Three Centuries of Warfare Between England and Scotland
English history and Scottish history have always been interlinked and often bloody. For the three hundred years following King Edward I's invasion of Scotland in 1296, until the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, England and Scotland attacked and counter-attacked, fighting many battles and sieges. Thousands died in major encounters at Berwick, Dunbar, Bannockburn, Pinkie Cleugh, Flodden and Solway Moss, with countless other deaths in frequent but no less fierce ambushes, raids and skirmishes.
Widespread destruction and pillage followed each nation's army whenever it advanced or retreated. The war-zone was the vast region made up of the six Border Marches*, West, Middle and East Marches on each side of the border. Here, between these increasingly bitter enemies, hardy, resolute and intermarried border people struggled to survive. For three centuries, the borderers were to know little else but war, starvation, raid and counter-raid, murder, arson and bitter feuds.
Exceptional Light Cavalry and Tough Guerillas
At each new outbreak of war, border men were the first conscripts into each country's army, to bolster and guide it across vast tracts of bleak and inhospitable terrain. Esteemed as tough, skillful fighters and exceptional, if unruly light cavalry, the borderers were guerillas but today's visitors will be hard-pressed to find their graves. Tens of thousands died, not at home in their beds, but on remote hillsides, lonely moors, in dark woods, and treacherous bogs. They fought and died in devastating battles and from starvation, disease and injury along the way.
Battlefield survivors often ended their days on some distant gallows, or in a local specialty, the drowning-pool, while others ended their days on border raids, fighting to protect their livestock and homes one day, then riding to steal food and property the next. Encouraged to scout, raid, forage and fight in time of war, they had few other skills with which to care for their kin. Raiding was known as 'reiving' and so the Border Reivers came into being.
Survival Struggles a Harsh Border Warzone
Winters in the borders were long and harsh. The borderers often built their homes of branches and turf, in the knowledge that they might well be destroyed the following night. Agriculture was basic, crops sparse and unpredictable. Anything grown in the ground might be stolen almost immediately, so they bred and herded animals that they could move quickly away from approaching threats. The downside of this though, was that others could drive the animals away too and this happened all too frequently.
During outbreaks of warfare, in between battles and skirmishes, the borderers tried to sustain their families by taking anything they could get their hands on. With their own homes and farms continually ravaged, they continued to use their fighting and foraging skills, their weapons and their armour, in forays to feed and supply their families. They raided each other, back and forth, usually at night, mounted on their sturdy Nags or Galloways, English against Scots, Scots against English, English against other English, and Scots against other Scots. Whoever had anything worth stealing was at risk.
Booty and Blackmail
Targets for reiver raids included horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, dogs, in fact any animal that could use its own legs to disappear into the wilds. Household implements, known as 'insight', weapons and clothes were valued and could be carried across a horse's back. Blackmail originated here too, though modern criminologists would call the borderers' version more of a protection racket. Families were encouraged to pay a more powerful family, reiver or farmer, clan chief or heidman, or even a gang of outlaws, for protection, usually in kind rather than cash. In return the blackmailer had not only to provide protection but was obliged to recover his 'client's' stolen goods and animals, though if this failed, there was little redress.
Centuries later, some of their family chieftains, known variously as lairds, lords or heidmen, could easily have been top gangster bosses, or guerrilla chiefs. The Border Reivers are almost forgotten, except for the hundreds of castles and fortified houses still to be found right across the borders, from modest bastle houses to grand towers and grim castles. They are also remembered in the English language, with the words 'blackmail' and 'bereaved'.
The Border Marches
* The Border Marches covered much of the area of Scotland now administered as part of Dumfries and Galloway and The Scottish Borders, known in times gone by as Dumfriesshire, Roxburgshire, Berwickshire, Selkirkshire, Peeblesshire and possibly parts of Midlothian and East Lothian. In England, the Marches encompassed a large part of what is now Cumbria, formerly Cumberland and Westmoreland, and Northumberland.
Source:
Fraser, George MacDonald. 1971. The Steel Bonnets; The story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. Collins Harvill.
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