Читать книгу The Steel Bonnets - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 22

The reivers themselves, as has already been mentioned, might be anything from peers to farm hands; some were full-time professional raiders, others divided their time fairly evenly between agriculture and stealing, and some made only occasional forays, when times were hard or they were offered a particularly tempting quarry. They commonly rode in family parties—Liddesdale raids were almost invariably made up of permutations of Elliots, Armstrongs, Crosers, and Nixons, just as the Redesdale and Tynedale incursions consisted largely of Charltons, Dodds, Milburns, and Robsons.

Obviously raiders got to know each other, and there is strong evidence of professional loyalty, the same men riding in each other’s company again and again, whether or not they belonged to the same family. This professional tie often spanned the Border, and it was common for Englishmen to ride with Scottish bands, and vice versa. The outlaw operations, of course, were international; gangs like Sandy’s Bairns, with whom Kinmont Willie rode latterly, would welcome recruits from anywhere.

Unfortunately there were no Pepyses among the reivers, to leave a day-to-day journal of their activities. So we can only guess how many raids were casual affairs, and how many were carefully plotted weeks in advance. We cannot know for sure if some raider’s wife, aware that her larder was running short, ever did lay a dish of spurs before her husband as a hint to be busy. One can imagine an Armstrong, in his tower, finding time hanging heavy and whistling in his sons and cousins for a spur-of-the-moment foray to Redesdale or Gilsland; they would perhaps enlist a couple of Elliots on the way, or pick up a specialist in the shape of a rider who knew the target area particularly well. On the other hand, a leader like Buccleuch was, as we know, capable of the most meticulous planning and intelligence work before he mounted a foray.

Frequently raids began from what was called a “tryst”, a prearranged meeting-place where the last-minute details were settled. These were usually well-known landmarks, and when a raid had set off without its full muster, a sign would be left to indicate the direction taken. According to Scott, one method was to cut the leader’s name or signal in the turf, the arrangement of the letters indicating the path to be followed.

Everyone who writes about the reiver’s technique invariably quotes Bishop Leslie, in one of his various translations. This is Camden’s, quoted by Scott; it is worth remembering that it applies to both Scottish and English alike.

“They sally out of their own borders, in the night, in troops, through unfrequented by-ways, and many intricate windings. All the day time, they refresh themselves and their horses, in lurking holes they had pitched upon before, till they arrive in the dark at those places they have a design upon. As soon as they have seized upon the booty, they, in like manner, return home in the night, through blind ways, and fetching many a compass. The more skilful any captain is to pass through those wild deserts, crooked turnings, and deep precipices, in the thickest mists and darkness, his reputation is the greater, and he is looked upon as a man of an excellent head.

“And they are so very cunning, that they seldom have their booty taken from them … unless sometimes, when, by the help of blood-hounds following them exactly upon the tract, they may chance to fall into the hands of their adversaries. When being taken, they have so much persuasive eloquence, and so many smooth insinuating words at command, that if they do not move their judges, nay, and even their adversaries (notwithstanding the severity of their natures), to have mercy, yet they incite them to admiration and compassion.”

His lordship the bishop writes with such feeling and descriptive skill that one wonders if he wasn’t out with the Armstrongs himself on some occasion. He has the exact mood of the business, and everything he says is consistent with the voluminous records of raids left in Border documents. What he was describing was a long-distance foray, such as might be made by Liddesdale riders far into the English Middle March, with only a small number of men involved and the need for passing undetected of the first importance.

Raids varied in size. Bands of a dozen to fifty riders were normal, but there were one-man operations, and great forays in which upwards of two or three thousand reivers took part. The objectives also varied, from a single animal—as in the case of the black horse which helped to rekindle the Maxwell-Johnstone feud—to an entire town, or even several towns. Distance was no object for rustlers who were expert at covering their traces, or who ventured out in sufficient numbers to be able to defy pursuit. Border raids are recorded within three miles of Edinburgh, and as far south as Yorkshire. What is striking is that the thieves far more often than not got away with it, which suggests that Leslie’s skilful captains and men of excellent heads were by no means uncommon.

