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NIXON
(Nicksoun)
Scottish and English. Upper Liddesdale, Bewcastle, Line rivers. Often described as having many “loose men”. Chief branch, Steile.
The sons of Nick were a troublesome breed, and an important part of the Armstrong-Elliot-Nixon-Croser confederacy. Although a smaller and less compact family than the Armstrongs, they were important enough to have Thomsons, Glendennings, and Hunters living “under them”, which is another way of saying associated with them.
Like other Liddesdales, they sometimes allied with England.
Notables: Fingerless Will Nixon, Archie of the Steile, Ill-drowned Geordie.
Common on West Marches.
ROBSON
Principally English. Tynedale, Liddesdale, West Teviotdale. Chief branches Middlesknowes and Owston.
The Robsons, “a wight riding sirname”, were at one time the leading family of Tynedale, and highly troublesome. They formed a violent power bloc with the Charltons, and also with the Dodds and Milburns, the other two principal tribes of the dale, although the Milburns were also found in Redesdale and Gilsland.
Notables: Ralph of Middlesknowes, Rowe of Alanstead.
Still numerous on the Border, as are the Milburns and Dodds.
SCOTT
Scottish. West Teviotdale, Ewesdale, Liddesdale. Chief branch, Buccleuch (Branxholm).
One of the most powerful families in the whole Border, active both as reivers and officers. They are so much a part of frontier history, and their branches are so numerous, that it is unnecessary to go into detail here.
Notables: Walter Scott of Buccleuch (d. 1552); his grandson, also Walter Scott (known variously as “the Bold Buccleuch”, “Flagellum Dei”, “God’s Curse”, etc.); Walter Scott (“Auld Wat”) of Harden.
Common throughout the Borders today.
STOREY
(Storie, Storye)
English. EWM, EMM, EEM, Eskdale.
A large but unfortunate clan who were forced out of the West by Lord Dacre in the 1520s for suspected treachery, and their land in Esk occupied by the Grahams. Latterly a surname of Northumberland and heavily involved in Middle March raiding and feud.
Notables: Jock of Awtenburn, Watt of the Hove End.
Common in English Border.
And finally, for the record, these are other Border tribes who, for reasons of space, have not been given more expanded notice.
EAST MARCH
Scotland—Trotter (listed as “gentlemen”), Dixon, Bromfield, Craw, Cranston.
England—Selby, Gray (“gentlemen”), Dunne.
MIDDLE MARCH
Scotland—East Teviotdale—Young, Pringle, Davison, Gilchrist, Tait. West Teviotdale—Oliver, Turnbull (Trumble), Rutherford. Liddesdale—Douglas, Laidlaw, Turner, Henderson.
England—Ogle, Heron, Witherington (Woodrington), Medford, Collingwood, Carnaby, Shaftoe, Ridley (“gentlemen”). Redesdale—Anderson, Potts, Read, Hedley. Tynedale—Dodd, Milburn, Yarrow, Stapleton. Also Stokoe, Stamper, Wilkinson, Hunter, Thomson, Jamieson.
WEST MARCH
Scotland—Carlisle, Beattie (also Baty, Batisoun), Little, Carruthers, Glendenning, Moffat.
England—Lowther, Curwen, Salkeld, Dacre, Harden, Hodgson Routledge (“every man’s prey”), Tailor, Noble.
1. (#ulink_5991bb0a-d5f5-5048-b805-25d99ea802a3) The various Marches are indicated by initials—SWM for Scottish West March, EMM for English Middle March, and so on. DL is Debateable Land.
