The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald
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over 800 bowmen to nine arquebusiers, and in the 1583 muster the English West March counted 2500 archers, with no mention of fire-arms. Hundreds of hand-guns with ammunition were sent to Berwick in 1592, but the powder was unreliable, and as for the guns, “when they were shot in, some of them brake, and hurte divers mennes hands.” In the same year Richard Lowther asked only for bows for the defence of Carlisle.3
Like the local peasant infantry, the Border riders also used the bow, but there is increasing mention as the century progresses of their carrying arquebuses, the light pieces called calivers, and the dag, the heavy hand-gun which was the tough equivalent of the modern large-calibre pistol.
The principal close-quarter weapons of the Border foot soldier were the bill, the long cleaver-cum-pike which had lasted through the Middle Ages, the spear, and a local arm called the Jedburgh axe, with a distinctive round cutting edge. Swords are seldom mentioned in the English muster rolls, but the March riders of both sides certainly carried them, occasionally with small shields.
However, in peace or war, the rider’s favourite weapon was the lance. These were sometimes over thirteen feet long, but usually must have been shorter. They were used couched, for thrusting, and also for throwing. Camden describes the Borderers on horseback spearing salmon in the Solway; anyone who has tried to spear fish on foot will appreciate the expertise required to do it from the saddle.
Eure pronounced on this Border skill without qualification: he found the March riders better at handling lances on horseback than Yorkshiremen, and “better prickers in a chase as knowing the mosses, more nimble on foot.”
This then was the Borderer’s armoury, for war-time campaign or peace-time raid. So if one mounts the reiver on his hobbler, with steel cap, jack, lance, cutting-sword, dagger, and hand-gun,4 he is fully equipped and ready to be pointed at the target—farm, village or grazing herd, peel tower or sheiling. This, quite literally, was his day’s work.
1. Froissart says twenty to twenty-four leagues a day, which is around seventy miles. It has been suggested that this is an incredible distance for armed riders, and that for “leagues” one should read “miles”. But Howard Pease has produced evidence to show that when Froissart said leagues he meant just that (i.e. three miles), and as we know that in 1603 Robert Carey rode close on 400 miles from London to Edinburgh in sixty hours (and took a nasty wound on the way, which reduced his speed) it seems safe to credit Froissart’s estimate.
As to their mustering speed, there is abundant evidence, in Warden’s correspondence and elsewhere, of the Borderers’ ability to be armed and riding in force in a remarkably short time after an alarm; John Maxwell of Herries reckoned that 350 horsemen could be assembled in thirty minutes.
2. The authority again is William Patten, a shrewd Londoner who accompanied Somerset’s Scottish expedition in 1547. One of his army acquaintances was young William Cecil, later Lord Burghley; the two of them kept journals of the expedition, which Patten used when he published his account of the campaign.
3. Possibly the fact that one Scottish monarch, James II, had lost his life through a bursting cannon in 1460 helped to prejudice the Scots against fire-arms. Hertford noted in the 1540s that the “Scotishe borderers … love no gonnes, ne will abyde withyn the hearyng of the same”.
4. Basically the reiver’s equipment was not very different from that which the English Border light horseman was supposed to carry for government service, and which the Bishop of Durham defined as “a steele cap, a coate of plate, stockings and sleeves of plate, bootes and spurres, a Skottisch short sworde and a dagger, an horsemans staffe and a case of pistolls”.
The reivers themselves, as has already been mentioned, might be anything from peers to farm hands; some were full-time professional raiders, others divided their time fairly evenly between agriculture and stealing, and some made only occasional forays, when times were hard or they were offered a particularly tempting quarry. They commonly rode in family parties—Liddesdale raids were almost invariably made up of permutations of Elliots, Armstrongs, Crosers, and Nixons, just as the Redesdale and Tynedale incursions consisted largely of Charltons, Dodds, Milburns, and Robsons.
Obviously raiders got to know each other, and there is strong evidence of professional loyalty, the same men riding in each other’s company again and again, whether or not they belonged to the same family. This professional tie often spanned the Border, and it was common for Englishmen to ride with Scottish bands, and vice versa. The outlaw operations, of course, were international; gangs like Sandy’s Bairns, with whom Kinmont Willie rode latterly, would welcome recruits from anywhere.
Unfortunately there were no Pepyses among the reivers, to leave a day-to-day journal of their activities. So we can only guess how many raids were casual affairs, and how many were carefully plotted weeks in advance. We cannot know for sure if some raider’s wife, aware that her larder was running short, ever did lay a dish of spurs before her husband as a hint to be busy. One can imagine an Armstrong, in his tower, finding time hanging heavy and whistling in his sons and cousins for a spur-of-the-moment foray to Redesdale or Gilsland; they would perhaps enlist a couple of Elliots on the way, or pick up a specialist in the shape of a rider who knew the target area particularly well. On the other hand, a leader like Buccleuch was, as we know, capable of the most meticulous planning and intelligence work before he mounted a foray.
Frequently raids began from what was called a “tryst”, a prearranged meeting-place where the last-minute details were settled. These were usually well-known landmarks, and when a raid had set off without its full muster, a sign would be left to indicate the direction taken. According to Scott, one method was to cut the leader’s name or signal in the turf, the arrangement of the letters indicating the path to be followed.
Everyone who writes about the reiver’s technique invariably quotes Bishop Leslie, in one of his various translations. This is Camden’s, quoted by Scott; it is worth remembering that it applies to both Scottish and English alike.
“They sally out of their own borders, in the night, in troops, through unfrequented by-ways, and many intricate windings. All the day time, they refresh themselves and their horses, in lurking holes they had pitched upon before, till they arrive in the dark at those places they have a design upon. As soon as they have seized upon the booty, they, in like manner, return home in the night, through blind ways, and fetching many a compass. The more skilful any captain is to pass through those wild deserts, crooked turnings, and deep precipices, in the thickest mists and darkness, his reputation is the greater, and he is looked upon as a man of an excellent head.
“And they are so very cunning, that they seldom have their booty taken from them … unless sometimes, when, by the help of blood-hounds following them exactly upon the tract, they may chance to fall into the hands of their adversaries. When being taken, they have so much persuasive eloquence, and so many smooth insinuating words at command, that if they do not move their judges, nay, and even their adversaries (notwithstanding the severity of their natures), to have mercy, yet they incite them to admiration and compassion.”
His lordship the bishop writes with such feeling and descriptive skill that one wonders if he wasn’t out with the Armstrongs himself on some occasion. He has the exact mood of the business, and everything he says is consistent with the voluminous records of raids left in Border documents. What he was describing was a long-distance foray,