aiorneltuB E(. (Ealitgan Mcmartal Callccttntt KERR A RICHARDSON GLASGOW . C3 MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WORKS OP SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. VOL. VII. PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND. BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH} WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. 1834. 270782 ADVERTISEMENT. [This Volume consists of an " Essay oJ5 Border Antiquities," which formed the Introduction to a work, in two vols, ^to, pub- lished in 1814, under the title of " Border Antiquities of England and Scotland^ comprising specimens of Architectui^e^ Sculpture^ ^c, ; " — and of " Essays illustrative of paintings of Scottish Scenery," first printed by Sir Wal- ter Scott in the elegant Collection, entitled Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Sce^ nery of Scotland;' 2 vols. 4to, 1825, 1826. The pictures which suggested these Essays were presented to Sir Walter Scott by the publish- ers of the work, and form the decoration of a small drawingroom at Abbotsford.] VOL. Vll. a CONTENTS OF VOLUME SEVENTH. PAGE Essay on Border Antiquities 1 Appendix. No. 1 142 No. II 144 No. Ill 148 Provincial Antiquities of Scotland Cricliton Castle 157 Borthwick Castle 196 The Great Hall of Borthwick Castle 214 Town of Dalkeith 216 Edinburgh, General Account of. 226 High Street of.. 243 from Braid Hills 247 Castle, from the Grassmarket 257 Heriot's Hospital, from the "West Bow 261 from the Glasgow Road 272 from Corstorphine Hill 275 from the Calton-Hill 276 Entrance to Leith Harbour 280 Holyrood House. 283 from Saint Anthony's Chapel 296 Regalia of Scotland 298 Appendix. No. 1 349 No. II., Ill 350 No. IV 354 No. V 355 No. VI 356 ii CONTENTS, Page Mercliiston Tower , 358' Craigmillar Castle 363 Roslin Glen, and Hawthornden 366 Palace of Linlithgow 382 Seton Chapel 39T Dirleton Castle 405 Innerwick Castle 407 Castle of Dunbar 410' Tantallon Castle 427 The Bass Rock 438 " Fast-Castle 446 AK ESSAY OK BORDER ANTIQUITIES. VOL. V2I. A ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. The frontier regions of most great kingdoms, while tliey retain that character, are unavoidably deficient in subjects for the antiquary. The ravages to which they are exposed, and the life to which the inhabitants are condemned by circumstances, are equally unfavourable to the preservation of the monuments of antiquity. Even in military anti- quities such countries, though the constant scene of war, do not usually abound. The reason is obvious. The same circumstances of alarm and risk require occupation of the same points of defence, and, as the modes of attack and of fortification change, the ancient bulwarks of cities and castles are destroyed, in order to substitute newer and more approved modes of defence. The case becomes different, however, when, losing by conquest or by union their character as a frontier, scenes once the theatre of constant battle, inroad, defence, and retaliation, have been for two hundred years converted into 4 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the abode of peace and tranquillity. Numerous castles left to moulder. in massive ruins; fields where the memory of ancient battles still lives among the descendants of those by whom they were fought or witnessed ; the very line of demar- cation, which, separating the two countries, thongh no longer hostile, induces the inhabitants of each to cherish their separate traditions, — unite to ren- der tliese regions interesting to the topographical historian or antiquary. This is peculiarly the case on the border of Scotland and England. The recollection of their former hostility has much of interest and nothing of enmity. The evidences of its existence bear, at the same time, witness to the remoteness of its date ; and he who traverses these peaceful glens and hills to find traces of strife, must necessarily refer his researches to a period of considerable antiquity. But it was not always thus ; for, since the eai'liest period of which we have any distinct information, until the union of the crowns, the northern provinces of England, and the southern counties of Scotland, have been the scenes of inveterate hostilities, commenced and maintained with fury, even before the names of Scotland and England were acknowledged by his- tory. Our earliest authentic acquaintance with these transactions is during the Roman period of Eng- lish history, and commences with the invasion of Agricola, whose efforts carried his invading ^Q^' arms almost to the extremity of Caledonia. At this period the Border counties of Eng- land and Scotland were inhabited by three nations*. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 5 Those Britons lying to the east, and possessing one- half of Northumberland, and extending from the northern bank of the South Tyne to the Frith of Forth, were called the Ottadini.^ Westward of this powerful nation lay the Gadeni, who held the west par^'of Northumberland, great part of Roxburgh- shire, Selkirk and Peebles shires, and extended also to the banks of the Forth, embracing West- Lotliian. This country being mountainous, and re*naining forest-ground to a late period, the Ga- deni were probably a less populous nation than the inhabitants of the more fertile country to the east. Westward of the Gadeni, and extending to the sea-coast of the Atlantic, lay the Selgovse, having the Solway Frith for their southern limit.^ These nations Agricola found each occupying a strong country, and animated with the courage necessary to defend it. But their arms and discipline were unable to resist those of the Romans. A brief statement of their means of defence at this remote period naturally commences the Introduction to tlie Border Antiquities. The towns of the ancient Britons were fortified in the ordinary manner of barbarians, with ditches, single or double, occupying the angles of the emi- nences, which were naturally selected for their 1 [Mr Chalmers, in his Caledonia, (vol. L, p. 58,) con- siders *' Ortadini" as the Roman corruption of a British word signifying ♦< Me inhabitants of the country stretching out from the Tyne."] « [Chalmers derives the name of the Gadeni from a word signifying groves or forests ; and that of the Selgovce from a term denoting " dividing water,''— Caledonia, vol. i., pp. 69, 60.] . 6 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. site, and being, of course, irregular in their form. The earth was thrown up so as to form a steep glacis to the outside, and was sometimes faced with stones, in order to add to its height, and increase the acclivity ; this formed the rampart of the place, and the gates, generally two or three in number, were placed where access was most convenient. One of the most perfect of these forts is situated in the neighbourhood of the celebrated Catrail, a work of antiquity to be afterwards briefly noticed, just where that limitary fence crosses the farm of Rink, belonging to Mr Pringle of Fairnilee.^ The fort occupies the crest of an eminence near the junction of the rivers Tweed and Ettrick, which has an extensive prospect in every direction ; and, though in the neighbourhood of higher hills, is too distant to be itself commanded by them in a mili- tary sense. There are two ramparts, the first of earth and loose stones, but the interior consisting of immense blocks of stone, disposed so as to form a rude wall, and faced with earth and turf within. The permanence of these massive materials seems to have ensured that of the building, for they defy- all ordinary efforts of the agriculturist, too apt to consider such works as cumberers of the ground. The fortress has two gates, one to the east and the other to the west, with something like traverses for protecting and defending the approach. This remarkable fortress is surrounded by others of less consequence, serving as outposts, and has plainly 1 [Robert Pringle, Esq. of Clifton and Fairnilee, &c. M.P for Selkirkshire. 1834.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 7 been a hill-fort of great importance belonging to the Gadeni. It is, probably, more ancient than the Catrail itself. There are not to be found, on the Border, any of those vitrified appearances which are to be found in Craig Phactraig, and other Highland fortifica- tions, and which seem to intimate that fire was used in building or in destroying them. We may therefore conclude, that the stones employed in constructing them were less fusible than those found in the shires of Forfar, Kincardine, and Aberdeen. If we can trust a popular tradition, the singular ancient structures called Peghts, or Picts Houses, common in the Highlands, Western Isles, and Or- cades, were also to be found in the Border. The inhabitants point out small rings, or elevated circles, where these Duns^ as they are called, are said to have stood. In Liddesdale, particularly, more than one of these are shown. But whether, like those of Dun-Dornadilla in Sutherland, and Mousa in Shetland, they were built of stones arranged in the form of a glass-house, and containing a series of concentric galleries within the thickness of the wall, must be left to conjecture. Mr Chalmers seems to have considered them as common hill-forts. These fortresses, so constructed, the natives de- fended with javelins and bows and arrows, the usual weapons of savages. The arrow-heads, made of flint, are frequently found, and are called, by the vulgar, elf- arrow-heads, from being, as they sup- posed, formed by the fairies or elves. At a later period, the Britons used copper and brass heads 8 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. for arrows, javelins, and spears, which are found of various sizes and shapes near their habitations. In like manner, from the specimens found on the Borders, there appears to have been a gradual im- provement in the construction of battle-axes and weapons of close fight. The original Celts, or axes, are of polished ^tone, shaped something like a wedge. These are found of all sizes, some seem- ing intended for felling trees, and others for warlike purposes; and others again so very small, that they could only be designed for carving or dividing food.^ When, however, this degree of refinement was attained, it was obvious that some improvement in the material of which the implements were formed, could not be far distant. Accordingly, brass Celts, or battle-axes, seem to have been the next step in advance ; and these are of various forms, more or less rude, as the knowledge of the art of working in metals began to advance. The first and most rude form of the brass Celt, usually found in the urns under sepul- chral cairns, is a sort of brazen wedge, having an edge, however, rounded like that of an axe, about three inches broad in the face. The shape of these 1 These are certainly Celtic weapons ; yet they cannot be considered as peculiar to that people. They have been found in considerable numbers in the Shetland Isles, which were evidently first settled by the Scandinavians. Tlie natives suppose them to be thunderbolts, and account the possession of one of them a charm. Mr Collector Ross of Lerwick presented the author with six of these weapons found in Shetland. It is said the stone of which they are constructed cannot be found in those islands. The natives preserve them, from a superstitious idea that they are thunderbolts, and preserve houses against the effects of lightning. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 9 weapons points out the probable mode of attaching them to handles, by hollowing out the sides, and leaving deep ledges ; so that, if we conceive the abrupt angle at the root of an oak branch to have been divided by fire, the axe might have been inserted between the remaining pieces ; and the wliole being lashed fast by a thong, for securing which provision is often, though not uniformly, made by a loop in the brazen head, a battle-axe of formidable weight and edge was immediately obtained. The next step of improvement was that of casting the axe hollow instead of solid, so that the crooked part of the handle being inserted into the concave part of the axe as into a sheath, a far more solid and effectual weapon was obtained^ and at less expense of metal, than when the handle was weakened by burning, and divided into two portions, which overlapped, as it were, the solid axe. It seems probable that the provincial Britons learned this improvement from their masters ; for the hollow axes resemble those of the Romans in shape and size, and are sometimes decorated round the rim, where they join the handle, with a rude attempt at moulding. But the hollow axe was, like the more rude solid implement, secured to the liandle by thongs, as the loop or fixed ring left for the purpose usually testifies. The next step taken by the Britons in impro- ving their warlike weapons, seems to have been the fastening the metal with which they were shod to the wooden handles, by means of broad-headed copper or brass nails, secured by similar heads on the opposite side, and thus efi'ectually riveted to 10 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the wood. This seems to have been the mode of shafting a weapon, like a very broad-headed jave- lin or spear, found near Friarshaugh, opposite to Melrose, the seat of John Tod, Esq.^ This curious weapon is about a palm's-breadth at the bottom, tapering to the length of about nine inches, or perhaps more, (for it is considerably- decayed towards the point,) dimensions greatly exceeding those of the Roman pilum, or javelin. It resembles pretty much those weapons which the Californian Indians manufacture out of copper, and secure, by broad-headed copper nails, to handles made of bone. These are now used by the Californians as they were probably employed by the Gadeni, or northern Britons in general, to complete and secure the union of the wooden shaft and metal head. Short brazen swords of a peculiar shape are also occasionally, though rarely, found in those districts ; they are uniformly formed narrow to- wards tlie handle, broad about the middle of the blade, and again tapering to a point at the extre- mity. Such weapons, by the common consent of antiquaries, have hitherto been termed Roman swords. They are, however, unlike in shape to those usually represented on Roman monuments, which are almost uniformly of an equal breadth from the handle, until they taper, or rather slope off suddenly, to form a sharp and double-edged ' ' Presented to the author hy Mr Tod. Notwithstanding what is said in the text, it ma}^, perhaps, he thought a speci- men of the Roman pilum, though diflfering in the size and mode of shafting. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 11 point. The metal employed may also lead us to doubt the general opinion which gives these wea- pons to the Romans. That the arts of Rome under the emperors, and for a length of time be- fore, had attained to working steel, a metal so much superior to brass for the formation of military weapons, and its general use in manufacturing arms, is sufficiently testified by their employing the word ferrum^ to signify battle in general. It may, no doubt, be urged, that in size and shortness the brass swords in question differ from the long blades generally used by barbarians. But, without stopping to consider the variety of weapons which might exist in different tribes ; without dwelling on the awkward and useless increasing breadth and thickness of the blades in the middle, which look very like the first gradation from a club to a sword ; without even founding upon the probabi- lity, that, after the Roman discipline had become known to the barbarians by fatal experience, they had tried (and certainly they had time enough to have done so) to make a rude imitation of the Roman sword in the metal which was most easily manufactured, — without resting upon any of these things, we may require the evidence that the Ro- mans ever, within the period of their recorded history, used brazen swords. That the Greeks did so in the remote days of Homer, cannot be doubted,^ and certainly from the same reason that we ascribe these weapons to the Britons, namely, that to fuse brass is a more easy and > [See for example, Iliadj xix., 1. 369.] 12 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. obvious manufacture than to work steel. But that the Romans ever employed swords of this inferior metal during the period of their history which is recorded, we have no warrant to believe. Virgil, an antiquary and a scholar, as well as a poet, in describing the various tribes of Italy, who assembled under Turnus, does indeed mention one nation whose warriors wore swords of brass — ** Teutonico ritu soliti torquere cateias ; Tegmina quis capitum raptus de subere cortex ; Erataeque micant peltse, micat sereus ensis." ^ JEneid, Lib. vii. On this passage there are three things to be observed. First, that this mountain and rude tribe is described as retaining the ancient customs of the Teutones. Secondly, that the rest of their armour and weapons, as the helmets made of cork, and the Gallic sling, or harpoon called cateia^ are given along with the brazen narrow buckler, or pelta^ and the brazen sword in question, as marks of a rude tribe, unprovided with such weapons as the other Italians used at the supposed arrival of ^neas. Besides, swords of this description have been found in the Western Islands, or Hebrides, to which the Romans never penetrated ; and they have also been found in Ireland. Nay, we are assured, that, in one instance, not only the sword-blades, but the mould for casting weapons of that description, have been found in the kingdom last mentioned, — 1 And these (as was the Teuton use of old) Wield brazen swords, and brazen bucklers hold. Sling weighty stones when from afar they fight; Their casques are cork, a covering thick and light.'* Drydbn.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 13 facts which certainly go far to establish that these brazen swords, which in breadth and thickness have a spherical form, are of British, not of Roman manufacture. The battle array of the British in these northern districts, mountainous and woody, and full of mo- rasses, must have been chiefly on foot. But we are assured by Tacitus that they, as weU as the Southern Britons, used the chariot of war. All the Celtic chiefs seem to have gloried in being car- borne, and are so described by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Gaelic bards. It is probable that men of distinction alone used this distinguished, but incon- venient, mode of fighting ; and that as the cavalry of the Romans formed a separate rank in the state, so the covinarii in the northern parts of Britain consisted of the chiefs and their distinguished fol- lowers only. Indeed the difficulty which such squadrons must have found in acting, unless upon Salisbury plain, or ground equally level, must have rendered the use of them in the north rather a point of imposing splendour than of real advantage. The charioteers of the Caledonians do indeed seem to have made a considerable part of their force in the memorable battle which Agricola fought against Galgacus near the foot of the Grampian Hills. But we are to consider, that at this important period, common danger had driven the chiefs to form a general league, so that every sort of force which they could draw together appeared in its utmost proportion; and those war-chariots, assembled from all quai'ters, augmented by those also of the South- ern Britons who had retired before the conqueror to 14 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. these last recesses of freedom, bore, probably, an unusual proportion to the extent of their forces. That they fought valiantly, the Romans themselves admit ; and they certainly possessed the mode of managing that very awkward engine called a cha- riot of war, where even the lower grounds are un- equal and broken by ravines and morasses, with as much, or more effect than the Persians, of a more ancient date, upon their extensive and level plains. There is, as far as we know, but one representa- tion of a chariot of this period existing in Scotland. It occurs in the churchyard of Meigle, in a neigh- bourhood famous for possessing the earliest sculp- tural monuments respecting the events of antiquity. The chariot is drawn by a single horse, and carries two persons besides the driver.^ Chariots used in war are the invention of a rude age, before men adventured to break horses for riding. In a rough country, like Scotland, they could be but rarely employed with advantage, and must soon have fallen into disuse. Of the worship of the Northern Britons we have no distinct traces ; but we cannot doubt that it was Druidical. The circles of detached stones, sup- posed to be proper to that mode of worsliip, abound in various places on the Border; and, although there may be good reason to doubt whether the presence of those monuments is in all other cases to be positively referred to the worship of the Druids,^ yet there is no reason to think that the 1 See an engraving^ in Pennant's Tour, [vol. iii., p. 166.] 2 The most stately monument of this sort in Scotland, and probably inf erior to none in England, excepting Stone-henge, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 15 religion of the Ottadini, Gadeni, or Selgovse, dif- fered from that of the southern British tribes. We know, at least, one instance of the Druid's Adder- stone, a glass bead so termed, being found on the Borders. This cm-ious relic is now in posses- sion of a lady in Edinburgh. They appear, how- ever, to have worshipped some local deities, whom the urbanity of Roman paganism acknowledged and adopted with the usual deference to the religion of the conquered. In the station of Habi- tancum, now called Risingham, near the village of Woodbourn in Redesdale, was found a Roman altar dedicated to Mogon, a god of the Gadeni; and there is one in the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh inscribed to the Divi Campestres^ or Fairies. It was found in the romantic vicinity of Roxburgh Castle. The funeral monuments of the Celtic tribes on the Border are numerous, and consist of the cairns, or heaps of stones, so frequently piled on remark- is formed by what are called the Standing Stones of Sten- hoiise, in the island of Pomona in the Orkneys, where it can scarcely be supposed that Druids ever penetrated ; at least, it is certain, that the common people now consider it as a Scan- dinavian monument ; and, according to an ancient custom, a couple who are desirous to attach themselves by more than an ordinai-y vow of fidelity, join hands through the round hole which is in one of the stones. This they call the promise of Odin. The Ting- walls, or places where the Scandinavians held their comitia, were sun'ounded by circles of stones as well as the places of Druid worship; and instances of this occur even in Norway. But, indeed, the general idea of setting up a circle of stones to mark the space allotted for the priests, or nobles, while the vulgar remained without its pre- cincts, seems likely to be common to many early nations. [See Note to The Firate-^Wavei'ley Novels, vol. xxv., p. 315.] IG ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. able spots. On opening them, there is usually found in the centre a small square enclosure of stones set on edge, with bones, and arms such as we have already described. There is frequently found within this stone-chest, or cist-vaen, as it is called by the Welsh, an urn filled with ashes and small beads made of coal. The manufacture of these urns themselves is singular. The skill of the artist appears not to have been such as to enable him to form his urn completely before subjecting it to the operation of the fire. He therefore appears to have first shaped the rude vessel of the dimen- sions which he desired, and then baked it into potter's-ware. On the vessel thus formed and hardened, he afterwards seems to have spread a very thin coat of unbaked clay, on which he exe- cuted his intended ornaments, and which was left to harden at leisure. The scrolls and mouldings thus hatched on the outside of these urns are not always void of taste. In these tombs and else- where have been repeatedly found the Eudorchawg^ the Torques^ or chain, formed of twisted gold, worn by the Celtic chiefs of rank. In the fatal battle of Cattraeth, in which the Celtic tribes of the middle marches sustained a decisive defeat from the Saxons who occupied Northumberland, Ber- wickshire, and Lothian, somewhere, probably, about the junction of Tweed and Ettrick,^ and in the neighbourhood of the Catrail, there fell three hundred chieftains, all of whom, as appears from the elegy of Aneuriu, a sad survivor of the ^ [About half-a-mile above the House of Abbotsford. ] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 17 slaughter, wore the Torques of gold. It is not a chain forged into rings, but is formed of thin rods of flexible gold twisted into loops which pass through each other^ and form oblong linlis. This ornament appears to have been common to the chiefs of all Celtic tribes ; and undoubtedly Man- lius had his surname of Torquatus from killing a Gallic chief so decorated. The brooch for secur- ing the mantle has been repeatedly found in the Borders. It is also an ancient Celtic ornament. The Druids are imderstood to have had no use of coins ; yet it is singular, that, on a place near to Cairnmore in Tweeddale, there were found, along with a fine specimen of the Eudorchawg, a number of round drops of gold of different sizes, greatly resembling the coins of the native Hindhus, and of which it is difficult to make any thing unless we suppose them intended to circulate as specie. May it not be conjectured, that the provincial Britons fell on this expedient of maintaining a circulating medium of commerce, from the example of the Romans? In the Lochermoss, near Dumfries, have been found canoes made out of a single trunk like those of Indians, which served the aboriginal inhabitants for the purposes of fishing. But in the time of the Romans, the Britons had acquired the art of making light barks, called Curraghs^ covered with hides like the boats of the Esquimaux. This brief account of the hill-forts, sepulchres, arms, religion, and means of embarkment> possessed by the three VOL. VII. B 18 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. Celtic tribes whom the Romans found in possession of the Borders, completes a brief and general view of the British antiquities of the district. The Roman Antiquities found in these districts are of such number and importance as might be expected from the history of their northern war- fare, and the policy which they adopted to preserve their conquests. Even the ambition of a Roman conqueror, to extend as far as possible the limits of the empire, could not blind the successors of Agricola to the inconveniences which would be incurred in attempting a total conquest of Britain. That the invaders would defeat the natives as often as they might be imprudent enough to hazard a general action, was highly probable ; but to win an engagement, or overrun a succession of mountains, lakes, towns, and morasses, was more easy than to establish and maintain amongst them the necessary garrisons and military points of communication, without which, the soldiers whom the victor might leave to maintain his conquests, must unquestion- ably have fallen victims to famine and the attacks of the barbarians. The Romans, therefore, re- nouncing the enticing but fallacious idea of main- taining a military occupation of the Caledonian mountains, set themselves seriously to protect such part of the island as was worth keeping and capable of being rendered secure. It may be much doubt- ed, whether they paid even to the southern parts of Scotland the compliment of supposing them a desirable conquest. But to intersect them by roads, and occupy them with camps and garrisons, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 19 was necessary for the protection of the more valu- able country of England.^ Accordingly, the earliest measure taken for the protection of the Roman province ^^q' in Britain, was the original wall of Hadrian, extending from the Frith of Sol way to the mouth of the Tyne. Within this line the country was accounted civilized, and what was retained beyond it, was strongly occupied and secured by fortresses. At a later period, Lollius Urbicus, during the reign of Antoninus, formed a similar wall greatly in advance of the first, between the Friths, namely, of Forth and Clyde. It was a ram- part of earth, with a deep ditch, military road, and forts, or stations, from point to point, but appears to have proved insufficient to curb the in- cursions of the tribes without the province, or to prevent the insurrection of those within its pre- cincts. The Emperor Severus found the country betwixt the walls of Hadrian and that erected by Lollius Urbicus, during the reign of Antoninus, in such a state of disorder, that, after an expedition in order to intimidate rather than to subdue the more northern tribes, he appears to have fixed upon the more southern barrier as that which was capable of being effectually maintained and defended ; and, iilthough it is not to be presumed that he formally renounced the sovereignty of the space between the Friths of Solway and of the Forth and the Clyde, 1 The learned author of Caledonia concludes, that these jroads were extended even to the north of Aberdeenshire. It is impossible to mention this work without acknowledging- with gratitude the brilliant light it has cast on many parts of *^oitish history hitherto so imperfectly understood. 20 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. yet it is probable he only retained military posses- sion of the most tenable stations, resting the ulti- mate defence of the province upon the wall of Hadrian, which he rebuilt with stone, and fortified with great care. Betwixt the years 211, being the era of the death of Severus, and 409, the date of the final abandonment of Britain by the Romans^ the space between the two walls, entitled by the Romans the province of Valentia, was the scene of constant conflict, insurrection, and incursion ; and towards the latter part of this tumultuous period the exterior line of Antoninus was totally aban- doned, and the southern wall itself was found as insufficient as that of Antoninus to curb the in- creasing audacity of the free tribes. From this brief deduction it may be readily con- jectured that the Roman Antiquities found in the districts to which this Essay relates, must be chiefly of a military nature. We find, accordingly, neither theatres, baths, nor temples, such as have been dis- covered in Southern Britain, but military roads, forts, castles, and camps, in great abundance. The principal Roman curiosity which the Border presents, is certainly the wall of Severus, with the various strong stations connected with it. The execution of all these military works bears the stamp of the Roman tool, which aimed at labouring for ages. The most remarkable is the wall itself, a work constructed with the greatest solidity and strength. The ravages continually made upon it for fourteen centuries, when any one in the neigh- bourhood found use for the well-cut stones of which it is built, have not been able to obliterate the ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 21 traces of this bulwark of the empire. The wall was twelve feet high, guarded by flanking towers and exploratory turrets, and eight feet broad, running" over precipices and through morasses. The facing on both sides was of square freestone, the interior of rubble run in with quicklime between the two faces, and uniting the whole in a solid mass. The earthen rampart of Hadrian lies to the north of it, and might, in many places, be used as a first line of defence. It is not clear in what manner the Roman troops sallied from this line of defence when cir- cumstances rendered it necessary. No gates appear except at the several stations. A paved military way may be traced parallel to the walls, in most places, for the purpose of sending reinforcements from one point to another. No less than eighteen stations, or fortresses, of importance, have been traced on the line of the wall. The most entire pai't of this celebrated monument, which is now, owing to the progress of improvement and enclo- sure, subjected to constant dilapidation, is to be found at a place called Glenwlielt, in the neigh- bourhood of Gilsland Spaw.^ ^ Its height may he guessed from the following characteris- tic anecdote of the late Mr Joseph Ritson, whose zeal for ac- curacy was so marked a feature in his investigations. That eminent antiquary, upon an excursion to Scotland, favoured the author with a visit. The wall was mentioned ; and Mr Ritson, who had been misinformed by some ignorant person at Hexham, was disposed strongly to dispute that any re- lics of it yet remained. The author mentioned the place in the text, and said there was as much of it standing as would break the neck of Mr Ritson 's informer were he to fall from it. Of this careless and metaphorical expression Mr R,itson foiled not to make a memorandum, and jifterwards wrote to 22 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. TTie number of forts and stations extending along the wall from west to east, some in front to receive the first attack of the enemy, some behind the wall to serve as rallying places, or to accommodate the troops destined to maintain the defence, render this magnificent undertaking upon the whole one of the most remarkable monuments of history. It differs from the Great Wall of China, to which it has been compared, as much as a work fortified with mili- tary skill, and having various gradations and points of defence supporting each other, is distinct from the simple idea of a plain curtain or wall. It was not until the hearts of the defenders had entirely failed them that the barbarous tribes of the north burst over this rampire. With the same regard to posterity which digni- fied all their undertakings, the Romans were careful to transmit to us, by inscriptions still extant, the time at which these works were carried on, and the various cohorts and legions by whom different parts were executed. These, with altars and pieces of sculpture, have been everywhere dug up in the vicinity of the wall, and form a most valuable department of Border Antiquities, though not entering into the scope of the following work.. In advancing beyond the wall, the antiquary is struck by the extreme pains bestowed by the Ro- mans to ensure military possession of the province the author, that he had visited the place with the express purpose of jumping down from the wall in order to confute what he supposed a hyperbole. But he added, that, tiiough not yet satisfied that it was quite high enough to break a- man's neck, it was of elevation sufficient to rendei* the experi* ment very dangerous. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 23 of Valentia. No generals before or since their time appear to have better understood the necessity of maintaining communications. A camp, or station, of importance, is usually surrounded by smaller forts at the distance of two or three miles, and, in many cases, the communication is kept up, not only by the Iters, or military roads, which traverse the country in the direction of these fortresses, but by strong lines of communication with deep ditches and rampires. Of this there are some curious and complicated remains near Melrose, where a large triangular space lying betwixt the remarkable sta- tion on Eildon Hills and those of Castlesteads and of Caldshiels, is enclosed by ditches and ramparts of great depth. There appears to have been more than one British fortress within the same space, particularly one called the Roundabout, upon a glen termed Haxlecleuch, and another very near it upon the march between the properties of Kippi- law and Abbotsford. Besides these lines of com- munication, there is a militaiy road which may be distinctly traced to the Tweed, which it appears to have crossed above Newharthaugh.^ It is impos- sible, while tracing these gigantic labours, to refrain from admiring, on the one hand, the pains and skill which is bestowed in constructing them, and, on the other, the extravagant ambition which sti- 1 Mr Chalmers, whose opinion is always to he mentioned with the utmost respect, seems inclined to think, that these intrenchments are the works of the provincial Britons, exe- cuted to protect them from the Saxons of Bernicia. Some hronze vessels and Roman antiquities, found hy the author in improving that part of his property through which these lines run, warrant a different conclusion. 24 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. mulated the conquerors of the world to bestow so much pains for the preservation of so rude a country. The frequent accompaniment of these camps is a Roman tumulus^ or artificial mount, for deposit- ing the remains of their dead, of which there is a very fine specimen on the south side of the Tweed, opposite to Sir Henry Hay Macdougal's beautiful mansion of Makerston. This tumulus appears to have belonged to the neighbouring camp on Fair- nington Moor. In these specimens of Roman pottery have been found, probably lachrymatories and the vessels sacred to the manes, or souls, of the deceased. These mounts might also be used for exploratory purposes. > < Around the stations have, in most instances, been found Roman coins, of all relics the most decisive, brazen axes, usually termed Roman, though perhaps not correctly to be regarded as such, and querns, or hand-mills, for grinding corn, made of two corresponding stones. Camp-kettles of bronze of various sizes are also found on the line of these roads, particularly where marshes have been drained for marl. It may, in general, be remarked, that, in Scotland, the decay of a natural forest is the generation of a bog, which accounts for so many antiquities being found by draining. Sacrificial vessels are also frequently discovered, particularly those with three feet, a handle, and a spout, which greatly resemble an old-fashioned coffee-pot without its lid.^ Out of the intrench- 1 [See an engraving in Pennant's Tour, vol. iii., p. 241. ] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 25 ment above mentioned, connecting* the fort at Castlelieads with that on Eildon Hills, was dug a pair of forceps of iron, much resembling smith's tongs. Inscriptions have rarely been found to the north of the wall. Such are the evidences which still remind the antiquary, that these twelve districts once formed the fence and extreme boundary of the Roman power in Britain. No reader requires to be reminded of the scenes of desolation which followed the abdication of the Romans. All exterior defences which the wall and the forts connected with it had hitherto afford- ed, were broken down and destroyed, while the Picts and Scots carried on the most wasteful incur- sions into the flourishing provinces of the south. But the learned and indefatigable Chalmers has plainly showed, that the tribes inheriting the late Roman province of Valentia were not subjugated by either of these more northern nations, but maintained a separate and precarious independence. These tribes, the reader will remember, were the Ottadini, Gadeni, and Selgovse, to which were united, the Novantes of Galloway, and the Damnij of Clydesdale, who, like their Border neighbours, were enclosed between the two walls. It is pro- bable that, according to the ancient British custom, they were governed by their separate chiefs, form- ing a sort of federal republic, whose array, in case of war, was subjected to the command of a dictator, termed the Pendragon. They did not long enjoy the full extent of their territory ; for, as in other parts of England, so on her northern frontiers, the 26 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. invasion of the Saxons drove from their native seats the original inhabitants. It was not, how- ever, until the year 547, that Ida, at the head of a numerous army of Anglo-Saxons, invaded and possessed himself of the greater part of Northum- berland. These conquerors spread themselves on all sides, and became divided into two provinces, Deira and Bernicia. The Deirians occupied the northern division of Northumberland, with the bishopric of Durham, and made constant war with the British inhabitants of Westmoreland and Cumberland. The Saxons of Bernicia pushed their conquests northwards, possessed themselves of the ancient seats of the Ottadini and Gadeni, or the modern Berwickshire and lower part of Rox- burghshire, seized on Lothian, were probably the first founders of Edinburgh, and warred fiercely with the natives now cooped up in the hilly coun- try to the westward, as also with the Picts, who lay to the northward of these invaders. It seems highly probable that to this people we owe the Scoto- Saxon language of the Lowlands.^ Their country is sometimes called Saxonia by ancient writers, being the Saxon part of Scotland. The line of demarcation, which then was the subject of dispute between the Saxons and Britons, extended north and south instead of east and west, like that * The author has no hesitation to own that a film has fallen from his eyes on reading the Caledonia with attention. The Picts, as conjectured by Tacitus, might have been interming- led with settlers from Germany. But it seems probable that such emigrants merged in the main body of the Celtic tribes just as the Scandinavians did, who, at a later period, settled in the Hebrides and in Sutherland. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 27 which afterwards divided Scotland from England. All good antiquaries allow, that the remarkable trench called the Catrail, which extends nearly fifty miles in the former direction, and may be traced from near the junction of the Gala and the Tweed to the mountains of Cumberland, was intended to protect the native inhabitants of Strath- Clwyde, for thus the remaining possessions of the Romanized Britons were entitled, from the too powerful Saxon invaders. It was natural that these provincial Britons should endeavour to make use of the same means of defence of which they had an example in the Prsetentura of Antoninus, and the more elaborate waU of Severus. The imperfect execution of the Catrail plainly shows their inferiority of skill, while its length, and the degree of labour bestowed in the excavation, indi- cate their sense of its importance. This rampart is the most curious remnant of antiquity which can be distinctly traced to this distracted period. It is a ditch and rampart of irregular dimensions, but in breadth generally from twenty to twenty-four feet, supported by many hill-forts and correspond- ing intrenchments, indicating the whole to have been the work of a people possessing some rem- nants of that military skill of which the Romans had set the example. From what Mr Chalmers mentions of the course of Herrit's Dike, in Ber- wickshire, we may conjecture it to have been either a continuation of the Catrail, or a more early work of the same kind.^ Supposing the latter to be the ^ See Caledonia, vol. 5., pp. 239-24a 28 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. case, it would seem that, when expelled from Lauderdale, the Britons fell back to the Catrail, as the Romans had done from the wall of Antoni- nus to that of Severus. The Catrail is very hap- pily situated for the protection of the mountainous country, as it just commences where the valley of the Tweed becomes narrow and difficult of access, and skirts the mountains, as it runs southward. Contrary to other defences of the same sort, it was erected to save the mountaineers from the conti- nued inroads of the inhabitants of the plains, whereas fortifications have generally been erected in the plains for precisely the opposite purpose. It is remarkable, that the obscure contests of the Britons and Saxons yet survive in traditional song. For this we have to thank the institution of the Bards, the second rank to the Druids, and par- taking of their sacred character. This order sm*- vived the fall of Druidism, and continued to per- petuate, while they exaggerated, tlie praise of the British chieftains who continued to fight in defence of the Cumbrian kingdom of Reged, and the more northern district of Strath- CI wyde. The chief of these bards, of whom we still possess the lays in the ancient British language, are Taliessin, Merlin of Caledonia, Aneurin, and Llywai'ch Hen. The two last appear to have been princes, and, contrary to the original rules of their order, they, as well as Merlin, were warriors.^ Urien of Reged, and his son Owen, both afford 1 [See Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, British Bards, vol. i., book ii., and Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works, vol. ix., p. 367, note."} ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 29 liigli matter for the songs of the bards ; and it is to the Welsh poetry also that Arthur owes a com- memoration, which, with the help of Geoffrey of Monmouth, was so extravagantly exaggerated by after minstrels. These native princes, however, do certainly appear to have maintained a long struggle with the Saxons, which was frequently successful, and might have been eventually so, had not the remains of the provincial Britons been divided into two petty kingdoms of Cumbria and Strath- CI wyde, and those tribes of warriors dis- tracted by frequent disunion among themselves. As it was, they finally lost their independence. The last king of the Cumbrian Britons, called Dunmail, was slain in battle near Ambleside, on the lake of Winandermere, where a huge cairn, raised to his memory, is still called Dunmail- Raise, and his kingdom was ceded to Scotland by the conqueror Edward in 945. Strath- CI wyde, some- times resisting, sometimes submitting, maintained a precarious independence until about 975, when Dunwallon, the last independent king of the North- ern Britons, was defeated by Kenneth III., King of the Scots, and is said to have retired to the cloister. . ^ But although the kingdoms of Reged and Strath- Clwyde were thus melted down into the general mass of Scottish subjects, yet the British inhabi- tants of Valentia continued long distinguishable by their peculiar manners, customs, and laws. When Edward I. was desirous to secure his usurpation of the Scottish crown, by introducing the feudal system in its full extent, and thus assimilating the 30 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. laws of England and Scotland, he declares, that the " customs of the Scots and the Brets shall for the future be prohibited, and no longer practised and that the king's lieutenant should submit to an assembly of the Scottish nation " the statutes made by David King of Scots, and the amendments made by other kings." It was probably at this time that the law treatise, entitled Regiam Majestatem, was compiled, with the artful design of palming upon the Scottish parliament, under the pretence of re- viving their ancient jurisprudence, a system as nearly as possible resembling that of England. Now it is proved that, until a late period, that part of modern Scotland which lay to the south of the river Forth, and bordered on the east with the Saxon province of Lothian, or Loden, was still called Britain. Accordingly, Fordun terms Stir- ling a castle situated in Scotland on the confines or Britain, and says that the seal of the town of Stir- ling bore this legend, " Continet hoc in se pontem castrum Strivilense Hie armis Bruti hie stant Scoti cruce tuti." As the names of Britain and Scotland were thus preserved, the customs alluded to by Edward as proper to be abolished, were those which the Scots and Britons, both nations of Celtic original, had transmitted to their descendants, and which, from the spirit of independence which they breathed, were naturally hostile to the Conqueror. It is probable that the clan-customs and regulations were amongst those alluded to by Edward's prohibition ; at least, we shall presently see that they were the subject of jealousy to future legislators. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 31 While the Northern Britons were maintaining the dubious and sanguinary resistance against the Saxons which we have briefly noticed, the invaders themselves were disturbed in their operations of conquest by the arrival of fresh hordes from Scan- dinavia, whose inroads were as distressing to the Saxon inhabitants of Northumberland and Lothian as those of their ancestors had been to the British Ottadini, whom they had expelled from those fertile provinces. The celebrated Ragnar Lod- brog, renowned in the song of Scalds, led the first attack by the Danes on Northumberland. He fell ; ^ but his death was promptly and dreadfully avenged by the fresh invasion headed by his sons, Inguar and Hubba. They appear totally to have subverted the Saxon kingdom of 'g^^* Northumberland founded by Ida, and to have conquered the country as far south as York, and penetrated westward as far as Stanemore, where their invasion added to the distressed condition of the Cumbrian Britons. Aided by frequent descents of thek roving countrymen, they wasted and they warred in these northern regions ; ^ and though 1 [" Ragnar Lodbrog, the most terrible and resistless of the fierce and unresting Sea Kings of the north — to whom life had no employment and no delight, save those of war and plunder — after a long series of successful piracies, his forces were at length overpowered by numbers, and himself taken prisoner. Ella, little foreseeing the direful consequences to himself and to all England, commanded his captive to be thrown into a loathsome dungeon, there to perish miserably among serpents." — See Turner's History of the Anglo Saxons, vol. ii., ch. 8, 9.] « [" After conquest of Ella's kingdom, the sons of Ragnar inflicted a no less cruel and iuhumau retaliation on Ella for 32 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. they nominally acknowledged the royalty of Ed- ward the Elder, the Northumbrian Danes could hardly be termed subjects of a Saxon monarch, until they were defeated by Athelstane, in the bloody and decisive battle of Brunnanburgh. The wild convulsions of the period sometimes occasion- ed a temporary disunion even after this engage- ment ; but such incidents may be regarded rather as insurrections than as a re-establishment of Nor- thumbrian independence. • It is natural to enquire what traces still remain of the Danish invaders ? The circular camps found in many places of Northumberland, and on the borders of Cumberland, are plausibly ascribed to them, and the names of their deities have been imposed upon several tracts in the same district. But we find none of those Runic monuments so common in their own country, either because they never possessed tranquillity sufficient to aim at establishing such records, or that they were de- stroyed in after ages out of hatred to the Danish name. The taste of the Scalds, however, is to be traced in the early English poetry which was first cultivated in the North of England. The northern minstrels could derive no lessons from the bards who spoke the Celtic language, their earliest at- tempts at poetry were, therefore, formed on allite- ration ; and as late as the time of Chaucer it was considered as the mark of a northern man to " afi^ect their father's sufferings. They cut the figure of an eagle on his back, divided his ribs to tear out his lungs, and agonized his lacerated flesh by the addition of the saline stimulant," —Turner, vol. il., p. 123. J ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 33 the letter." ^ Further of the Danes antiquaries can trace hut little. Their independent sovereignty in Nortlnimherland was as brief as it was bloody ; and their descendants, mixing with Saxons, and what few might remain of the Southern Ottadini, formed the mixed race from which, enriched by the blood of many a Norman baron, the present Northum- brians are descended. In the tenth century, tlie frontiers of England and Scotland, which had now begun to assume these distinctive appellations, differed greatly from the relations they bore to each other in subsequent ages. The district of the Ottadini, conquered first by the Saxons, and afterwards by the Danes, ex- tended from the Tyne, and sometimes even from the Humber, to the shores of the Frith of Forth. Berwickshire of course, and Lothian, made part of its northern division, called Bernicia. These counties were often the scene of inroad to the nation of Scots and Picts, now united under the same mo- narch, and might occasionally be occupied by them. But regularly and strictly speaking, they, as well as the city of Edinburgh, (Edwins-burgh,) may be considered as part of England. It acquired in time the name of Lothian, an epithet not only con- ferred on the counties now comprehended under that term, but also including Berwickshire, after- wards called the March.^ The Lodenenses, dis- 1 Chaucer's Parsone apologizes for not reciting a piece of poetry — *' But trusteth wel I am a sotherne man, I cannot geste, rom, ram, ruf, by my letter, And, God wot, rime hold I but litel better." 2 Simeon of Durham, narrating the journey of the papal VOL. VII. C 34 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. tinguislied in the battle of tlie Standard and else- where, were the people of this south-eastern district ; and the district appears to have been included amongst those for which, as English possessions, the King of Scotland did homage to his brother of England.* Thus Scotland was, at this early period, deprived of those fertile south- eastern provinces. On the other hand, the south- western frontier of Scotland was enlarged beyond its present bounds by the possession of the ancient British kingdom of Reged, or Cumberland. This was ceded to Malcolm I. by Edmund, after the defeat of Dunmail, the last King of Cumbria. The cause of the cession is obvious. The people of Cumberland were of the same race and manners with those of the Britons of Strath- Clwyde who occupied the opposite frontier of Scotland ; and Edmund, who retained but a doubtful sovereignty over Northumberland, would have been still more embarrassed by the necessity of retaining, by gar- risons or otherwise, so wild and mountainous a country as the British Reged. By yielding it to legate to Scotland, has these remarkable words, — " Pervenit apud fluvium Tuedam qui North umbriam et Loidum deter- aninat, in loco qui Rothesburche vocatur." * Malcolm IV. acknowledged himself vassal to the crown of ^^ngland for the county of Lothian, (among other posses- sions,) a circumstance which has greatly embarrassed Scottish antiquaries, who are very willing to discover the Comitatus Liodenensis in Leeds or in Cumberland. The fact is, how- ever, that the true meaning rather fortifies the plea of inde- pendence. For Lothian, in this enlarged sense, was just the ancient Bernicia, peopled with Saxons or English, and Mal- colm did homage for it, not as part of Scotland, but as part ot England. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 35 Malcolm, he secured a powerful ally capable of protecting the western frontier of Northumber- land, and to whose domination the Cumbrians might be the more readily disposed to submit, as it united them with their brethren the Britons of Strath- Clvvyde. We have already seen that these districts, as far as the Forth, though under the dominion of the Scottish kings, were termed Bri- tain, in opposition to Scotland proper. But in the year 1018, Malcolm II. enlarged the eastern limits of his kingdom to the present fron- tier of Scotland, by a grant from Eadulf, Earl of Northumberland, who ceded to him the whole district of Lothian and Berwickshire to the Tweed. This important addition to his kingdom he cer- tainly continued to retain, although the English historians pretend that Canute carried his arms into Scotland, and penetrated far north- wards. If such was the case, his invasion ^* and victory remamed without fruits. What the Scottish kingdom acquired on the eastward in the reign of Malcolm II., was balan- ced by the loss of Cumberland, which William the Conqueror wrenched from Malcolm Canmore. Af- ter this period, although Stephen, in his necessity, ceded Northumberland to Scotland, and, although the English on the other hand frequently held mi- litary possession of part of the opi^osite country, the Borders, with the exception of the Debateable Land to the west, and the town of Berwick on the east, which were constant subjects of dispute, might be considered as finally settled according to the present limits. 36 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. While these transactions occurred, other most important changes having taken place both in the interior of South and JNortli Britain, had amalga- mated these two grand divisions of the island each into one great kingdom, so that the regions, where they bordered on each other, ceasing to be the residence of independent or tributary states, as- sumed the character of frontiers, or, as we now term them, of Borders. This important consoli- dation of England and Scotland, each into a dis- tinct and individual monarchy, took place in both countries nearly about the same period. At least, although the present kingdom of England was formed by the consolidation of the states of the heptarchy rather more early than the Scottish nations were united into one state, the distractions, occasioned by Danish invasions and civil wars^ prevented her extending her empire over her northern neighbours. Indeed, the power of Eng- land could scarce be said to be wielded by one sovereign with uncontrolled sway, until William the Conqueror had repressed the various insur- rections of the Saxons, subjugated for ever the tumultuary Northumbrians, and acquired a conso- lidated force capable of menacing the kingdom of Scotland. Had this event happened a century sooner, it is probable all Britain would, at that early period, have been united under one monarch. Or had a Scottish monarch existed during the heptarchy, as powerful as Malcolm Can more at a subsequent era, it is possible that he might have pushed his limits much farther to the south than the present Borders, and would probably have ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 37 secured to Scotland at least the countries on the north of the Humber. As it happened, the situa- tion and bahmced strength of both countries dic- tated tlie present limits. The Saxons, who gave name to England, and language to both nations, now began to disappear from the stage. The local antiquities which are ascribed to them on the Borders are not numerous. Their coins, as well as those of the Danish dynasty, are frequently found both in England and Scot- land ; and cups and drinking horns have been pre- served and discovered, which may be referred to this period. But of their architecture the ecclesi- astical edifices afford almost the only specimen. The houses, even of their princes, were chiefly formed of wood ; and their military system con- sisted rather in giving battle than in attacking or defending places of strength. Some rude ramparts seem to have encircled their towns for protection against the Danish invaders, and in their own civil dissensions. But castles, whether belonging to kings or chiefs, must have been rare during the Saxon period. No specimens survive on the Bor- der, or even farther south, unless the very singular edifice, called Coningsburgh Castle, near Sheffield, be considered as a specimen of Saxon military architecture. The Keep is round instead of being square as usual ; and, being supported by six huge projecting buttresses, has a massive, and, at the same time, a picturesque ^ippearance. The mortar is of a kind much more imperfect than that which is used in tlie Norman buildings, having a mixture of ashes and charcoal and very little lime. In this 38 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. place the Saxons certainly had a castle, as appears from the name, and tradition points out in its vicinity the tumulus of the celebrated Hengist. But it is probable that the Saxon building was repaired and improved by William de Warren the Norman baron, on whom it was bestowed by the Conqueror.^ If the Saxons left few examples of their military architecture, they laid the foundation of many splen- did ecclesiastical establishments. Once the most fierce, they appear, on their conversion, to have be- come the most devout nation of Europe. Christi- anity, though such advantage should not be named with her inestimable spiritual benefits, brought the arts to Britain in her train. Paulinus, one of the missionaries, who, by orders of Pope Gregory, had accompanied to Britain the intrepid Saint Augustin, made great progress in the conversion of Northum- berland about the year 625. At Yevering, now an obscure hamlet, about two miles from Wooler^ then the royal residence of Edwin, King of Nor- thumberland, and his pious spouse, Ethelburga, Paulinus abode thirty-six days in company with the sovereigns, daily employed in instructing the heathen inhabitants, and baptizing them in the neighbouring river called the Glen. The first church which this zealous and successful missionary constructed in Northumberland was that of Lindes- farne, or Holy Island. It was formed entirely of wood. But the use of stone was speedily intro- duced, and the art improving in proportion to the ' [See Ivanhoe — Waverley Novels, vol. xvii., p. 330, and note, p. 335.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 39 encouragement which it received, began, during the eighth and ninth centuries, to assume a more regular and distinct form. The Saxon style of architecture, as it is called with more propriety than that by which the style that succeeded it is termed Gothic, had now assumed a determined character. Massive round arches, solid and short pillars, much gloom and an absence of ornament, mark this original mode of building. It is also remarkable for a peculiar style of architectural decoration, described by Mr Turner in his excel- lent history of the Anglo-Saxons, as being a uni- versal diagonal ornament, or zigzag moulding, " disposed in two ways, one with its point project- ing outwards, the other with its point lying so as to follow the lines which circumscribe it, either horizontal, perpendicular, or circular." There is a curious specimen of this ornament on a door-way in the ruinous part of the Abbey- Church at Jed- burgh,^ which looks into the clergyman's garden, which is richly arched with this species of mould- ing. In the Chapter- House at the same place may be seen a very perfect specimen of Saxon architecture. The Saxon historians expatiate with a sort of rapture on the magnificence which Wilfred, Bishop of York, displayed in the erection of a church at Hexham. It was raised by ma- g*^^' sons and pargeters brought from Italy, who garnished the building by winding stairs, elevated it into Roman magnificence, and decorated its waUs i Jed worth, or Jedburgh, was founded a. d. 823. See Caledonia, vol. i., p. 426. 40 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. and vaults with pillars, ornamental carving, orato- ries, and chapels. Perhaps we may suspect a little exaggeration in this description ; for the same autho- yities assure us, with little probability, that when Wilfred attempted the conversion of the South Saxons, they were rendered so miserable by fa- mine, that they were in the habit by forty at a time to hold each other by the hands and throw them- selves into the sea ; and that they were so little able to secure themselves from this evil, that, till in- structed by Saint Wilfred, they were ignorant of catching any fish but eels. A state so grossly savage in Sussex is scarce to be reconciled with a favourable progress in the arts so much farther to the northward. Still, however, religion appears to have flourished in these savage districts. Aidan, a monk of Saint Columba's monastery of lona, was, in 1634, named Bishop of Lindesfarne, or Holy Island, which became soon a renowned seminary. Melrose, a classical name, owed its original fomidation to the same Aidan ; and, as the holy flame spread around and increased, the abbeys of Coldingham and Tyningham were erected. These buildings, like the chm'ch of Lindesfarne, were originally fabricated of wood, and afterwards arose in more durable materials. But of these, and of other Saxon edifices, only fragments can now be traced. The unsparing fury of the heathen Danes destroyed almost all the churches on the Borders, and only in a very few favoured instances can the Saxon architecture be distinguished. Even its remnants are rendered indistinct by the repairs and additions of later ages. The ancient ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 41 vaults beneath the present cliurch at Hexham, which liave been constructed chiefly by the use of materials fetched from some Roman station, as appears from the inscriptions in Horsley's work, are probably the only part remaining of the mag- nificent church of Wilfred. In Holy Island a few diagonal mouldings and circular arches flatter the fancy of the antiquary that they may have been part of Saint Cuthbert's original church. At Jed- burgh, the Chapter- House and one highly enriched door- way have been already noticed. In Kelso Abbey- Church the whole arches and ornaments of the building are decidedly in the Saxon style, and its noble, concentrated, and massive appearance forms one of the most pure and entire, as well as most favourable, specimens of that order, which occur on the Scottish Border. The young student of antiquities is not, however, to set it down as a rule, that, where such ornaments and arches occur, the edifice exhibiting them is indubitably as old as Saxon times. The architecture which had arisen among the Saxons was practised among their suc- cessors, not only until the Gothic, as it is called, was introduced, but even in many later instances, from taste, or with a view to variety. It is probable that the Cumbrian Britons and those of Reged mingled with the Christian religion circumstances expressive of their own ancient manners and cus- toms ; but of this we have little evidence. We may refer, however, to this period, the remarkable monument at Penrith, consisting of two huge stone pillars, richly engraved with hieroglyphics, with a sepulchral stone extended between them. The 42 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. common tradition terms tins tlie monument of Sir Ewain Csesarius, a champion who cleared the neighbouring forest of Inglewood of wild beasts. The edifices upon the Border, dedicated to devotion and peace, arose the more frequently that the good understanding between the English and Scottish nations was for some time only inter- rupted by occasional and brief wars, bearing little of the character of inveterate hostility which after- wards existed between the sister kingdoms, even in the time of peace. In fact, until the conquest of England by the Normans, and for ages after- wards, each monarch was so earnestly employed in the consolidation of his authority over the mixed tribes to whom it extended, that he had no time for forming schemes of ambition at the expense of his neighbour. If the English fron- tier regions contained aboriginal Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, the subjects of Scotland were even more miscellaneous. The Picts and Scots had now, indeed, melted down into one people, bearing the latter name ; but the Scoto- Britons of Reged still retained a distinct, though no longer an independent, existence. This was still more the case with the people of Galloway, who, lying more remote from the authority of the kings of Scotland, gave them apparently no other obedience than that which was formerly yielded by the British tribes to the Pendragon, or chief of their federation. There remain to be noticed the Scoto- Saxons, being the descendants of those, who, in earlier times, had colonized the northern divi- sion of Bernicia, extending from the banks of the ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 43 Tweed to the Frith of Forth, and skirting on the west the kingdom of Strath-Clvvyde. These Saxons were gradually augmented by such ot their countrymen as the civil broils of the heptar- chy, the invasion of the Danes, and, finally, the sword of the Normans, drove to seek shelter among their northern brethren ; and such was the number of these fugitives, and the influence which they attained at the court of the Scottish monarch, that their language came to be in general use, and at length to supersede the various dialects of the Celtic, which were probably spoken by the other tribes. It cannot but be considered as a very singular phenomenon, that the inhabitants of a ceded province, and that not a large one, should give language to the whole kingdom, although both their original churchmen and royal family were certainly Celtic. But Lothian and the Merse, as the most fertile parts of Scotland, had a natural attraction for her monarchs ; and the Saxon language, refined and extended as it must have been by the new emigrants from England, possessed the power of expressing wants and acquisitions unknown to the more simple Celtic nations. It is probable, also, from the expression of Tacitus, that among the various tribes who inhabited the eastern shores of Scotland, particu- larly about the mouth of the Tay, there might be several of German descent, by whom the Saxon would be readily adopted. Above all, the reader must observe, that, although the Christian mis- sionaries came originally from the Celtic seminary of lona, yet the large foundations of Lindesfarne, 44 ESSAY ON BOKDEK ANTIQUITIES. Hexham, Melrose, Coldingliam, Jedburgh, and others on the Borders, were endowed by Saxon munificence, and filled with Saxon monks, who disseminated their language along with their reli- gion through such tribes as still used the British or Celtic tongue. The authority of these Saxon ministers of religion must have been the more prevalent, as they were held to teach a more orthodox doctrine concerning a very important point of controversy — the keeping of Easter — than their Scottish brethren. On this subject, Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore, em- ployed against the Scottish heresy " the sword of the spirit," combating their errors three days, like " St Helena," says the encomiast, " converting the Jews." Her warlike and royal spouse acted as interpreter on this occasion between his zealous consort and the Scottish clergy, a cu'cumstance which proves that he understood both Saxon and Celtic, she the former language only. It also establishes this fact, that the Lowland Scotch had not yet spread generally through the Celtic tribes, though it did so afterwards. To the nations already mentioned as subjects of Scotland, must be added the Norman families, who, expelled from England by the various con- vulsions which took place in that scene of their new conquest, or voluntarily abandoning it in consequence of discovering their services ill re- compensed by the Conqueror, were attracted to Scotland by the munificence of Malcolm Canmore. The weak prince, who succeeded that active and enterprising monarch; in vain adopted a different ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 45 line of policy from his, and laboured to banish from Scotland those foreigners wlio had settled there under his auspices, — a savage and inhospi- table measure, by which Donald Bane endeavoured to gain favour with the Scottish tribes, who longed to return to the wild manners of their forefathers. But Alexander I., though himself of a disposition so stern as to acquire the surname of The Fierce, yet, connected with England by marriage, again encouraged the settlement of foreigners in his realm, and the Norman barons, with their retain- ers, flocked thither in such numbers, that David I. addresses his charters to his feal subjects, Franks, English, Scottish, and Galwegians ; and his son Henry classes the inhabitants of his county of Northumberland into Franks {i. e, Normans) and English. The Normans brought with them their rules of chivalry, their knowledge of the military art, their terms of honour and badges of distinction, and, far the most important, their feudal system of laws. It is not to be supposed that these were at once im- posed on the Scottish nation at large, as has been erroneously asserted by the ancient historians of that people. But the fiction of law which consi- dered the sovereign as the original source of all property, and which held the possessors of land by that very act of possession amenable to his courts, and liable to serve in his armies, rendered the sys- tem acceptable to the king, while the great barons, being each in their degree invested with the same right and authority within their own domains, were satisfied to submit to the paramount superiority of 46 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the crown, distant as it was, and feebly exercised, in consideration of their own direct authority over their vassals being recognised and acknowledged by the same system. The king, by whom grants of land Avere made, and the nobles to whom they were given, had thus every motive for adopting the feudal form ; not to mention that the Norman barons, on whom such marks of regal bounty were confer- red, would not have accounted that they possessed them securely, unless they had been expressed in the manner to which the law of their own country had familiarized them. Thus, while in England the feudal law was suddenly imposed in conse- quence of the Norman conquest, it gradually glided into Scotland, recommended at once by its own well-modelled and systematic arrangement, by the interests of the king and of the nobles, and the principle of imitation among the inferior gentry. The clergy, doubtless, lent their aid to the intro- duction of the new system, which, while it imposed no new burdens on their property, gave them at once a firmer and more durable species of land rights, and sundry facilities for exercising their superior knowledge of law, and of legal documents, at the expense of the laity. At what time the feudal system was entirely adopted through the Lowlands of Scotland, it would be difficult to ascer- tain. We have already seen that the laws of the ancient inhabitants, the customs, as they are called, of the Scots and Bretts, were in some observance during the temporary usurpation of Scotland by Edward I., and that it appears to have been the purpose of that wily monarch, by abolishing these ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 47 usages, and introducing into the Scottish law a universal observance of the feudal system, to pre- pare the way for a more complete union between his usm-ped and his hereditary dominions. One leading feature of Celtic manners and laws re- mained, however, upon the Borders, until the union of the crowns ; and, in despite of the feudal system with which it was often at variance, conti- nued to flourish as well in the southern as in the northern extremities of Scotland. This was the system of septs, or clanship, by which these dis- tricts were long distinguished. The patriarchal government of each tribe, or name, by a single chieftain, supposed to represent in blood the father from whom the whole sept claim their original descent, is, of all kinds of government, the most simple and apparently the most universal. It is deduced from the most pri- mitive idea of all authority, that right of command, which is exercised by a father over his family. As the wigwams of the grandchildren arise round the hut of the patriarch, the power of the latter is extended in a wider circumference ; and, while the increasing numbers of the tribes bring them into contact, and of course into disputes with other societies of the same kind, this natural Head (such is the literal interpretation of the Norman word Chef, or the Celtic Cean) is more extensively useful, as their counsellor in peace and captain in battle. This simple mode of government, very- similar to what now exists among the Persian and Hindhu tribes, was universal among the ancient Celtic nations. A confederation of a certain num- 48 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. ber of these tribes, or clanships, under a govern- ment, whether monarchical or popular, composed a Celtic kingdom, or state, but did not alter, or interfere with, the authority exercised by each chief over his own tribe. Thus, ancient Gaul was divided into sixty-four states, comprehending four hundred different tribes ; which makes a propor- tion of about six clans to each federal union. In Britain, in like manner, Caesar enumerates no less than four kings in the province of Kent alone, by which he must have meant four patriarchal chief- tains. That such was the original government of Britain, is sufficiently evident from the system of clanship being found in such perfection in Wales, whose inhabitants, driven into the recesses of their mountains by the Saxons, long maintained with their independence the manners of the ancient British. They acknowledged five royal tribes, and five of churl's blood, to one or other of which each genealogist could refer the pedigree of the subordinate septs. That Ireland, unbroken and untouched by the Romans or Saxons, should have possessed the system of clanship in all its perfec- tion, cannot be matter of surprise. In the High- lands of Scotland, the system became only extinct in the days of our fathers.^ And, therefore, as 1 By the act of 20th King George II., cap. 5, all tenures by wardholding, that is, where the vassal held lands for the performance of military service, were declared unlawful, and those which existed were changed into holdings for feu, or for blench tenures, — that is to say, either for payment of an annual sum of money, or some honorary acknowledgment of vassalage, — so that it became impossible for any superior or overlord, in future, to impose upon his vassals the fatal service ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 49 being found in all countries where dialects of the Celtic are spoken, and where their customs conti- nued to be preserved, we must account the system of clanship as peculiar to the Celtic tribes, and unknown to the various invaders of Britain, whe- ther Saxons, Danes, or Normans. As it continued to retain full force upon the Borders, we must hold that it was originally derived from the Celtic inhabitants of the western parts of Valentia, who remained unsubdued by the Saxons, and by those of Reged, or the modern Cumberland. Nor does it at all shake this conclusion, that none of the clans distinguished upon the Borders used the Celtic patronymics common in Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish Highlands, and that we are well assured that several of them are of Saxon or Nor- man descent. In this case, as in Ireland, the Saxon or Norman settlers seem to have readily conformed to the custom of the native inhabitants, and to have adopted the name and authority of chiefs, with as much readiness and as effectual patriarchal sway, as if they had been descended from Galgacus or Cadwallader. A vague tradi- tion asserts, that the number of Scottish Border clans was eighteen, and of those of the Highlands of following him to battle, or to discharge the oppressive duties of what were called hunting, hosting, watching, and ■warding. Thus, although the feudal forms of investiture were retained, all the essential influence of the superior or overlord over the vassal or tenant, and especially the right which he had to bring him into the field of battle, in conseu quence of his own quarrels, was in future abrogated and disallowed."— .TaZes of a Grandfather, 3d series, vol. iii., p. 863.] VOL. VXI. D 50 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. forty-eight ; but I presume there is no genealogist now alive who would undertake to repeat the list. At a late period in the history of the Borders, the Scottish parliament, for the purpose of checking the depredations of these septs, published a Roll of the Clans that has Captains and Chieftains, on w^hom they depend ofttimes against the Will of their Landlords, as well on the Borders as High- lands," which, with some brief remarks on Border names, will be found in the Appendix to this In- troduction.^ The system of clanship thus established on the Western and middle parts of the Border, spread its influence into Berwickshire also ; for, although the potent family of Gordon, or of Home, has not, in the strictest sense, been termed a clan, that is, a sept depending entirely upon one patriarchal head, and of which the common people, as well as the leaders, bore the same name, yet the heads of the branches of these great families added to their ex- tensive feudal and territorial influence that autho- rity of blood which they exercised over the barons of their own name, as was the case with the But- lers, Geraldines, and other great Norman families settled in Ireland. But on these eastern parts of the marches, this clannish attachment was less strong and inviolable, and there are more frequently instances of persons of distinction acting against the head of their family upon occasions of public distraction.^ The same thing may be observed on ^ See Appendix No. III. 2 In the civil wars of Queen Mary, Godscroft (himself a Home) informs us, after enumerating the royalists, that ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 51 tlie opposite Borders of England. Northumber- land, at least the more level parts of that county, from which the British had been long expelled, was occupied by families of power and distinction, who exercised the same feudal and territorial authority that was possessed by other landholders throughout England. But in the wild and moun- tainous dales of the Reed, the Tyne, and the Coquet, as well as in the neighbouring county of Cumberland, the ancient British custom of clanship still continued in observance, and the inhabitants acted less under the direction of their landlords than under that of the principal man of their name, corresponding in this respect with the manners of the Cumbrian Britons, from whom they derived their descent. This grand distinction should be heedfully kept in view by the antiquary ; because the mode of government, of living, and of making war, adopted by the Borderers on both sides, seems to have been in a great measure the consequence of this prevailing system of clanship. The simplicity of the system was its first and principal recommendation. The father is the natu- ral magistrate among those of his own family, and his decisions are received with respect, and obeyed without murmur. Allow the fiction (for such it must frequently have been) that the existing chief was the lineal descendant and representative of the common parent of the tribe, and he became the ^* the Lord Home did also countenance them, though few of his friends or name were with him, save one mean man, Fer- dinand© of 13roomhouse," — History of the Douglasses, Folio edit, p, SlI. 52 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. legitimate heir of his paternal authority. But the consequences of this doctrine led directly to despo- tism ; and indeed it is upon this very foundation that Sir Robert Filmer, the slavish advocate of arbitrary power, has grounded his origin of magis- tracy. The evil, however great in a more advanced state of society, was not felt by tribes of bounded numbers, and engaged constantly in war. As sol- diers, they felt the necessity of submitting abso- lutely to their leader, wliile he exerted his autho- rity with tolerable moderation ; and, as command- ing soldiers, the chief must have felt the hazard of pushing discipline into tyranny. There were also circumstances which balanced the inconvenience of being subjected to the absolute authority of the chieftain. He was not only the legislator and cap- tain and father of his tribe, but it was to him that each individual of the name looked up for advice, subsistence, protection, and revenge. The article of counsel, it may be supposed, was mutual ; for it is reasonably to be presumed, that the chieftain would, in any matter of great moment, use the advice of the persons of most consequence in the clan ; as, on the other hand, it was a natural part of his duty to direct and assist them by his opinion and countenance. The support assigned by the chief to his people was so ample, as to render it questionable whether he could call much proper to himself, excepting his horses and arms. However extensive his ter- ritories were, he could use no part of them for his own peculiar profit, excepting just so much as he was able (perhaps by incursions upon the neigh- ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 53 bouring kingdom) to stock with sheep and with black cattle, which were consumed in the rude festivals of his castle faster than they could be supplied by the ordinary modes of raising them. The rest of the lands he distributed among his principal friends and relations, by whom they were managed in the same way, that is, partly stocked with cattle for the use of the laird, and partly assigned to be the temporary possessions of the followers. The vas- sals, or, to speak more properly, the men of name among the kindred, sometimes assisted the revenues of the chief by payment of the various feudal casualties, when he happened to be their feudal superior as well as patriarchal captain. But these seem frequently to have been remitted " in respect of good and acceptable service," and most probably were at all times levied with a very lenient hand. Payment of rent was totally unknown on the Borders until after James's accession to the crown of England, and thus the chief's superior wealth consisted in his extensive herds and flocks. Here also the inhabitants of the Borders gave token of their Celtic origin. To live on the produce of their flocks, to be independent of the use of bread, to eat in quantity the flesh of their cattle, are attributes which Lesley ascribes to the Borderers in Queen Mary's time, and which also apply to the Welsh and the Irish. On the splendour with which the chief practised his rude hospitality, much of his popularity, and of course much of his power, depended. Those who rose to great consequence were in the custom of maintaining constantly in their castles a certain number of the younger and 54 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. more active warriors of the clan, as we shall have afterwards occasion to notice more particularly. And thus all the chief means of subsistence were expended in the service of his clan. Protection was the most sacred duty of a chief to his followers, and this he was expected to extend in all forms and under almost all circumstances. If one of the clan chanced either to slay a man, or commit any similar aggression, the chief was expected to defend him by all means, legal or illegal. The most obvious and pacific was to pay such fine, or amende^ or assythement, as it was called, as might pacify the surviving relations, or make up the feud.