VIII (#ulink_6f22e402-2b7e-5704-bcc1-2346c1bf2ffe)
Hands across the Border (#ulink_6f22e402-2b7e-5704-bcc1-2346c1bf2ffe)
In auld times it was determinit … that there suld be na familiaritie betwix Scottis men and Inglis men, nor marriage to be contrakit betwix them, nor conventions on holydais at gammis and plays, nor merchandres to be maid amang them, nor Scottis men till enter on Inglis grond, nor Inglis men til enter on Scottis ground, witht out save conduct.… Bot thai statutis and artiklis are adnullit, for ther hes been grit familiaritie, and conventions, and makyng of merchandreis, on the boirdours, this lang tyme betwix Inglis men and Scottis men, baytht in pace and weir.…
—The Complaynt of Scotland
Of all the difficulties suffered by the Wardens, especially on the English side, none was more frustrating than the international character of the Borderers. This showed itself in several ways. Despite national rivalry, there was considerable fraternisation and co-operation between Scots and English along the frontier, socially, commercially and criminally. There was intermarriage on a large scale. There were “international” families like the Grahams, and communities of “our lawless people, that will be Scottishe when they will, and English at their pleasure”, as Thomas Musgrave put it. As the century wore on, more and more Scots became settled on the English side of the frontier, to the distress of the English Wardens, who regarded them (rightly) as a dangerous fifth column. In short, the administrative advantages of a frontier system, whereby two sides are neatly divided and controlled by the frontier, were completely lost because the Borderers used the frontier as and when it suited them, and ignored it when they felt like it.
There were good reasons for this attitude. English and Scots Borderers had everything in common except nationality; as we have seen already, they belonged to the same small, self-contained unique world, lived by the same rules, and shared the same inheritance. They raided and killed each other by way of business, but their view of Anglo-Scottish relations was totally different from the views of London and Edinburgh. They had to live on and by the frontier, and traditional national hostility, while it was real enough, did not prevent personal understanding and even friendship. Englishmen and Scotsmen tend to like and respect each other, when they meet on equal terms; on the Border, at all social levels, they were perfectly ready—provided feud or professional differences were for the moment out of the way—to enjoy each other’s company.
This was, of course, frowned on officially by governments who always had national security in mind.
(#ulink_155ed680-8960-5b4d-8ccb-bacec5dcc248) “There is too great familiarity and intercourse between our English and Scottish borders,” John Carey wrote primly to the Privy Council, “the gentlemen of both countries crossing into either at their pleasure, feasting and making merry with their friends, overthrowing the Wardens’ authority and all Border law.”
There spoke the born bureaucrat; the international race meetings, huntings and hawkings, football matches, and social exchanges, must have seemed unnatural and dangerous to him. Of course, he had some reason, for “in like manner, the common thieves and outlaws, English and Scots, devising murders and robberies with their fellows” were a very real threat to the common peace. The co-operation between the reivers of both sides, especially the fugitives and outlaws, was a menace beyond control, and all the more difficult to tackle because it often rested not only on a professional basis, but on a family one.
Intermarriage between Scots and English was, from authority’s point of view, a continual embarrassment and danger—“the same is the decaie of Her Majesty’s service, and the greatest occasion of the spoils and robberies upon the Border,” wrote Simon Musgrave in 1583. It was highly prevalent, especially in the West Marches, where the most troublesome tribes lived. Both governments did their best to prevent it by law—at its most extreme this imposed the death penalty on Scots who married Englishwomen without licence, or who even received English men or women; on the English side, it was March treason to marry a Scotswoman, or even to befriend her, without the Warden’s permission.
Borderers were not the kind to ask leave for anything, and especially not to go courting. They married across the line with a fine disregard for the laws, which young Scrope in 1593 confessed were “too remissly executed”—so frequently, in fact, that when Thomas Musgrave drew up his celebrated list of Border riders, he made a special note of those Mangerton Armstrongs who were not married to English girls, and underlined his point by singling out the Elliots because few of them took English wives. The Armstrongs seem to have found the Graham and Forster girls particularly attractive, and vice versa.
The same thing happened all along the Border; one of the charges levelled against Sir John Forster, the English Middle March Warden, was that he tolerated inter-racial marriages—the Forsters with the Humes, the Selbys with the Rutherfords, the Collingwoods with the Halls of Teviotdale, the Reades with the Armstrongs, and so on. Forster, sunk deep as he was in Border politics, doubtless had his own private reasons for permitting these alliances, but these apart he was too old and worldly-wise to try to impose government’s law on nature’s.
These inter-racial marriages greatly complicated the Warden’s work (to say nothing of the historian’s) since they flatly contradicted the ancient working principle that Scot and English were mutually hostile. At worst, they provided an added incentive to English and Scottish marauders to combine in their depredations, and in their hostility to authority; at best they confused an already complicated social pattern. It was impossible for a Warden to rely on a man whose wife—and therefore father-in-law and brothers-in-law, to say nothing of uncles and cousins—belonged to the other side. A glance at Musgrave’s list, with its massive succession of Anglo-Scots marriages, or at the Graham genealogy, over which poor Burghley spent so much weary annotation, will explain why young Scrope was driven to despair by subjects who had ties with both sides of the line, and exploited them shamelessly.
