The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald
geography, by common social conditions, and by a shared spirit of lawless independence, was a paradox that intermarriage strengthened. It has never entirely disappeared.
The tribal system, sometimes called clanship, also helped to foster it. Family unity as much as anything made the Borders and set them apart. Despite the feudal system, tribal loyalty was paramount; Scott noted that no matter what the family’s origin, Saxon, Norman, or Celtic, clanship persisted and was too strong for the government. “No Prince but a Percy” was a Northumberland saying, and on the English side the power of the local chieftain was a continuing matter of concern to London, especially when the Catholic North became a menace to the Reformed state. On both sides the chief of the tribe was the man who mattered; in England “the inhabitants acted less under the direction of their landlords than under that of the principal man of their name”. In Scotland clanship was recognised by a government that could do nothing about it anyway; the chiefs were to find pledges for keeping good order by the clan, just as landlords had to take responsibility for their tenants.
There is a tendency to think of clanship as a peculiarly Scottish thing, but it is evident that on the Border the tie of tribal blood was no stronger among the Kerrs and Scotts and Armstrongs of Scotland than among the Forsters, Ogles, Fenwicks, Charltons, Halls, and Musgraves of England.
And if it was not easy to be a chief or a landlord over such people, it was even harder to be a central government whose claims to loyalty and obedience were feeble by comparison. What member of the Scott family needed Edinburgh’s protection—or approval—when he had Buccleuch’s?
No doubt the clan system contributed to the poverty and economic decline of the Borders, as well as to their backwardness. Greedy overlords were a cause of decay, and so was overpopulation of the dales, which drove men out to steal. Poverty has perhaps been over-emphasised as a root cause of Border reiving, but it was certainly a spur. The oft-quoted phenomenon of Tynedale, where a deceased’s land must be divided equally among all his sons, “whereby beggars increase and service decays” was rightly a matter for reform in Eure’s eyes.
1. The Last Years of a Frontier, pp. 26–8.
2. Thomas Howard the younger (1474?–1554), Earl of Surrey and later Duke of Norfolk (1524). Fought in Spain, 1512; Lord High Admiral of England, 1513–25; Earl Marshal of England, 1533. An experienced Border fighter, he suppressed the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Uncle of Anne Boleyn.
3. Sir Robert Carey (1560–1639), was at different times Warden of the English East and Middle Marches, and also served in a subordinate capacity in the West March. Clever, brave, and something of a beau sabreur, he is one of the few Borderers to have left memoirs of his activities.
4. Sir Robert Cecil (1563–1612), third son of Lord Burghley, was Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State from 1596, although in effect he had been holding the post for some years before that. He worked hard to secure the succession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne. Created Earl of Salisbury, 1605.
5. Sir Ralph Sadler, English Ambassador to Scotland in the middle of the sixteenth century.
6. Sir John Forster (1501?–1602), an extraordinary English Borderer, held the Middle March Wardenship for almost thirty-five years, with only one brief break. He was over 100 when he died, having lived almost exactly through the sixteenth century, and seen every aspect of Border life. No one was more experienced or sunk in frontier affairs than Forster; unfortunately, although he was outstandingly brave, his honesty was seldom out of question.
7. Sir John Maxwell (1512?–1583), later Lord Herries, had a highly chequered career, during which he held the Scottish West March Wardenship five times.
8. Sir William Bowes, a treasurer of Berwick and a commissioner for Border affairs in the 1590s. There was a large family of Boweses, of whom the most famous was the earlier Sir Robert Bowes, who was Warden of the English East and Middle Marches in the 1540s, “a most expert Borderer”, and author of “Forme and Order of a Day of Truce”. A later Robert Bowes was Elizabeth’s ambassador to Scotland.
9. Ralph, 3rd Lord Eure (1538–1617) was English Middle March Warden from 1595–98, and had a hard time of it. Like some other Wardens, he failed to live up to the reputation of distinguished ancestors—in his case, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been Wardens. The great-grandfather, Sir William Eure, 1st Lord, had the East March in the 1530s and 1540s; his son, Sir Ralph Eure, held the Middle March in the 1540s, was notorious for his cruel raids in Scotland, and was finally killed at Ancrum Moor (1545)—he was the father of the 2nd Lord Eure, who was Middle March Warden in the 1550s and died in 1594. Confusion occasionally arises because of the various ways of spelling the name, which also appears as Eurie, Ewerie, Ewer, and Evers. Whenever “Eure” is quoted in this book the person referred to is Ralph, 3rd Lord, unless otherwise stated.
10. Scott, quoting Patten’s account of Somerset’s expedition into Scotland.
The tribal system, and the eternal turbulence of the frontier, dictated the day-to-day living of the people. Camden spoke of nomads; as such, the Borderers tended to live on mobile beasts rather than on standing crops. They ate beef and broth in quantity, and some mutton: “they live chiefly on flesh, milk and boiled barley”, says Leslie, while Sylvius gives a diet of fish and flesh, with bread only as a dainty. Pedro de Ayala mentions immense flocks of sheep1 in the wilder parts, and the lack of crop cultivation.
Leslie noted that not only was use of bread very limited, but that the Borderers took very little beer2 or wine. Indeed, they seem to have been abstemious enough, although according to a document giving the number of taverns in the English Border in 1571, the inhabitants of the Middle March must have had a pub for every 46 people or thereabouts, and Berwick the same proportion. But drunkenness is seldom mentioned in Border records, with such notable exceptions as the six Scots reivers whom John Carey captured drunk at an inn, and Sir John Forster’s bastard son and deputy, “wan that is so given over to drunkennes, that if he cannot get companey, he will sit in a chayre in his chamber and drinke himself drunke before he reise!”
Leslie was talking about the rural Borderers when he mentioned the absence of bread, which was commoner in the cities, larger houses, and garrisons.3 An English traveller who stayed in the home of a Border knight in 1598 (it may have been Branxholm, the hold of Buccleuch), observed that “they commonly eat hearth cakes of oats” (the cakes or cracknels of which Froissart talks), and although he was entertained “after their best manner” he found “no art of cookery or household stuff, but rude neglect of both”. His account of a meal-time in the hold of a Border chieftain is so detailed that it is worth quoting at greater length:
“Many servants brought in the meat, with blue caps on their heads,