^ This practice of receiving an atonement for slaughter seems also to have been part of the ancient Celtic usages ; for it occurs in the Welsh laws of Howell Dha, and was the very foundation of the Irish Brehon customs. The vestiges of it may be found in the common law of Scotland to this day. But poor as we have de- scribed the Border chief, and fierce as he certainly was by education and ofiice, it was not often that he was either able or disposed to settle the quarrels of his clansmen in a manner so amicable and expen- sive. War was then resorted to ; and it was the 1 In the year 1600, Archibald Napier, second son of Sir Alexander Napier of Merchiston, was waylaid and assassi- nated by five of the name of Scott, who had a deadly feud ■with the unfortunate younij^ man. The present Lord Napier has some curious correspondence between the father and "brother of the slain gentleman, respecting the assythement offered by the chief in the name of the murderers to atnne the quarrel. The brother seems to have declared forreveng--, the^ lather appears rather inclined to accommodate the dispute* ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 55 duty of the chief and clan who had sustained tlie injury to seek revenge by every means in their power, not only against the party who had given the offence, but, in the phrase of the time and country, against all his name, kindred, maintainers, and upholders. On the other hand, the chief and clan to whom the individual belonged who had done the offence, were equally bound in honour, by every means in their power, to protect their clans- man, and to retaliate whatever injury the opposite party might inflict in their thirst of vengeance. When two clans were involved in this species of private warfare, which was usually carried on with the most ferocious animosity on both sides, they were said to be at deadly feiid^ and the custom is justly termed by the Scottish parliament most hea- thenish and barbarous. And the Statute-book expressly states, that the murders, ravage, and daily oppression of the subjects, to the displeasure of God, dishonour of the prince, and devastation of the country, was occasioned partly by the negli- gence of the landlords and territorial magistrates, within whose jurisdiction the malefactors dwelt, but chiefly by the chieftains and principal leaders of the clans and their branches, who bore deadly quarrel and sought revenge for the hurt or slaughter of any of their " unhappy race," although done in form of justice, or in recovery of stolen goods. " So that," continues the statute, " the said chief- tains, principals of branches, and householders, worthily may be esteemed the very authors, fos- terers, and maintainers of the wicked deeds of the 66 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. vagabonds of their clans or surnames."^ In these deadly feuds, the chiefs of clans made war, or truce, or final peace with each other, with as much formality, and as little sincerity, as actual monarchs. Some examples of which the reader will find in the account of the private wars between the power- ful families of Johnstone and Maxwell, in the end. of the sixteenth century, in which each clan lost two successive chieftains. Many battles were fought, and much slaughter committed.^ As the chief was expected to protect his fol- lowers, in good and evil, from the assaults of their neighbours, and even from the pursuit of justice, the followers and clansmen were expected, on the other hand, to exhibit the deepest marks of devo- tion to his interest, never to scruple at his com- mands when alive, and, in case of his death by violence, to avenge him, at whatever risk to them- selves. In the year 1511, Sir Robert Kerr, warden of the Middle Marches, was slain at a Border meeting by three Englishmen. Starhed, one of the murderers, fled, it is said, nearly as far south as York, and there lived in private and upon his guard. Yet in this place of security he was sur- prised and murdered by two of Sir Robert Kerr's followers, who brought his head to their master, by whom, in memorial of their vengeance, it was exposed at the Cross of Edinburgh. These obser- vations may suffice to explain the state of clanship as it existed on the frontier. The cause of the 1 Statute, 1594, chap. 211. ^ See Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ^ vol. ii., p. 133. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 57 system's subsisting" so long- was its peculiar adapta- tion for the purposes of war and plunder, which the relative condition of the two kingdoms rendered in later times the constant occupation of the Bor- derers. This was not always the case, for there >vas an early period of history when the hostility between the two kingdoms M^as neither constant nor virulent. Until the death of Alexander III. of Scotland, and the extinction of the direct line of succession to the crown opened the way to the ambition of Ed- ward I., there were long continued intervals of peace and amity between England and Scotland. The royal families of each country were united by frequent alliances ; and as the possession of exten- sive domains in England, held of the English crown, frequently obliged the kings of Scotland to attend the court of their brother-sovereign, they formed friendships both with the English kings and nobles, which tended to soften the features of hostility when it broke out between the nations. The attachment of Malcolm IV. to Henry II. was so great as to excite the jealousy of his own sub- jects ; and the generosity of Coeur de Lion restored to William of Scotland the pledges of homage which had been extorted from him after his defeat and imprisonment at Alnwick, and converted an impatient vassal into an affectionate and grateful ally. From that period, a. D. 1189, there was an interval of profound peace between the realms for more than a century. During this period, as well as in the preceding reigns, the state of the Border 58 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. appears to have been progressively improving'. It was there that David I. chose to establish tLe monastic institutions whose magnificent remains still adorn that country, the Abbeys, namely, of Kelso, Melrose, Jedburgh, and Dryburgh. Tlie choice of spots so near the limits of his king- dom (for his possession of some part of the North of England was but precarious) was, perhaps, dic- tated by the sound policy of ensuring the culti- vation of tracts peculiarly exposed to the ravage of the enemy, by placing them under the sacred protection of the church. In this point of view the foundations completely answered the purpose designed; for it is well argued by Lord Hailes, that, while we are inclined to say with the vulgar that the clergy always chose the best of the land, we forget how much their possessions owed their present appearance to the art and industry of the clergy, and the protection which the ecclesiastical character gave to their tenants and labourers, while the territories of the nobles were burnt and laid waste by invaders. If these advantages are taken into consideration, we shall admire, rather than censure, the munificence of David I., and hesitate to join the opinion of his successor, who, adverting to his character of sanctity, purchased, as he deemed it to have been, by his dilapidation of tlie royal patrimony, observed, sarcastically, that he had proved a sore saint for the crown. The settlement of these monasteries contributed, doubtless, not a little to the improvement of the country around them ; and the introduction of ESSAY ON BOKDER ANTIQUITIES. 59 many Norman families upon the Border country must also have had its share in introducing regular Lw and good order. Under the progressive in- fluence of these changes of property, it seems pro- bable that the Celtic system of clanship vrould have gradually given way, and that the Borderers would have assimilated their customs and manners to those of the more inland parts of Scotland. But the savage and bloody spirit of hostility which arose from Edward the First's usurpation of the crown of Scotland, destroyed in a few years the improvements of ages, and carried the natives of these countries backward in every art but in those which concerned the destruction of the English and each other. The wars which raged through every part of Scotland in the thirteenth century, were urged with peculiar fury on the Borders. Castles were surprised and taken ; battles were won and lost ; the country was laid waste on all sides, and by all parties : The patriotic Scotch, like the Spaniards of our own time, had no escape from usurped power but by sacrificing the benefits of civilisation, and leading the lives of armed outlaws. The struggle, indeed, terminated in the establish- ment of national independence ; but the immediate effect of the violence which had distinguished it was to occasion Scotland retrograding to a state of barbarism, and to convert the borders of both countries into wildernesses, only inhabited by sol- diers and robbers. Many towns, which had begun to arise in the fertile countries of Roxburgh and Berwickshires, were anew ruined. Roxburgh itself, once one of the four principal burghs of Scotland, 60 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. was SO completely destroyed, that its site is now only remembered and pointed out by tradition.^ The mode of warfare adopted by the Scots themselves, however necessary and prudent, was destructive to property, and tended to retard civili- sation. They avoided giving pitched battles, and preferred a wasting and protracted war, which might tire out and exhaust the resources of their invaders. They destroyed all the grain and other resources of their own country which might have afforded relief to the Englishmen, and they viewed with great indifference the enemy complete the work of destruction. In the meanwhile, they secured their cattle among the mountains and fo- rests, and either watched an opportunity to attack the invaders with advantage, or, leaving them to work their will in Scotland, burst into England themselves, and retaliated upon the enemy's coun- try the horrors which were exercised in their own.^ 1 [Roxburgh (old and new town) was undoubtedly the capital of Scotland, during the reign of David I., and the county town, till it was ruined, by the sad hostilities of the succession war. — Chalmers' Caledonia, vol. ii., p. 111.] 2 This extraordinary species of warfare astonished the French auxiliaries, who, under John de Vienne, came to the assistance of the Scottish in the year 1384. They beheld with surprise the Scottish army decline combat, and, plunging into the woods, " destroy," says Froissart, " all as they went, and burn towns, villages, and manors, causing all the men, women, and children to retreat with their cattle into the wild forests, where they knew well that the English could not follow them." Then, while an English army ravaged the country of Scotland, and burned the capital, the Scottish forces burst into Northumberland and Cumberland, wasting, slaying, and burning without mercy, until, in the opinion of the French auxiliaries, they had done more damage in the bishoprics of ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 61 This ferocious, but uncompromising mode of war- fare, had been strongly recommended in the rhymes considered a legacy from Robert Bruce to his suc- cessors, and which indeed do, at this very day, comprise the most effectual, and almost the only defensive measures, which can be adopted by a poor and mountainous country, when invaded by the overpowering armies of a wealthy neighbour. The concentration of the national forces in woods, mountains, and difficult passages, — the wasting the open country, so as to deprive the enemy of the supplies they might obtain from it, — sudden attacks from ambushes and by night, — a system of destroy- ing the hostile communications and narrowing their resources, are as distinctly recommended by these homely lines as they were to the Portuguese by the great captain whose conduct and valour achieved their independence. In the following transcript, the modern orthography is preferred : — " On foot should be all Scottish weir, * By hill and moss themselves to wear; ^ Let wood for walls be bow and speir, That enemies do them no dreire. * In strait places gar 4 keep all store, And burn the plain land them before ; Durham and Carlisle than all the towns of Scotland were worth. So the Frenchmen and Scotts returned into Scot- land the same way they came; and when they came into Scotland, they found the country destroyed, but the people did set but little thereby, and said how with three or four poles they would soon set up their houses again, and that they had saved much of their cattle in the woods." — The Cronycle of Froissart, vol. ii., pp. 27, 29. 1 ^FezV— war. 2 Wear—io defend, ^ Dreire— \idxm or injury, 4 Gar — cause. 62 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. Then shall they pass away in haste, When that they find naething hut waste. With wiles and wakening on the night. And meikle noises made on height; Than shall they turn with great affray As they were chased with sword away ; This is the counsell and intent Of good King Robert's testament." FoRDUNi, Scotichronicon^ vol. ii., p. 2.32. It followed, from this devastating system of defensive vrar, that the Scottish were so far from desiring to cover their borders by building strong places or fortresses, that they pulled them down and destroyed them where they already existed. Buchanan has elegantly turned this systematic destruction of their castles into a compliment to the valour of his countrymen : Necfossis et muris patriam sed Marte tueri. But, without disparaging Scottish valour, the mo- tive of leaving their frontier thus open, seems to have been a consciousness that they were greatly surpassed by the English both in the attack and defence of their strongholds ; that if they threw their best warriors into frontier garrisons, they might be there besieged, and reduced either by force or famine ; and that the fortresses of which the enemy should thus obtain possession, might afford them the means of maintaining a footing in the country. When, therefore, the Scottish pa- triots recovered possession of the castles which had fallen into the power of the English, they usually dismantled them. The Good Lord James of Douglas surprised his own castle of Douglas three times, it having been as frequently garrisoned ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 63 by the English, and upon each occasion he laid waste and demolished it.^ The military system of Wallace was on the same principle. And, in fine, witli very few exceptions, the strong and extensive fortresses, which had arisen on the Scot- tish Borders in better times, were levelled with the ground during the wars of the thirteenth cen- tury. The ruins of the Castles of Roxburgh, of Jedburgh, and of several others which were thus destroyed, bear a wonderful disproportion in ex- tent to any which were erected in subsequent times. Nay, the Castle of Jedburgh was so strong- ly and solidly constructed, and the Scottish so unskilful in the art of destruction, even where there was no military opposition, that it was thought it could not be destroyed without such time and labour as would render it necessary to impose a tax of two pennies on every hearth in Scotland to defray the expense. But Duke Robert of Albany, then regent, to shun the unpopularity of this im- post, defrayed the charge of the demolition out of the crown revenues. This continued to be the Scottish defensive system for many ages, and, of course, while it exposed invaders to hardships, loss, and want of subsistence, it reduced the frontiers of their own country, for the time, to a waste desert. Beacons were lighted in such a manner as to signify either the threatened approach, or actual arrival, of the English army. These were maintained at Hume Castle, at the Tower of Edgerhope, or Edgerstane, 1 [See Appendix to the Lord of the Isles, note T, Sir Wal- ter Scott's Poetical Works, vol. x., p. 333.]; 64 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. near tlie soui'ce of the Jed, upon the ridge of the Soltra Hills, at Dunbar, Dunpender (or Trapraine) Law, North Berwick Law, and other eminences ; and tlieir light was a signal for the Scottish forces to assemble at Edinburgh and Haddington, aban- doning to waste and pillage all the southern coun- ties.^ Till the very last occasion of hostility between England an-d Scotland, this mode of defensive war was resorted to in the latter kingdom. Cromwell found the Borders in that desolate situation in his campaign of 1650 ; and, had it not been for the misjudged zeal of the presbyter ian ministers, who urged David Lesley to give battle at Dunbar, he must have made a disastrous and disgraceful retreat.^ " From this system it followed that most of the Scottish places of strength, even when the abode of great nobles or powerful chiefs, w^ere constructed upon a limited and mean scale. Built usually in some situation of natm^al strength, and having very thick walls, strongly cemented, they could easily repel the attack of any desultory incm'sion ; but 1 Statute 1455. Chap. 28. 2 « In the march between Mordington and Coppersmith (Cockburn's Path) we saw not any Scotchman in Eyton, and other places that we passed through ; but the streets were full of Scotch women, pitiful sorrow creatures, clothed in white flannel, in a very homely manner. Very many of them very much bemoaned their husbands, who, they said, were en- forced by the lairds of the towns to gang to the muster. All the men in this town, (Dunbar,) as in other places of this day's march, were fled ; and not any to be seen above seven or under seventy years old, but only some few decrepid ones." — Relation of the Fight at Leith, near Edinburgh, ^c, puhlished hy authority ; printed by Ed, Griffin^ 1650, 4to, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 65 they were neither victualled nor capable of re- ceiving garrisons sufficient to defend them, except- ing against a sudden assault. The village, which always almost adjoined to the castle, contained the abodes of the retainers, who, upon the summons of the chieftain, took arms either for the defence of the fortress or for giving battle in the field. Of these, the greater part were called "kindly ten- ants," or " rentallers," deriving the former name from the close and intimate nature of their con- nexion with the lord of the soil, from whom they held their little possessions by favour rather than bargain ; and the latter from the mode in which their right of possession was constituted, by enter- ing their names in their lord's rental-book.^ Besides ' * Satchells gives a list of the pensioners thus daily main- tained in the family of Buccleuch, and distinguishes the lands which each held for his service: — •* That famiiie they still were valiant men. No Baron was better served into Britain ; The Barons of Buckcleugh they keept at their call Four-and-twenty gentlemen in their hall. All being of his name and kin. Each two had a servant to wait on them ; Before supper and dinner most renowned. The bells rung and the trumpet sounded. And more than that I do confess. They kept four-and-twenty pensioners j Think not I lie, or do me blame. For the pensioners I can all name ; There's men alive elder than I, They know if I speak truth or lie. EvVy pensioner a room did gain. For service done and to be done. This rie let the reader understand. The name of both the men and la d. Which they possess'd it is of truth. Both from the Lairds and Lords of Buckleugh." 2 History of the Name of Scott, 8 [Compare the opening stanzas of the Lay of the Last MinstreW} VOL. VII. E 66 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. this ready militia, the more powerful chiefs main- tained in their castle, and as immediate attendants upon their persons, the more active young gentle- men of their clan, selected from the younger bre- thren of gentlemen of estate, whose descent from the original stock, and immediate dependence upon the chief, rendered them equally zealous and determined adherents. These were recompensed by grants of land, in property or lease, which they stocked with cattle or sheep, as their chief did those which he retained in his own hands. But the castles which held these garrisons, whe- ther constant or occasional, were not of strength, or at least of extent, at all commensurate with the military power of the chiefs who inhabited them- The ruins of Cessford, or of Branxholm, before the latter was modernized, might be considered as on the largest scale of Scottish Border fortresses, and neither could brook comparison with the baronial castles of English families of far less power and influence. Hume Castle might be reckoned an exception, from its extent and importance. The French king w^as at one time required to supply a garrison for it, (Ridpath's Border Hist. p. 571,) which shows a determination to defend it to the uttermost. But this fortress commanded and protected Berwick- shire, a country which, from its wealth and popu- lation, as well as from the strength of the frontier afforded by the Tweed, early lost the wilder and more savage features of the middle and western Borders. Even in this case it was not without great Jiazard that the Scottish transgressed their ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 67 usual rules, by covering this commanding" situation with a strong and extensive castle. For Hume Castle wa« taken by the English after the fatal battle of Pinkie, and again in the year 1570 ; and being garrisoned by the enemy, afforded, on both occasions, a stronghold from which they were not easily dispossessed. The castle of Caerlaverock, on the western fron- tier, protected against the English by its situation, appears also to have approached, in size and splen- dour of architecture, to the dignity of an English fortress ; but this fortress also was repeatedly taken by the invaders. The original castle of Caerlave- rock was besieged, taken, and garrisoned by Ed- ward I., in the year 1300. The siege is the subject of a curious French poem, preserved in the British Museum, and published in the Antiquarian Reper- tory. When recovered by Sir Edward Maxwell, during the wars of Robert Bruce, he dismantled it, according to the policy which we have already noticed. The present castle, built on a scale of unusual size and magnificence by the powerful family of Maxwell, was ruined by the Earl of Sussex in the fatal year 1570. Much of the pre- sent ruins belong to the seventeenth century ; and the castle owes its state of desolation to the suc- cessful arms of the Covenanters in 1640. The extensive ruins of Bruce's ancient castle, on a lake beside Lochmaben, indicate its extent and strength; and, by the Scottish regulations, particular care was enjoined that it should be kept by a " wise and famous gentleman," with four horsemen in constant attendance, who was to dis* 68 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. cliarge the office of steward-depute of AnnandaJe. But Lochmaben Castle was founded before the bloody wars in the fourteenth century, when the Borders were in a state of comparative civilisation. Most of the other abodes of the south-westeru barons, as Closeburn, Spedlin's Castle, Hoddom, X On such occasions it sometimes happened that a few- retainers were left as enfans perdus, without the means of escape, to hold the tower out to the uttermost, and thus pro- tect the retreat of the laird. This appears from the account given by Patten of the siege of the towers of Anderwick and Thornton by the Lord Protector Somerset, which also con- tains a minute account of the mode of attacking and defend- ing a Scottish Peel or Bastle-house. — See Appendix, No I. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 71 was over, set themselves about to regain, by re- peated forays, on a smaller scale indeed, but equally formidable from their frequency, a compensation for the property which they had been compelled to abandon to the overpowering force of the in- vaders. The two most dreadful invasions comme- morated in Scottish annals, were the great inroads of the Earl of Hertford, in the end of Henry the Eighth's reign, and that of the Earl of Sussex, in the twelfth year of Queen Elizabeth. While such was the state of the landholder, and even of the noble, upon the Borders, it is natui-al to enquire into the condition of the towns along the Scottish frontier. It appears they were nu- merous, and, considering the very precarious state of security, fuU of inhabitants. Dumfries, Jed- burgh, and Selkirk, were those of principal note. They were under the same mode of government, by their own elective magistrates, as the other free boroughs of Scotland, and, on many occasions, maintained their freedom and franchises against the powerful barons in the neighbourhood, with whom they were frequently at feud.^ Besides * There was a memorable feud betwixt the Laird of Fairni- hirst and the town of Jedburgh, accompanied with some curious circumstances. The chief was attached to the interest of Queen Mary, the burghers of Jedburgh espoused that of King James VI. When a pursuivant, under the authority of the Queen, was sent to proclaim that every thing was null which had been done against her, during her imprison- ment in Lochleven, the provost commanded him to descend from the cross, and, says Bannatyne, " caused him eat his letters, and thereafter loosed down his points, and gave him his wages on his bare buttocks with a bridle, threatening him 72 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. these intestine divisions, they had to be constantly on their guard against the inhabitants of the oppo- site frontier, to whom their wealth (such as it was) afforded great temptation. It was acquired chiefly by smuggling ; for, as the most rigorous laws in both countries prohibited all mercantile intercourse upon the Borders under high pains, a great con- traband trade, both for cattle, horses, salt, fish, and other merchandise, existed upon the frontiers, even till the union of the kingdoms, when most of the southern boroughs of Scotland experienced a great declension, both in wealth and inhabitants, from its being discontinued. Every free burgher was by his tenure a soldier, and obliged, not only to keep watch and ward for the defence of the town, but to march under his magistrates, deacons of craft, &c., to join the king's banner when lawfully summoned. They also attended in order of battle and well armed at the warden meetings and other places of public rendezvous on the Borders, had their peculiar gathering-words and war-cries, and appear often to have behaved with distinguished gallantry.^ that if ever he came again he should lose his life.** — Banna- tyne's Journal, p. 243. In revenge of this insult, and of other points of quarrel, Fairnyhirst made prisoners, and hanged ten of the citizens of Jedburgh, and destroyed with fire the whole stock of provisions which they had laid up for the winter. 1 The citizens of Jedburgh were so distinguished for the use of arms, that the battle-axe, or species of partisan, which they commonly used, was called a Jed dart- staff, after the name of the hurgh. Their bravery turned the fate of the day at the skirmish of the Reedswair, one of the last fought ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 73 The Border towns were usually strong by si- tuation, as Dumfries upon the Nith, and Jedburgh upon the river of the same name, and were almost always surrounded by some rude sort of fortifica- tion, or wall, with gates, or, as they were called in Scottish, ports. But even when these defences were forced by a superior enemy, the contest was often maintained with obstinacy in the town itself, where the height of the houses and narrowness of the streets afforded to brave and determined men the means of resistance, or at least of vengeance. Most of the towns and even villages contained, besides the houses of the poorer inhabitants, bastle- houses, or towers, surrounded with walls, like those which we have described as the habitations of the landed proprietors. The ruins of these are to be seen in most Border villages of antiquity. In that of Darnwick, near Melrose, there is one belonging to a family called Fisher, almost entire. There is another at Jedburgh, which Queen Mary is said to have lodged in after her ill-fated expedition to visit Bothwell at Hermitage Castle.^ These towers were either the abode of the wealthier citizens, or of the neighbouring gentry, who occasionally dwelt within the burgh, and they furnished admirable posts for the annoyance of an enemy, even after they had possessed themselves of the town. Lessudden, a populous village, when burned by Sir Ralph Evers upon the Borders, and their slogan, or warcry, is mentioned in the old ballad which celebrates that event — Then rose the sloe^an with a shout, *• Fye to it, Tyuedale" — " Jedburgh's here.'* * [See Border Minstrelsy, Introduction, vol. i., p. 134.] 74 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. in 1544, contained no less than sixteen strong bastle- houses ; and Jedburgh, when taken and burned by the Earl of Surrey, contained six of these strong- holds, with many good houses besides, was twice as large as the town of Berwick, and could have accom- modated a garrison of a thousand cavalry. The defence of these towns was very obstinate, the people themselves pulling down the thatch of their houses, and burning it in the streets to stop the progress of their enemies ; and the military spirit of the Borderers was such as calls forth the following very handsome compliment from the generous Surrey : — " I assure your Grace (Henry VIII.) that I found the Scots at this time the boldest men and the hottest that ever I saw any nation, and all the journee upon all parts of the army they kept us with such continual skirmishes that I never beheld the like. If they could assemble forty thousand as good men as the fifteen hundred or two thou- sand I saw, it would be a hard encounter to meet them"! If we turn our eyes from the frontiers of Scot- land to those of England, we shall behold a very different scene, indicating, even in these remote provinces, the superior wealth and civilisation of the English nation, with that attention to defence which was the natural consequence of their having something of value to defend. The central marches, indeed, and the extreme verge of the frontier in every direction, excepting upon the east, were inha- bited by wild clans as lawless as their northern 1 Cotton MSS. Calig. B. iv. fol. 29. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 75 neighbours, resembling them in manners and cus- toms, inliabiting similar strongholds, and subsist- ing, like them, by rapine. The towers of Thirl- wall, upon the river Tippal, of Fenwick, of Wid- drington, and others, exhibit the same rude strength and scanty limits with those of the Scottish Border chieftains. But these were not, as in Scotland, the abode of the great nobles, but rather of leaders of an inferior rank. Wherever the mountains rece- ded, arose chains of castles of magnificent structure, great extent, and fortified with all the art of the age, belonging to those powerful barons whose names hold so high a rank in English history. The great house of Clifford of Cumberland alone possessed, exclusive of inferior strongholds, the great and extensive castles of Appleby, Brough, Brougham, Pendragon, and Skipton, each of which formed a lordly residence, as may yet be seen from their majestic ruins. The possessions of the great house of Percy were fortified with equal strength. Warkworth, Alnwick, Bamborough, and Cocker- mouth, all castles of great baronial splendour and strength, besides others in the interior of the coun- try, show their wealth and power. Raby Castle, still inhabited, attests the magnificence of the great Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland ; and the lower- ing strength of Naworth shows the power of the Dacres. All these, and many others which might be mentioned, are so superior to edifices of the same kind in Scotland, as to verify the boast, that there was many a dog-kennel in England to which the tower of a Scottish Borderer was not to be com- 76 * ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. pared.^ Yet when Nawortli or Brougham Castles are compared with the magnificence of Warwick and of Kenilworth, their savage strength, their triple rows of dungeons, the few and small win- dows which open to the outside, the length and complication of secret and subterranean passages, show that they are rather to be held limitary fort- resses for curbing the doubtful allegiance of the Borders, and the incursions of the Scottish, than the abodes of feudal hospitality and baronial splen- dour. The towns along the English frontier were, in like manner, much better secured against incur- sions than those of the opposite Borders. The necessity of this had been early taught them. In the reign of Edward I., a wealthy burgess of Newcastle was made prisoner in his own house by a party of Scottish moss-troopers, carried into Scotland, and compelled to ransom himself. This compelled the inhabitants to fortify that city.^ The strength and importance of Berwick, often won and lost during the fourteenth century, induced the English to bestow such expense and skill in fortifying it, that, after the year 1482, it remained as a gate between the kingdoms, barred against the Scottish, but through which the English could at pleasure make irruption. A strong garrison was maintained in that city, ready at all times for service ; and, to have kept Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1 See Cabala, p. 160. ^ Chorographia, or a Survey of Newcastle-upori' T^e, repub- lished by the Antiquarian Society of that city. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 77 was of itself a sufficient praise for a military man, and sums up, in a minstrel ballad, the character of Harry Hotspur himself.^ When garrisons of re- gular troops were lodged, as was usually the case, in the royal castle of Norham, and Lord Grey's baronial castle of Wark, with smaller parties in those of Etal, Ford, Cornhill, and Twizell, the course of the Tweed, where it divides the king- doms, was well protected from invasion ; and the necessary siege of one or other of this chain of fortresses usually found the Scottish arms such employment, that, ere they could advance into the interior of Northumberland, the array of England was collected and combined for the defence of her frontier. Carlisle, strong and skilfully fortified, having besides a castle of great antiquity and strength, was to the English west marches, what Berwick was on the east, a place of arms and a rallying point. The crown appears frequently to have maintained garrisons there, besides the reti- nue which was assigned to the wardens, as also at Askerton in Bewcastle, Naworth, and other places ^ In the old song of the battle of Otterbourne, Hotspur is thus eulogized : *' Sir Henry Percye in the New Castell lay, I tell ye withouten drede. He had been a march man all his dayes, And kept Berwicke upon Tweed.'* Sir Ralph Evers, a Border hero of later date, who was slain in the battle of Ancrum Moor, receives a similar com- pliment from the minstrel by whom he was celebrated — *' And now he has in keeping the town of Berwicke, Tne town was ne'er so well keepit I wot ; He maintain'd law and order ahing- the Border, And ever was ready to prikke the Scot.." 78 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. of strength. Hexham, in the centre of the Border line, was also fortified, so that if any considerable body of the Scottish forces should penetrate through the wastes of Reedsdale and Tyndale, they might still find an obstacle in their passage. But although these precautions served to pro- tect the English frontier from those extensive scenes of inroad and desolation which their arms sometimes inflicted on Scotland, and in so far afforded them defence, yet the evils of the desul- tory war carried on by small parties of the enemy, who made sudden irruptions into particular dis- tricts, laid all waste, and returned loaded with spoil, were not to be guarded against. If the waste committed by the English armies was more widely extended and generally inflicted, the continual and unceasing raids of the Scottish Borderers were scarcely less destructive. The English, if better defended by castles and garrisons, afforded, from the superior wealth of the country, stronger temp- tation to their free-booting neighbours, and gain is a surer spur to adventures of this kind than mere revenge. The powerful Earl of Northumberland, writing to Henry VIII., complains, that from his house at Warkworth he sees the horizon enlight- ened by the burning hamlets which the Scottish marauders had pillaged and fixed. Such were the frequent signals of invasion— ■ " at whose sight So oft the yeomen had in days of yore, Cursing his perilous tenure, wound the horn ; And wai'den from the castle tower rung out The loud alarm bell, heai'd far and wide." Modoc, p. 359. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 79 The tenure of cornage, alluded to by the poet in these beautiful lines, was well known on the Eng- lish Borders, as well as on the Marches of Wales, to which the verses refer. The smaller barons usually held their lands and towers for the service of winding a horn, to intimate the approach of a hostile party. An alarm of this sort, and its con- sequences, JSneas Silvius witnessed on his passing through Northumberland in his road to Scotland, in the character of a legate, in the year 1448. " There is a river, (the Tweed,) which spread- ing itself from a high mountain, parts the two kingdoms ; Eneas having crossed this in a boat, and arriving about sunset at a large village, went to the house of a peasant, and there supped with the priest of the place and his host. The table was plentifully spread with large quantities of poultry and geese, but neither wine nor bread was to be found there, and all the people of the town, both men and women, flocked about him as to some new sight ; and as we gaze at Negroes or Indians, so did they stare at Eneas, asking the priest where he came from, what he came about, and whether he was a Christian. Eneas, understanding the diffi- culties he must expect on this journey, had taken care to provide himself at a certain monastery with some loaves, and a measure of red wine, at sight of which they were seized with greater astonish- ment, having never seen wine or white bread. Women with child came up to the table with their husbands, and after handling the bread and smel- ling the wine, begged some of each, so that it was impossible to avoid distributing the whole among* 80 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. them. The supper Listed till the 2d hour of the night ; the priest and host, with all the men and children, made the best of their way off, and left Eneas. They said they were going to a tower a great way off for fear of the Scots, who, when the tide was out, would come over the river and plunder; nor could they with all his intreaties by any means be prevailed on to take Eneas with them, nor any of the women, though many of them were young and handsome, for they think them in no danger from an enemy, not considering violence offered to women as any harm. Eneas therefore remained alone for them with two servants and a guide, and 100 women, who made a circle round the fire, and sat the rest of the night without sleep- ing, dressing hemp and chatting with the inter- preter. Night was now far advanced, when a great noise was heard by the barking of dogs, and scrc^aming of the geese. All the women made the best of their way off, the guide getting away with the rest, and there was as much confusion as if the enemy was at hand. Eneas thought it more pru- dent to wait the event in his bedroom, (which happened to be a stable,) apprehending if he went out he might mistake his way and be robbed by the first he met. And soon after the women came back with the interpreter, and reported there was no danger, for it was a party of friends, and not of enemies, that were come." To prevent these distressing inroads, the Eng- lish warden. Lord Wharton, established a line of communication along the whole line of the Border, from Berwick to Carlisle, from east to west, with ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 81 setters and searchers, sleuth-hounds, and watchers by day and night.