiasm was displayed whether the case were one of “lynch law” or of political intrigue, as in the fight at Darnelinver. Sir Robert Carey, in his Memoirs, describes his duties as deputy warden for his brother-in-law, Lord Scroop. The castle was near Carlisle. “We had a stirring time of it,” he says, “and few days passed over my head but I was on horseback, either to prevent mischief or take malefactors, and to bring the Border in better quiet than it had been in times past.” Hearing that two Scotchmen had killed a churchman in Scotland, and were dwelling five miles from Carlisle on the English side of the Border, under the protection of the Graemes, Carey took about twenty-five horsemen with him, and invested the Graeme's house and tower. As they did so, a boy rode from the house at full speed, and one of his retainers, better versed in Border warfare than the chief, told him that in half an hour that boy would be in Scotland to let the people know of the danger of their countrymen and the small number of those who had come from Carlisle to arrest them. “Hereupon,” says our author, “we took advice what was best to be [pg 225] done. We sent notice presently to all parts to raise the country, and to come to us with all the speed they could; and withal we sent to Carlisle to raise the townsmen, for without foot we could do no good against the tower. There we stayed some hours, expecting more company, and within a short time after the country came in on all sides, so that we were quickly between three and four hundred horse; and after some longer stay, the foot of Carlisle came to us, to the number of three or four hundred men, whom we presently set to work to get to the top of the tower, and to uncover the roof, and then some twenty of them to fall down together, and by that means to win the tower. The Scots, seeing their present danger, offered to parley, and yielded themselves to my mercy.” But the victorious Carlisleans had reckoned without their host. From the hills and defiles around came pouring wild-looking mountaineers on rough, wiry ponies, farm-horses, etc., to the number of four hundred. The prisoners ceased their pleading, and looked eagerly towards their deliverers. Meanwhile, the men of “merry Carlisle”[60] gave their perplexed chief more trouble than his enemies, who “stood at gaze” a quarter of a mile from him; for, says he, “all our Borderers came crying with full mouths, ‘Sir, give us leave to set upon them; for these are they that have killed our fathers, our brothers and uncles, and our cousins, and they are coming, thinking to surprise you with weak grass nags, such as they could get on a sudden; and God hath put them into your hands, that we may take revenge of them for much blood that they have spilt of ours.’ ” The warden was a conscientious man, and had come here to execute justice against two malefactors, not to encourage indiscriminate private revenge; but even with his rank and vested authority he did not dare sternly to forbid a faction fight. He only told them that, had he not been there, they might have done as best pleased them; but that, since he was present, he should feel that all the blood spilt that day would be upon his own head, and for his sake he entreated them to forbear. “They were ill-satisfied,” he adds, “but durst not disobey.” So he sent word to the Scots to disperse, which they did, probably because they were unprepared to fight such a large and well-disciplined force, having expected to find but a handful of men. The necessity for delicate handling of this armed mob of English Borderers points sufficiently to the curious standard of personal justice which prevailed in those wild times. And yet, strange to say, while a Border “ride” (alias foray) was a thing of such ordinary occurrence that a saying is recorded of a mother to her son which soon became proverbial: “Ride, Rowley, hough's i' the pot”—that is, the last piece of beef is in the pot, and it is high time to go and fetch more—still it would sometimes happen, as it did to James V. of Scotland, that when an invasion of England was in contemplation, and the royal lances gathered at the place where the king's lieges were to meet him, only one baron would declare himself willing to go wherever the sovereign might lead. This faithful knight was another of the loyal race of Scott—John Scott of Thirlestane, to whom James, in memory of his fidelity, granted the privilege set forth in the following curious and rare charter:
“... Ffor the quhilk (which) cause, it is our will, and we do straitlie command and charg our lion herauld, ... to give and to graunt to the said John Scott ane border of ffleure de lises about his coatte of armes, sic as is on our royal banner, and alsua ane bundle of lances above his helmet, with thir words, Readdy ay, Readdy, that he and all his after-cummers may bruik (carry?) the samine as a pledge and taiken of our guid will and kyndnes for his true worthiness.”
The list of the damages done in some of these Border rides sounds strange in modern ears. Each country was a match for the other, though the strong castles of Wark, Norham, and Berwick in English hands were thorns in the side of the Scottish Borderers. Rowland Foster of Wark, on the 16th of May, 1570, harried the barony of Blythe in Lauderdale, the property of Sir Richard Maitland, a blind knight of seventy-four years of age. None of that country “lippened” (expected) such a thing, as it was in time of peace; and despite what may have been said—and truly—as to their lawlessness, the Borderers had a code by which to regulate their actions. The old man wrote a poetical account of the harrying, calling the poem the Blind Baron's Comfort, and in the introduction he enumerates his losses: five thousand sheep, two hundred nolt, thirty horses and mares, and the whole furniture of his house, worth £8 6s. 8d., and everything else that was portable. The sum represents some forty dollars.
In these narratives one feels it impossible to be very sorry for either party, each was so thoroughly unable to take care of itself! Those who to-day seem down-trodden victims of lawlessness will figure again a year hence as “stark moss-troopers [moss for marsh] and arrant thieves; both to England and Scotland outlawed, yet sometimes connived at because they gave intelligence forth to Scotland, and would raise four hundred horse at any time upon a raid of the English into Scotland.” This was said of the Graemes, Earls of Monteith, but was applicable, mutatis mutandis, to most of the Borderers on both sides. An old Northumbrian ballad, that survived in the North of England till within a hundred years, and was commonly sung at merry-makings till the roof rang again, gives forcible and rather coarse details as to the personal results of these forays. It celebrates the ride of the Thirlwalls and Ridleys in the reign of Henry VIII. against the Featherstons of Featherston Castle, a few miles south of the Tyne. Here is one of the rude stanzas:
“I canno' tell a', I canno' tell a',
Some gat a skelp (blow), and some gat a claw;
But they gard the Featherstons haud their jaw,