Night-time was the popular hour for riding, although day forays of all sizes were frequent. There is some evidence that the reivers liked moonlight—“There’ll be moonlight again” is a slogan long associated with the Scott family—but even more to suggest that they preferred complete darkness. The expert guides seem to have known their ground to an inch, and the kind of leader typified by Hobbie Noble, the legendary English fugitive, could pick his way through the wastes at night with ease.

The size of the foray naturally dictated the technique employed. While small bands depended heavily on stealth and secrecy, the great raids went much more openly; they had less to fear from a hot trod or the country’s rising against them, since they were strong enough to fight off anything short of an army. Consequently, their leaders planned these forays like miniature military campaigns, often spending several days in enemy territory, or even longer, depending on the danger of the general situation.

A master of the large-scale foray technique was that old Walter Scott of Buccleuch who flourished in the first part of the sixteenth century, was an inveterate English-hater, spent several terms in confinement in Scotland for political and other reasons, and was eventually cut down by the Kerrs in the great Kerr – Scott feud. When he swept into the English Middle March in the winter of 1532 it was with 3000 lances, most of whom he held in reserve while smaller forays were detached at chosen targets. The main body thus served the double purpose of base camp, established on an English village, and ambush for any English trods which might pursue Buccleuch’s smaller raiding bands.

The ambush was a common variation of the large and medium-sized raids, the reivers leaving a strong party posted on their proposed return route, so that pursuers chasing a raid frequently found themselves surrounded and beset by an unexpectedly large enemy force. This was a favourite stratagem of the Armstrongs, who practised it memorably against Lord Dacre in 1528 (see pp. 233–4).

The raiding season, although it was never closed in practice, was autumn to spring, when the cattle and their owners were in their permanent winter quarters in the valleys. As the summer waned, anxiety grew along the frontier; “the longer the nights growe, the worse they will be”, wrote Robert Carey one late August, and young Scrope in November was lamenting: “The depe of winter and most unquiet season is come upon us.” Carey made a study of this aspect of reiving, and pronounced the last months of the year as the worst, “for then are the nights longest, theyre horses at hard meat, and will ride best, cattel strong, and will drive farthest.”

Of those closing months, the worst period was from Michaelmas (September 29) to Martinmas (November 11): “then are the fells good and drie and cattle strong to dryve”. The dead of winter was comparatively less troublesome, because of foul weather and the weaker state of the cattle. This weakness had reached a peak by Candlemas (February 2), when with the nights growing shorter and oats dearer, the reivers’ horses were less well fed and ready to be put to grass.

Thus Robert Carey, waxing technical on an admittedly technical subject: he even noticed that the thieves “will never lightly steal hard before Lammas (August 1), for fear of the assizes, but beeing once past, they returne to their former trade”. In fact it was probably not the assizes, but the removal of the cattle to the high sheilings during the summer that restrained the robbers. But his observations show up some of the finer points of reiving, although judging by Border records the pattern of raiding was spread more generally over the year than his findings suggest.

As to any geographical pattern of raids, it is difficult to say more than that the general trend from Scotland was south-eastwards, the Western end of the frontier containing by far the most troublesome elements, while from England the Middle March raiders forayed in all directions. Edward Aglionby’s report to Burghley of 1592 is quite definite that the English West and Middle Marches suffered most from Liddesdale, but that Teviotdale “doth never offend the West Border”. Lord Willoughby, at Berwick, was equally positive that all the spoils in the English East March were committed over the Tweed fords.

But it is dangerous to take these generalisations too much for granted, just as it is unwise to emphasise too strongly the importance of the so-called “reivers’ roads” which cross the Border at various points. It is tempting for a geographer to pick on well-defined paths and passages, and suggest that these were used habitually by the rustlers. The last thing a Border reiver wanted was to follow a known route, especially on the way home. There were, by contemporary calculation, more than forty passages into the English Middle March,¹ but unless the Border character has changed considerably, they were probably often ignored in favour of going “over the tops”. Men who know their business can take cattle over some unpromising country.

One thing is sure: the ground most often crossed by raiders was the Bewcastle Waste, a wild area of fell and moor lying south-east of Liddesdale on the English side. It was the very hub of the Middle and West Marches, and there is ample documentary confirmation of Lord Dacre’s assertion in 1528, that “theye come thorow Bewcastelldale, and retirnes, for the moste parte, the same waye agayne”.