^ Such fords as could not be conveniently guarded, were, to the number of thh'ty-nine, directed to be stopped and destroyed, meadows and pastiu^es were ordered to be enclosed, that their fences might oppose some obstacle to the passage of marauders, and narrow passes by land were appointed to be blocked up or rendered unpassable. All these precautions, wliile they showed the extent of the evil, did not, however anxiously considered and carefully enforced, pro- duce, in any remarkable degree, the good effects which might have been expected. Indeed, the state of the population on either side of the frontier had become such, that to prevent these constant and reciprocal incursions was absolutely impossible, without a total change in their manners and habits of life. And this leads us to take a brief review of the character and manners of the Borderers on either side. Lesley, bishop of Ross, has given us a curious chapter on the manners of the Borderers of Scot- land, a translation whereof the reader will find in the Appendix, No. II. Contrary to the custom of the rest of Scotland, they almost always acted as light-horsemen, and used small active horses accustomed to traverse morasses, in which other cavalry would have been swallowed up. Their hardy mode of life made them indifferent to danger, and careless about the ordinary accommodations of life. The uncertainty of reaping the fruits of their 1 See Articles devised at Newcastle in the 6th of Edward VI. Border Laws, Appendix. VOL. VII. F 82 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. labour, deterred them from all the labom-s of culti - vation ; their mountains and glens afforded pastu- rage for the cattle and horses, and when these were driven off by the enemy, they supplied the loss by reciprocal depredation. Living under chiefs by whom this predatory warfare was countenanced, and sometimes headed, they appear to have had little knowledge of the light in which their actions were regarded by the legislature ; and the various statutes and regulations made against their incur- sions, remained in most cases a dead letter. It did indeed frequently happen that the kings, or governors of Scotland, when the disorders upon the Border reached to a certain height, marched against those districts with an overpowering force, seized on the persons of the chiefs, and sent them to dis- tant prisons in the centre of the kingdom, and executed, without mercy, the inferior captains and leaders. Thus, in the year 1529, a memorable era for this sort of expeditious justice, James V., having first committed to ward the Earl of Both- well, the Lords Home and Maxwell, the Lairds of Buccleuch, Fairnihirst, Johnstone, Polwarth, Dol- phington, and other chiefs of clans, marched through the Borders with about eight thousand men, and seizing upon the chief leaders of the moss-troopers, who seem not to have been aware that they had any reason to expect harm at their sovereign's hands, executed them without mercy. Besides the celebrated Johnie Armstrong of Gillnockie, to whom a considerable part of the English frontier paid black-mail, or protection-money, the names of Piers Cockburn of Henderland, Adam Scott of ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 83 Tusliielaw, called the King of the Border, and other marauders of note, are recorded as having suffered on this occasion.^ And although this, and other examples of severity, had the effect for the time, as the Scottish phrase is, of " dantoning the thieves of the Borders, and making the rush-bush keep the cow," yet this course not only deprived the kingdom of the assistance of many brave men, who were usually the first to endure or repel the brunt of invasion, but it also diminished the affec- tions of those who remained ; and a curious and middle state of relation appears to have taken place between the Borderers on each side, who, as they were never at absolute peace with each other during the cessation of national hostilities, seem, in like manner, to have shunned engaging in vio- lent and sanguinary conflicts, even during the time of war. The English Borderers, who were in the same manner held aliens to the civilized part of the country, insomuch that, by the regulations of the corporation of Newcastle, no burgess could take to liis apprentice a youth from the dales of Reed or Tyne, made common cause with those of Scotland, the allegiance of both to their proper country was much loosened ; the dalesmen on either side seem to have considered themselves in many respects as ^ separate people, having interests of their own, distinct from, and often hostile to, that of the country to which they were nominal subjects. This ^ave rise to some singular featm-es in their history. * [See Tales of a Grandfather, 1st series, vol. iii., p. 28, et seq., and, at more length, the case of Armstrong, Border Mivr- strelsy, vol. i., p. 392.] 84 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. In the first place, this indifFerence to the national cause rendered it the same thing to the Borderers whether they preyed upon the opposing frontier, or on their own countrymen. The men of Tyne- dale and Reedsdale, in particular, appear to have been more frequently tempted by the rich vales of the Bishopric of Dm^ham, and other districts which lay to the southward, than by the rude desolation of the Scottish hills. Their wild manners are thus described in the Chorographia^ or Survey of New^ castlcy first published in 1549. " There is in many dales, the chief are Tinedale and Reedsdale, a country that William the Conqueror did not subdue, retaining to this day the ancient laws and customs (according to the county of Kent) whereby the lands of the father is equally divided at his death amongst all his sonnes. These Highlanders are famous for thieving ; they are all bred up and live by theft. They come down from these dales inta the low countries, and carry away horses and cattell so cunningly, that it will be hard for any to get them or their cattell, except they be acquainted with some master thiefe, who for some mony (which tiiey call saufey-mony) may help them to their stoln goods, or deceive them. There is many every yeare brought in of them into the goale of Newcastle, and at the Assises are condemned and hanged, sometimes twenty or thirty. They forfeit not their lands, (according to the tenure in gavelkind,) the father to the bough, the son to the plough. The people of this countrey hath had one barbarous custome amongst them ; if any two be displeased, they expect no lawye, hut bang it out bravely, one and his kindred against the other and his ; they will subject themselves to no justice, but in an inhumane and barbarous manner fight and kill one another ; they rxin together in clangs (clans) as they terme it, or names. This fighting they call their feids, or deadly feids, a word so l)arbarous that I cannot express it in any other tongue. Of late, since the union of both kingdoms, this heathenesh bloody custom is repressed, and good laws made against such barbar- ous and unchristian misdemeanours, and fightings. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES* 85 The Scottish Borderers seem to have been, in all respects, as little amenable to the laws of their country, and as little disposed to respect the rights of their countrymen as the Dalesmen of Northum- berland. Their depredations not only wasted the opposite frontier of England, but extended through the more civilized parts of Scotland, and even into Lothian itself ; and it is singular enough, that a Scottish lord chancellor seems to have had no more effectual mode of taking vengeance on them than by writing a poem of exprobation.^ They entered readily into any of the schemes of the English Borderers, and we find them contributing their numbers to swell the army with which the unfor- tunate Earls of Westmoreland and Northumber- land entered Liddesdale in the twelfth year of Queen Elizabeth, as well as upon other occasions, when public commotion gave hope of plunder. But their allegiance hung much more loosely about them than this would imply ; for not only did they join the English Borderers in their ex- ploits against the English government, but upon any turn of affairs which was favourable to the arms of England, they readily took assurance, as it is called, or allied themselves with that kingdom, and assisted them with their forces in laying waste 1 See Maitland's Complaint against the Thieves of Liddes- dale^ in Pinkerton's Scottish Poems; and a copy, somewhat different, in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. i., pp. 164 and 256. ** Of Liddesdale, the common thieves Sae pertly steilis now and reives That nane may keep Horse, nolt, or sheep. Nor yet dare sleep For their mischievis," &c. &c 86 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES, tlieir native country. This was particularly the case with the Borderers who inhabited the Debate- able Land^ as it was called, a considerable portion of ground upon the west marches, the allegiance of whose inhabitants was claimed by both parties, and rendered to neither. They were outlawed to both nations, and readily made incursions upon either, as circumstances afforded the best prospect of plun- der.^ The inhabitants of Liddesdale, also compre- hending the martial clans of Armstrong, Elliot, and others, were apt, on an emergency, to assume the red cross, and for the time became English subjects. They had indeed this to plead for their conduct, that the sovereigns of Scotland had repeat- edly abandoned them to the vengeance of English retaliation, on account of hostilities against that country, which their own monarchs were unable to punish.^ These clans, with the Rutherfords, ^ The Debateable Land (a perpetual source of contention between the kingdoms) was a small tract of ground, inhabited by the most desperate outlaws of both nations, lying between the rivers Sark and Esk. In 1552, it was divided by com- missioners of both nations, the upper or more western part being assigned to Scotland, and the lower portion to England, in all time coming. 2 By a cofivention, dated at Berwick, in the year 1528, it is declared lawful for the King of England to proceed by let» ters of marque, authorizing his wardens and other officers to proceed against the inhabitants of Liddesdale to their slaughter, burning, hership, robbing, reiving, despoiling, and destruction, till full redress was obtained of the wrongs complained of. But it is provided, that the English shall not b^isiege the house or castle of Hermitage, or appropriate any part of Liddesdale, or accept of the homage of any of its inhabitants being Scotchmen by birth. The same singular mode of coercion was to be competent to *he King of Scot- land for the injuries committed by the clans of Leven, and ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 87 Crossers, Turnbulls, and others, were the princi- pal instruments of the devastation committed in Scotland in the year 1445. They expiated this fault, liow ever, by another piece of treachery to- wards their English allies, when seeing the day turn against them at Ancrum-moor, these assured Borderers, to the number of 700 men, suddenly flung away their red crosses, and, joining their countrymen, made great and pitiless slaughter among the flying invaders. ' It followed, as another consequence of the rela- tions which the Borderers held with each other, that, as they were but wavering in allegiance to their own country, so their hostilities upon the other, though constant and unremitted, were sel- dom marked by a sanguinary character. The very unremitted nature of the predatory war between them gradually introduced rules, by which it was modified and softened in its featm-es. Their in- cursions were marked with the desire of spoil, rather than that of slaughter. Indeed, bloodshed was the rather avoided, as it uniformly demanded revenge, and occasioned a deadly feud between two clans ; whereas the abstraction of property was only considered as a trivial provocation. As we have noticed the fury with which they revenged the former injury, we may here give an instance of the care which they took to avoid it. When inhabitants of the tract of country between the Crissep, the Liddell, and that stream. Each monarch might prevent this hostile mode of procedure against his subjects, by offered redress and satisfaction, by the 11th of January, 1528-9, or within forty days thereafter. — Rymer's Foedera, p. 276. 88 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the discomfited Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland entered Liddesdale, after the dis- persion of their forces in the twelfth of Queen Elizabeth, they were escorted by Black Ormiston, and other Borderers. Martin Elliot of the Prea- kin Tower, who was attached to the Regent Mur- ray, raised his clan to intercept their passage ; but when both parties had met, and dismounted from their horses to fight out their quarrel, Elliot said to Ormiston, " he woidd be sorry to enter into deadly feud with him by bloodshed, but he would charge him and the rest before the Regent for keeping of the rebels ; and if he did not put them ofi^ the country the next day, he would do his worst against them ; " and thus they parted on a sort of composition.^ Patten, in describing the English Borderers, gives many insinuations that their hostilities against their Scottish neighbours were not of a resolved or desperate nature. They wore, he observes, handkerchiefs on their arms, and letters embroidered on their caps, which, he hints, enabled them to maintain a collusive cor- respondence with the Scottish, who bore similar cognizances. He said they might be sometimes observed speaking familiarly to the Scottish prick- ers, within less than spear's length ; and when they saw themselves noticed, they began to charge each other, but so far from serious was their skir- mish, that it rather resembled countrymen playing at bar, or novices in a fencing-school. Lastly, he affirms that they attended much more to making Cabala, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 89 prisoners than to fighting, so that few brought home less than one captive, and many six or seven. Their captains and gentlemen, this censor admits, are men of good service and approved prowess ; hut he seems to doubt the fidelity of the northern prickers who served under them. Yet these men, who might thus be said to bear but dubious allegiance to their country, were, of all others, the most true of faith to whatever they had pledged their individual word. If it happened that any of them broke his troth, he who had sus- tained the wrong displayed, at the first public meeting upon the Borders, a glove on the point of a lance, and proclaimed him a perjured and man- sworn traitor. This was accounted an insult to the whole clan to which the culprit belonged. If his crime was manifest, there were instances of his being put to death by his kinsmen ; but if the accusation was unfounded, the stain upon the ho- nour of the clan was accounted equal to the slaugh- ter of one of its members, and, like that, could only be expiated by deadly feud. Under the terrors of this penalty, the degree of trust that might be reposed in the most desperate of the Border out- laws, is described by Robert Constable, in his account of an interview with the banished Earl of Westmoreland and his unfortunate followers. They desired to get back into England, but were unwilling to trust their fortune without sure guides. " I promised," said Constable, " to get them two guides that would not care to steale, and yet they would not bewray any man that trusts in them for all the gold in Scotland or France. 90 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. They are my guides and outlaws ; if they would betray me they might get their pardons, and cause me to be hanged, but I have tried them ere this."^ This strict observance of pledged faith tended much to soften the rigours of war ; for when a Borderer made a prisoner, he esteemed it wholly unnecessary to lead him into actual captivity or confinement. He simply accepted his word to be a true prisoner, and named a time and place where he expected him to come to treat about his ransom. If they were able to agree, a term was usually assigned for the payment, and security given ; if not, the prisoner surrendered himself to the dis- cretion of his captor. But where the interest of both parties pointed so strongly towards the ne- cessity of mutual accommodation, it rarely happen- ed that they did not agree upon terms. Thus, even in the encounters of these rude warriors on either side, the nations maintained the character of honour, courage, and generosity assigned to them by Froissart. " Englishmen on the one party, and Scotsmen on the other party, are good men of war ; for when they meet, there is a hard fight without sparing ; there is no hoo (i. e. cessation for parley) between them, as long as spears, swords, axes, or daggers, will endure ; but they lay on each upon other, and when they be well beaten, and that the one party hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so in their deeds of arms, and are so joyful, that such as be taken they shall be ransomed ere they go out of the field ; so that ^ Sadler's Letters, vol. ii. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 91 shortly each of them is so content with other, that at their departing courteously they will say, * God thank you.' But in fighting one with another? there is no play, nor sparing Of the other qualities and habits of the Borderers we are much left to form our own conjectures. That they were a people of some accomplishment, fond of the legends of their own exploits, and of their own rude poetry and music, is proved by the re- mains still preserved of both. They were skilful antiquaries, according to Roger North, in whatever concerned their own bounds. Lesley gives them the praise of great and artful eloquence when re- duced to plead for their lives ; also that they were temperate in food and liquors, and rarely tasted those of an intoxicating quality. Their females caught the warlike spirit of the country, and appear often to have mingled in battle. Fair Maiden Lil- liard, whose grave is still pointed out upon the field of battle at Ancram-moor, called, from her name, Lilliard's Edge, seems to have been a heroine of this description.^ And Hollinshed records them at the conflict fought near Na worth, ^'^^^ between Leonard Dacres and Lord Huns- don ; the former had in his company " many des- perate women, who there gave the adventui'e of their lives, and fought right stoutly." This is a change in the habits of the other sex which can only be produced by early and daily familiarity with scenes of hazard, blood, and death. The 1 Berner's Froissart, Edit. 1812, vol. ii., p. SQ6. ' [See notes to the battle of Ancram Moor — Border Min^ strelsy, vol. iv., p. 199.] 92 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. Borderers, however, merited the devoted attach- ment of their wives, if, as we learn, one principal use of the wealth they obtained by plunder was to bestow it in ornamenting the persons of their partners. It may be easily supposed, that men living in so rude a state of society, had little religion, however well they might be stored with superstition. They never told their beads, according to Lesley, with such devotion as when they were setting out upon a marauding party, and expected a good booty as the recompense of their devotions. The various religious houses, which the piety or the superstition of an earlier age had founded in these provinces, gradually ceased to overawe, by their sanctity, the spirits of the invaders ; and in the history of the mutual incursions of the two hostile nations, we read repeatedly of their being destroyed and laid waste. Thus the administration of religious rites became irregular and unusual in these wild districts. Of this negligence some traces stiU remain. The churches on the English border are scantily en- dowed, and many of them are ruinous. In some parishes there is no house for the incumbent to in- habit, and in others no church for divine service. But these are only the scars of ancient wounds ; for in former times the condition of these countries, as to spiritual matters, was more extraordinary and lamentable. In the dales of Esk, Euse, and Lid- dell, there were no churchmen for the ordinary celebration of the rites of the church. A monk from Mekose, called, from the porteous or breviary which he wore in his breast, a book-a-bosom, visited ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 93 these forlorn regions once a-year, and solemnized marriages and baptisms. This is said to have given rise to a custom called by tradition, hand^ fasting y by which a loving couple, too impatient to Avait the tardy arrival of this priest, consented to live as man and wife in the interim.^ Each had the privilege, without loss of character, to draw back from the engagement, if, upon the arrival of the holy father, they did not think proper to legiti- mate their cohabitation according to the rites of the church. But the party retreating from the union was obliged to maintain the child, or children^ if any had been the fruits of their union. It would seem that the opposite valleys of Redes- dale and Tynedale were better supplied with persons (such as they were) who took upon them the charac-' ter of churchmen. There is extant a curious pastoral monition of Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, dated 1498, in which, after setting forth the various enor- mities of theft, robbery, rapine, and depredation^ committed by the dalesmen of the Reed and Tyne, and the neighbouring district, not only without shame and compunction, but as the ordinary and proper business of their lives, after stating that they were encouraged in these enormities by the king's offi- cers of justice, and patronised either for kindred's or name's sake, or for the lucre of gain, by the power- ful and noble of these districts, the prelate proceeds to describe a sort of ghostly comforters and abet- tors who were found among them, irregular and ' [See The Monastery — Waverley Novels, vol. xix., p» 110.] 94 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. dissolute churchmen suspended from their holy- office for misconduct, or lying under the sentence of excommunication, so ignorant of letters, that they did not even understand the service of the church which they had recited for years, and with them laymen, never ordained, who yet took upon them- selves the sacred character of the priesthood. These men, proceeds the monition, dressed in tat- tered, foul, and sordid vestments, not only unfit for the ministers of Heaven, but even for decent society among men, presume and take upon them, not only in hallowed and dedicated places, but in such as are profane, interdicted, unlioly, and defaced by ruins, to administer the rites and sacraments of the church to the thieves, robbers, murderers, and depredators before mentioned, and that without exhorting them to restitution or repentance, ex- pressly contrary to the rules of the church, and to the great danger of precious souls, and scandal of Christianity. The Bishop instructs his suffragans to direct against the robbers and their abettors, whether spiritual or temporal, his pastoral monition to restitution and repentance, to be followed by the thunders of excommunication in case it were contemned by the offenders. It would seem several of the Borderers had accordingly been excom- municated; for, by a rescript, dated at Norham Castle, 5th September, 1498, the same prelate releases from the spiritual sentence certain persons of the clans of Charleton, Robson, Tod, Hunter, and others, who had professed penitence for their misdeeds, and submitted, in all humility, to his ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES, 95 paternal cliastisement. The penance annexed to their release from spiritual censures was of a sin- gular kind, but illustrates their ordinary costume and habits of life. They are required to renounce the use of the jack and head-piece, and to ride upon no horse which shall exceed, in ordinary esti- mation, the sum of six shillings and eight pence. Moreover, they are enjoined, when they shall enter any church, chapel, or cemetery in the territory of Redesdale or Tynedale, to lay aside, upon their entrance, every offensive weapon exceeding one cubit in length, and to hold speech with no one while within these hallowed precincts, excepting the curate or ministering priest of the said church or chapel, all under penalty of the greater excom- munication. Mr Surtees justly observes, that the reclaiming of these Borderers must be ascribed to the personal influence of this able and worthy pre- late ; but there is ample reason to believe that no radical cure was wrought either in freebooters at large, or in the manners of those irregular and uncanonical churchmen, who, attending them as Friar Tuck is said to have done upon Robin Hood, partook in their spoils, and mingled with the relics of barbarism the rites and ceremonies of the Christian church.^ The injunction of laying aside oJBPensive weapons, and keeping silence in the church and its precincts, was to prevent the sacred 1 See the History of Durham, by Mr Surtees, p. 62. Also the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. i., p. 274, where the record of the excommunication and release is printed at length, from the communication of that accurate and indefatigable antiquary. 96 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. place from becoming the scene of those bloody quarrels, which usually occurred whenever or wherever the members of clans, between which a deadly feud existed, chanced to meet together. How late the savage customs whicli rendered such regulations necessary, continued to last among the Northumbrians is evident from some passages in the Life of the truly pious and Clu'istian teacher, Bernard Gilpin, who having a pastoral charge in those wild countries, in the reign of Queen Eliza- beth, laboured unremittingly to soften and civilize the yet wilder manners of the inhabitants. The biographer of this venerable man, after stating the fierce usage of deadly feud which often engaged two clans in much bloodshed, on account of some accidental quarrel, proceeds thus : — " It happened that a quarrel of this kind was on foot when Mr Gilpin was at Rothbury, in those parts. During the two or three first days of his preaching, the contending parties observed some decorum, and never appeared at church toge- ther; at length, however, they met. One party had been early at chui'ch, and just as Mr Gilpin began his sermon, the other entered. They stood not long silent. Inflamed at the sight of each other, they began to clash their weapons, for they were all armed with javelins and swords, and mutually approach. Awed, however, by the sacredness of the place, the tumult in some degree ceased. Mr Gilpin proceeded, when again the combatants began to brandish their weapons and draw towards each other. As a fray seemed near, Mr Gilpin stepped from the pulpit, went between them, and addressed the leaders, put an end to the quarrel for the present, but could not effect an entire reconciliation. They promised him, however, that, till the sei-mon was over, they would make no more disturbance. He then went again inta the pulpit, and spent the rest of the time in endeavouring to make them ashamed of what they had done. His behaviour and discourse affected them so much, that at his farther entreaty, they promised to forbear all acts of hostility while ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 97 lie continued in the country. And so much respected was he among them, that whosoever was in fear of his enemy, used to resort where Mr Gilpin was, esteeming his presence the best protection. " One Sunday morning, coming to a church in those parts before the people were assembled, he observed a glove hanging up, and was informed by the sexton that it was meant as a challenge to any one that should take it down. Mr Gilpin ordered the sexton to reach it him ; but upon liis utterly refusing to touch it, he took it down himself, and put it in his breast. When the people were assembled, he went into the pulpit, and before he concluded his sermon, took occasion to rebuke them severely for these inhuman challenges. * I hear,' said he, * that one among you hath hanged up a glove even in this sacred place, threatening to fight any one who taketh it down ; see, I have taken it down and pulling out the glove, he held it up to the congregation, and then showed them how unsuitable such savage practices were to the pro- fession of Christianity, using such persuasives to mutual love, as he thought would most affect them."— Xi/e of Bernard Gilpin, 1753, p. 178. The venerable preacher had his reward, for even the freebooter who stole his horses, returned them as soon as he understood to whom they belonged, not doubting that the foul fiend would have carried him off bodily, had he wilfully injured Bernard Gilpin. But it was long ere the elfects of the northern apostle's precepts brought forth in that rude country fruits meet for repentance. Leaving the manners of the Borderers, it is now proper to notice the measures of policy adopted for exercising, in some sort, the royal authority in districts which so many circumstances combined to render lawless ; and that whether for the protec- tion of each nation against the aggressions of the other during peace, or for repelling more open invasion during the time of war, or for regulating VOL. VII. G 98 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the conduct and appeasing the feuds of the inhabi- tants amongst themselves. As every thing was military upon the Borders, those important duties were intrusted to officers of high rank, holding special commissions from the crown of either country, and entitled wardens, or guardians of the marches. There were sometimes two, sometimes three in number on each side, for the division of the Borders into east, west, and middle inarches, did not prevent the middle marches being occasionally put under the charge of the same war- den who governed those on the east or west. The kings of Scotland, compelled by circumstances to yield to the great nobles and powerful chiefs what- ever boons they chose to exact of them, usually deposited the charge of warden with some noble- man or chieftain who possessed great personal weight and influence in the districts submitted to his jurisdiction. It is needless to point out the impolicy of this conduct, since the chiefs thus invested with high powers and jurisdiction were often the private encouragers of those disor- ders which it was their business, as wardens, to have suppressed, and hence their authority was only used to oppress their private enemies, while they connived at the misconduct of their own clansmen and allies. But this was the effect of the weakness, rather than of the blindness, of the Scottish sovereigns. Even the timid Albany, re- gent during the minority of James V., saw the evil, and endeavoured to secure impartial administration of justice on the frontiers, by naming a gallant French knight, Anthony D'Arcy Sieur De La ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 99 Bastie, to the wardenry of the east marches. But the family of Home being incensed to see the office conferred on a stranger which they were wont to consider as proper to the head of their own house, in defiance of the royal authority, Home of Wed- derburn assailed and murdered the wai'den, cut off his head, knitted it to the saddlebow by the long locks, and afterwards exposed it upon the battle- ments of Home Castle. The issue of this experi- ment was not therefore such as to recommend its repetition.^ Accordingly, the names of the barons who for the time possessed most influence on the Border, are usually found on the Scottish commis- sions. The Earls of Douglas almost always added this title to the other marks of their extensive power. The Earls of Angus frequently exercised the authority of warden of one or other division of the marches, and could often excite mutiny and dis- order wlien the rival house of Arran, or any other, was intruded into an office which they held peculi- arly their own right. At a later period, the Earls of Home, or Lords of Cessford, were usually wardens of the east march ; Earls of Bothwell, or the Lords of Buccleuch and Fairniherst, of the middle, which usually, though not uniformly, com- prehended the separate office of keeper of Lid- desdale ; and the rival families of Maxwell and Johnstone, or the Lords Herries, were wardens of the west march. Yet even when the truncheon of warden was consigned to a baron of extensive power and following on the frontiers, he seems to * [See the Introduction to Border MinsirelsT/j vol. i., p. 109.] 100 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. have thought that the royal commission, added to his own natural authority, was insufficient to over- awe the turbulent Borderers, and bonds of alliance and submission were, in many cases, procured from the principal cliiefs, agreeing to respect and enforce the royal authority in the person of the warden ; an expedient which only serves to prove how feeble was the influence of the crown, and which implied in it this evil, that the chiefs who thus voluntarily agreed to support the imperfect authority of the ■warden, expected that it should not be over strictly exerted against those under their immediate pro- tection. Neither was it less precarious than impo- litic, for such bonds were, among men of a fiery and jealous disposition, apt to be broken through on the slightest occasion. It was another, and yet more dangerous conse- quence of lodging the office of warden in the hands of the Border chieftains, that they appear, without any scruple, to have employed it less for the pre- servation of the public peace, than for inflicting vengeance upon their own private enemies. If the warden was engaged in deadly feud or private war with the chief of another name, he failed not to display against him the royal banner, and to proceed against him as a rebel to the crown, a conduct for Avhich pretexts were seldom wanting. Thus, in the year 1593, Lord Maxvv^ell, then war- den of the west marches, assembled the whole strength of that part of the Border, marched against the Lord of Johnstone, and entered An- nandale, with displayed banner as the king's lieu- tenant, with the purpose of utterly erazing and ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 101 ruining that clan, which had so long rivalled his own in courage and enterprise, if not in numbers find power. The Johnstones, by the assistance of their allies the Scotts, and other friendly clans, gave the Maxwells a severe defeat, in which the warden was struck from his horse, mutilated of his hand, and then slain. ^ And although the king took it hardly, according to Spottiswoode, that his warden, a nobleman bearing his authority, should be thus cut off, yet he found himself unable, in the circumstances of the country, to exact any ven- geance for the insult. This is a remarkable in- stance, among many, of the warden's using the royal name to serve his own private purpose, and of the slight respect in which his authority was held upon such occasions. The Scottish wardens were allowed by the crown forage and provisions for their retinue, which consisted of a guard of horsemen, by whom they were constantly attended ; these were levied from the royal domains on the Borders. They had also a proportion of the " unlaws," or lines and forfeits imposed in their warden courts, and, no doubt, had other modes of converting their authority to their own advantage, besides the opportunities their situation afforded them of ex- tending their power and influence. The abodes of the Scottish wardens were generally their own. castles on the frontiers, such as we have described them to be ; and the large trees, which are still to be seen in the neighbomhood of these baronial 1 [See The Lads of Wamphray — Border Minstrelsy^ vol. ii., p. 146, and Lord Maxwells Goodnight^ lb. p. 133.] 102 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. strongholds, served for the ready execution of justice or revenge on such malefactors as they chose to doom to death. There is, or was, a very large ash-tree near the ruins of Cessford Castle, said, by tradition, to have been often used for this purpose. Until the English monarchy acquired some de- gree of power and consistency, the northern nobles usually, as in the sister country, extorted from the crown the office of wardenry, which was then held by the potent Earls of Northumberland and West- moreland, the Lords Clifford, Dacre, and other chiefs of power on the Border. But, from the reign of Henry VIII. downward, and more espe- cially after most of the great Northumbrian fami- lies were destroyed in the great northern insurrec- tion of 1569-70, a different line of policy was observed. Instead of conferring commissions of wardenry on the great Border families, whose wealth, extensive influence, and remote situation, already rendered them but too independent of the crown, those offices were bestowed upon men of political and military skill, such as Sir Ralph Sad- ler, Sir James Crofts, . Sir Robert Carey, and others, the immediate dependents of the sovereign himself, who, supported by liberal allowances from the treasury, and by considerable bodies of regular troops,^ were not afraid, if the discharge of their 1 From a memoi ial concerning Border service, m the papers of Sir Ralph Sadler, it appears that the allowance of the capta.in-general of Berwick was twenty shillings per day, and. the pay of the captains, soldiers, and others of the garrison in ordinaiy, amounted to L.2100; and when extraordinary forces were stationed there, to more than twice that sum. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 103 office called for it, to give offence even to the most powerful of the provincial nobility.^ For their residence, the warden of the east marches appears often to have resided at Alnwick, although Norham Castle, once belonging to the Bishops of Durham, afterwards to the crown, is recommended both by Lord Wharton and Sir Ralph Sadler^ as the fittest place for his abode. But the office of warden of the east marches being frequently united with the government of Ber- wick, that most important frontier town was often the warden's place of abode. Upon the middle marches, the castle of Harbottell, originally the seat of the Umfravilles, and afterwards, by mar- riage, that of the Tailbois, being vested in the crown by forfeiture, was judged a commodious and suitable residence for the warden. The go- vernment of Carlisle being usually combined with the wardenry of the western marches of England, the strong castle of that town furnished the w^arden with a suitable residence. Lord Scroope of Bol- ton, who held both these important offices, long resided there, and made considerable additions to the fortifications without, and accommodations within the castle. But Lord William Howard occupied his baronial castle of Naworth when he had the same commissions. The warden of the east marches, with his personal attendance of fifteen gentlemen, was allowed L.16 : 16:8 for his weekly charges, and all allowances to inferior officers were upon the same scale. — Sadler's State Papers, vol. ii., p. 276. 1 See Sadler's State Papers, vol. ii., p. 97, concerning dis- putes betwixt him and the Earl of Northumberland. ^ 2 See Border Laws, p. 341, and Sadler, vol. ii., p. 283. 104 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. To ensure a general superintendence of these important offices, a lord- warden-general Avas some- times nominated ; but this office became less neces- sary, because, in time of war, there was usually a lieutenant appointed for the management of all military affairs, and during peace the general af- fairs of the Borders fell under the cognizance of the Lord President of the Council of the North. The wardens had under them deputy-wardens, and warden-serjeants, (popularly called land-ser- jeants,) upon whose address and activity the quiet of the country much depended. The captains of the various royal garrisons also received orders from them ; and the keeper of Tynedale, an un- ruly district, which required a coercive magistracy of its own, was under the command of the warden of the middle marches. h The duties committed to the charge of the war- dens were of a twofold nature, as they regarded the maintenance of law and good order amongst the inhabitants of their jurisdiction themselves, and as they concerned the exterior relations betwixt them and the opposite frontier. In the first capacity, besides their power of con- trol and ministerial administration, both as head stewards of all the crown tenements and manors within their jurisdiction, and as intromitting with all fines and penalties, their judicial authority was very extensive. They held courts for punishment of high treason and felony, which the English Border laws classed under the following heads : — 1. The aiding and abetting of any Scottishman, by communing, appointment, or otherwise, to rob, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 105 burn, or steal, within the realm of England. 