Buccleuch, having urged the release of Kinmont Willie in vain, determined to free him by force. At Morton Tower, in the Debatable Land, he collected one evening before sunset a chosen band of followers with scaling ladders and pickaxes. Through the darkness of a misty and stormy night they forded in succession the Esk and the Eden, and halted under the wall of Carlisle two hours before daybreak. Bursting in the postern, and overpowering the sentinels, they made such a ferocious din with tongue and trumpet that the garrison, thinking all the wild men of the Border had got into the town, prudently shut themselves up in the Keep, and then—
“Wi’ coulters, and with forehammers,
We garr’d the bars bang merrilie,
Until we came to the inner prison,
Where Willie o’ Kinmont he did lie.”
The prisoner was soon rescued; and there being no time to knock off his irons, he was mounted on the shoulders of “Red Rowan,” described as “the starkest man in Teviotdale.” Some attempt was made to prevent the escape; but the night continuing dark, the bold band got away, and a wild gallop brought them safe to the Scots border two hours after daybreak. Kinmont humorously complaining of his steed and his spurs, as he playfully termed his irons, the company halted at a smith’s cottage in their own country, and demanded his services. The smith seemed loth to rise so early, whereupon Buccleuch, playfully thrusting his lance through the window, speedily had him wide awake. This stroke of humour was highly appreciated on the Border—was considered quite side-splitting, in fact—but history has failed to record the smith’s observations on the incident. The “bauld Buccleuch” himself never did a bolder deed, but Elizabeth was furious. In October, 1597, he was sent to the English court to make what excuse he might to the Queen, who, in one of her Tudor tempers, angrily demanded “how he dared to undertake an enterprise so desperate and presumptuous.” “What is there that a man dares not do?” was the answer, surely in fit keeping with the tradition of boldness. Elizabeth turned to her courtiers: “With ten thousand such men our brother of Scotland might shake the firmest throne in Europe!” and so Buccleuch departed in peace.
Our last picture is from the days after the Jacobite rising of 1745. A great many of the trials of the Scots rebels took place at Carlisle, and, as one can understand, the accused had but short shrift. “We shall not be tried by a Cumberland jury in the next world!” was the comforting reflection of one of the prisoners. A long series of executions, with all the terrible rites practised on traitors, took place on Gallows Hill, and the heads of these poor Jacobites were planted over Carlisle gates as a warning. A ballad of deepest pathos tells the fate of one unfortunate:—
“White was the rose in his gay bonnet,
As he faulded me in his brooched plaidie;
His hand, which clasped the truth o’ luve,