But not invariably, according to Thomas Musgrave fifty years later. Writing to Burghley, he described two Liddesdale routes quite specifically; one, directed at the Coquet Valley, skirted Bewcastle to the east and ran “by the Perlfell without the Horse Head near Kelder, and so along abone Chepechase”. The second, to Tyne Water, was by Kershopehead, skirting Gele Crage, and by Tarnbek, Bogells Gar, Spye Crag, and Lampert. Musgrave was an expert frontiersman, and his information can be relied on. But these were routes which would be fashionable for a time—as in the Elliot – Fenwick feud; for the most part, the reivers were liable to ride anywhere, at any time, in any numbers.

To understand how good their scouting and woodcraft was, we should see what they were up against, quite apart from the dark, the weather, and the rough country. On the English side the most expert of all Wardens, Lord Wharton, had established a formidable guard system in the 1550s, whereby the entire frontier, from Solway to Berwick, was under watch night and day, from October to mid-March; local gentlemen were made responsible for arming and horsing their people, and setting and inspecting the watches, which were posted on hilltops, fords, valleys, and every conceivable passage over the Marches. Wharton, a hard man who believed in hanging first and asking questions later, reinforced his system with harsh penalties for neglect of duty; it was death not to resist raiders,² all intercourse with Scots was forbidden, and gentlemen were under the strictest instructions to see his rules enforced. He knew his Borderers, and was determined to stamp out any fifth column activities on the raiders’ behalf.

Nor could the reivers count on watches always being in the same place; small mobile patrols were also used, and “plump” watches of unusual strength were liable to be set up as occasion demanded.

To man the frontier efficiently, about 1000 watchers were necessary; it follows that in spite of the regulations, there was some defaulting. Young Scrope found difficulty in maintaining plump watches of forty horse in the West, and at Morpeth in the winter of 1597 there was a flat refusal to stand watches, so that a plump watch had to be moved in. Possibly owing to shortage of men, day watches seem to have been indifferently kept in young Scrope’s time.

Watches on the Scottish side seem to have been less organised, which may be significant, but here as in England there was a system of beacons on hilltops and the roofs of towers to give the alarm. Owners of towers were obliged to light their beacons on learning of any fray by night; the penalty for failure was a 3s 4d fine. In Liddesdale the approach of a raid in daylight was signalled by spreading a white sheet over a prominent bush on a hillside or crest, this being repeated all along the valley.

England had another line of defence, in the establishment of numbers of “slewdogges”³ for the tracking down of raiders; money was raised for their maintenance, and from the number of them stolen in raids it is obvious that they were highly prized. They could be worth as much as £10.

So, even allowing for those watchers who were in league with the reivers, or were too terrified to give them away, the business of raiding was fraught with hazards. From the moment the March limits were crossed, the marauders were riding in the shadow of the gallows; if some of their exploits were undoubtedly mean and cruel, they can hardly be called cowardly. Even when they were riding into a frightened countryside (which was often the case in the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign), and were sufficiently expert to avoid or evade the guards, tracker dogs, and mobile patrols, to lift their plunder and shake off pursuit, there were some dangers which could not be anticipated. No band could ever be sure that they were the only ones out on the fells at night; half a dozen raids might cross each others’ tracks in the dark, and although hi-jacking was not common, it did happen at least once, to an Elliot party who made a quick dawn foray into Bewcastle only to be jumped by a returning band of English night raiders, who lifted the Scots’ booty of eighty head.

1. The names attached to some of the Middle March riders’ passages are highly evocative: Murders Rack, Hell Cauldron, Keilder Edge, Thrust Pick, etc.

2. The penalty was eventually relaxed, and after 1570 watchers in the English West and Middle Marches who failed to raise a hue and cry against thieves were only held liable for goods stolen.

3. Also given as sloughdogs and sleuthdogs. Scott traces the name from the sloughs and mosses through which they followed the scent, but it seems more likely that it came from sleuth, meaning a track or trail. Trail hounds are common in Cumberland today, where they are used for long-distance racing. They travel at surprising speeds after scent, and it seems possible that the sleuthdogs of the sixteenth century were of this breed, rather than bloodhounds.