2. The accompanying, personally, any Scottishman, wliile perpetrating such offences. 3. The harbouring, con- cealing, or affording guidance and protection to him after the fact. 4. The supplying Scottishmen with arms and artillery, as jacks, splents, brigantines, coats of plate, bills, halberds, battle-axes, bows and arrows, spears, darts, guns, as serpentines, half-haggs, harquibusses, currys, cullivers, hand- guns, or daggers, without special license of the lord -warden. 5. The selling of bread and corn of any kind, or of dressed leather, iron, or other appurtenances belonging to armour, without special license. 6. The selling of horses, mares, nags, or geldings to Scottishmen, without license as afore- said. 7. The breach of truce, by killing or as- saulting subjects and liege-men of Scotland. 8. The assaulting any Scottishman having a regular pass or safe-conduct. 9. In time of war the giving tid- ings to the Scottish of any exploit intended against them by the warden or his officers. 10. The con- veying coined money, silver or gold, also plate or bullion, into Scotland, above the value of forty shillings at one time. 11. The betraying (in time of war) the counsel of any other Englishman tending to the annoyance of Scotland, in malice to the party, and for his own private advantage. 12. The forging the coin of the realm. 13. The making appointment and holding communication with Scot- tishmen, or intermarrying with a Scottish woman, without license of the wardens, and the raising no fray against them as in duty bound. 14. The 106 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. receiving of Scottish pilgrims with their property without license of the wardens. 15. The failing to keep the watches appointed for defence of the country. 16. The neglecting to raise in arms to the fray, or alarm raised by the wardens or watches upon the approach of public danger. 17. The re- ceiving and harbouring Scottish fugitives exiled from their own country for misdemeanours. 18. The having falsely and unjustly ^bw/c? {i.e, found true and relevant) the bill of any Scotchman against an Englishman, or the having borne false witness on such matters. 19. The having interrupted or stopped any Englishman pursuing for recovering of his stolen goods. 20. The dismissing any Scot- tish offender taken red-hand (i, e. in the manner) without special license of the lord- warden. 21. The paying of blackmail, or protection money, whether to English or Scottish man. All these were points of indictment in the warden courts ; and the number and nature of the prohi- bitions they imply show the anxiety of the English government to prevent all intercourse, as far as possible, between the natives of the two kingdoms. Most of these offences, if not all, amounted to march- treason. The accused persons were tried by a jury, and, if found guilty, suffered death by decapitation ; but with the marauders of either country, the wardens used much less ceremony, and hanged them frequently, and in great numbers, without any process of law whatever. This was a very ordinary consummation, if we can believe a story told of Lord William Howard of Naworth. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 107 While busied deeply with his studies, he was sud- denly disturbed by an officer who came to ask his commands concerning the disposal of several moss-troopers who had been just made prisoners. Displeased at the interruption, the warden an- swered heedlessly and angrily, " Hang them, in the devil's name;" but, when he laid aside his book, his surprise was not little, and his regret consider- able, to find that his orders had been literally ful- filled. The Scottish wardens do not appear to have held warden-courts, doubtless because the territorial jurisdictions of sheriiFdoms, stewartries, baillaries, and so forth, which belonged to the great families by hereditary right, and the privileges of which they jealously watched, would have been narrowed by their doing so. Besides, the Scottish heredi- tary judges possessed the dangerous and incon- venient power of repledging, as their law terms it^ that is, reclaiming any accused person from courts of a co-ordinate jurisdiction, to try him by their feudal authority. It is true, the judge exercising this privilege was obliged to give security for doing justice in the premises himself; but whether his object was that of acquittal, or condemnation, his situation gave him easy means of accomplishing* either without much risk of challenge. But if the Scottish wardens were more slow to hold formal com'ts than the English, they were not behind them in the sunnnary execution of those offenders w^hom they seized upon. The ordinary proverb of Jedburgh Justice, where men were said to be 108 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. hanged first, and tried afterwards, appears to have taken its rise from these hasty proceedings.^ The pleasure of hunting these outlaws to their fastnesses was, to some of the warlike barons who held the office of warden, its own best reward. Godscroft says it was so peculiarly suited to the disposition of Archibald, the IXth Earl of Angus, that it might be called his proper element. He used to profess that he had as much delight in hunting a thief as others in chasing a hare ; and that it was as natural to him as any other pastime or exercise was to another man. Yet the chase of this Border Nimrod (whose game was man) was by no means uniformly successful ; and he was foiled on many occasions by the impracticability of the country, and the cunning of the outlaws who harboured in it.~ * There is a similar English proverh concerning Lydford : — ** I oft have heard of Lydford law. Where in the morn men hang and draw. And sit in judgment after." Brown's Poems. 2 « He made only one road against the outlawed thieues of the name of Armestrang (most of them) after the king was gone home, who had heen present at the casting down of their houses. He pursued them into the Tarrass Moss, •which was one of their greatest strengths, and whither no host or companies had ever heen known to have followed them before, and in which they did confide much, because of the straightness of the ground. He used great diligence and sufficient industry, but the success was not answerable either to his desire or other men's expectation. Neither did he forget to keep his intention close and secret, acquainting none of the people of that country therewithal!, until he was ready to march. Then directing one Jordan, of Applegirth, to go ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 109 The Border marauders had every motive to exert their faculties for the purpose of escape ; for, once seized upon, their doom was sharp and short. The mode of punishment was either by hanging, or drowning.^ The next tree, or the deepest pool of the nearest stream, was indifferently used on these occasions. Many moss-troopers are said to have been drowned in a deep eddy of the Jed near Jedburgh. And, in fine, the little ceremony used to the other side, whither he knew they hehoved to flee, he sent with him one of his especiall followers, whom he knew to be well affected to the service, to see that he did his duty. He himself, with the army, came openly and directly to the place of their abode, that they, fleeing from him, might fall into the hands of Applegirth, and his companie, who were come in sufficient good time, before the army could be seen to that passage which they were sent to keep. But the birds were all flown, and there was nothing left but the empty nest, having (no question) had some inkling and intelligence hereof ; but it could not be tried by whom the notice had been given them. In the retreat they shew themselves, and rode about to intercept and catch such as might happen incircumspectly to straggle from the army ; and they failed very narrowly to have attrapped William Douglas of Ively, a young gentleman of my lord's family, for which incircumspec- tion he was soundly chide by him, as having thereby hazarded his own person, and his lord's honour." — G obsckoft' s Hhtori/ of the House of Douglas, folio, Edin. p. 430. ^ 1 Drowning is a veiy old mode of punishment in Scotland ; and in Galloway there were pits of great depth appropriated to that punishment, still called murder-holes, out of which human bones have occasionally been taken in great quantities. This points out the proper intei-pretation of the right of pit and gallows, (in law Latin, /o5sa etfurca,) which has, less probably, been supposed the right of imprisoning in the pit or dungeon, than that of hanging. But the meanest baron possessed the right of imprisonment. The real meaning is, the right of inflicting death either by hanging or drowning* 110 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. on these occasions added another feature to the reckless and careless character of the Borderers, who were thus accustomed to part with life with as little form as civilized men change their garments. The wardens had it also in their power to deter- mine many civil questions concerning the right of property violently usurped by oppression, or reco- vered from the hands of marauders. The mode of application seems to have been by petition. Thus, the complaint of Isabel Wetherel to Sadler, when warden of the middle marches, sets forth, that she had been found entitled to possession of a certain tenement in Bassenden, by order of the Earl of Northumberland, the former warden, and that the bailiff of the liberty still refused to execute the warrant in her favour. Another " poor oratrix," the Widow Fenwick, states in her supplication, that besides certain persons formerly named, she now charges some of her neighbours of the town of Wooler, whom before she had been afraid to accuse, with stealing her three cows, and prays relief in the premises. Again, John of Gilrie states, that he had made a bargain with William Archer for twenty bolls of barley, at a certain price ; that Archer had only delivered ten of the said bolls, and had arrested the petitioner's horses in payment thereof, instead of implementing his bargain by delivery of the remainder. All these petitions pray for letters of charge to be directed by the warden against the parties complained upon, for answer or redress. They serve to show the complicated and ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 1 I 1 mixed nature of the warden's jurisdiction, which thus seems to have admitted civil suits of a very trifling" kind. But the principal part of the warden's duty re- spected his transactions in the opposite kingdom in the time both of war and peace. During the time of war, he was captain-general within his wardenry, with full power to call out musters of all the fen- cible men betwixt the age of sixteen and sixty, duly armed and mounted according to their rank and condition, for defending the territory, or, if necessary, for invading that of the enemy. He directed, or led in person, all hostile enterprises against the enemy's country ; and it was his duty, upon such occasions, to cause to be observed the ancient rules and customs of the marches, which may be thus summed up. 1. Intercourse with the enemy was prohibited. 2. He who left his company during the time of the expedition was liable to the punishment of a traitor. 3. It was appointed that all should alight and fight on foot, except those commanded by the general to act as cavalry ; he who remained on horseback, without such orders, forfeited his spoil and prisoners, two parts to the king, and one to the general. 4. No man was to disturb those appoint- ed to array the host. 5. If a soldier followed the chase on a horse belonging to his comrade, the owner of the horse enjoyed half the booty ; and if he fled upon such horse, it was to be delivered to the sheriff as a waif on his return home, under pain of treason. 6. He that left the host after victory, though for the purpose of securing his prisoner, lost 112 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. his ransom. If any one slew another's prisoner, he was liable to pay his ransom ; or, in failure of his ability to do so, was sentenced to death. In general, it was found to be the use of the marches, that every man might take as many prisoners as he could secure, exchanging tokens with them that they might afterwards know each other. 7. Any one accused of seizing his comrade's prisoner was obliged to find security in the hands of the warden- serjeant. Disputed prisoners were to be placed in the hands of the warden ; and the party found ultimately wrong, to be amerced in a fine of ten pounds. 8. Relates to the evidence in the case of such dispute. He who could bring his own coun- trymen in evidence, of whatever quality, was pre- ferred as the true captor ; failing of this mode of proof, recourse was had to the prisoner's oath. 9. No prisoner of such rank as to lead an hundred men, was either to be dismissed upon security, or ransomed, for the space of fifteen days, without leave of the warden. 10. He who dismounted a prisoner was entitled to half of his ransom. 11. Whoever detected a traitor was entitled to the reward of one hundred shillings ; whoever aided his escape, suffered the pain of death. 12. Relates to the firing of the beacons in Scotland ; the stewards of Annandale and Kirkcudbright, were liable in the fine of one merk for each default in that matter. 13. He who did not join the array of the coun- try upon the signal of the beacon-lights, or who left it during the continuance of the English inva- sion without lawful excuse, his goods were forfeited, and his person placed at the warden's will. 14. In ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 113 case of any Englishman being taken within Scot- land, he was not suffered to depart under any safe conduct save that of the king or warden ; and a similar protection was necessary to enable him to return and treat of his ransom. If this was neglect- ed, he became the prisoner of whatever Scottish- man happened to seize him. 15. Any Scottish- man dismissing his prisoner, when a host was collected either to enter England or defend against invasion, w^as punished as a traitor. 16. In the partition of spoil, two portions were allowed to each bowman. 17. Whoever deserted his com- mander and comrades, and abode not in the field, to the uttermost, his goods were forfeited, and his person liable to the punishment of a traitor. 18. Whoever bereft his comrade of horse, spoil, or prisoner, was liable in the pains of treason, if he did not make restitution after the right of property became known to him. These military regulations were arranged by William Earl of Douglas, by the advice of the most experienced marchmen, in the year 1468.^^ ^ The exordium of these reflations is remarkable. It runs thus : — " Be it remembered, that on the 18th day of Decem- ber, 1468, Earl William Douglas assembled the whole lords, freeholders, and eldest Borderers that best knowledge had, at the College of Linclouden, and there he caused those lords and Borderers bodily to be sworn, the holy Gospel touched, that they justly and truly, after their cunning, should decrete, decern, deliver, and put in order and writing, the statutes, ordinances, and uses of marche that were ordained in Black Archibald of Douglas' days, and Archibald his son's days, ia time of warfare; and they came again to him advisedly with these statutes and ordinances which were in time of warfare VOL. VII. H 114 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. But it appears that tliey were adopted by the English with the necessary alterations, for a copy of them is found in the Manuscript of Mr Bell, the accurate and laborious warden-clerk of the western marches of England, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. At least, they are so well suited to the genius of the country and age, that there can be no doubt that they express the general spirit of the military enactments on both sides of the Border. We must not omit to state, that as the wardens of the marches had it in charge to conduct the war between the countries, so they had also power of concluding truces with the opposite warden for their own jurisdictions. Such an indenture, entered into between " the noble lords and mighty," Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway, at the water of Esk, beside Sol way, on the 15th March, 1323-4, not only concludes a truce between their bounds on each side, but declares., " That if any great power of either country shall prepare to invade the other, each of the said lords shall do what they can to hinder it, and if they cannot prevent it, they before. The said Earl William seeing the statutes in writing decreed and delivered by the said lords and Borderers, thought them right speedful and profitable to the Borderers; the which statutes, ordinances, and points of warfare he took, and the whole lords and Borderers he caused bodily to be swom that they should maintain and supply him at their goodly power, to do the law upon those that should break the statutes underwritten. Also the said Earl William, and lords and eldest Borderers, made certain points to be treason in 'time of warfare to be used, which were no treason before his time, but to be treason in his time, and in all time com- ing." ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 115 shall give the other party fifteen days' notice, and shall themselves abstain from riding with the host, and shall do all in their power, without fraud or guile, to keep the aggressors out of their bounds. Intimation of the rupture of the truce was to be given by a certain term, at the Chapel of Salom, or Solway. All prisoners on either side were to be freely delivered. If any single freebooter committed theft in breach of the cove- nant, he was to be hanged or beheaded ; if a company were concerned in the delict, one should be put to death, and the others amerced in double the value of their spoil." This indenture rather resembles a treaty between two independent prin- ces, than an agreement between the crown officers of the west marches of England and Scotland. Something, doubtless, is to be ascribed to the great power of the Percy and the Douglas, who could, unquestionably, make their authority go much farther than chieftains of less weight could have done, though holding the same ostensible commis- sion. Still, however, the powers of the wardens in waging war, or concluding truces, were of an ex- tensive and unlimited nature. In time of peace, the warden had the more deli- cate task of at the same time maintaining the ami- cable relations betwixt the two countries, and of preventing or retaliating the various grievances and encroachments committed by the Borderers of the opposite kingdom upon the frontiers under his rule. The most constant, and almost unremitted sub- ject of complaint, was the continual incursions of 1 16 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. the moss-troopers upon both sides. This species of injury early required the redress of international laws or customs. For example, although the right of the native of the invaded country to protect his property against the robber could not be denied, and although it was equally his inherent privilege to pursue the marauders with such force as he could assemble, and recover the plunder if he could overtake them within the bounds of the kingdom which they had invaded, yet it was a question of national law, how far he was entitled to continue pursuit in a hostile manner into the territory of the sister country, and there to recover his property by force. At the same time, it was not to be expected that the intervention of a small river, or of an imaginary line, should be a protec- tion for the robbers and their booty, against the just resentment of the party injured, while in the very act of hot pursuit. The Border Laws, there- fore, allowed the party plundered not only to fol- low his goods upon the spur, and enter the opposite kingdom for recovery thereof, without license or safe conduct, but even to do the like, at any time within six days after his sustaining the injury, pro- viding always he went straight to some honest man of good fame inhabiting the marches which he had thus entered, and declared to him the cause of his coming, inviting him to attend him and wit- ness his conduct. The wardens of either realm, or those duly authorized by them, were entitled to pursue fugitives or offenders into the precincts of the neighbouring realm, by what was called the liot'trod. This pursuit was maintained vrith a ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 117 lighted piece of turf carried on a spear, with hue and cry, biigle-horn, and blood-hound, that all might be aware of the purpose of the party. If any native of the country thus entered intercepted the party or their blood-hound in such hot-trod^ he was liable to be billed, or indicted at the next day of truce, and delivered up to the warden whom he had offended. It was, however, recommended to the pursuers of the hot-trod to stop at the nearest town of the realm whose frontiers they had thus passed, and give declaration of the purpose of the chase, and require the inhabitants to go along to witness his procedure. If the pursuers did unlaw- ful damage within the opposite realm, they were liable to be delivered to the warden thereof for condign punishment. But these provisions were only calculated to remedy such evils as befell de recently since to have sought reparation at their own hand and by their own strength for such as were of older date, would have made the Borders a constant scene of uproar, retaliation, and bloodshed. Some course of justice, therefore, was to be fallen upon, by which justice might be done to those who had sustained wrong from the depredators of the opposite country, by means more regular and less hazardous than the ready measures of forcible retaliation. The first regulations laid down on this subject were conformable to the ideas of that military age, which referred all matters difficult of instant proof, to the judgment of God in single combat. Eleven knights of Northumberland, and as many of the Scottish east marches, with the Sheriff of North- 118 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. "umberland on the one side, and of Roxburgh and Berwick on the other, met in the 33d of Henry III. anno 1249. These martial formalists made some regulations for recovery of debts due by those of the one kingdom to the other, and for the re- delivery of fugitive bondsmen.^ But they unani- mously declared that every Scottishman accused of having committed any crime in England, of which he could offer to purge himself by the combat, could only be summoned to answer at fixed places on the marches. Also, that all persons, of what- ever rank or degree, dwelling between Totness, in Cornwall, and Caithness, in Scotland, might be appealed to battle on the marches, excepting only the sovereign, and the Bishops of St Andrews and Dunkeld.^ Goods alleged to be stolen from Eng- land might be sued for by the owner in the court of the Scottish lord within whose bounds they "were discovered ; but if the accused party denied tlie charge, there was no other alternative but the combat. Yet, if the accused did not feel bold in his innocence, or determined in his denial, he might quit himself of the charge, without the risk of com- bat, in the following singular manner. He was ta bring the stolen ox, horse, cow, or other animal, to the brink of the river Tweed or Esk, where they form the frontier line, and drive it into the stream. If the animal escaped alive to the other kingdom, he had no farther trouble in the matter ; but if it ^ It is the Scottish copy of Indenture which exists. That of England must have been mutatis mutandis. 2 Churchmen of corresponding dignity in England must have been unquestionably admitted to the same privilege. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 119 was drowned before it readied the middle stream, then he was condemned liable to tlie plaintiff for its estimable value. Lastly, these experienced men of war decreed, by a sweeping clause, that no inhabitant of either kingdom could prove his pro- perty in any goods actually possessed by an inha- bitant of the other, unless by the body of a mariy that is, by entering the lists either personally, or by a delegated champion. Every dispute between the inhabitants, on either side, was, therefore, decided by personal duel, and even churchmen were bound to combat by proxy. The clergy of England numbered this among the grievances which they reported to the legate Otlio, in the year 1237. They state, that by an abuse of a mandate of the kings of England and Scotland, not only simple clerks, but even abbots and priors within the diocese of Carlisle, were, on the chal- lenge of any one of the kingdom of Scotland, com- pelled to undertake, with lance and sword, and otherwise armed, the combat, which was called aera^^ to be fought on the frontiers of the two kingdoms ; so that the abbot or prior, of what- ever order, was obliged to have a champion, and, in case of his defeat, was subjected to the penalty of one overcome in the appeal to God, as in om* J Aera, or aerea, a word of uncertain meaning ; and, so far as I know, only occurring in this sense in the present passage. It may allude to the area or enclosed space within which the combatants fought. Aerea, and arm, are explained by Du Cange and in the Supplement, as synonymous, and as meaning an enclosed space, neither cultivated nor ploughed. The cir- cular enclosure near Penritli, called King Arthur's Round Table, was probably an area of this kind. 120 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. own time, continues the remonstrance, was expe- rienced by the Prior of Lideley.^ When priests were not excused, the combats among the hiity must have been very numerous. But in later times, the appeal to combat was less universally admitted, and the state of confusion and depredation on the Borders increasing, as we have observed, after the usurpation of Scotland by Ed- ward I., rendered it necessary to seek for other modes of checking theft than that by which the true man was compelled to expose his life in com- bat with the robber. It became, therefore, a prin- cipal part of the warden's duty, when that duty was conscientiously performed, during the time of peace to maintain a regular and friendly inter- course with those on the opposite side, both for preventing and punishing all disorders committed by the lawless on either territory. But besides these communications, it was a principal point of their commission, that the wardens on either side should hold days of truce, or of march, as frequently as could be made convenient, in which, with great solemnity, they enquired into and remedied the offences complained of by the subjects of either realm. The wardens, on these occasions, took the field attended by the lords, knights, esquires, and men of name within their jurisdictions, all in their best arms, and well mounted. The two troops paused on the frontiers of both kingdoms, until they had exchanged assurance for observing and keeping 1 Annales Burtonejisesy apud Gale, vol. i., p. 292. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 121 the peace from suni'ise to sunset. The two war- dens then met in great form, mutually embraced each other, and, surrounded by those of the best rank in their marches, they proceeded to examine the hills, or complaints, tendered on either side. If the persons accused were judged guilty, the lills were to be filed, or fouled ; if the complaint was dismissed, the bill was said to be cleansed. Where doubt occurred, the question of cleansing or fouling a bill was tried either by the honour of the wardens, or by a jury of six English and six Scottish gentlemen,^ mutually chosen, or by a vower-public, that is, a referee belonging to the country of the party accused, and mutually chosen by the plaintiff and the defendant. In some cases, the accused was permitted to exculpate himself by oath, which, terrible as its denunciations were, did not always prevent perjury.^ In like manner, the plaintiff, or party who preferred the bill, was bound to make oath to the estimated value of his goods.^ ^ The jurors took the following oath : " You shall clean no bills worthy to be fouled, you shall foul no bills worthy to be eleaned, but shall do that what appeareth with truth, for the maintenance of the peace, and suppressing of attempts. So help you God." — M.S. of Mr Bell, Warden Clerk, quoted in Introduction to Nicolson's History of Cumberland and West- moreland. 2 The following were the terms of this oath for excusing a bill, as it was termed : — " You shall swear by heaven above you, hell beneath you, by your part of paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God himself, you are whart out sackless of art, part, way, witting, ridd, kenning, having, or recetting of any of the goods and cattels named in this bill. So help you God." — Bell's Manuscript, as above. 3 The oath of estimation was as follows : " You shall leile 122 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES, Perjury, in such cases, was punished by imprison- ment and infamy ; and if the plaintiff over-rated the goods he had lost, the amount might be taxed by a jury of both nations. With respect to the offenders against whom bills were presented, it was the duty of the warden to have them in custody, in readiness for their an- swer ; and in case the bills were fouled, he was bound to deliver them up to the opposite warden, by whom they were imprisoned until they paid a single and two doubles^ that is to say, treble the value of the estimated goods in the bill. To pro- duce these offenders was generally the most diffi- cult part of the warden's duty. He could not keep them in confinement until the day of truce ; for, independently that they were sometimes per- sons of power and rank, their numbers were too great to be detained in custody. The wardens, therefore, usually took bonds from the chief, kins- men, or allies of the accused party, binding him or them to enter him prisoner within the iron gate of the warden's castle, or else to make him forthcom- ing when called for. He against whom a bill was thrice fouled, was liable to the penalty of death. If the offender endeavoured to rescue himself after being lawfully delivered over to the opposite war- den, he was liable to the punishment of death, or otherwise, at the warden's pleasure, as being guilty of a breach of the assurance. price make, and trueth say, what your goods were worth at the time of their taking, to have been bought and sold in a market all at one time, and that you know no other recovery but this. So help you God." — Ihid, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 123 The extent of the mutual damage sustained by both kingdoms being thus ascertained, a list, in the form of an account-current, was made up by enu- merating all the bills fouled on each side, and the value was summed by striking a bala-nce against the country whose depredators had been most active. It seems probable the extremity of the legal satisfaction was seldom exacted or obtained. The resentment of the depredators and of their kinsmen was dreaded ; the common usage took away the natural abhorrence of the crime ; plunder was a privilege which each party assumed in their turn ; and as it often happened that the same per- son against whom a bill was fouled for one fact, had himself been a sufferer, and was a plaintiff in a charge preferred against others, it is probable that some extra-judicial settlement often took the matter out of the warden court. Nay, it frequently happened, when enormities had gone to great extent during any particular time of misrule, that a veil was dropped over the past, and satisfaction exacted from neither party. At other times, when the crowns were determined strictly to maintain the relations of amity with each other, the course of justice was more severely enforced. Men of high rank, the cliiefs of clans, and others responsible, by their situation and authority, for the conduct of those under them, were sometimes delivered up to be kept in ward in the opposite kingdom until the misdeeds of their deputies and dependents were atoned for by payment of the valuation and fines. But it does not appear that the wardens could pro- ceed to attacli these persons on their simple autho- 124 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. rity. Their delivery seems to have followed in consequence of an agreement to that purpose, by special commissioners, vested with full powers from both crowns. To such commissioners also belonged tlie power of making new laws and enactments on the Border, the wardens being limited by the ex- isting rules of march. Besides depredations by robbery on each side, the wardens, at their days of truce, were wont to demand and receive satisfaction for other encroach- ments, such as sowing or pasturing by the natives of one kingdom within the territories of the other, offences subject to be fouled by bill, and punished by mulct, and the more frequent invasion for the purpose of cutting wood in the forests of the oppo- site frontier, or hunting, hawking, and disporting in the same without license asked or received. These encroachments, which will remind the reader of Chevy Chase, often gave rise to scuffles, and even to bloodshed.^ ^ Such an event was prevented by the prudence of Sir Robert Carey. " The next summer after, I fell into a cum- bersome trouble, but it was not in the nature of thieves or malefactors. There had been an ancient custom of the Borderers, when they were at quiet, for the opposite Border to send to the warden of the middle march to desire leave that they might Come into the Borders of England and hunt with their greyhounds for deer towards the end of summer, which was never denied them. But towards the end of Sir John Foster's government, when he grew very old and weak, they took boldness on them, and without leave asking, would come into England, and hunt at their pleasure, and stay their own time; and when they were a-hunting, their servants would come with carts, and cut down as much wood as every one thought would serve his turn, and carry it away to their houses in Scotland^ Sir John's imbecillity and weakness ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 125 When the business of the meeting was over, the wardens retired, after taking a courteous leave of each other ; and it was a custom of the march, that, occasioned them to continue this misdemeanour some four or live years together, before he left his office. And after my Lord Euers had the office, he was so vexed and troubled with the disorders of the country, as all the time he remained there, he had no leisure to think of so small a business, and to redress it; so that now they began to hold it lawful to come and go at their pleasures without leave asking. The first summer I entered, they did the like. The Armstrongs kept me so on work that 1 had no time to redress it; but having over-mastered them, and the whole march being brought to a good stay and quietness, the beginning of next summer, I wrote to Fernihirst, the warden over against me, to desire him to acquaint the gentlemen of his march, that I was no way unwilling to hinder them of their accustomed sports to hunt in England as they ever had done, but withal I would not by my default dishonour the queen and myself, to give them more liberty than was fitting. I prayed him, therefore, to let them know, that if they would, according to the ancient custom, send to me for leave, they should have all the content- ment I could give them; if otherwise they would continue their wonted course, I would do my best to hinder them. " Notwithstanding this letter, within a month after, they came and hunted as they used to do without leave, and cut down wood, and carried it away. I wrote again to the war- den, and plainly told him, I would not suifer one other affront, but if they came again without leave they should dearly ahy^ it. For all this they would not be warned ; but, towards the end of the summer, they came again to their wonted sports. I had taken order to have present word brought me, which was done. I sent my two deputies with all the speed they could make, and they took along with them such gentlemen as were in their way, with my forty horse, and about one of the clock they came up to them, and set upon them ; some hurt was done ; but I gave especial orders they should do as little hurt, and shed as little blood, as pos- sibly they could. They observed my command, only they 1 Suffer for it. 126 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. before dismissing the gentlemen who attended them, each warden demanded of the most respect- able and experienced Borderers, their opinion of the business of the day, and requested them to say whether the rules of the march had been observed, and justice equally distributed. When these days of march-truce were held regularly, ajid justice punctually administered, the Borders were comparatively but little disturbed; and the wardens on both sides were usually instructed, from their several courts, not to insist too particularly on points of mere form or of difficult discussion, but to leave them for discussion by special commissioners. But although these regulations were perhaps as wise as the case admitted, yet the union of the opposite wardens, so necessary to preserve the peace of the frontier, was always of precarious broke all their carts, and took a dozen of the principal gentle- men that were there, and brought them to me at Withrington, where I then lay. I made them welcome, and gave them the best entertainment that I could. They lay in the castle two or three days, and so I sent them home, they assuring me, that they never would hunt there again without leave, which they did truly perform all the time I stayed there; and I many times met them myself, and hunted with them two or three days; and so we continued good neighbours ever after; but the king complained to the queen very grievously of this fact. The queen and council liked very well of what I had done ; but, to give the king some satisfaction to content him, my two officers were commanded to the Bishop of Durham's, there to remain prisoners during her majesty's pleasure. Within a fortnight I had them out again, and there was no more of this business. The rest of the time I stayed there, it was governed with great quietness." — Cahey's Memoirs, Edit. 1808; p. no. ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 127 duration. They were soldiers by profession, of liostile countries, jealous at once of their own hononr and that of their nation, surrounded by warlike partisans and dependents, who animated every dis- agreement into a quarrel, and must therefore, on the whole, have preferred taking" satisfaction for any insult at their own hand, and by their own force, than seeking it in a more peaceful manner from the opposite warden. Sir Robert Carey gives us a singular picture of their conduct towards each other. Being deputy- warden of the east marches, he sent to Sir Robert Kerr of Cessford, the opposite Scottish warden, to appoint a meeting for regulation of the Border affairs. But Cessford apparently wished to anti- cipate one part of the affairs to be discussed. Having therefore received Carey's messenger, filled him with drink and put him to bed, he mounted his horse, entered England with an armed attendance, seized a Borderer against whom he alleged some cause of quarrel, and put him to death at his own door. After this exploit, he delivered a civil answer to Sir Robert Carey's servant, agreeing to tlie proposed interview. It was now the turn of the English warden to be offended ; he neglected the appointment without notice to Cessford, leaving him to wait several hours at the place of meeting. The Borderers began to stir on both sides, and raids were made out of Scotland so often as three or four times a-week. The severe measures of Sir Robert Carey, who executed all thieves taken in the manner, or red-hand as it was called, in some degree checked these inroads. At length a 128 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. noted depredator, called Geordie Bourne, a special favourite of the Lord of Cessford, fell into his hands. The gentlemen of the country entreated him to enter into terms with Sir Robert Kerr for sparing this man's life ; but, having visited him in disguise, and learned his habits from his own mouth, Carey resolved that no conditions should save him, and caused him to be executed accord- ingly before the gates of the castle.^ In revenge of the death of this man, Sir Robert Kerr very nearly surprised a party of Carey's servants at Norham, who must have been cut to pieces, had they not, by their master's command, slept that night in the castle. The dissension between these two officers continued, until, upon such an occasion as we have noticed, p. 123, Cessford, along with the Lord of Buccleuch, was appointed to be deli- vered into England, when, with that sort of gene- rous confidence which qualified the ferocity of the Border character, he chose his enemy. Sir Robert Carey, for his guardian ; after which they lived on the most amicable terms with each other.^ Even the meetings of truce, appointed for the settlement of grievances betwixt the wardens, were very often converted into scenes of battle and bloodshed. Each warden, being themselves such fiery and martial characters as we have described, 1 See Cai'ey's Memoirs. Edit. 1808, p. 73 ; or Border Miro- strelsy, vol. i., p. 247. 2 Such tracts are like a glimpse of sunshine amid the lower- ing of a storm. Carey relates the circumstances which led to these agreements in the pithy style of Queen Elizabeth's time. — [See Carey's Memoirs^ Edit. 1808, p. 80; or Border Miri^ strelsif, vol. i., p. 252.