The Steel Bonnets
These are flat, general statements, and they obviously have some basis. But they do not accord with the written records of Border life, with their long catalogues of broken assurances, unredeemed pledges, and the like. If one studies the lives of, say, John Forster6 and John Maxwell,7 it may not be possible to prove either of them liars, but there can be no doubt that lies were being told by someone, profusely and persistently. Sir William Bowes8 despaired of the Scots, “that both can and will say more for a falsehoode, than for my own part I can doe for the truth”, and John Carey thought them “the most crafty and deceitful” on earth. Many of his fellow-officials agreed. The necessity of repeated Border legislation to deal with perjury does not speak for a truthful populace.
It is sometimes argued that Border law could not have been based on good faith and truth-telling if these had not been the norm. This is to miss the point. The law was so based because there was no alternative in a fairly primitive and unusual society. Good faith was an ideal, then as now, and it was recognised, but that doesn’t mean it was universally observed. Study of the written facts suggests that the Borderers were no more truthful or reliable than other men; they had their own eccentric notions of honour, but stainless veracity was not essential to it in practice. Bishop Leslie no doubt had good reason for his opinion, but the records appear to contradict him. Still, there will always be those eager to accept his view of the Borderers; personally, I wouldn’t have trusted them round the corner.
Breaking a promise is one thing; deliberate betrayal and treachery are rather different, and it is said that these were uncommon. It is difficult to judge at this distance, but again a study of the records makes one cautious about accepting blanket statements. Hector of Harlaw, the Carleton brothers, Black Ormiston, and Richie Graham will be mentioned later; their behaviour provides food for thought on the subject.
Leslie is interesting on Border morality as applied to property and theft. “They have a persuasion that all property is common by the law of nature, and is therefore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity.” Later he adds: “Besides, they think the art of plundering so very lawful, that they never say over their prayers more fervently, or have more devout recurrence to their beads and their rosaries, than when they have made an expedition.”
Sometimes one gets the impression that the good bishop secretly admired the Border reivers. At least he is careful to do them justice, and there may be a clue to his attitude in that passage where he notes approvingly: “Nor indeed have the Borderers, with such ready frenzy as many others of the country, joined the heretical secession from the common faith of the holy church.” Rascals they might be, but Leslie counted them among his flock. Possibly he had not heard the story of the visitor to Liddesdale who, finding no churches, demanded: “Are there no Christians here?” and received the reply, “Na, we’s a’ Elliots and Armstrangs.”
Apart from the spiritual side, we know some other things about the old Border character. One has to remember, in quoting travellers’ stories, that most of those who visited Scotland, for example, wrote of the country as a whole, and what they described may not hold good for the Marches. But Pope Pius II, who visited the country in his earlier years when he was Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, made observations which are pertinent; he noted the generally poor condition of the country, and that the men were small, bold and forward in temper, while the women, “fair in complexion, comely and pleasing” were “not distinguished for their chastity, giving their kisses more readily than Italian women their hands”.
This was in the fifteenth century; fifty years later Pedro de Ayala, a Spaniard, found the women “courteous in the extreme … really honest, though very bold”. He thought they dressed better than English women, and were in absolute control of their houses.
Several writers testify to a boastful tendency in the Scots, and Sylvius noted that nothing pleased them more than to hear the English abused. An English physician who lived in Scotland in the 1540s found that it was not in nature for a Scot to love an Englishman, and we have plenty of evidence of mutual loathing on either side. John Carey thought the Scots “the most perverst and prowde nacion in the world”, and paid them a back-handed compliment: whoever found himself up against them, the Scots were “such a people as will soon find what is in him.”
Eure,9 an English Warden, said of his own Marchmen that they “envied the stranger”; outsiders were not welcomed on either side of the line, as many of the later English Wardens, who were not Borderers, found to their cost. But one learns to be cautious about accepting some of the English officials’ strictures on the Borderers at their full face value; they were doubtless sincere, but they were under severe pressures in their office, and in writing to London they tended to give full vent to their feelings. One detects a fine rising note of hysteria in John Carey’s correspondence, and in that of Eure, who never found his feet as a Warden. Henry Leigh, a lesser official, once observed, with feeling, that the Borderers “were no cripples of their tongues”; neither were their Wardens.
