The History of the Border Reivers

isitors to Britain who head North by rail or motor up the M6 or A1 for Scotland and the Highlands often do not realise what they are missing by not stopping to explore the wild tract of land that spans the country from the Irish Sea in the West to the North Sea in the East. This is the land of the Border Reivers.

or over 350 years up to the end of the 16th century what are now Northumberland, Cumbria, The Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway rang to the clash of steel and the thunder of hooves. The great border tribes of both Scotland and England feuded continuously among themselves. Robbery and blackmail were everyday professions; raiding, arson, kidnapping, murder and extortion an accepted part of the social system.

hile the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled the comparatively secure hearts of their kingdoms, the narrow hill land between was dominated by the lance and the sword. The tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary peasants of the valleys, in their own phrase, 'shook loose the Border'. They continued to shake it as long as it was political reality, practising systematic robbery and destruction on each other. History has christened them the Border Reivers.

n the story of Britain, the Border Reiver is a unique figure. He was not part of a separate minority group in his area; he came from every social class. He was an agricultural labourer, or a small-holder, or a gentleman farmer, or even a peer of the realm, a professional cattle rustler, a fighting man and a guerrilla soldier of great resource to whom the arts of theft, raid, tracking and ambush were second nature. He was also a gangster organised on highly professional lines, who had perfected the protection racket three centuries before Chicago was built. He gave blackmail to the English language.

hroughout the Reiving years, travel was a dangerous business. Strangers met with suspicion, fear and hostility. The traveller had to move cautiously by day, always sought shelter before night fall and rarely found welcome.The Border lands straddle the once disputed boundary and Debatable Land between two of the most energetic, aggressive, talented and altogether formidable nations in history, England and Scotland. They stretch in one broad sweep from the Solway Firth in the West to the Northumbrian and Berwickshire coast in the East, and compromise the Cheviot Hills and parts of the Southern Uplands and the Pennines. To the West they are the Solway Coast and the Eden Valley, to the East the Merse. They are riven by the waters of the Nith, the Annan, the Esk, the Teviot, the Tweed and by Redesdale, Coquetdale, Tyndale and of course Liddesdale, scenery of so many of the bloodiest events of the Reiving years.

he area is literally dotted with castles, stately homes, the ruins of historic abbeys, fortified farmhouses (bastles), the scattered remains of pele towers and the atmospheric remnants of abandoned hamlets or howfs, hidden up the remote side valleys. The many towns and settlements that were raided, the fortified churches and the defensive walls and dykes dating back to Elizabeth I and her forbears. The fields of battle and the Reiver graveyards all bear testament to the turbulent history that marked these lands and those times.

he brutal activities of the warring families and the indiscriminate plundering and merciless cruelty that drove fear into the very souls of ordinary Border folk.

ther vestiges of that virtually ungovernable region, of that lawless state that was allowed to flourish, more or less unchecked, for the best part of 350 years, reside within the seats of power, the Warden families such as the Buccleuchs, Dacres, Humes and Scropes, the frontier garrisons, the places of truce. And on the Reivers side, there are the secret places of sanctuary, the lairs they fled to in the heat of pursuit, the 'hot-trod'; mosses and wastes where pursuing posses could find themselves at a distinct disadvantage; hidden valleys where one thousand head of cattle could be spirited away.

o visit the border lands is to venture into one of Britain's great wildernesses. To reach a forbidding tower, standing guard over a lonely moorland, is to begin to learn something about an almost forgotten way of life.