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 129 came to the place of meeting-, attended by his guard of horsemen, and by all the Avarlike clans of his district, completely armed. Among these must often have been many names betwixt whom deadly feud existed ; and, if they had no peculiar cause of animosity, their nations were habitually hostile, and it was the interest of the Borderers to exas- perate that national animosity. Add to this, that the principal depredators being present, with their friends and allies, they had every motive to insti- gate any brawl which could interrupt the course of justice. It was, therefore, often in vain, that all men at those days of truce were discharged from baughling (brawling) or reproving with the subjects of the opposite realm, or from disturbing the assurance of peace, by word, deed, or counte- nance. Where there were so many combustible materials, the slightest spark served to kindle a conflagration. Accordingly, repeated instances occur of such affrays happening, in which much gentle blood, and frequently that of the wardens themselves, stained the days appointed for the administration of Border justice. Thus, in the year 1511, Sir Robert Kerr of Cessford, warden of the middle marches, while at a march-meeting, was struck through with a lance by the bastard Heron, and despatched by Starhed and Lilburn, two English Borderers ;^ a slaughter which, amongst other causes of quarrel, gave ground tc the war between 1 [See ante, p. 66.] VOL. VII. I 130 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. England and Scotland, terminated by the fatal battle of Flodden.^ On a subsequent occasion, when Sir Francis Russell, third son of the second Earl of Bedford, chanced to be slain, the Scots appear to have been aggressors in their turn. Camden gives the fol- lowing account of a fray which took place in the year 1585 : — " For when Sir John Foster, and Thomas Carre of Ferni- hurst, wardens of the middle marches hetwixt the two king- doms of England and Scotland, had appointed a meeting on •the 27th of June, about certain goods unjustly taken away, rand security was given on both sides by oath, according to custom, and proclamation made, that no man should harm other, hy word) deed, or look, (as the Borderers speak,) the Scots came to the place of meeting armed in battle array, with ensigns displayed, and drums beating, contrary to custom and beyond expectation, being in number about three thousand, whereas the English were not above three hundred. Scarce were the wardens sat to hear the complaints, when on a sud- den, upon an Englishman's being taken pilfering, there arose a tumult, and the Scots discharging a volley of shot, slew Russel, with some others, put the English to flight, and eagerly pursuing them the space of four miles into England, carried off some prisoners. Who was the author of this slaughter was not certainly known. The English laid the fault upon Arran, now chancellor of Scotland, and upon Fernihurst, The queen pressed, both by her letters and com- missioners, to have the murderers delivered into her hands, inasmuch as Henry IV., King of England, had formerly de- livered up into the hands of James IV., King of Scots, Wil- liam Heron and seven Englishmen, for killing Robert Carre of Cessford upon a day of meeting; and Morton, the late regent, sent Carmichael, a Scot, into England for killing George Heron. The king protested his own innocency in the matter, and promised to send, not only Fernihurst imme- diately into England, but the chancellor too, if they could be convicted by clear and lawful proofs to have premeditately 1 fSee Tales of a Grandfather, 1st Series, vol. ii.| ch. xii.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 131 infringed the security, or procured tlie murder. Fenwick, aji Englishman, accused Fernihurst of the fact to his face ; he iivoided it by a tiat denial, because the other could produce no Scottishman for a witness. For in these trials on the Bor- ders, according to a certain privilege and custom agreed on amongst the Borderers, none but a Scot is to be admitted for a witness against a Scot, and none but an Englishman against an Englishman ; insomuch, that if all the Englishmen which, were upon the place had seen the murder committed before their eyes, yet their testimony had been of no value, unless some Scottishman also did witness the same. Nevertheless, Arran was confined to his house, and Fernihurst was com- mitted to custody at Dundee, where afterwards he died ; a stout and able warrior, ready for any great attempts and undertakings, and of an immoveable fidelity to the Queen of Scots, and the king her son ; having been once or twice turned out of all his lands and fortunes, and banished the sight of his country and children, which yet he endui'ed patiently, and, after so many crosses falling upon him toge- ther, perished unshaken and always like himself." — Camden's Ayinalls at the year 1585, in Kennet's History of England, vol. ii., p. 505. One of the latest of these affrays has been de- scribed with some lively colouring in the rude rhymes of an old Scottish minstrel. The place of meeting was the Reidswair, a spot on the very ridge of a bleak and waste ti-act of mountains, called the Carter-fells, which divide England from Scotland. The Scottish clans of the middle marches arrived in arms and in attendance upon Sir John Carmichael of Carmichael ; and, from the opposite side, the Borderers of Tynedale and Redesdale advanced, with "jack and spear and bended bows,'* witli Sir John Forster, the English warden. Yet the meeting began in mirth and good neighbour- hood ; and while the wardens proceeded to the business of the day, the armed Borderers of either 132 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. party engaged in sports, and played at cards or dice, or loitered around the moor. The merchants, or pedlars, erected their temporary booths, and displayed their wares, and the whole had the ap- pearance of a peaceful holiday or rural fair. In the midst of this good-humour, the wardens were observed to raise their voices in angry altercation^ A bill had been fouled upon one Farnstein, an English Borderer, who, according to custom and law of march, ought to have been delivered up to the Scots. The excuses made by Sir John For- ster did not satisfy the Scottish warden, who taxed him with partiality. At this the English warden, rising suddenly, and drawing up his person so as to have the full advantage of all his height, con- temptuously desired Carmichael to match himself with his equals in birth and quality. These signs of resentment were sufficient hints to the Tynedale Borderers, who immediately shot off a flight of arrows among the Scots. The warcry and slogan of the different clans then rose on either side ; and these ready warriors, immediately starting to their weapons, fought it out manfuUy. By the oppor- tune arrival of the citizens of Jedburgh, armed with firearms, the Scots obtained the victory ; Sir George Heron of Chipchase, and some other Eng- lishmen of rank, being slain on the spot, and Sir John Forster himself, with others of his retinue, made prisoners. This affray gave great offence to Elizabeth ;^ and the Regent Morton, stooping ^ [This skirmish happened on the 7th of June, 1675. See The Raid of the Heidswire — Border Minstrelsy , vol. ii.,, p. 15.] ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 133 before her displeasure, sent Carmichael to answer for his conduct at the court of England, where, however, he was not long detained. Besides the duties of annoying the hostile fron- tiers in war, and maintaining amicable relations with them in time of peace, there was a sort of mixed obligation on the wardens, of a nature some- what delicate ; they were expected to avail them- selves of their proper strength to retaliate such offences as they could not obtain reparation for from the opposite warden, or contentedly sit down under, without compromising their own honour and that of their country. This mode of compen- sating injuries by retaliation always added consi- derably to the discords and inroads upon the Bor- ders, and licensed for the time the enterprises of the most desperate marauders. One or two in- stances of the manner in which the wardens acted on such occasions, and of the circumstances which ^ave rise to their appearing in arms, will complete oiu* account of the duties of these guardians of the frontiers. The Debateable Land (before its final division) was a constant subject of dissension between the opposite wardens of the west marches. To require satisfaction from the English for the inroads of the Borderers inhabiting this tract, or to render satisfaction to them for what the people of the Debateable Land had suffered from the Scottish in return, would have been to acknowledge the district to be a part of England. Lord Maxwell, therefore, in 1550, declared his intention of march- ing against the men of the Debateable Land, not 134 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. as Englishmen, but as Scottish rebels, and laying waste their possessions. Lord Dacre, the oppo- site warden, acted with equal spirit and prudence. He drew out the forces of his march upon the verge of the acknowledged possessions of Eng- land, thus affording countenance, but no active assistance, to the men of the Debateable ground. These, a fierce and untractable set of people, chiefly of the clans of Armstrong and Graeme, seeing themselves well supported, pricked or skir- mished with Lord Maxwell on his entering their district, and took one or two of his followers, by which repulse, backed by the good countenance shown by the English warden, the expedition of Lord Maxwell was disconcerted. This brief cam- paign is mentioned in King Edward the Fourth's Journal.^ Numerous occasions took place, when the war- dens, on either or both sides, resenting' some real or supposed denial of justice, endeavoured to right themselves by riding^ as it was termed, that is, making incursions on the opposite country. This was at no time more common than in the year 1596, when a singular incident gave rise to a suc- cession of these aggressions, and weUnigh occa- sioned a war between the kingdoms. In the year 1596, there was a meeting on the 1 " August 16, 1549. The Earl of Maxwell came down to the North Bolder with a good power to overthrow the Gremes, who were a certain family that were yielded to me; but the Lord Dacre stood before his face with a good band of men, and so put him from his purpose; and the gentlemen called Gremes skirmished with the said earl, slaying certain of his men." ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 135 borders of Liddesdale betwixt the deputies of the Lord Scroope of Bolton, warden of the west inarches, and the Lord of Buccleuch, keeper of Liddesdale. When the business of the day was over, and the meeting broken up, the English chanced to observe a Scottisli Borderer, of the clan of Armstrong, called Willie of Kinmont, cele- brated for his depredations. He had been in attendance, like other Border riders, upon the Scottish officer, and was now returning home on the north side of the river Liddle. Although he was on Scottish ground, and that the assurance of truce ought to have protected him, the temptation to seize an offender so obnoxious was too great to be resisted. A large body of English horsemen crossed the river, pursued and took him, and lodged him in Carlisle Castle. As Lord Scroope refused to give Kinmont up, although thus unwarrantably taken prisoner, Buccleuch resolved to set him at liberty by force, and, with a small body of deter- mined followers, he surprised the Castle of Carlisle, and without doing any injury to the garrison, or to the warden, carried off the prisoner.^ This spirited action was so much admired by the Scottish nation, that even King James, however much afraid of displeasing Elizabeth, and though urged by her with the most violent complaints and threats, hesi- tated to deliver up the w^arden who had so well sustained the dignity of his office and the immuni- ties of the kingdom. But this act of reprisal gave rise to many others. Sir Thomas Musgrave rode ^ [See the narrative prefixed to the historical ballad of Kinmont Willie — Border Minstrelsy, vol. ii., p. 32.] 136 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. into Scotland, and made spoil like an ordinary Borderer ; and Henry Widdrington laid waste and burned Cavers, belonging to the Sheriff of Teviot- dale. Buccleuch's life was said to be the aim of these marauders, and, as it was alleged, with the privity of the Queen of England.^ On the other hand, the Lords of Buccleuch and Cessford vexed the English Border by constant and severe incur- sions, so that nothing was heard of but burning, hership (devastation) and slaughter. In Tynedale, Buccleuch seized upon no less than thirty-six Eng- lish freebooters, and put them to death without mercy. The wTath of Elizabeth waxed uncon- trollable.^ " I marvel," are her own royal expres- 1 Rymer's Fccdera, vol. xvi., pp. 307, 308. 2 Her instructions to her ambassador, Sir William Bowes, mark at once the state of the marches and the extremity of her majesty's displeasure. They occur in Rymer's Fcsdera, Yol. xiv., p. 112. Elizabeth R. Trusty and welbeloved, We greet you well. ** When you deptirted, we delivered you our full pleasure how you should, upon your an'yval at Carlile, and how you should address yourself to the king upon his approach to the Borders, or upon any difficulties occurring in the treaties, since which time we have received from our wardens nothing hut frequent advertisements, both from the east and middle inarches, especially how daily they are spoyled and burned by the incursions from the opposite borders ; and for more open shewe of injury, Buklugh himself, the king's officer, hath been a fresh ringleader of the same, whereby appeareth how little likelihood there is that such wardens Avill restrayne their inferiors, or the king himselfe reforme any thing, seing he doth not only tollerat but cherish them, since they were found most faultie, and hath, in lieu of punishment, given, some of them newe favors, and left us neglected in the eye of the world, with fmtelesse promisses of satisfaction ; by expec* ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 137 sions, " how tlie king thinks me so base-minded as to sit down with such dishonourable treatment. Let him know we will be satisfied, or else " Some of James's ancestors would have bid her " Choke in thy threat. We can say or as loud." But James judged it more safe to pacify her by- surrendering his officers to England, where, how- ever, they were not long detained. tation whereof our people fynde themselves abandoned to utter ruine and miserie. " You shall therefor repair to the king, and, by the means of our ambassador, require speedy access, at which time you may plainly declare unto him the generalities above mention- ed ; and you shall also furnish yourself with an abstract of all the mayne wronges newly done us, and deliver to the king how much it troubleth us to be requyted with nothing but continuall frutes of spoyles and injuries, where we have ever sown continuall care and kyndness ; and if it may be deemed that we do less value the estate of those poor creatures who are more remote from us, than of others who daily are in com- passe of our eye, surely they shall be deceived ; for in our care for their preservation (over whom God hath constituted us equally the only head and ruler) wee never do admit any inequality or difference of care, either for point of justice to be administered by ourselves, or satisfaction to be procured from them that any way oppress them. But we do see that tyme spends on to their loss, that our people are vexed, our commissioners are tyred, and our selve delayed ; an therefor we require you, seeing all promises are so little observed, and all references to conventions so partially conducted, to let the king know that we cannot deny the just and pitifuU appeals which our dear people make for protec- tion and redress, but will enable them to make these unruly rabble of outlawes and ravagers know and feel that they shall taste of a sourer neighbourhood than they have done of late, seeing they do nothing but insult upon our toleration of many injuries, whilst we are apt (out of respect to the king only) to quietness," 138 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. It was not, therefore, until the union of the crowns, that any material alteration took place in the manners or customs of the Borders. Upon that great event, the forces of both countries acting with more uniform good understanding, as now the ser- vants of the same master, suppressed every disorder of consequence. The most untractable Borderers were formed into a body of troops, which Buc- cleuch conducted to the Belgic wars. The Bor- der counties were disarmed, excepting such wea- pons as were retained by gentlemen of rank and repute.^ And the moss-troopers, who continued ^ Amorij^st other articles agreed upon betwixt the English and Scottish commissioners for the final pacification of the Borders, 9th April, 1605, after recommending that all deadly- feuds should be put to agreement, or those who refused to acquiesce should be detained prisoners, that heavy mulcts and penalties should be inflicted on such Scottishmen and English as broke the peace by any act of violence, and that robbers from either country should be punished with death, there is a clause of the following tenor : '* Also, it is agreed that proclamation shall be made, that all inhabiting within Tin- dale and Riddesdale in Northumberland, Bewcastledale Wil- gavey, the north part of Gilsland, Esk and Leven in Cum- berland, East and West Tevidale, Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewsdale, and Annerdale in Scotland, (saving noblemen and gentlemen unsuspected of felony or theft, and not being of broken clans,) and their household servants dwelling within those several places before recited, shall put away all ai*mour and weapons, as well ofi'ensive as defensive, as jacks, spears, lances, swords, daggers, steelcaps, hagbuts, pistols, plate sleeves, and such like ; and shall not keep any horse, gelding, or mare, above the price of 60s, sterling, or h.QO Scots, upon like pain of imprisonment. " Item, That proclamation be made, that none of what calling soever, within the countries lately called the Borders, of either of the kingdoms, shall wear, carry, or bear any pis- tols, hagbuts, or guns of any sort, but in his majesty's service, ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 139 to exercise their former profession, experienced in great numbers the unsparing and severe justice of the Earl of Dunbar. But though the evil was remedied for the pre- sent, the root remained ready to sprout upon the least encouragement. In the civil vrars of Charles I., the Borderers resumed their licentious habits, particularly after the war had been transferred to Scotland, and the exploits of the moss-troopers flourish in the diaries and military reports of the time.^ In the reign of Charles II. we learn their ex- istence still endured, by the statutes directed against them.^ And it is said that non-conforming pres- upon pain of imprisonment, according to the laws of either kingdom." ^ In a letter from CromwelFs headquarters, Edinburgh, October 16, 1650, the exploits of the Borderers in their old profession are alluded to. " My last told you of a letter to be sent to Colonels Kerr and Straughan from hence. Satturday the 26, the commissary-general despatcht away a trumpet with that letter, as also gave another to the Sheriff of Cum- berland, to be speeded away to M. John Scot, bailiff, and B„ brother to the Lord of Buccliew, for his demanding restitu- tion upon his tenants, the moss-troopers, for the horses by them stolne the night we quartered in their country, since which, promises hath been made of restitution, and we doubt not to receive it very suddenly, or else to take satisfaction another way ourselves." In the accounts of Monk's cam- paigns, given in the News Letter of the time, there is fre- quent mention of the moss-troopers. 2 The 13th and 14th Charles II., ch. 3,— 18th, Charles IL, ch. 3 and 29, and 30th Charles II , ch. 1, all proceed upon similar preambles, stating, in substance, — " Whereas, a great number of lewd, disorderly, and lawless persons, being thieves and robbers, who are commonly called moss-troopers, have successively, for many and sundry years last past, been bred, resided in, and frequented the Borders of the two 140 ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES, byterian preachers were the first who brought this rude generation to any sense of the benefits of religion.^ However this may be, there seems little respective counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, and the most adjacent parts of Scotland ; and they, taking the opportunity of the large waste ground, heaths, and mosses, and the many intricate and dangerous ways and by-paths in. those parts, do usually, after the most notorious crimes com- mitted by them, escape over from the one kingdom to the other respectively, and so avoid the hand of justice, in regard the offences done and perpetrated in the one kingdom cannot be punished in the other. " And whereas, since the time of the late unhappy distrac- tions, such offences and offenders as aforesaid have exceeding- ly more increased and abounded ; and the several inhabitants of the said respective counties have been, for divers years last past, necessitated, at their own free and voluntary charge, to maintain several parties of horse for the necessary defence of their persons, families, and goods, and for bringing the offend- ers to justice." Upon this preamble follow orders for asses- sing the inhabitants of these disturbed counties in the sums necessary to pay sufficient bands of men for protection of the inhabitants. These acts are still in force. * This appears from a curious passage in the Life of Rich- ard Cameron, who gave name to the sect of Cameronians. *^ After he was licensed, they sent him at first to preiach in Annandale. He said. How could he go there? He knew not what sort of people they Avere. But Mr Welch said. Go your way, Ritchie, and set the lire of hell to their tails. He went, and the first day he preached upon that text, How shall I put thee among the children, &c. In the application he said. Put you among the children ! the offspring of robbers and thieves. Many have heard of Annandale thieves. — Some of them got a merciful cast that day, and told it afterwards, that it was the first field-meeting that ever they attended ; and that they went out of curiosity to see how a minister could preacli in a tent, and people sit on the ground." — Harries' Scottish Worthies, p. 361. Cleland also, the poet of the sect of Cameronians, takes cre- dit for the same conversion, and puts the following verses into ESSAY ON BORDER ANTIQUITIES. 141 doubt that, until the union of the crowns, the man- ners of these districts retained a tincture of their former rudeness, and would have relapsed, had occasion offered, into their former ferocity. Since that fortunate era, all that concerns the military- habits, customs, and manners of what were once the frontier counties, falls under the province into which these details may serve to introduce the reader — the study, namely, of Border Antiqui- ties. the mouth of a prelatist haranguins^ the Highlanders, and "warning them against the inconvenient strictness of the pres- hyterian preachers : — •* If their doctrine there get rooting. Then farewell theift, the best of booting. And this ye see is very clear, Dayly experience makes it appear; For instance, lately on the Borders, "Where there was nought but theft and murders. Rapine, cheating, and resetting. Slight- of-hand — fortunes getting ; Their designation, as ye ken, "Was all along, the Tacking Men. Now rebels more prevails with words. Then drawgoons does with guns and swords. So that their bare preaching now. Makes the rush-bush keep the cow Better than Scots or English kings Could do by kilting them with strings ; Yea, those that were the greatest rogues. Follows them over hills and bogues. Crying for mercy and for preaching. For they'll now hear no others teaching.** Cleland's Poemst 1697, p. SOt [ 142 ] APPENDIX. No. I. Account of the Attack and Defence of Two JBorder Strong- holds, extracted from Patton's Account of Somerset's JExpe- dition to Scotland in 1544. DalzelVs Fragments of Scottish History, ^.36, In the way we should go, a mile and a half from Dungla* northward, there were two pyles or holds, Thornton and Ander- wike, set both on craggy foundation, and divided a stone's cast asunder, by a deep gut, wherein ran a little river. Thornton belonged to the Lord Hume, and was kept then by one Tom Trotter, whereunto my lord's grace over night, for summons, sent Somerset, his herald, toward whom four or five of this cap- tain's prickers with their gaddes (i. e. lances) ready charged did right hastily direct their course; but Trotter both honestly defended the herald and sharply rebuked his men, and said, for the summons, he would come speak with my lorde's grace him- self ; notwithstanding he carae not, but straight locked up about 16 poore souls like the soldiers of Dunglas fast within the house, took the keys with him, and commanding them they should defend the house and tarry within (as they could not get out) till his return, which should be on the morrow, with munition and relief, he with his prickers prickt quite his ways. Anderwick pertained to the Lord of Hamilton, and was kept by his son and heir, (whom by custom they call the Master of Hamilton,) and an 8 more with him, gentlemen for the most part, as we heard say. My lord's grace, at his coming nigh, sent unto both these piles, which upon summons refusing to render, were straight a<5sailed ; Thornton by battery of four of our great pieces of ordi- APPENDIX. NO. I. 143 nance, and certain of Sir Peter Mewtus' hackbutters to watch the loop holes and windows on all sides, and Anderwick by a sort of the same hakbutters alone, who so well besturred them, that when these keepers had rammed up their outer doors, clayed and stopt up their stairs within, and kept themselves aloft for defence of their house about the battlements, the hakbutters got in and fyred them underneath, whereby being greatly troubled with smoke and smother, and brought in desperation of defence, they called pitifully over their walls to my lord's grace for mercy ; who notwithstanding their great obstinacy, and the sample other of the enemies might have had by their punishment, of his noble generositie, and by these words making half excuse for them, (men may some time do that hastily in a jeer, whereof after they may soon repent them,) did take them to grace, and therefore sent one straight to them. But ere the messenger came, the hakbutters had gotten up to them, and killed eight of them aloft ; one leaped over the walls, and running more than a furlong after, was slain without in a water. All this while at Thornton, our assault and their defence was stoutly continued, but well per- ceiving how on the one side they were battered, mined on the other, kept in with the hakbutters round about, and some of our men within also occupying all the house under them, (for they had likewise stopt up themselves in the highest of their house,) and so to do nothing inward or outward, neither by shooting of base (whereof they had but one or two) nor tumbling of stones, (the things of their chief annoyance,) whereby they might be able any while to resist our power, or save themselves, they plucked in a banner that afore they had set out in defiance, and put out out over the walls a white linnen cloth tied on a stick's end, crying all with one tune for mercy ; but having answer by the whole voice of the assailers, they were traitors, and it was too late, they plucked in their stick and stuck up the banner of defiance again, shot of, hurled stones, and did what else they could, with great courage of their side, and little hurt of ours. Yet then after, being assured by our ernesty, that we had vowed the winning of their hold, before our departure, and then, that their obstinacy could deserve no less than death, pluckt in their banner once again, and cried upon mercie ; and being generally answered, ' Nay, nay, look never for it, for ye are errant traitors,' then made they petition that if they should needs die, yet that my lord s grace would be so good to them as they might be hanged, whereby they might somewhat reconcile themselves to Godward, and not to dye in mahce with go great danger of 144 APPENDIX. NO. II. their souls ; a policy sure in my mind, though but of gross heads, yet of a fine device. Sir Miles Partridge being nigh about this pile at that time, and spying one in a red doublet, did guess he should be an Englishman, and therefore came and furthered this petition to my lord's grace the rather, which then took effect : They came and humbled themselves to his grace, whereupon, without more hurt, they were but commanded to the provost- marshal. It is somewhat here to consider, I know not whether the destiny or hap of man's life ; the more worthy men, the less offenders, and more in the judges grace, were slain ; and the beggars, the obstinate rebells, that deserved nought but cruelty, were saved. To say on now, the house was soon after so blown up with powder, that more than one-half fell straight down to rubbish and dust, the rest stood all to be shaken with rifts and chinks. Anderwick was burned, and all the houses of ofl&ce and stacks of corn about them both.** No. II, Account of the Borderersy translated from Leslceus, de Origine, MorihuSf et Rehus gestis Scotorum, Among all the provinces of Scotland, those which are situated next to England assume to themselves the greatest habits of license, in which they frequently indulge with impunity. For as, in the time of war, they are readily reduced to extreme po- verty by the almost daily inroads of the enemy, so, on the resto- ration of peace, they entirely neglect to cultivate their lands, though fertile, from the fear of the fruits of their labour being immediately destroyed by a new war. Whence it happens thai; they seek their subsistence by robberies, or rather by plundering and rapine, (for they are particularly averse to shedding of blood ;) nor do they much concern themselves whether it be from Scots or English that they rob and plunder, and carry oflf by stealth their booty of horses, cattle, and sheep. They live chiefly on flesh, milk, and boiled barley. Their use of bread is very limited, as well as of good beer and wine, in neither of which they take much delight, even when they obtain them. Their residences consist of huts and cottages, about the burning of which they are nowise concerned. The chiefs construct for themselves a py- ramidical kind of towers, which they call peelsj made entirely of APPENDIX. NO. II. 145 «tone, and which cannot be demolished by fire, nor thrown down without great force and labour. There are, however, among them, chiefs of noble rank, some of whom, although they commit no depredations openly them- selves, do, notwithstanding, lest they should give offence to their own tribe, connive at those done by others, even though they do not participate in the plunder. Of this they are highly careful, lest, if they should behave harshly to their own people in time of peace, they should find them less obedient at the approach of war. And although there may be some few men of influence, who are sincerely earnest about justice and civil affairs, yet they cannot resist the multitude, who are so hardened by their inve- terate habits, that they have become as it were a second nature* Besides, if the chief men should require auxiliary forces from the king against those robbers, as has been often attempted, they only lose their labour. Indeed, these plunderers are so well pro- tected by the nature of the ground, that should they be forced out from their thickest woods, they instantly betake themselves to the rugged mountains ; if again they are expelled from these, they take their flight towards the banks of rivers and the marshes. If they shall still find it necessary to remove quarters, they next, with perfect safety to themselves, entice their pursuers into some of the most intricate parts of the marshes, which, though to ap- pearance they are green meadows, and as solid as the ground, are nevertheless seen, upon a person's entering upon them, to give way, and in a moment to swallow him up into the deep abyss. Not only do the robbers themselves pass over these gulfs with wonderful agility and lightness of foot, but even they accustom their horses to cross many places with their knees bent, and to get over where our footmen could scarcely dare to follow ; and chiefly on this account, they seldom shoe their horses. They reckon it a great disgrace, and the part of a mean person, for any one to make a journey on foot, whence it follows that they are mostly all horsemen. If, therefore, they be possessed of nimble horses, and have sufficient wherewith to ornament their own persons and those of their wives, they are by no means anxious about other pieces of household furniture. What some have said of the Scots being in the practice of li- ving on human flesh, cannot be ascribed to any others than these Borderers, and not to them all, but only to those of Annandale ; indeed, our writers do say, that only the Ordovici, who inhabited the modern Annandale, were wont to feed upon the flesh of their captives, whom they also distinguish for a farther piece of cruelty, VOL. VII. K . 146 APPENDIX. NO. II. that the women, namely, should with their own hand kill their husbands who had been vanquished in war, on their return home, as if the fact of being defeated was sufficient indication of cow- ardice, which they looked upon as the highest crime in a man. But the ferocious habit of a small tribe, which is long since dis- used, ought not to be ascribed to the whole nation of the Scots ; much less that which is quoted from D. Hieronymus, that one of the Scots themselves was seen in Gaul to eat human flesh, although some were of opinion that he was a Scythian. They might as reasonably also be pleased to affirm, upon the evidence of a single instance, that all the Scots at this day live upon raw salmon, even when newly taken out of the rivers, without salt or bread ; for there is an instance quite familiar to us, of a man very noted among ourselves, called Monanus Hogg, who had been condemned to exile in his youth, and, unknown to any, had concealed himself for some time near a certain river, where he could find no meat at all, and perceiving that he could easily catch salmon upon the sandy shallows, by an art which he had learnt before, he forthwith caught and ate them raw, and became at length so inured to that sort of food, that when an old man, he was often seen to eat freely, and without the least disgust, as much raw salmon, as many others could do of the best fish boiled, and that in the presence of several who would not believe it ; a wonderful instance how pressing a thing want is, in cases of ad- versity, and how powerful is custom, that second nature. ^ But I return to our Dalesmen, or Borderers, in whom, though some things are to be noticed to their dispraise, yet there are others to be greatly admired ; for most of them, when deter- mined upon seeking their supply from the plunder of the neigh- bouring districts, use the greatest possible precaution not to shed the blood of those that oppose them ; for they have a persuasion that all property is common by the law of nature, and is there- fore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity, but that murder and other injuries are prohibited by the Divine law. If, however, they do commit any voluntary slaughter, it is gene- rally done in revenge of some injury, but more frequently of the death of some of their own relations, even though it be in conse- quence of the laws of the kingdom. Then arises a deadly hatred, not of one against one, or a few against a few, but of them all, how numerous soever the tribe may be, against all of the oppo- site name, however innocent or ignorant of the alleged injury ; 1 In the curious account of the Tonga Islands, by Mr Mariner, it appears that he easily acquired the habit of eating raw fish among- the South Sea islanders. APPENDIX. NO. II. 147 ^hich plague of deadly feud, though a general calamity through the kingdom, is chiefly proper to these people. To their praise it may be added, that, having once pledged their faith, even to an enemy, they are very strict in observing it, insomuch, that they think nothing can be more heinous than violated fidelity. If, however, any one shall be found guilty of this crime among them, it is usual for him who has received the injury, or any one of his name, to suspend the culprit's glove upon the top of an elevated spear, and to ride about with it, exhibiting it in reproach of his violation of faith, which is done in their solemn conventions, as, for example, in those while the wardens of the marches of both kingdoms are sitting to make amends for injuries, according to custom. They think there cannot be a greater mark of disgrace than this, and esteem it a greater punishment even than an honourable death inflicted on the guilty person ; and those of the same tribe frequently resent it in the same manner. 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. They take great pleasure in their own music, and in their rhyth- mical songs, which they compose upon the exploits of their ancestors, or in their own ingenious stratagems in plundering, or their artificial defences when taken. Besides, they think the art of plundering so very lawful, that they never say ever their prayers more fervently, or have more devout recurrence to the beads of their rosaries, than when they have made an expedition, as they frequently do, of forty or fifty miles, for the sake of booty. They leave their frontiers in the night time in troops, going through impassable places, and through many by-paths. In the day time they refresh their horses, and recruit their own strength, in hiding places prepared before-hand, until the approach of night, when they advance to their place of destination. Having seized upon their booty, they in the same manner return by night, through circuits and by-ways, to their own habitations. The more expert each leader is in making his way through these dreary places, windings, and precipices, in the darkest night, he is so much the more accounted a person of superior ingenuity, and held in greater honour ; and with such secrecy can they proceed, that they very rarely allow their prize to be recovered, •unless they be sometimes tracked by their opponents, when dis- covered by keen-scented dogs, who always follow them in the right path. 148 APPENDIX. NO. III. But if they are taken, their eloquence is so powerful, and the sweetness of their language so winning, that they even can move both judges and accusers, however severe before, if not to mercy, at least to admiration and compassion. No. III. Border Clans* The principle of clanship had been reluctantly acknowledged by the Scottish legislature, not as a system approved of, but as an inveterate evil, to cure which they were obliged to apply extraordinary remedies. By the statute 1581, chap. 112, it was declared, that the clans of thieves, keeping together by occa- sion of their surnames, or near neighbourhood, or society in theft, were not subjected to the ordinary course of justice ; and therefore it was made lawful, that whatever true and obedient subject should suffer loss by them, might not only apprehend, slay, and arrest the persons of the offenders, but of any others being of the same clan. And thus the whole sept was rendered jointly answerable, and liable to be proceeded against, in the way of retaliation, for the delinquencies of each individual. But to render the recourse of the injured parties more effec- tual, an elaborate statute, (1587, ch. 94, 97,) made two years afterwards, proceeding on the same melancholy preamble of waste and depredation committed on the Borders and Highlands, directs that security shall be found by those landlords and baihes on •whose grounds the offending clansmen dwelt, that they would bring them in to abide process of law when complained of, or otherwise drive them from their grounds. It was further decreed, that the clans, chiefs, and chieftains, as well on the Highlands as on the Borders, with the principal branches of each surname who depended upon their several captains by reason of blood or neigh- bourhood, should find hostages or pledges for keeping good rule in time coming, under pain of the execution of these hostages unto the death, in case transgression should happen without amends being made by delivery of the criminal. These hostages ■were to be kept in close prison until the chiefs by whom they were entered in pledge found security that they would not hreak ward, that is, make their escape. But on such security being found, the hostages were to be placed mfree ward; that is, were APPENDIX. NO, III. 149" to remain prisoners on parole at their own expense, in tlie families of such inland gentlemen and barons as should be assigned to take charge of them respectively, the Borderers being quartered on the north, and the Highlanders on the south side of the Forth; which barons were bound, under a penalty of L.200, not to license their departure. The clans who should fail to enter such pledges within the time assigned, were to be pursued as incorri- gible freebooters, with fire and sword. To render the provisions of this act yet more effectual, it was appointed (chap. 96) that all Highlanders and Borderers should return from the inland country to the place of their birth: (chap. 97,) That all the clans should be entered in a register, with the names of the host- ages or sureties, and of the landlords or bailies. Also, (chap, 98,) that vagabonds and broken men, for whom no sureties or pledges were entered, as belonging to no known clan, should find security to undergo the law, under pain of being denounced rebels. Also, (chap. 100,) that the security found by the feudal land- lords and bailies to present such offenders as dwelt on their lands to regular trial, was distinct from, and independent of, that which should be found by the patriarchal captain, head, or chief- tain of the clan, and that each subsisted and might be acted on without prejudice to the other. These securities being obtained, it was provided, that when goods or cattle were carried off by the individuals of any clan, the party injured should intimate the robbery to the chief, charging him to make restitution within fifteen days, wherein if he failed, the injured party should have action against him, and other principal persons of the clan, to the amount of his loss. These, and other minute regulations to the same purpose, show that the clan system had become too powerful for the government, and that, in order to check the disorders to which it gave rise, the legislature were obliged to adopt its own principle, and hold the chief, or patriarch of the tribe, as liable for all the misdeeds of the surname. The rolls which were made up in consequence of these acts of parliament, gives us an enumeration of the nobles and barons (several of whom were themselves also chiefs) who possessed property in the disturbed Border districts, and also of the clans who dwelt in them. 150 APPENDIX. NO. Ill Jtoll of the Names of the Landlords and Bailies of Lands dwelling on the Borders, ^ where broken Men have dwelt and presently dwell. A, D. 1587. MIDDLE MARCH. The Earl of Both well (^formerly Hepburn, then Stuart.) The Laird of Fairnyherst {Kerr.) The Earl of Angus (^Douglas.) The Laird of Buckcleuch (Scott.) The Sheriflf of Teviotdale (Douglas of Cavers.) The Laird of Bedroule (Turnbull.) The Laird of Wauchop. The Lord Herries (^formerly Harries, then Maxwell. ^ The Laird of Howpaisley (Scott.) George TurnbuU of Halroule, The Laird of Littledene (Kerr.) The Laird of Drumlanrigg (Douglas,) The Laird of Chisholme ( Chisholme. ) WEST MARCH. The Lord Maxwell (Maxwell. ) The Laird of Drumlanrigg (Douglas.) The Laird of Johnston (Johnstone.) The Laird of Applegirth (Jardine.) The Laird of Holmends ( Carruthers.) The Laird of Gratney (Johnstone.) The Lord Herries (Maxwell.) The Laird of Dunwiddie. The Laird of Lochinvar (Gordon.) The Boll of the Clans that have Captains and Chieftains on whom they depend oftimes against the Will of their Land- lords, and of some special Persons of Branches of the said Clans. MIDDLE MARCH. Elliots* (Laird of Lairistoun.) 