A marked characteristic of the Marchmen, seemingly at odds with Anglo-Scottish rivalry, was their peculiar sense of community which made the Borderland an entity. Over and above inter-marriage and blood kinship, there was a common heritage that seemed to unite English and Scot on the Border against the outside world; they under stood each other and, to use a modern cliché, shared common problems. C. P. Snow touched in one of his novels on the phenomenon of two enemies who felt somehow closer to each other than to their own supporters, and this was true of the Border people. At its extreme this feeling manifested itself in one English invasion, when English and Scottish Borderers, on opposite sides as part of their national armies, were seen talking to each other “within less than a spear’s length, but when aware that such intercourse was noticed, they commenced to run at each other, apparently with no desire to inflict serious injury.”10
Often to English Wardens it seemed that their subjects were more at home with Scottish Borderers than with other Englishmen—usually for profit. The bond, created by geography, by common social conditions, and by a shared spirit of lawless independence, was a paradox that intermarriage strengthened. It has never entirely disappeared.
The tribal system, sometimes called clanship, also helped to foster it. Family unity as much as anything made the Borders and set them apart. Despite the feudal system, tribal loyalty was paramount; Scott noted that no matter what the family’s origin, Saxon, Norman, or Celtic, clanship persisted and was too strong for the government. “No Prince but a Percy” was a Northumberland saying, and on the English side the power of the local chieftain was a continuing matter of concern to London, especially when the Catholic North became a menace to the Reformed state. On both sides the chief of the tribe was the man who mattered; in England “the inhabitants acted less under the direction of their landlords than under that of the principal man of their name”. In Scotland clanship was recognised by a government that could do nothing about it anyway; the chiefs were to find pledges for keeping good order by the clan, just as landlords had to take responsibility for their tenants.
There is a tendency to think of clanship as a peculiarly Scottish thing, but it is evident that on the Border the tie of tribal blood was no stronger among the Kerrs and Scotts and Armstrongs of Scotland than among the Forsters, Ogles, Fenwicks, Charltons, Halls, and Musgraves of England.
And if it was not easy to be a chief or a landlord over such people, it was even harder to be a central government whose claims to loyalty and obedience were feeble by comparison. What member of the Scott family needed Edinburgh’s protection—or approval—when he had Buccleuch’s?
No doubt the clan system contributed to the poverty and economic decline of the Borders, as well as to their backwardness. Greedy overlords were a cause of decay, and so was overpopulation of the dales, which drove men out to steal. Poverty has perhaps been over-emphasised as a root cause of Border reiving, but it was certainly a spur. The oft-quoted phenomenon of Tynedale, where a deceased’s land must be divided equally among all his sons, “whereby beggars increase and service decays” was rightly a matter for reform in Eure’s eyes.
1. The Last Years of a Frontier, pp. 26–8.
2. Thomas Howard the younger (1474?–1554), Earl of Surrey and later Duke of Norfolk (1524). Fought in Spain, 1512; Lord High Admiral of England, 1513–25; Earl Marshal of England, 1533. An experienced Border fighter, he suppressed the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Uncle of Anne Boleyn.
3. Sir Robert Carey (1560–1639), was at different times Warden of the English East and Middle Marches, and also served in a subordinate capacity in the West March. Clever, brave, and something of a beau sabreur, he is one of the few Borderers to have left memoirs of his activities.
4. Sir Robert Cecil (1563–1612), third son of Lord Burghley, was Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State from 1596, although in effect he had been holding the post for some years before that. He worked hard to secure the succession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne. Created Earl of Salisbury, 1605.
5. Sir Ralph Sadler, English Ambassador to Scotland in the middle of the sixteenth century.
6. Sir John Forster (1501?–1602), an extraordinary English Borderer, held the Middle March Wardenship for almost thirty-five years, with only one brief break. He was over 100 when he died, having lived almost exactly through the sixteenth century, and seen every aspect of Border life. No one was more experienced or sunk in frontier affairs than Forster; unfortunately, although he was outstandingly brave, his honesty was seldom out of question.
