The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald
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on Abbotsford by night to ransack and burn it.
One concludes that most of the romantic writers on the subject had never seen a sword or axe wielded in earnest, or seen a hanging, or a thatch burned in anger, or wakened in terror to the sound of hoof-beats. That was not their fault; but if they had known these things, a little of their enthusiasm for the glamorous side of the Border story might have been modified. Nor is patriotism, a common resort of the apologist, of much use in this context; patriotism was, as will be seen, frequently well down the scale of the Borderer’s priorities.
So, while admitting that it is difficult not to see the romantic side, it is important to keep it in perspective.
At the other extreme from the romantics are the historical specialists, who have dealt with various parts of the Border question—international politics, administration, military history, genealogical research, and a host of much smaller topics which have been examined in minute detail. These matters have been exhaustively done, but, quite rightly, they have not usually been concerned with what is called human interest. The Scottish policy of Henry VIII is a fascinating thing, offering as rich a field to the psychiatrist as to the historian, but I am less concerned with the effect that it had on, say, Franco-Scottish relations than with the more immediate and dramatic impact which it had on the good wife of Kirkcudbright who, during a skirmish near her home, actually delivered her husband up to the enemy for safe-keeping. Obviously one must take account of the machinations of Walsingham and James VI and I, but the prime consideration for me is how Nebless Clem Croser went about his business of cattle-rustling, and how the Grahams came to dispossess the Storeys, and how old Sir John Forster’s wife got the door shut in the nick of time as a band of reivers came up the stair.
It is necessary, I feel, to try to understand the Border reivers, and if not to excuse what they did, at least to see why they did it. And among all this, to try to see what it must have been like to be a wife or a mother making a home on the Marches.
At the beginning, it is as well to make one or two general points which are perhaps not commonly known. One should dispose immediately of the notion that Border raiding in peace, or even in war-time, was a straight case of England v. Scotland. It wasn’t. Raiding went both up and down and sideways. It has been common to show the English as the cops and the Scots as the robbers, but this was not the case. At this time of day no one can say who stole most from where, or who wreaked the greatest havoc; one might take a daring stab and say that probably the southern Scottish counties suffered the greater devastation, on a wide scale, as a result of English activity, including war-time inroads which cannot be classed as reiving proper—although the reiver and the soldier were often indistinguishable in war. On the other hand, the number of regular reiving forays by smaller groups was certainly greater from Scotland into England than vice versa. The net result over the centuries was probably not very different.
The important point is that it was not a one-way traffic, or even a two-way one. Scot pillaged Scot and Englishman robbed Englishman just as readily as they both raided across the frontier; feuds were just as deadly between families on the same side of the Border as they were when the frontier lay between them; Scots helped English raiders to harry north of the line, and Englishmen aided and abetted Scottish inroads. The families themselves often belonged to both sides—there were English Grahams and Scottish Grahams, for example (and no family ever made better use of dual nationality). Add to this the fairly obvious fact that sex attraction is immeasurably stronger than national policy, and the picture becomes more complex still. In spite of official opinion and even prohibition, inter-marriage took place, at least in some areas, to such a degree that one English surveyor made a point of noting particularly those Scots who did not have English family ties.
Consider also the perpetual petty jealousies, the conflict of national, family, and personal interest, the great criss-cross of vendetta and alliance, of feudal loyalty and blood tie, the repeated changing of sides and allegiances, and the general confusion bordering on chaos, and one sees that the traditional Anglo-Scottish antipathy, while it was ever-present and mattered considerably, will simply not do as an inviolable rule when one looks closely into Border reiving. National difference was at the root of the business, but it was frequently lost among the running cattle and the fell-side skirmishing.
This was what made the failure of law and order inevitable, so long as Britain was divided into two separate states. While one country could be played off against the other, while the frontier could be used as the safety line in a massive game of Tom Tiddler’s Ground, and while the line was crossed by all the tangled threads of blood kinship, marriage, and personal and professional alliance, the reiver system presented an insoluble problem. The international Border law, operated by the Wardens of the Marches and other Border officers, could and did sometimes work surprisingly well, but it was at best a finger in the dyke.
All in all, it is not a pretty story, but in its small way it is essential to what T. H. White called the matter of Britain. The British, and their kinsmen in America and the Commonwealth, count themselves civilised, and conceive of their savage ancestors as being buried in the remote past The past is sometimes quite close; these ancestors of Presidents Nixon and Johnson, of Billy Graham and T. S. Eliot, of Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the first man on the moon, are not many generations away.
Lastly, I should explain the plan of the book. The story of the reivers is not one that can conveniently be told in strict chronological order, so I have split it into five parts.
Part I is a brief historical sketch up to 1500, to show how the sixteenth-century Borderland was created.
Part II describes what the Border was like in that century, what manner of people lived there, who were the leading robber families, how they lived and ate and dressed and built their homes, what games they played, what songs they sang, and so forth, so that the background of the story can be understood.
Part III describes the reivers and how they rode their raids, the skills and tactics they used, how they conducted their feuds, and how they practised such crimes as blackmail, kidnapping, and terrorism. It also explains how Border law operated under the March Wardens, how the two governments tried to fight the reivers, and what it was like for the ordinary folk living in the frontier country.
Part IV is a historical survey of the reiving century, from 1503 to 1603 (when James VI of Scotland came to the English throne). It shows how the reivers fitted into the history of their time, and what part they played in the long-drawn Anglo-Scottish struggle.
Part V tells how their story ended when England and Scotland came under one king, and the old Border ceased to be.
1. Borderers—inhabitants of Northumberland, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, Cumberland, and Dumfriesshire. Add Selkirk and Westmorland to taste.
2. Reiver, reaver—robber, raider, marauder, plunderer. The term is obsolete, but lingers on in words like bereave.
3. Satchells’ lines on the reiver philosophy are often quoted:
I would have none think that I call them thieves
The freebooter ventures both life and limb
Good wife, and bairn, and every other thing; He must do so, or else must starve and die, For all his livelihood comes of the enemie.
The one observation to be made is that “enemie” might mean anyone, either Scottish or English, outside the freebooter’s own circle of kinship.
In