1 Those of the Highlands are omitted, as not being comprehended in the present subject. * The Elliots and Armstrongs inhabited chiefly Liddesdale. APPENDIX. NO. III. 151 Armstrongs Laird of Mangerioun.) !Nicksons. * Crossers. WEST MARCH, Scotts of Ewsedale.* Beatisons.' Littles {chief unknown,) Thomsons (chief unknown.) Glendinnings (^Glendonwyne of that Ilk.) Irvings {Irving of Bonshaw.) Bells (believed to he Bell of Blacket House.) Carruthers (Laird of Holmends,) Grahames.* Johnstones (Laird of Johnstone.) Jardanes (Laird of Applegirth.) Moffetts {chief unknown, but the name being territorial, it is probably an ancient clan.) Latimers (chief unknown.) A little work, called Monipenny^s Chromcle,5 published in 1597 and 1633, gives, among other particulars concerning Scot- land, a list of the principal clans and surnames on the Borders not landed, as well as of the chief riders and men of name among them. From this authority, we add the following list o£ foraying, or riding clans, as they were termed, not found in the parlia- J The Nixons and Crossers mig-ht rather be termed English than Scottish Borderers. They inhabited the Debateable Land, and were found in Liddesdale, but were numerous in Cumberland. 2 It is not easy to conjecture whether one part or branch of this numerous surname is distinguished from the rest, or whether it must be understood to comprehend the whole clan. The chief of the name was Scott of Buccleuch. 3 Or Beatties, a name still numerous on the Borders. They were dispossessed of large possessions in Eskdale, by the Scots, who killed many of them in the struggle. The name of their chief is unknown. The last was called The Galiiard, slain at the Galliard's-haugh, near Langholm. * The chief of the Grahames is unknown. The clan were rather English than Scottish. They inhabited the Debateable Land. 5 [The small volume entitled The Abridgmenty or Summarie of the Scots Chronicles, from Fergusius's^ the first, SfC, with a truedescrip. Hon of the whole realme of Scotland^ ^c, is rarely to be met with joer se. It is, however, reprinted in the first volume of Wylie's MisceU lanea Scotica, 4 vols. 12mo. Glasgow, 1818.20.] 152 APPENDIX. NO. III. mentary roll of 1587. It commences with tlie east marclies, which being in a state of comparative good order, were not included under the severe enactments of 1587. Bromfields {chief, JBromfidd of Gordon Mains, or of that Trotters (chief unknown^) Diksons {chief unknown.^ Redpeth (Laird of Redpath.^ Gradens (Laird of Graden originally their chief. ^ Youngs (chief unknown,^ Pringles (believed to be Pringle of Galashiels.^ Tates (Tait of Pirn.) Middlemast (chief unknown.) Burns (chief unknown.) Dalgleishes (Dalgleish of that Ilk.) Davisons (Davison of Symiston.) Pyles (Pyle, or Peele, of Milnheuch.)' Robisons (chief unknown — a Cumberland clan.) Ainslies (chief unknown.) Olivers (chief unknown — believed to be Lustruiher.) Laidlaws (chief unknown : It is said by tradition the family came from Ireland, and that the name was originally Ludlow.) LIDDESDALE. Parks (chief, John of Park.) Hendersons (chief unknown.) An equally absolute authority is the enumeration which is put by Sir David Lindsay of the IMount, in his very curious drama called the Partium, into the mouth of Common Thift, a Bor- derer, and who, being brought to condign punishment, takes leave of his countrymen and companions in iniquity : — EAST MARCHES. Ilk.) WEST MARCHES. Carliles (Lord Carlile) Romes 7 q^^^^ almost extinct — chiefs unknotun. ** Adieu, my brother Annan thieves. That helpit me in my mischieves. Adieu, Crossars, Niksons, and Bells, Oft have we fared through the fells ; APPENDIX. NO. III. 153 Adieu, Robsons, Hanslies,i and Pyles, That in our craft have mony wiles. Littles, Trumbulls, 2 and Armstrongs j Adieu, all thieves that me belongs, Taylors, Eurwings, 3 and Elvvands,* Speedy of foot and light of hands ; The Scots of Ewesdail and the Grrjemes, I have na time to tell your names ; With King Correction be ye fangit. Believe right sure ye will be hangit.". 1 Ainslie, as now spelled and pronounced. 2 The popular pronunciation of Turnbull. 3 Spelled Cur wings : the same with Irving, which is sometimes popularly pronounced Euring as if the v. were an u. * Elwands, or El woods, the old way of spelling Elliot. PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND. PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OP SCOTLAND. CRICHTON CASTLE. [prom paintings by J. M. W. TURNER, AND REV. J. THOMSON.] The Castle of Crichton is situated on the banks of the Tyne, there an inconsiderable stream, ten miles south from Edinburgh, and about two miles above the village of Pathhead, on the Lauder road. The river flows through a grassy valley, bounded by sloping banks, which, at least till of late, being chiefly covered with copse and underwood, formed a wild and beautiful fringe to the level pasture - land through which the brook winds. The stream itself is more deep, sluggish, and slow, than most of the Scottish rivers, and in that particular rather resembles those of South Britain. The very high prices which alders have lately borne, owing to their forming the most proper charcoal for making gunpowder, has occasioned the fall of many of those natural thickets. But it is to be hoped, that the demand for this formidable article of merchandise 158 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. will not be again so imperative, and that the pro- prietors may have leism-e to replace these coppices by more permanent plantations. The Castle was built at different periods, and forms, on the whole, one large square pile of irre- gular height, enclosing an inner court. It is situated upon a sharp angle of the almost precipitous bank which we have mentioned as the boundary of the dale. The lofty, massive, and solid architecture, impresses the spectator with an emotion rather of awe than of beauty. Yet the interior is so far from being of a rude character, that we shall here- after have occasion to notice its architectural merits. At present, we propose to introduce the reader to the general history of the building, so far as it has been traced, as well as of its first possessors, to whom the Castle and Barony gave name. The family of Crichton was ancient and honour- able, but remained long among the rank of lesser barons, and owed its great rise to the genius and talent of an individual statesman, distinguished for policy and intrigue beyond what is usual in a dark age. The name being territorial, and derived from the neighbouring village, seems to have been assumed about the period when surnames became common in Scotland. A William de Crichtoun occurs in the Lennox Chartulary about 1240,^ and a Thomas de Crichton figures in the Ragman Roll in 1296; a wretched document, to which a name seems to have been accidentally affixed as contemp- tuous as it deserved, since by its tenor most of the 1 JfoocTs Peerage, vol i., p. 603. CRICHTON CASTLE. 159 ancient families of Scotland submitted to Edward IIL^ More honourable records afterwards dis- tinguish a Sir John de Crichton in the reign of David Bruce. A William de Crichton is frequently mentioned in the end of the fourteenth century ; and finally, a John Crichton had a charter of that barony from Robert III. These ancient Lords of the Castle and Barony of Crichton, although men of note and estate, were still numbered among the lesser barons, who were not entitled to the rank of nobility. Sir William Crichton, son of the last-mentioned baron, with talents and a disposition not unlike to those which distinguished Ras Michael at the Com't of Gondar,^ was destined to rise to a greater eminence, and attain more celebrity, than his ancestors. He appears to have been one of the first laymen in Scotland who attained eminence, rather from political than military talents, and flourished in the reigns of James I. and his suc- cessor — a period, fertile in strange turns of fortune, of which our imperfect records have presented but a dubious history. Sir William de Crichton early attended the court, being one of the persons despatched to congratulate James I. on his ^^.J^* marriage, and, on the king's return to Scot- land, he became master of the royal household. Three years afterwards he was one of the envoys sent to treat for the establishment ^^^^ of a perpetual peace with Erick, king of * Nisbet's Remarks on Ragman's Roll, Heraldry^ vol. ii., p. 42. * [See Bruce's Travels in Ahyssinia*~\ 160 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. Denmark, and seems ever after to have been the personal favourite of his sovereign, and to have acted the part of a courtier and minister with an address then very unusual in Scotland. Injustice to this statesman we ought to add, that to be the adherent of the crown during this period, was, in fact, to be the friend of civil liberty and of the free administration of justice. The people as yet did not exist as an order of the state, and the imme- diate oppressors of law and freedom were the band of aristocratic nobility, who set the laws of the kingdom and authority of the sovereign at equal defiance. The sudden and violent death of James I. threw loose all the rules and bonds of government which his wisdom had begun to introduce; for it was ever the misfortune of Scotland, to lose her wisest and bravest rulers at the moment when she most needed them. The exorbitant power of the Douglasses outbalanced the feeble authority of an infant prince. But the wise policy of the parliament, while it named no noble of high rank to the office of regent, which the Earl of Douglas might have considered as an insult to himself, and avenged accordingly, assigned the management of the kingdom to Sir William Crich- ton, under the title of chancellor, and the custody of the king's person to Sir Alexander Livingston, a person of the same moderate station. It seems likely that the powerful feudal nobles were led thus to compromise their own claims in favour of two gentlemen of inferior rank, rather than run the risk of either placing Douglas in that high office, CRICHTON CASTLE. 161 or electing in his despite one of his own rank. The talents of both statesmen were higlily esteemed, and their wisdom was considered a counterbalance to the great power of Douglas. In the meanwhile, they could not refuse him the dignity of lieutenant- general of the kingdom. A dissension soon arose betwixt Living- 1433! stone and Crichton, the former alleging that the chancellor had deprived him of the cus- tody of the king's person. The queen entered into the views of Livingston, and concealed her son in a chest, in w^hich he was smuggled out of the Castle of Edinburgh, then in the power of the chancellor ; and she herself accompanying him, under pretence of a pilgrimage to Whitekirk in Buchan, they landed safely at Stirling^ the stronghold of his competitor. The power of Douglas, who contemned and me- naced both the chancellor and Livingston as low- born upstarts, compelled the chancellor and the guardian once more to unite their interests. A second feud broke out between them, owing to the insolence of Livingston, who, as we learn from a curious and authentic chronicle of the time, laid the person of the queen under arrest, forgetful of the advantage she had so lately procured him ; threw into a dungeon her second husband, the Black Knight of Lorn, as he was called, and his brother, and bollit, i, e, fettered them.^ Crichton, therefore, found it no difficidt matter to reconcile himself with the queen-dowager^ ' See Ane Schort Memoriale of the Scottis CronikUs, p. i, VOL. VII. L 162 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. through whose connivance he recovered the custody of the king's person, by a stratagem similar to that of Livingston. He surprised James while hunting in the Park at Stirling, and carried him off to Edinburgh, without any resistance offered by his attendants, or any reluctance shown on his own part. The estates of parliament interfered ; the chancellor, with the Lord of the Isles, the Lord Gordon, and Sir Alexander Seton, became security for Sir James Stewart, and the governors were again reconciled ; a truce which became fatal to the young heir of the house of Douglas. This unfortunate nobleman was a youth of eighteen, and could, therefore, have committed no ^reat personal aggressions against his country ; he was high-spirited, gallant, and intelligent, and might have lived to do her service. But his house had possessed too much power, and his mi- nority and inexperience gave the governors ; 2^Q* an opportunity to restrain it. Under the guise of seeming reconciliation, he was en- ticed to the Castle of Crichton, and there hospi- tably entertained, — an evident proof how deeply Sir William Crichton was concerned in the nefarious scene which followed. On the next morning the young Earl of Douglas was inveigled to the Castle of Edinburgh, then in possession of the lord chan- cellor. The mask of friendship and hospitality was then thrown aside. The earl was arrested in the presence of the young king, who wept bitterly, and besought his life in vain from his unrelenting guard- ians. After the mockery of a hasty trial, Douglas was dragged to an inner-court, and there beheaded, CRICHTON CASTLE. 163 along" with his brother, still younger than himself, and Fleming- of Cumbernauld, their most deter- mined adherent, — an act of detestable policy, which soon brought on the vengeance it deserved, and was long remembered and execrated in the popular rhyme, — Edinborough castle, town, and tower, God grant you sink for sin, And that even for the black dinoure Earl Douglas gat therein.'* The young king now appeared on the stage. He hated his chancellor and Living- stone, particularly the former. He united with the Earl of Douglas, successor to him who was murdered ; and, in the turns of state which follow- ed, Crichton was deprived of his office of chancel- lor, and summoned to appear and stand his trial. His answer showed a confidence which could only proceed from the secret countenance of many of the nobility, w^ho hated the exorbitant power of the Douglasses. He avowed himself a true servant to the king, and willing to render an account of his administration, so soon as " the captain of thieves" was removed from the royal councils, and he had a prospect of a fair and just trial. In the mean- time, although denounced a rebel by blast of horn, he defended himself both against the power of the king and that of Douglas, in the then almost im- pregnable Castle of Edinburgh, while his kindred and followers maintained themselves in other strong places in Lothian, and refused to render them to the royal authority. This was particularly the 164 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. case with Barntoun, or Brunston, defended by one Andrew Crichton, who, when summoned by the Earl of Douglas, in name and behalf of the king, returned for answer, " that he had the keeping in- trusted to him on the king's behalf by the sheriff, (Sir William Crichton,) to whom he had found security for safely keeping the same, and with- out whose order he would not deliver it. The event of this siege does not appear. Edinburgh Castle was beleaguered for nine months, and de- fended with an obstinate valour and success, which showed that Crichton was supported by many and powerful allies. In the meanwhile, his paternal Castle of Crich- ton, the present subject of our local history, was stormed and taken by John Forester of Corstor- phine, a dependent of the Earl of Douglas, by whose orders it is said to have been demolished^ in resentment of the treacherous hospitality with which his kinsman had been feasted within its walls on the day before he was inveigled to Edinburgh and there executed. " He was scarce retired,"^ says Hume of Godscroft, " when Crichton assem- bled his friends and followers, so suddenly as none could imagine, and foraged the lands of Corstor- phine, together with the lands of Strabrock, Aber- corn, and Blackness ; and, amongst other goods, he drove away a race of mares that the Earl Dou- glas had brought from Flanders, Avhich were kept in Abercorn ; doing more harm than he had recei- ved." These alternate ravages, which took place in 1445, mark at once the spirit of the times and the power of Crichton, who could retaliate so for* CRICHTON CASTLE. 165 jiiidably upon the dreaded Earl Douglas, even when armed with the royal authority. At length, Edinburgh Castle being found 1446 strong for the besiegers, Crichton yield- ed it up on an honourable compromise, with full security of his life and fortune ; and thus, as an old historian expresses it, " leapt dry-shod" over a great danger. His colleague, Livingston, did not escape so clear, being imprisoned and forfeited ; whence Mr Pinkerton conjectures, that Livingston had the greater share in the murder of the youthful Douglasses. The damning fact, however, remains, that they were feasted in Crichton Castle while they were trained on to their destruction ; and John Major, in treating of that cruel murder, has these remarkable words :— " I have read in our annals, that these men were not guilty of any crime deserving death, but that the deed was perpetrated by the council or the guile of William Crichton^ Chancellor of Scotland."^ It would therefore seem, that Crichton owed his safety to his high reputation for political talents, and his experience in state affairs. He was soon afterwards replaced in the office of chancellor, and -sent to France, as one of the ambassadors, to re- new the ancient league, and to choose a wife for the young king. Mary of Gueldres was selected on this occasion, and the services of the chancellor were rewarded by his elevation to the peerage by the title of Lord Crichton. About 1450, when great discord and jealousy 4 Majoris Historia, Ed. 1745, p. 322. 166 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. again arose betwixt the king and the Earl of Dou- glas, Crichton was supposed to have given his counsel for the utter ruin and destruction of that high-spirited, but turbulent house. His restoration, therefore, to political authority, renewed the slum- bering ire of Douglas, whose commands at that time were so much more absolute than those of the Scottish monarch, that Pitscottie avers, that who- ever slew or plundered at their bidding, was free from all risk of pursuit at the hands of public justice. In a journey from Crichton Castle to Edinburgh, the chancellor, riding with a small train, fell into an ambush placed for his assassination. But remem- bering his ancient courage, and being weU seconded by his son Sir James, he broke tlu-ough the band by whom he was beset, slaying two, and wounding several, and escaped safe to his Castle of Crichton. To retaliate this injury, he gathered promptly a body of chosen retainers, and made so sudden an attack upon the Earl of Douglas, then residing in the town of Edinburgh, that he forced him in his turn to fly for his life. Yet, notwithstanding these acts of mutual 1452 ^^^^ aggravated hostility, we find the king of England granted a pass soon afterwards to the Earl of Douglas, Lord Crichton, and other persons of rank attached to both their factions, together with the Bishops of Glasgow, Moray, and Dunblane, and the Abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline, and Paisley, to perform in company a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket.^ This passport 1 Rymer's Fcedera, xi., p. 303, CRICHTON CASTLE. 167 had probably reference to some truce or league betwixt tlie parties, of which a pilgrimage was often the stipulated sanction. It does not appear that it was ever used. It seems probable that the counsels of Crichton directed the desperate blow aimed at the power of the Douglasses, when James II. stabbed Earl William with his own hand in the Castle of Stir- ling. But the aged statesman was not in Stirling upon that memorable occasion. Godscroft insi- nuates that he had withdrawn to his own Castle under the pretended displeasure of the king, in order that the absence of an enemy so inveterate might more readily encourage Douglas to trust himself within the fatal fortress. The deed was, at all events, in conformity with the sagacious, but unscrupulous advice of Crichton, who had ever recommended that the king should take all occa- sions, and every possible means, for destroying the family of Douglas. In 1455, this active and experienced minister was summoned from the stage on which he had so long performed a bustling and important part. He was a consummate statesman, according to the manners of the age, and appears, from the firmness with which he encountered, baiEed, and retaliated the injuries of the Douglasses, to have possessed a power corresponding far more to his wisdom and experience than his w^ealth or family, although the one became extensive and the other was honour- able. He was cautious without timidity, and en- terprising without rashness, seldom failing in any of his undertakings, and always able to extricate 168 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. himself from their more perilous consequences. But we are compelled to record, that this saga- cious statesman was as destitute of faith, mercy, and conscience, as of fear and of folly. Sir William Crichton left issue, by Agnes his wife ; namely, Sir James, his son and heir, also two daughters, Elizabeth, married to Alexander, first Earl of Huntly, and Agnes, to Alexander Lord Glamis. Sir James Crichton, his son, was styled commonly, in the lifetime of his father, by the title of Frendraught, an extensive property in Aberdeenshire, which he obtained by marriage with Janet, the eldest of the two daughters and co-heirs of James Dunbar, Earl of Murray. William, third Lord Crichton, the son of Lord James, succeeded him in his estate and dignities in 1469. This nobleman en- gaged in the great conspiracy of the Duke of Albany, in 1483, for dethroning James III. If Buchanan, always hostile to the family of Stuart, can be credited, there subsisted betwixt the king and Lord Crichton mutual injuries, of a dye too In Spain, the exiled Earl of Bothwell had nearly fallen under the power of the Inquisition ; amongst other reasons, because, by taking upon him to tell fortunes, and help men to goods purloined, he incurred the suspicion of a sorcerer.'* Winwood's Memorials, vol. ii., p. 108. George Sandys, the traveller, found him in Italy, in full possession of necromantic fame. " A certain Calabrian," he says, " hearing that I was an Englishman, came to me, and would needs persuade me that I had insight in magic; for that Earl Bothwell was my countryman, who lives at Naples, and is in these parts famous for suspected necromancie. He told me that he had treasure hidden in his house, the quantity and qualitie shown him by a boy, upon conjuration of a Knight of Malta, and offered to share it between us, if I could help him to it. But I an- swered, that in England we were at defiance with the devill, and that he would do nothing for us." — Sandys' Journey y 1627, p. 250. Thus it seems that Bothwell was to the very last a dupe to those vain and mystical researches, which first occasioned his falling under his sovereign's displeasure. In the Introduction to Law's MemorialSf Mr C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe, whose indefatigable researches have collected such curious illustrations of his author, has shown that Both well's son was, like his father, a student of the occult sciences, and was present with Sir Kenelm Digby when the devil carried off a conjurer, who, being unfortunately overtaken with liquor, had neglected to propitiate with proper suffumigations- the spirits whom he invoked. — Law's Memorials, Introduction, p. xliii. note. The truth is, to use honest Evelyn's words. Sir Kenelm was an arrant mountebank. 2 The reader may be amused with the rhodomontades of Sir Thomas Urquhai*t of Cromarty concerning Lord Both- weU, whom he leaves, so far as skill and bravery in arms were concei*ned, not a jot behind his more celebrated theme of eulogy, the Admirable Crichton. The Earl of Bothwell was, according to his learned countrymen, a terror to the most desperate duellists of Europe, and a subduer of the proudest champions, both Turks and Christians; the gasconades of France, the rhodomontades of Spain, fanfaronades of Italy,. CRICHTON CASTLE, 183 The forfeiture of Francis Earl of BothwelFs large estates became a prey to others. Buccleuch, and braggadocio brags of all other countries, no more asto- nished his invincible heart, than would the cheeping of a mouse conjure down the fury of a bear robbed of her whelps. Not to mention his conquest over a strong and warlike Maho- metan, who had appealed, like a second Goliah, the whole champions of Christendom to enter the lists with him. Sir Thomas Urquhart affirms, that Bothwell would very often, in the presence of ladies whose intimate favourite he was, give some proof of the undauntedness of his courage, and by the mere activity of his body, with the help of a single sword, set upon a lion in his greatest fierceness, and kill him dead upon the place. After this, the reader will not be startled to find, that, by way of pastime, he was wont to set upon some ten or twelve swordsmen at once, and lay such thick and threefold load upon them, that he quickly made them betake themselves to their heels. Nor will he be much surprised at the author's apprehension that the history of the banished earl may ap- pear to future ages but as a romance of chivalry, and draw as little faith as those of Amadis or Esplandian. — Tracts, by Sir Thomas Urquhart, Edin. 1782, p. 63. Notwithstanding the exaggerations of Sir Thomas Ur- quhart, which throw discredit upon truth itself, Bothwell was, to use Sir Toby's phrase, *' a very devil in private brawl," and divorced various souls and bodies. But his life, while abroad, was as contemptible and licentious as it had been ambitious and turbulent while in his native country. See the Letters of Sir Charles Cornwallis, in Winwood's Memorials, vol. ii. pp. 108, 325, 441, 442. From these passages, the reader will learn what sort of damsels those were for whose sake the Earl achieved his deeds of chivalry, besides coming to great and divers losses, which the ambassador re- ports to the court of London. The cause assigned for Both- well's death is as singular as any part of his wild and hare- brained career. Sir Dudley Carleton writes to Trumble, the English Resident at Brussels, upon the 16th January, 1612 : You will have heard of the death of the Lord Bothwell at Naples, and what cost and ceremony the Spaniards used at his funerall. But the occasion, it may be, will seem strange 184 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. and Kerr of Cessford, had the greatest share. Crichton castle and barony, with Hales, and the Lordship of Liddesdale, were granted to Sir Walter Scott, the step-son of the forfeited Earl of Both- well, and were inherited by his son Francis, second Earl of Buccleuch, who was served heir, on 27th February, 1634, to his father Walter, the first Eai'l, son of the grantee. Charles I., however, with more regard to equity and humanity than unto you ; it being most certaine, that the news of our prince's (z. e. Prince Henry's) death struck him with such a sudden melancholy, that he took his chamber thereupon, and, without speech with any man, (though many came to him to offer him all possible comfort) he died within three or four days after. What may we imagine would have been per- formed by that prince, if it had pleased God he had lived, since his ashes have wrought such an effect upon a man of so strong a mind, who had been the instrument of so much trouble to his father ? And yet towards his end, I under- stand, he was so dutifully affected towards his majesty, that he was heard often to say, he would go into England and crave pardon of him, though he were sure to lose his head the next day." — Winwood's Memorials^ vol. iii., p. 424. From this account it would seem, that the death of Both well was has- tened, if not absolutely occasioned, by the premature fate of Henry, the hopeful Prince of Wales. To this prince, of a character so different from his father, clung the hopes of Raleigh, Southampton, and many others, who had either in- curred James's displeasure, or who disapproved of his go- vernment. Among others, it seems probable that the exiled earl, whose life shows him to have been " of imagination all compact," had formed some fantastic hopes of emerging from his difficulties by the favour of a prince known to love arms, and those who could use them. The disappointment operating on a mind broken by disasters, and a frame enfeebled by de- bauchery, will afford an adequate cause for the inconsolable melancholy which hastened the death of the last distinguished Lord of Crichton Castle. CRICHTON CASTLE. 185 policy, had early manifested a desire to resume these hirge grants, at least in part, and to confer them upon the son of the forfeited earl. This was Francis Stuart, who obtained a reliabi- litation under the great seal, confirmed by Parlia- ment in 1633, against his father's forfeiture. Thus restored in blood, he proceeded to act against the possessors of his father's estates. He found Cess- ford, now Earl of Roxburgh, tractable, but Walter Earl of Buccleuch, extremely restive. Charles took Stuart's part in the affair, which so greatly incensed the Earl of Buccleuch, then in service in the Low Countries, that he is said to have uttered threatening expressions against the king, as appears in the course of that mysterious procedure, which, in 1631, was near being decided by judicial combat betwixt Donald Lord Reay and Sir David Ramsay. Stuart pressed his suit against Earl Francis of Buccleuch, then a minor, with such favour from the king, and with such success, that it was sub- jected by reference to Charles's arbitration, who assigned to Stuart the whole estates in Mid- Lothian, although Liddesdale remained in the Buccleuch family. This act of resumption added a very powerful family, with their numerous kindred and followers, to the king's enemies during the civil wars. Buc- cleuch levied a strong regiment of his clan for the service of the Parliament against the king, who did good service at Newcastle, Longmarston-moor, and particularly at Philiphaugh. Bishop Guthrie repeatedly notices the inveteracy of this house and 186 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. name against King Charles, which had its source in this impolitic restitution. Neither did Francis Stuart profit by the estates thus restored to him. He had been a man of dis- solute life and large expense, and they passed into the hands of his creditors, without his receiving any advantage from them. He left a son, who, according to Scotstarvet, was the same Francis Stuart that was so far reduced as to ride a private trooper in the Life- Guards. He is mentioned in the Memoirs of Captain Creightoun, but is perhaps better known as the Both well of the popular novel called Old Mortality. Stuart was not, however, slain at the skirmish of Drumclog, as is represented in that tale, but was present as a captain of cavalry at the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Mr Wood, in liis edition of Douglas's Peerage, contends, that Francis Stuart, the trooper, was the nephew of the restored son of Bothwell. But, at all events, the latter's son, called Charles, seems to have been an obscure soldier as well as his cousin, unless he has been accidentally confounded with him. In such utter obscurity terminated, in the fifth generation, a line directly descended from the kings of Scot- land. Crichton Castle, which had so often changed masters in consequence of important revolutions in the state, and witnessed so many instances of human instability, was after this period transferred from hand to hand, according to the ordinary changes of property, which it is less interesting to trace. Its previous history strongly illustrates the versatility CRICHTON CASTLE. 187 of human affairs, and the peculiar mutability of the turbulent politics of Scotland, where it became matter of proverbial remark, that no family of pre- ponderating distinction usually throve beyond the third generation. When fortunes began to be acquired by com- merce, properties situated like Crichton, in the county of Edinburgh, changed owners with a fre- quency which surprised and somewhat scandalized the gentry of the more remote counties. As the opportunities of acquiring land were in the neigh- bourhood of tlie metropolis relatively frequent, the temptations to profuse expense were equally so. Hence the proverb, that burgesses' heirs seldom thrive beyond the fourth generation, and another, which runs thus : — " The grandsire buys, the father biggs; ' The son sells, the grandson thiggs." ^ To both these adages there are many honourable exceptions ; but, of course, most of the proper- ties near Edinburgh changed masters frequently, when land became the subject of ordinary com- merce. The following were the transmissions of the Castle and Barony of Crichton, so far as we have been able to trace them. In the time of Scotstar- vet they were in possession of one Dr Seaton, as having right from the creditors of Francis Stu- art, from whom it seems to have been ac- quired by Hepburn of Humbie, perhaps as ^q^' a trustee for the said creditors. It was 1 Builds. ^ Begs. 188 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. sold about thirty years afterwards to a- Primrose of Carrington, ancestor of the family of Roseberry, and, in about forty years more, was alienated by Primrose to Sir James Justuss, of Justuss-Hall. With him the castle did not long* remain, being con- veyed in trust to one Livingstone, who j^^' sold it to Pringle Haining. He again sold it to Patrick Ross, from whose trustees it was bought by Alexander Callander, Esq. He was succeeded by the late Sir John Cal- ^^^^ lander, and the estate is now possessed by Sir John's heir of entail, J. A. Higgins, Esq. of Higgins-Nooke.^ Plaving finished the history of the possessors of Crichton Castle, it remains to notice the building itself. A stately quadrangle, surrounded by buildings of various ages and distinct characters, in which we can trace something of the change of possessors which this castle has undergone. All are totally ruinous. In the north-west angle of the quadrangle, is a small keep, or donjon-tower, which seems to have been the habitation of the Crichtons, ere the talents of the chancellor elevated his family above the rank of lesser barons or gentry. If their conse- quence had never swelled beyond the accom- modations which that rude tower afforded, in aU probability it would have remained theirs for some centuries longer. The chancellor, doubtless, ^ Chalmers's Caledonia, vol. ii., p. 819. [The possessor now, 1834, is William Burn Callander, Esq.] CRICHTON CAvSTLE. 189 added considerably to his paternal fortalice ; and the buildings immediately adjacent on the east seem to be of the period of James II. We are, indeed, told by our historians, that the castle of the chancellor was demolished by Douglas in 1445 ; but when this phrase occurs, it is usually to be understood with much modification. The ex- treme thickness of the walls of a Scottish castle, defied any hasty application of force, and the actual demolition was a work both of time and expense. Thus, when it was resolved, in 1409, to raze the Castle of Jedburgh, as afibrding too convenient a stronghold to the English, it was agitated in the Scottish Parliament, that a tax of two pennies upon every hearth in the kingdom, should be employed to defray the charge. When we read, therefore, in Scottish history, of a fortress being demolished, it frequently means only that it was laid waste and dismantled. Such must have been the case with Crichton ; for had it been razed totally in 1445, it could hardly, in 1451, have been so completely rebuilt, as to affbrd refuge to its master when pur- sued by the bands of Douglas. The size, also, and style of building of the tower on the north-western angle, show that it has been erected before the rest of the castle. Its antiquity, therefore, will proba- bly draw back to the fourteenth century. It is not so easy to assign a precise date to other parts of the castle ; but the eastern side is the most modern, as well as the most beautiful, and ofibrs an example of splendid architecture very unusual in Scottish castles. The inner front, as represented in the engraving, rises above a piazza 190 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. running tlie whole length of the front, the pillars of which have their capitals richly decorated with anchors entwined with cables. This favourite ornament inclines us to refer the building to one of the Earls of Bothwell, who were High Admi- rals of Scotland ; and we are disposed to assign the work to the splendour of Earl Patrick, whose taste for magnificence has been already commemo- rated. Above the portico, the stones of the whole front are cut into diamond facets, the angular pro- jections of which produce a variety of light and shade, and give a varied, rich, and beautiful effect to the building. The interior corresponds to the external elegance of the structure. The first floor seems to have been occupied by a magnificent gal- lery or banqueting-room, well lighted, and running the whole length of the front, to which access was formerly given by a stately staircase, which is now entirely demolished. The soffits of this staircase have been ornamented with cordage and rosettes, carved in freestone ; and the whole might afford admirable hints for the modern Gothic, now so frequently employed in architecture. The plainer and less interesting parts of the castle contain such a variety of halls and chambers, as shows the power of the baron, and the number of his follow- ers. The kitchen, which is in the north-eastern angle of the castle, corresponds in gloomy magni- tude to the rest of the building. In a large stone-chimney in one of the apart- ments, a flat arch is formed of freestones very ingeniously dovetailed into each other. We must not omit to mention the dungeon, a CRICHTON CASTLE. 191 horrible vault, only accessible by a square hole in the roof, through which captives were lowered into this den of darkness and oblivion. This pit is termed the Massiemore, a name of Eastern ori- gin. It is still applied to the dungeons of the ancient Moorish castles in Spain, and occurs twice in the " Epistolce Itinerarice^' of ToUius : — " Car- eer subterraneuSy sive, ut Mauri appellant ^ Maz- MORRA," p. 147 ; and again, " Coguntur omnes captivi sub noctem in ergastula subterranea, quce Turcce Algezerani vacant Mazmorras," p. 243.^ 1 [" That castle rises on the steep Of the green vale of Tyne : And far beneath, where slow they creep. From pool to eddy, dark and deep, Where alders moist, and willows weep. You hear her streams repine. The towers in different ages rose ; Their various architecture shows The builders' various hands ; * A mighty mass, that could oppose. When deadliest hatred fired its foes. The vengeful Douglas bands. ^ " Crichton ! though now thy miry court But pens the lazy steer and sheep, ' Thy turrets rude, and totter'd keep, ^ Have been the minstrel's loved resort. Oft have I traced within thy fort, ■ Of mouldering shields the mystic sense. Scutcheons of honour, or pretence, Quarter'd in old armorial sort, .