7. Sir John Maxwell (1512?–1583), later Lord Herries, had a highly chequered career, during which he held the Scottish West March Wardenship five times.
8. Sir William Bowes, a treasurer of Berwick and a commissioner for Border affairs in the 1590s. There was a large family of Boweses, of whom the most famous was the earlier Sir Robert Bowes, who was Warden of the English East and Middle Marches in the 1540s, “a most expert Borderer”, and author of “Forme and Order of a Day of Truce”. A later Robert Bowes was Elizabeth’s ambassador to Scotland.
9. Ralph, 3rd Lord Eure (1538–1617) was English Middle March Warden from 1595–98, and had a hard time of it. Like some other Wardens, he failed to live up to the reputation of distinguished ancestors—in his case, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been Wardens. The great-grandfather, Sir William Eure, 1st Lord, had the East March in the 1530s and 1540s; his son, Sir Ralph Eure, held the Middle March in the 1540s, was notorious for his cruel raids in Scotland, and was finally killed at Ancrum Moor (1545)—he was the father of the 2nd Lord Eure, who was Middle March Warden in the 1550s and died in 1594. Confusion occasionally arises because of the various ways of spelling the name, which also appears as Eurie, Ewerie, Ewer, and Evers. Whenever “Eure” is quoted in this book the person referred to is Ralph, 3rd Lord, unless otherwise stated.
10. Scott, quoting Patten’s account of Somerset’s expedition into Scotland.
VI
Food and shelter
The tribal system, and the eternal turbulence of the frontier, dictated the day-to-day living of the people. Camden spoke of nomads; as such, the Borderers tended to live on mobile beasts rather than on standing crops. They ate beef and broth in quantity, and some mutton: “they live chiefly on flesh, milk and boiled barley”, says Leslie, while Sylvius gives a diet of fish and flesh, with bread only as a dainty. Pedro de Ayala mentions immense flocks of sheep1 in the wilder parts, and the lack of crop cultivation.
Leslie noted that not only was use of bread very limited, but that the Borderers took very little beer2 or wine. Indeed, they seem to have been abstemious enough, although according to a document giving the number of taverns in the English Border in 1571, the inhabitants of the Middle March must have had a pub for every 46 people or thereabouts, and Berwick the same proportion. But drunkenness is seldom mentioned in Border records, with such notable exceptions as the six Scots reivers whom John Carey captured drunk at an inn, and Sir John Forster’s bastard son and deputy, “wan that is so given over to drunkennes, that if he cannot get companey, he will sit in a chayre in his chamber and drinke himself drunke before he reise!”
Leslie was talking about the rural Borderers when he mentioned the absence of bread, which was commoner in the cities, larger houses, and garrisons.3 An English traveller who stayed in the home of a Border knight in 1598 (it may have been Branxholm, the hold of Buccleuch), observed that “they commonly eat hearth cakes of oats” (the cakes or cracknels of which Froissart talks), and although he was entertained “after their best manner” he found “no art of cookery or household stuff, but rude neglect of both”. His account of a meal-time in the hold of a Border chieftain is so detailed that it is worth quoting at greater length:
“Many servants brought in the meat, with blue caps on their heads, the table being more than half furnished with great platters of porridge, each having a little sodden meat. When the table was served, the servants sat down with us; but the upper mess instead of porridge, had a pullet with some prunes in the broth. The Scots, living then in factions, used to keep many followers and so consumed their revenues in victuals, and were always in want of money.”
However, he found them hospitable to strangers, the city folk entertaining “passengers on acquaintance”.
The agricultural system of the Borderers, peaceful and lawless alike, followed a regular pattern. From autumn to spring, when the nights were long, was the season for raiding; the summer months were for husbandry, and although raiding occurred then also, it was less systematic. Tillage took place in spring and summer, and the crops were mainly oats, rye, and barley, but the main effort went into cattle and sheep raising. For this the rural Borderer had to be mobile, leaving his winter dwelling about April to move into the “hielands” where he lived in his sheiling for the next four or five months while the cattle pastured.