■- Remains of rude magnificence. Nor wholly yet had time defac'd Thy lordly gallery fair ; Nor yet the stony cord unbraced Whose twisted notes with roses laced. Adorn thy ruin'd stair. Still rises unimpaired below The court-yard's graceful portico; Above its cornice, row and row Of fair hewn facets richly show Their pointed diamond form. 192 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. Pennaiit slightly hints, that a person of rank was formerly lowered into the Massiemore of Crichton Castle for having failed to pay his respects to the lord in passing through his domains. The detailed tradition is as follows : — In Scotland, formerly, as still in some parts of Greece, the great chieftains required, as an acknowledgment of their authority, that those who passed through their lands should repair to their castle to explain the purpose of their journey, and receive the hospitality suited to their rank. To neglect this, was held discourtesy in the great, and insolence in the inferior traveller ; and so strictly was the etiquette insisted on by some feudal lords, that the Lord Oliphant is said to have had guns planted at his Castle of Newtyle, in Angus-shire, so as to command the high-road, and to compel all restive passengers to do this act of homage. It chanced when such ideas were predominant, that the Lord of Crichton Castle received intelli- gence that a Southern chieftain of high rank, some say Scott of Buccleuch, was to pass his dwelling on his return from court. The Lord of Crichton made great preparation to banquet his expected guest, who nevertheless rode past the castle with- out paying the expected visit. In his first burst Thoueh there but houseless cattle go To shield them from the storm. And, shuddering", stiJl may we explore. Where oft whilom were captives pent. The darkness of thy Massy More; Ot from thy grass-grown battlement. May trace, in undulating line. The sluggish mazes of the Tyne.'* Marmion^ canto iv., st. 10, 11.} I CRICHTON CASTLE, 193 of indignation, the baron pursued the discourteous traveller with a body of horse, made him prisoner, and confined him in the dungeon, while he himself and his vassals feasted upon the good cheer which had been provided. With the morning, however, came reflection, and anxiety for the desperate feud which impended as the necessary consequence of his rough proceeding. It is said, that, by way of amende honorable^ the baron, upon the second day, placed his compelled guest in his seat of ho- nour in the hall, \/hile he himself retired to his own dungeon, and thus did at once penance for his rashness, satisfied the honour of the stranger chief, and put a stop to the feud which otherwise must have taken place between them. Ere taking leave of these ruins, there may be mentioned a whimsical circumstance which occur- red there, about thirty years since, during a fox- chase, and is described by an eyewitness. Rey- nard, hard pressed by the Dalkeith pack, took refuge in the ruins of Crichton Castle, with the recesses of which he had probably been long ac- quainted. The hounds followed in full cry, and wakened the slumbering echoes of the vaults, halls, and chambers, with sounds very different from those to which they had replied during the feudal festivals of the Crichtons and the Bothwells. In the midst of a clamour, which was multiplied ten- fold by the reverberation of the ruins, the fox was seen to leap from a small window about ten or twelve feet from the ground, and make the best of his way for the neighbouring cover. The hounds speedily found out the mode of Reynard's retreat ; VOL. VII. N 194 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. but, as only one could pass tlirough the opening at a time, it. was one of the strangest sights possible to see them tumble successively, dog after dog, like a stream, or rather cascade, composed of living creatures, each eagerly resuming the pursuit as he touched the ground, while those that were detained "within expressed their rage and impatience by the eagerness of their continued clamours. The fox, however, had by his finesse gained so far the advan- tage, that he reached the cover on the banks of the stream, and the hounds were thrown out. Upon the whole, these romantic ruins are well Reserving a visit, whether from the antiquary, the admirer of the picturesque, or he who seeks the scenes of historical events, as fittest to convey sub- jects of grave contemplation, and cherish the re- membrance of days which are gone by. Before leaving the subject of Crichton Castle, it is proper to notice the neighbouring Collegiate Church, which is represented in a slight engraving taken from the south-west. It was originally a rectory, rated in the ancient Taxatio at 30 merks, and received its collegiate foundation from Chan- cellor Crichton, out of thankfulness and gratitude to Almighty God for all the manifold deliverances lie had vouchsafed to him. So Crawford the gene- alogist says, " ought to be presumed, and so he verily believes ; " leaving, of course, the more un- charitable few, to impute either superstition, hypo- crisy, or a political wish to gratify the church, as the ruling motive of the veteran statesman. The foun- dation is endowed, — " In laudem et honorem Dei Omnipotentis^ et Domini nostri Jesu Christi, CRICHTON CASTLE. 195 heatce et gloriosce Mari^ semper Virginis, beati Kentigerni et omnium sanctorum, et electorum DeV' — for a provost, eight prebends, and two boys, appointin*^, as was usual then, divine service to be daily offered ''pro anima bonce memorice Jacobi Regis Scotorum, et pro salute supremi Domini nostri Regis Jacobi moderniy et Domince Marije Hegince, conjugis suce ; et pro salute animarum an- tecessorum, et successorum suorum ;pro salute etiam animarum Domini Johannis Cnicwro^ patris meiy €t Chrstian^ matris mecBy nec non pro salute animcB mece, et Agnetis conjugis mece, et animarum omnium antecessorum, et successorum nostrorum ; etpro salute omnium fidelium defunctorum,^ &c. The ancient Church of Crichton still subsists, a small but venerable building, in the usual form of a cross, with a low and truncated belfry. The west end has been left unfinished. There are also, without the gates of the castle, and at a gun-shot's distance, the ruins of a chapel, intended for divine service. It is remarkable, that, in Scotland, the chapel of the castle is often thus situated, perhaps to avoid admitting within the precincts of the fortification those w^iom it was not thought proper or decent to debar from the place of worship. [ 196 ] BORTHWICK CASTLE. [turner.] This ancient and stately tower rises out of the centre of a small, but well-cultivated valley, water- ed by a stream called the Gore, which, flowing to the north-eastward, joins the Esk near Kirkhill; thus deceiving the eye of the spectator, who is led to imagine it the same brook with that on which Crichton Castle is situated at about two miles distance, and which has a south-easterly course. Contrary to the common case, Borthwick Castle did not give a territorial denomination to the Karons who possessed it ; but, on the contrary, received its name from theirs. We should con- ceive that the baronial name of Borthwick was derived from the ancient parish of Borthwick, and the river of the same name in Selkirkshire ; yet, genealogists find individuals so called settled in Berwickshire and elsewhere, before Sir William Borthwick, the most distinguished of the family, obtained from Robert, Duke of Albany, governor of Scotland, a charter of the barony of Borthwick, in Selkirkshire, formerly belonging to Robert Scott. In this uncertainty, tradition has taken the liberty of deducing the family from a supposed Andreas, Lord of Bur tick, in Livonia, who was said to haye BORTHWICK CASTLE. 197 accompanied Queen Margaret from Hungary to Scotland in the year 1057. It is cen-tain that, however descended, Sir Wil- liam de Borthwick, who was already possessor of Herriot-moor, bought from Sir William Hay the greater part of the manor of Locher worth, and bestowed upon it his own family name : he then obtained from King James I. a special license for erecting upon the spot called the Mote of Locherwart, a castle, or fortalice, and to surround the same with walls and ditches, to defend it with gates of brass or iron, and to place upon the summit defensive ornaments, by which is meant battlements and turrets : he was farther empowered to place in the castle so erected, a constable, a porter, and all other persons and things necessary for the defence thereof.^ Such licenses were not very common in Scot- 1 [LiTERA LICENTIiE WiLI.IELMO DE BoRTHWICK DE EODEM aiiLiTi AD coNSTRUENDUM CASTRUM. — {Regist. Mag. Lib. 3, No. 86.) — Jacobis Dei gratia Rex Scotorum. Omnibus probis "hominibus suis ad quos presentes literse pervenerint Salutem. Sciatis quod concessimus Dilecto et Fideli nostro Willielmo jde Borthwick de eodem militi tanquam utile et honestum licentiam nostram specialem construendi castrum in loco illo qui vulgariter dicitur le Mote de Lochorvvart infra vicecomi- tatum de Edinburgh ac ipsum castrum seu fortalicium erigere fortificare muris fossisque circumcingere portis ereiis sea ferreis ac in sumitate ornamentis defensivis preparare. Et in eodem castro seu fortalicio constabularium janitorem cus- todesque necessarios et optimos pro sua voluntate ponendi ct removendi ac omnia alia quae ad securitatem et fortificationem dicti castri necessaria fuerint faciendi. In cujus rei testimo- . nium has literas nostras sub magno sigillo nostro fieri fecimus patentes. Apud Edinburghum 2vick, according to genealogists, made also a figure in the history of his time ; he adhered to the king in the feuds of the Douglasses, and sat in that Parliament by which doom of forfeiture was pronounced upon that powerful family on the 10th of June, 1455. Upon the 14th of March, 1457, we find Lord Borth- wick protesting in open Parliament against the pur- pose of the king to raise Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith, for the reward of his loyalty, to the rank of Earl, by the title of Morton, alleging, that the lands of Morton belonged in property to his sister Janet, Lady Dalkeith, and Sir William Douglas, her son ; wherefore. Lord Borthwick humbly im- plored the King, that no title might be conferred in prejudice of their right. It was replied by the Chancellor, that the place from which Lord Dal- keith was to derive the title of his proposed Earl- dom was Morton in Calderclear, and not the Castle and Barony of the same name in Clydesdale, belonging to his mother-in-law and to liis half- 202 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. brother : upon which declaration Lord Borthwick took instruments. . In. the records of Parliament, now rendered accessible to the public, by that most honourable national publication, superintended by Mr Thom- son, the Depute Register, no name occurs more frequently as attending on the Scottish Estates than that of Lord Borthwick. The vicinity of the family residence to Edinburgh may, in some mea- sure, account for this ; but, unquestionably, their power and talents rendered them also able coun- sellors, and powerful assistants of the royal autho- rity. To relieve these dry antiquarian details, the reader may be amused with the following whimsi- cal incident which took place in the Castle of Borthwick, in the year 1547. It appears, that, in consequence of a process betwixt Master George Hay de Minzeane and the Lord Borthwick, letters of excommunication had passed against the latter, on account of the contumacy of certain witnesses. William Langlands, an apparitor, or macer, (bacu^ larius^ of the See of St Andrews, presented these letters to the Curate of the Church of Borthwick, requiring him to publish the same at the service of High Mass. It seems that the inhabitants of the Castle were at this time engaged in the favourite sport of enacting the Abbot of Unreason, a species of High-jinlis, in which a mimic prelate was elected, who, like the Lord of Misrule in England, turned all sort of lawful authority, and particularly the Church Ritual, into ridicule. This frolicsome per- BORTHWICK CASTLE. 203 son, with his retinue, notwithstaiicling' of the appa- ritor's characte)', entered the church, seized upon the primate's officer without hesitation, and, drag- ging him to the mill-dam on the south side of the castle, compelled him to leap into the water. Not contented with this partial immersion, the Abbot of Unreason pronounced, that Mr William Lang- lands was not yet sufficiently bathed, and therefore caused his assistants to lay him on his back in the stream, and duck him in the most satisfactory and perfect manner. The unfortunate apparitor was then conducted back to the chmxh, where, for his refreshment after his bath, the letters of excommu- nication were torn to pieces, and steeped in a bo»wl of wine ; the mock abbot being probably of opi- nion, that a tough parchment was but dry eating. Langlands was compelled to eat the letters, and swallow the wine, and dismissed by the Abbot of Unreason, with the comfortable assurance, that, if any more such letters should arrive during the continuance of his office, " they should a' gang the same gait," i, e, go the same road. A similar scene occurs betwixt a Sumner of the Bishop of Rochester and Harpool, the servant of Lord Cob- ham, in the old play of Sir John Oldcastle, when the former compels the church-officer to eat his citation. The dialogue, which may be found in the note, contains most of the jests which may be supposed appropriate to such an extraordinary occasion.^ 1 " Harpool, IMarry, sir, is this process parchment ? Sumner, Yes, marry, is it. 204 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. The same incident occurs in another old play, The Pinner of Wakefield, where George a Greene tears, the commission of a traitorous envoy, and Harpool. And this seal wax ? Sumner. It is so. Harpool. If this he parchment and this he wax, eat you this parchment and wax, or I will make parchment of your skin, and beat your brains into wax. Sirrah Sumner, des- patch—devour, sirrah, devour. Sumner, I am my Lord of Rochester's Sumner ; I came to do my office, and thou shalt answer it. Harpool. Sirrah, no railing, but betake thyself to thy t-eeth. Thou shalt eat no worse than thou bringest with thee. Thou bringest it for my lord, and wilt thou bring my lord worse than thou wilt eat thyself? Sumner. Sir, I brought it not my lord to eat. Harpool. O, do you sir me now ! All's one for that ; I'll make you eat it for bringing it. Sumner. I cannot eat it. Harpool. Can you not? S'blood, I'll beat you till you have a stomach. [Beats him. Sumner. Oh, hold, hold, good Mr Servingman, I will eat it. Harpool. Be champing, be chewing, sir, or I will chew you, you rogue. Tough wax is the purest of the honey. Sumner. The purest of the honey ! — O, lord, sir ! oh ! oh ! Harpool. Feed, feed, 'tis wholesome, rogue, wholesome. Cannot you, like an honest Sumner, walk with the devil your brother, to fetch in your bailiff's rents, but you must come to a nobleman's house with process? If thy seal were as broad as the lead which covers Rochester Church, thou shouldst eat it. Sumner, Oh, I am almost choked — I am almost choked. Harpool. VV^ho's within there? will you shame my lord ? Is there no beer in the house? Butler, I say. Enter Butler, Butler. Here, here. Harpool. Give him beer. Tough old sheep-skin's but dry meat." First part of Sir John Oldcastle, Act ii. Scene i. ' BORTUVVICK CASTLE. 205 compels tlie bearer " to eat tlie seals, or brook the stab." — See Dodsley's Old Plays, vol v., p. 11. A similar mode of expressing scorn, with some additional circumstances of disgTace, was actually adliibited to another ambassador by the citizens of Jedburgh.^ Nash, in his controversy with Gabriel Plarvey, gives yet another instance of this whim- sical kind of revenge, as practised by the witty and dissolute Robert Greene. He says he saw liim cause an apparitor to eat his citation, very handsomely served up betwixt two plates. The officers of the church seem to liave been parti- cularly obnoxious to this unpleasant treatment. The Consistory Register of St Andrews, which contains tliis curious detail, ^ does not explain what ^ See Note, from Bannatyne's Journal, ante, p. 71. 2 The Extract was supplied to us by that eminent Scottish antiquary, J. Iliddell, Esq. Advociite. " Per officialem die lunge xvi mensis Mail anno Domi, 1547°. " Hay, Dominus Borthwick, " Eodem die (die lunse) Willielmus Langlandis baculus literarum cititaruin Domini Officialis emanatarum su{>er Johannem Dominum Borthvvik ad instHjjtiam Magistri Georgii Hay de Mynzeane et literarum t'xcoinmuni<'iindum pro nonnullis testibus contumacibus, juravitque quod idem "Willielmus baculus presentavit literas hujusmodi Curato dicte ecclesie pro earundum executione facieiida die dominico decimo quinto die mensis instantis Maii ante initium summe misse. Qui Curatus easdem ante summam missam deponenti redeliberavit, et dixit, se velle easdem exequi post summam missam. Et supervenit quidem vulgariter nuncupatus ye Ab- bot of Unressone of Borthwick, cum suis coiuplicibus, and causit him passe wyt yam quhill become to ye n)yl(ie-dam, at ye south syde of ye castell, and c^>mpeHit him to lope in ye wattir, and quhan he had loppin in ye waitir, ye said Ab- 206 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. was done in consequence of so gross an insult to an officer of the church, farther than the curate was s^ummoned to depone, in the name of the Abbot of Unreason, who, with his complices, was threat- ened with excommunication so soon as that should be ascertained. The incident serves, however, to show the progress of the Reformation at this period, as well as that unbounded license which, a few years afterwards, occasioned the choosing of Abbots of Unreason, and other popular sports of the same saturnalian description, to be pro- "th 40^* liibited by Act of Parliament. By the same statute, women singing round Sum- mer-trees, or Maypoles, are ordered to be taken, handled, and put upon the ducking-stone ; — a rude penance for so classical and pastoral an amusement. John, the fifth Lord Borthwick, though he pro- bably patronised the license of the Abbot of Un- reason, was, it is believed, a Catholic, certainly a loyalist and an adherent of Queen Mary. She bot of Unressone, saide ye deponent was not weite aneuche nor deip aneuche, and wyt yat keist him doune in ye watter by ye shulderis. And yerefter ye deponent past agane to ye kirk, and deliverit yaiin to ye curate for executione of ye samyn. And you, ye said Abbot of Unressone, came, and tuke ye letters furt of ye Curate's hand, and gaif ye deponent ane glasse full of wyne, and raif ye letters, andmulit ye samyn amangis ye wyne, and causit ye deponent drynk ye wyne ande eit ye letters, and saide, gif ony maa lettres came yair, salang as he war lord, yai sulde gang ye said gait: propterea judex decrevit Curatum citandum ad deponendum super nomine et cognomine dicti Abbatisde Unressone et suorum Complicium et literas in futurum exequendas in vicinioribus ecclesiis. Et dictus Abbas et complices excommunicandus quam primo constare poterit de eorundem nominibus." BOIITIIWICK CASTLE. 207 frequently made use of his baronial castle in her progress tlirongli her kingdom : and it would appear that Lord Borthwick was a friend and ally of BothwelL to whom, indeed, as Lord of Crichton Castle, he was a near neighbour. A journal of some material passages concerning Mary's motions, usually termed CeciFs, or Murray's Diary, contains the following entries : — " October 7, 1566. My Lord Bothwell was hurt in Lyddisdale, and the Queen raid to Borth- wick." " June 1 y 1567. He (Bothwell) purposed and raid against the Lord Houme and Fernherst, and so passed to Melros, and she to SorthiuichP " June 11, 1567. The lords came suddenly to Borthwick ; Bothwell fled to Dunbar, and the lordis retyred to Edinbrough, she followed Bothwell to Dunbar disguised." This might, in any ordinary historical investiga- tion, seem a sufficient notice of what passed. But the history of Mary Stuart is invested with an interest, as well as a mystery, which attaches to no other part of Scottish history. Her beauty, her talents, her misfortunes, her errors, the watchword which her name has long afforded to contending partisans, have combined to irritate curiosity respecting the most trivial circumstance connected with her un- happy story. The following more minute detail of the anxious moment, in which she escaped from Borthwick, is taken from a letter of James Beaton, the Archbishop of Glasgow, written to his brother Andrew, for the information of that active prelate, dated 17th June, 1567. 208 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. On 11th June, Morton, Mar, Hume, and j^^' Lindsay, with other inferior bai'ons, and at- , tended by nine hundred or a thousand horse, on a sudden surrounded the Castle of Borthwick, where Bothwell was in company with the Queen. BothweU had such early intelligence of their enter- prise, that he had time to ride off with a very few attendants ; and the insurgent nobles, when they be- came aware of his escape, retreated to Dalkeith, and from thence to Edinburgh, where they had friends who declared for them, in spite of the efforts of Queen Mary's partisans. The latter, finding them- selves the weaker party, retreated to the castle, while the provost and the armed citizens, to whom the defence of the towm was committed, did not, in- deed, open their gates to the insm'gent lords, but saw them forced without offering opposition. These sad tidings were carried to Mary by Beaton, the writer of the letter, who found her still at Borth- wick, " so quiet, that there was none with her passing six or seven persons." She had probably calculated on the citizens of Edinburgh defending the capital against the insurgents ; when this hope failed, she resolved on flight. " Her majesty," says the letter, " in men's clothes, booted and spurred, departed that same night from Borthwick to Dun- bar : whereof no man knew, save my lord duke, [e. e, Bothwell, created Duke of Orkney,] and some of his servants, who met her majesty a mile from Borthwick, and conveyed her to Dunbar." We may gather from these particulars, that, al- though the confederated lords had declared against Bothwell, they had not as yet adopted the purpose BOIITHWICK CASTLE. 209 of imprisoning Queen Mary lierself. When Both- weirs escape was made known, the blockade of Borthwick was instantly raised, although the place had neither garrison nor means of defence. The more audacious enterprise of making the Queen prisoner, had not been adopted by the insurgents until the event of the incidents at Carberry-hill showed such to have been the Scottish Queen's unpopularity at the time, that any attempt might be hazai'ded against her person or liberty, without the immediate risk of its being resented by her subjects. There seems to have been an interval of nearly two days betwixt the escape of Bothwell from Borthwick Castle, and the subsequent flight of the Queen in disguise to Dunbar. If, during that interval, Mary could have determined on separating her fortunes from those of the deservedly detested Bothwell, her page in history might have closed more happily. John Knox gives the following account of the same incident and its consequences. The nobles, who proposed to set up James the Sixth, had as- sembled at Stirling, while the Queen and Bothwell were raising men in Lothian with a view of march- ing. " The lords failing of thair design at Borth- wick Castle, went to Edinburgh, quherof they made thameselfis masters easely, having the aifec- tions of the people, notwithstanding the Erie of Huntly and Archbishop of Saint Androis perswa- sioun to the contrary : These two, with their asso- ciates, wer constrained to retire to the castle, quhere they wer received by Sir James Balfour, left there by Bothwell." VOL. vn. o 210 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. As the fifth Lord Borthwick was a faithful ad- herent of Queen Mary, his great-grandson, John, the eighth lord, was a follower of the king duiing the Great Civil War ; he was not, however, a pure royalist, or, as their enemies termed them, a malign nanty but adhered to the Scottish Parliament, and his name is to be found in the Committee of Estates, 1649 ; and on the 15th March, in the same impor- tant year. Upon this occasion Borthwick Castle, with all the other strong houses in the neighbour- hood of Edinburgh, was garrisoned for the king, which greatly straitened the invading English army under Cromwell, and, joined to the cautious tactics of Lesley, compelled Oliver to a retreat from Edinburgh, which, but for the insolent pre- sumption and pragmatical ignorance of the Presby- terian ministers, would have been both disgraceful and destructive. But when these false prophets had, by their meddling interference, occasioned the fatal battle of Dunbar, and the surrender of Edin- burgh, the detached fortresses in Mid-Lothian fell one by one into the hands of the English. Borthwick Castle seems to have held out gal- lantly, and the garrison employed, themselves to the last in annoying the victorious army. This soon drew upon them the vengeance of Cromwell, who sent the following characteristic summons, dated at Edinbm*gh, 18th November, 1650, and en- dorsed — " For the Governor off Borthwick Castle —These." « Sir, " I thought fitt to send this trumpett to you to BORTHWICK CASTLE. 211 let you know, that if you please to walk away with your company, and deliver the house to such as I shall send to receive it, you shall have libertie to carry off your arms and goods, and such other ne- cessaries as you have. You harboured such par- ties in your house as have basely and inhumanely mui'dered our men ; if you necessitate me to bend my cannon against you, you must expect what I doubt you will not be pleased with. I expect your present answer, and rest " Your servant, " O. Cromwell.'' Notwithstanding this very significant epistle, the governor of Borthwick Castle, supposed to be Lord Eorthwick himself, held out the fortress, until artil- lery was opened upon it, and then surrendered it upon honourable terms. The effect of Cromwell's battery still remains, his fire having destroyed a part of the freestone facing of the eastern side of the castle. It is said, the family repeatedly after- wards attempted to repair the injury which the place had sustained, but without success ; for, owing to the difficulty of uniting the modern and the an- cient masonry, the former always fell down ; a cir- cumstance, if true, which argued little skill in the art of building, since nothing could be so easy as to cut into the old wall, so as to afford a sufficient foundation for the new work. After the death of the last-mentioned Lord Borthwick, the title remained in abeyance ; nor has it yet been resumed by any claimant who has 212 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. been able to make good his pretensions in the House of Lords. TJie estates belonging to the family have been Kegat. C. S. time immense. In the first Lib. 2G. conveyance of the Borthvvick estates^ No. 158. executed August 1st, 1538, there are comprehended the Moat of Lochquarret, the castle of the same, called the Castle of Borthwick ; half of Bateland, in the county of Edinburgh ; Borth- wick, in Selkirkshire ; Legerwood, Glengelt, Colin- law, and Brownhouse, in Berwickshire ; Ormi- ston, Herriot, Herriotmuir, Hethpule, and Whit- field, in the county of Peebles ; and Aberdour, in Aberdeenshire ; which lands, by this deed, are destined to William, Lord of Borthwick ; John Borthwick, his son, and apparent heir ; Sir John Borthwick of Gordonhall ; and William Borth- wick of Crookstone, and their heirs-male respec- tively. Besides the descendants immediately connected by entail with the family succession, there were others of the name who were distinguished during the reigns of the several monarchs of the Stuart family. Such was Robert Borthwick, eminent for his skill both in founding and using artillery, at a time when both arts were little understood. He was Master of Artillery to James IV., and cast, among other pieces, the beautful train of guns called the Seven Sisters, so much admired by the victors whose prize they became on the fatal field . of Flodden. He put on his guns this rude legend— " Machina sum Scoto JBorthwic fabricata Roberto." T30RTHWICK CASTLE. 213 Another person of the name was remarkable for using upon his death-bed the saying which is pro- verbially termed David Borthvnck's Testament » He was bred an advocate, and acquired many large estates, which he put into his son Sir James Borth- wick's possession during his own life. The young heii- proved a prodigal, and spent all. BallencriefF, the last estate which remained, was sold while the old lawyer was dying. He heard the evil news, and only replied, " What can I say ? — I bequeath every man to the devil that begets a fool, and does not make a fool of him." We return to the principal line of Borthwick. The last direct heir-male having, as already men- tioned, deceased in the person of the ninth Lord Borthwick, in 1672, the castle and barony became the property of John Dundas of Harvistone, ne- phew of the deceased Lord Borthwick, and grand- son of Sir James Dundas, of the distinguished family of Arnistoun. It passed afterwards by purchase to the family of Dalrymple of Cousland, and from thence to that of Mitchelson of Middle- ton. By a late sale, the castle has been acquired by John Borthwick, Esq. of Crookstone, passing thus once more into a branch of the ancient family, from which the ruins derived their name, and who, as we believe, possesses a claim to inherit their ancient baronial honours. It is at any rate pleasant to consider, that so fine a specimen of ancient architecture, interesting also tlirough so many remembrances, and, if deserted, still far from being ruinous, is now in possession of a fa- 214 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. mily so deeply interested in its preservation. To render such a castle habitable, however entire the walls, and pleasant the site, is usually impossible, without altogether destroying its character as a memorial of antiquity. But that the work of actual destruction, and even the slow progress of decay, should be arrested by timely and reveren- tial attention, is what tlie historical antiquary will doubtless expect from a family possessing so proud a memorial of the grandeur of theu' ancestors. And it is with pleasure that we conclude this imperfect article, on one of the most beautiful and entire specimens of castle-architecture in Scotland, with expressing our conviction that it is now in the hands of a proprietor equally interested in its preservation, and disposed to attend to it. THE GREAT HALL OF BORTHWICK CASTLE [e. bloue] " Is," says Nisbet, so large and high in the roof, that a man on horseback might turn a spear in it with all the ease imaginable." The ceiling of this stately apartment consists of a smooth vault of ashler work, the joining of the stones being curious- ly fitted together. The roof has been painted with such devices as occur in old illuminations. There can be still traced the representation of a castle^ BORTHWICK CASTLE. 215 with its battlements, towers, and pinnacles, and the legend, in Gothic characters, tKcixtplt ni ?t}tflT0r, is distinctly legible. Stately and magnificent in itself, the Hall of Borthwick, as appears from our sketch of the his- tory of the castle, is no less rich in associations- Here we may suppose the Abbot of Unreason was permitted to exercise his frolics, till the applause with which they were received encouraged him to set his mimic authority in competition with that of the Primate of Scotland. Here " The stern protector of the conquered land •* received the keys of the castle, into which his cannon had forced an entrance. But, above all, the image of Queen Mary feasting with her un- worthy Both well, startled from revelry by the voice of insurrection, and finally obliged to escape in the disguise of a page, comes before us with that deep interest which is excited by every vicis- situde of her melancholy history. It is pleasing to reflect, that so fine a remnant of antiquity as Borthwick Castle, is now the pro- perty of those most interested in saving it from falling to ruins. It is very capable of being ren- dered habitable ; but Mr Borthwick of Crookstone, the proprietor, has, with better taste, determined to preserve the castle in its present state. The attempt to ingraft modern accommodations upon the simplicity of an ancient castle, is certain to de- stroy the points which render it interesting to an antiquary, without always answering the purpose intended by the inhabitant. So that, in the general 216 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. case, it is more judicious to arrest the progress of decay, and preserve ancient buildings in the style and form in which they were originally built, than to change their appearance, and injure their histo- rical interest, by attempting to metamorphose them into modern places of residence. TOWN OF DALKEITH. [P^EV. J. THOMSON.] This thriving town is a burgh of barony, lying about six miles from Edinburgh, and is most beauti- fully situated betwixt the rivers called the North and South Esk, which here approach close to each other, previous to their actual junction in the Park belonging to Dalkeith- House, about a mile and a half below the town. In ancient times, the town of Dalkeith, as was almost universally the fashion in Scotland, run close up to, and was terminated by, the baronial castle, which served as a citadel to the town, and in time of need was garrisoned by the inhabitants. But the principal street, which is wide and hand- some, is now terminated by the gate at the head of the avenue to the mansion, so that there is some interval between the town and the house, or, as it is popularly termed, the palace. The etymology of the name cannot be easily TOWN OF DALKEITH. 217 ascertained. Besides the barony of Keith, in Lothian, Inch-Keitli, and other compounds of the same word, occur. It has passed mto the proper name of a distinguished tribe, Avhose head was the Earl Mareschal of Scotland. But though the family of Keith probably took their name from the barony so called, of which they long held the pro- perty, that circumstance will not help us to the original sense of the word. Some have supposed Keith equivalent to the British word Cath, signify- ing battle^ in which case Dalkeith would mean the field of battle, Inch- Keith the island of battle, and so forth. The learned Mr Chalmers inclines to derive the word Keith from Caetli^ signifying, in Celtic, narrowness, or confined extent, w^hich suits well with the situation of the town, betwixt two rivers. Lying so near the metropolis, the barony, castle, and town of Dalkeith, were at a very early period possessed by proprietors of note and importance. The first upon record are the family yet remem- bered in the town of Dalkeith, by the popular name of the gallant Grahames. William de Grahame obtained from David I., so munificent in his grants to men of rank and valour, the lands of Abercorn and Dalkeitli, in Lothian, in which he was succeed- ed by his eldest son, Patrick, while his second son, John, the ancestor of the Dukes of Montrose, ob- tained other possessions in Forfarshire and else- where. The male line of Patrick, the eldest son of William, became extinct in the reign of David II., ending in the person of Sir John de Grahame, 218 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. whose possessions of Lugton and Dalkeith, as well as extensive lands in Liddesdale, passed to his daughter Margaret, who married a Sir William Douglas, and thus transferred to that yet more powerful family the estates of her father. No memorials remain of the Grahames about Dalkeith, unless the fading traditions of the place, and two curious, but wasted tombstones, which lie within the ruined circuit of the old church. They represent knights in chain-armour, lying cross- legged upon their monuments, like those ancient and curious figures on the tombs in the Temple Church, London. I Who the Sir William Douglas was, that, by his marriage with Margaret Grahame, acquired so fair an estate, antiquaries are by no means agreed. Thus far it seems to be certain, that he was the ancestor of the Earls of Morton. But a great confusion arises from the frequency of the name of William, in the House of Douglas, and from its being actually borne at this period by the celebrat- ed Sir William Douglas of Polbothy, in Molfat- dale, better known in history as the Knight of Liddesdale, and by several others. Mr Chalmers is decidedly of opinion, that although William of Dalkeith is sometimes termed the Lord of Liddes- dale, and certainly had possessions there, he must be held a different person from the celebrated Knight of Liddesdale. His reasoning on this sub- ject indicates his usual extent of research. Con- siderable difficulties, however, still hang around this obscure subject; one or two of which we may TOWN OF DALKEITH. 219 be forgiven for stating, not as impugning Mr Chalmers's opinions, but as requiring further illus- tration. It is, in the first place, an admitted fact, that Sir William Douglas of Dalkeith had a nephew, term- ed James Douglas, by whom he was succeeded. This is proved, among other circumstances, by two chartei's, the one signed at Dalkeith, 14th Decem- ber, 1351, by which William of Douglas, designing himself Lord of the Valley of Liddell, confers the lands of Aberdower on liis beloved nephew, James of Douglas, which charter he subscribes in presence of these witnesses, Andrea de Douglas avunculo meo, Willielmo de Douglas seniore fratre meo. Again, in a grant of certain lands to the chm'ch of Dalkeith, 1st June, 1406, Sir James Douglas, the grantor, mentions Sir John of Douglas, his father, the Lady Agnes, his mother, and " Willielmi de Douglas domini Vallis de Leddalle avunculi nostrir The relation of nephew and uncle, being there- fore proved to exist betwixt Sir William Douglas of Dalkeith, designed the Lord of the Valley of Liddesdale, and Sir James Douglas, we shall pro- ceed to show, that at least one ancient historian states the same connexion to have existed betwixt Sir James and the historical Knight of Liddesdale in contradiction of the system wdiich would make the latter a distinct person from Sir William Douglas of Dalkeith, assuming also the title of Lord or Laird of Liddesdale. Fordun, w^ho is usually accm'ate, mentions the murder of David de Berkeley, in 1350, as com- 220 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. mitted at the instigation of William Douglas, then prisoner in England, in revenge of the death of his brother, John Douglas, father to James Douglas of Dalkeith, the elder.^ That the historical Knight of Liddesdale is the person charged with the insti- gation of this crime, is certain, from his being des- cribed as " prisoner in England," where he remain- ed from the date of the battle of Durham, where he w^as made captive, untH 1351, when he was set at liberty upon a traitorous composition with the Eng- lish monarch. It would seem to follow, that the historical Knight of Liddesdale, unless For dun be mistaken, was that uncle to whom Sir James Douglas succeeded in the Lordship of Dalkeith. Indeed many other points of resemblance occur between these Sosias of Liddesdale, the two Sir William Douglasses. Both married heiresses, and were designed of Liddesdale. Both left an only daughter. The Knight of Liddesdale was alive in 1351. So was the Lord of Dalkeith. The Knight of Liddesdale was slain in 1353, and it would be difficult to show that the Lord of Dalkeith survived that period. Both of these Sir Williams had a father called Sir James. Sir William Douglas of Dalkeith had, as ap- pears from the chai'ter above quoted, a brother, bearing his own name of William. And the Ro- tuli Scotise contain a safe conduct to a William 1 Forduni Scot. Chrojiicon, vol. ii., p. 348. TOWN OF DALKEITH. 221 Douglas, senior, who had been prisoner in the tower along with the Knight of Liddesdale. Which circumstances, by tlie way, add a third William Douglas to the list. Yet, notwithstanding these remarkable indica- tions of identity, as well as the direct testimony of Fordun, the following circumstances, collected by Mr Chalmers, go far to establish, that the Knight of Liddesdale, and the Lord of Dalkeith, were, in fact, distinct persons. The wife of Sir William, by whom he succeeded to the estate of Dalkeith and Abercorn, is said to have been called Margaret. But the widow of the Knight of Liddesdale was certainly named Elizabeth, as appears from her curious treaty with the King of England after the death of her hus- band.^ Both were prisoners in England about the same time, but they were not taken on one occasion. William Douglas of Polbothy (indisputably the Knight of Liddesdale) was taken prisoner in a skirmish at Lochmaben, in March 1332-3, whereas William Douglas of Loudon or Dalkeith was made captive in the battle of Halidon, fought 19th July, 1333. It seems hard to reconcile these distinct points of difference with the testimony of Fordun, whom we are therefore tempted to believe mistaken in terming the Knight of Liddesdale, who was the certain instigator of the murder of Berkely, the nncle of Sir James of Dalkeith. Godscroft had ^ Rymer, vol. v., p. 760. 222 PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES. already noticed the existence of such an error, positively affirming, that the Knight of Liddesdale was " the son natural to (the good) Sir James, but not the brother of John of Dalkeith, (father to Sir James,) as some say." The point is not altogether indifferent to those claiming descent from the House of Dalkeith, since, if the Knight of Liddesdale could be identified with the founder, it would bastardize that whole race of the Doug- lasses. To return from this digression, William Doug- las of Dalkeith was succeeded by his nephew, Sir James, who transmitted the estate to a son of his own name, afterwards created Lord Dalkeith. The fam.ily finally attained the title of Earls of Morton. But although the Douglasses of the Morton branch seem thus to have possessed the property ■of Dalkeith, yet, if Froissart's testimony can be received, the castle was occupied by the Earl of Douglas, the head of the house so named, and used by him as his own mansion. In describing the skirmish which passed at the barriers of New-