Although the sheiling communities were safer than the winter quarters, they were not immune from the reivers. Their inaccessibility cut both ways, for if it made raiding more difficult it also placed the herdsmen farther from the protection of the Warden forces. Eure wrote to Burghley at the start of the 1597 summering to complain that he could not defend the Middle March sheilings “without I have 100 foot from Berwick to lie during the summer with them for defence.” In that season at least the Scots were hitting the sheilings harder than usual, so that Eure found his people were reluctant to venture out summering, “which is their chiefest profitt”.
Following this system of transhumance was easier for people who were not accustomed to build houses for permanence, and who had learned from generations of warfare and raiding to live on the hoof. Even their winter quarters were often makeshift affairs that could be put up in a matter of hours. They were fashioned of clay, or of stones when they were available, and sometimes of turf sods, with roofs of thatch or turf. Most of the isolated holdings would be of this type, “huts and cottages” as Leslie says, “about the burning of which they are nowise concerned”. It was easy enough to build another, and Sir Robert Bowes described in 1546 how “if such cottages or cabins where they dwell in be bront of one day they will the next day maik other and not remove from the ground”.
In the larger villages there was more effort at permanence, with sturdy stone houses and walls, and in Tynedale and on the Scottish side there were some “very stronge houses” constructed of massive baulks of oak bound hard together and “so thycke mortressed that yt wilbe very harde, without greatt force and lasoure, to break or caste [them] downe”. By lining the walls and roofs thickly with turf the builders went some way towards fire-proofing these block-houses; Ill Will Armstrong’s house in the Scottish West March was “buylded after siche a maner that it couth not be brynt ne distroyed, unto it was cut downe with axes”.
The next stage up from the wooden block-house was the peel tower, many of which can still be seen all over the Border. An excellent example is Smailholm, near Kelso, or Hollows Tower on the Esk, which are rather de luxe models, but show exactly the purpose which the peel tower served.
The peel was built of stone, with walls of massive thickness, and ideally was three or four storeys high. The only entrance was through a double door at ground level, one of the doors being an outer iron grating, and the other of oak reinforced with iron. The bottom storey was used as a store room, and the floors above were reached by a narrow curving stair, called a turnpike, usually going up clockwise so that a defender retreating up the flight had his unguarded left side to the wall, and his sword arm to the outside; his attacker, coming up, was at the disadvantage of having his sword arm to the wall. Tradition has it that the Kerrs, who were notoriously left-handed,4 built their stairs anti-clockwise.
The upper floors were the living quarters, and at the very top there would usually be a beacon, to summon help in attack or give warning of an impending foray.
The peel was normally a chief’s house, and no matter how rich or powerful a Border leader might become he needed a tower at least for his personal safety and to provide a rallying point and defensive centre for his dependants. Their great virtue was their simplicity and strength; they were impervious to fire from the outside, or indeed to anything short of artillery or a sustained siege. Once inside, with the doors shut, the defenders could hold out against a greatly superior force, firing from the arrow-slits and shot-holes, and hurling down interesting objects from the roof. Even when the doors were forced, determined men could fight from floor to floor.
The situation of the towers varied. Sometimes a dwelling house was attached, and normally the chief’s immediate family and dependants, sometimes in large numbers, would live in and around the fortress. The peel might be surrounded by a large wall, known as a barmekin or barnekin; by statute of 1535 Scottish leaders on the Border were obliged to build them to regulation size, over two feet thick and between seven and eight feet high. The barnekin offered a refuge for people and cattle, and a defensible perimeter against minor attacks.
Even when he had to abandon his peel in the face of a large invasion, and retire to the wastes or mosses with his folk and goods, the Borderer had an ingenious way of preventing its destruction in his absence. The interior of the peel would be stuffed tight with smouldering peat, which would burn for days, and made it impossible for gunpowder charges to be laid, or for the attackers to get inside and set to work with crowbars and axes. When the Borderer found it safe to return he would have to renew and repair his woodwork, but the framework of his tower would be little the worse for wear.
There were methods of capturing a peel tower, one of which is described in detail by a reiver in Chapter XV. The Bold Buccleuch’s5 method, described by young Scrope,6 of “fyre to the door” whereby the defenders were smoked out, was probably common practice, especially when attackers had succeeded in capturing the ground floor and driving the defenders upstairs. Another ingenious method was used by Robert Carey in attacking a Graham peel: “we set presently at worke to get up to the top of the tower and to uncover the roofe, and then some 20 of [the besiegers] to fall down together, and by that means to win the tower”.
Carey was fairly new to the frontier at that time, and since the redoubtable Thomas Carleton, an officer of great experience, was at his elbow throughout the operation, we can guess whose bright idea it was to remove the roof.
The towers and block-houses were no doubt comparatively comfortable places, and decently if crudely furnished, although there was a total absence of such refinements as carpets or decorations, but the peasant huts and sheilings were primitive in the extreme. Heat was by peat fire, probably in the centre of the floor; the clothing, like the furniture, was of the simplest. “The husbandmen in Scotland, the servants, and almost all the country wore coarse cloth made at home of grey or sky colour, and flat blue caps very broad,” says our English traveller.7 The heads of tribes and leading landowners on both sides might use satin, silk, damask, lace, and taffeta, but among the poorer folk leather and buckskin for the men, and broadcloth, linen and woollens for both sexes were the common dress materials.
We get some idea of clothing and household goods among the Borderers from the lists of goods stolen in raids. These vary from the sumptuous apparel lifted from Robert Kerr of Ancrum, including fine hats and dresses, feather beds and plate, to the crude kitchen utensils of the peasants. An inventory of goods stolen from a servant of John Forster’s in 1590 is an interesting guide to the possessions of a “middle class” Borderer. It includes two doublets, two pairs of breeches, a cloak, a jerkin, a woman’s kirtle and pair of sleeves, nine kerchiefs, seven rails (shifts), five pairs of linen sheets, two coverlets, two linen shirts, a purse containing six shillings, another purse, two silk ribbons, a winding cloth, a feather bed, three shirts, a cauldron, and so on. Not a badly furnished establishment; Forster’s servant could obviously afford to spend money on his wife’s appearance—which is mentioned elsewhere as a common Border trait.8
Within the towns conditions were somewhat different; Carlisle and Berwick were sophisticated by the standards of the rural communities, and on paper differed from southern towns only in that they were garrisoned and heavily defended. On the Scottish side, towns like Dumfries, Annan, Jedburgh, and Kelso were strong, organised communities, usually walled and fortified, run by their own councillors, and often containing houses of some strength. They were sturdily independent folk, quick to resent interference by rural potentates; Jedburgh especially, which carried on a feud with the Kerrs of Ferniehurst, was noted for the toughness of its inhabitants.
The standard of living was generally higher in the towns, as one would expect. A man in the Berwick garrison, in 1597, when times were hard and inflation had increased rapidly,9 got a daily ration of a twelve-ounce loaf, three pints of beer, one-and-a-half pounds of beef, three-quarters of a pound of cheese, and a quarter of a pound of butter—this was a considerable reduction in what his ration had been some years earlier.
What is interesting about the Berwick garrison’s rations is that they do not seem to have been markedly better off than the civilians—at least they could not afford the strong beer which apparently found a ready civil market. Nor was their food always considered satisfactory; John Carey bluntly told Burghley on one occasion that it was not fit for a horse.
1. Sheep-raising in the sixteenth century was primarily for wool production, not for mutton, but Border wool was considered of poor quality. The demand for mutton increased gradually from Elizabeth’s reign onwards.
2. The better classes in the towns brewed ale, which was their “usual drink”.
3. The garrison of the fortress of Roxburgh laid in 1800 loaves among the winter’s victuals in 1548.
4. A left-handed person is still called ker-handed, car-handed, or corry-fisted in the Scottish Borderland.