To a virtual outsider like Scrope it was a hopeless situation. One of his own principal Border officers, Thomas Carleton, a former constable of Carlisle Castle, was closely related by marriage to the great Scottish reiver, Kinmont Willie. His English Grahams were so intertwined with the robber families of Liddesdale that “no officer could move against evil-doers of England or Scotland, but the Grahams knew of it and prevented it.” They were so strong by marriages on both sides that they were in a unique position to trouble the peace; apart from ordinary confederation with Scottish thieves, they were in the habit of importing their Scottish relatives to do their dirty work for them, and protesting their own innocence.
The Grahams were admittedly a special case. Scottish in origin, English by adoption, and ready to be either, they were settled within the limit of the English West March. The biggest family in the Western Border, they also had a fair claim to being the worst. In murder, blackmail, theft, extortion, and intrigue they were second to none—yet they held their English land on condition that they defend the Border against the Scots, watching the fords and being constantly “with gere and horses still reddye” to resist incursions. How well they did it was seen in the Kinmont raid when they actually assisted Buccleuch’s foray to Carlisle Castle, having done much of the plotting groundwork as well.
“Many of them are linckede in marriage [with the Scots], and partakers with them, and some bringers in of the same.” It was the understatement of the century, but manfully as Scrope tried to prove the Graham’s treachery (which everyone knew, anyway), he was never able to do anything effective about them.
And of course with the passage of time the general situation became worse, with the international family ties growing ever stronger and more complex, until it must have seemed to harassed officials like Scrope that everyone in his March had relatives over the Border, and was therefore involved in their tangled and ever-changing feuds and alliances. It became increasingly hard to determine who precisely was who, much less who could be trusted.
But if intermarriage was a dangerous nuisance, thickening the plots of regular criminal conspiracy, it was no more alarming to the English Wardens than Scottish immigration. Illegal pasturing of cattle, and even raising of crops, in the opposite realm, was one thing, but the permanent settlement of thousands of Scots on the English side of the line was a threat to national security. Hunsdon in 1587 found “so many Scottes planted within Northumberland, especially on the very Borders, as no exploit or purpose can be secretly resolved uppon, but … the Scottes have straight warning.” In some English towns there were more Scots than English; given authority, Hunsdon would get rid of two or three thousand of them.
This invasion was partly blamed on the fact that the English tenants had been driven out by Scottish raiders; it would have been fair to share the responsibility with oppressive English landlords. And it does not appear as though the ordinary English Marchman shared his superiors’ concern at the presence of the incomers; large numbers of Scots found employment as servants on the English side.
Not all of them were so welcome. The English West March found itself “for Scottes roges … overlaide with thousands”, and even in the largest English towns their presence constituted an insoluble problem. The Mayor of Berwick was complaining in 1592 of Scottish gentlemen banished from their own country for murder, who went armed about the city’s streets; no Scots-born person, he thought, should be permitted there, in particular those Scottish merchants who provided embarrassing competition to local traders, and carried English money into Scotland.
(#ulink_01623a4a-0a9c-5a7b-ad8b-19c9d3d58120) But in spite of his complaint, there were still three or four hundred Scots in Berwick four years later (over 10% of the population), although those men of the garrison with Scottish wives had been dismissed, and all Scottish servants banished. Those who remained were “too many for safety”, in John Carey’s opinion—“Marye! the country is full of Scottes!”
Berwick, although it had provided a special Scottish market place outside the fortifications in 1587 (after all, it depended on Scottish food) and prohibited Scots from lodging in the town “or to walk up and down”, was less successful with its unwanted immigrants than Carlisle. “Scotch merchants” were avoiding tolls there in 1596, but as the largest city on the Borders, inured to guarding the worst stretch of the frontier, it seems to have been more tolerant of those from north of the line. Most of its guilds had regulations discriminating against Scots, and the city itself forbade “unchartered” Scots to live there, or to walk the streets after curfew without an English companion. However, it also distinguished between “outmen” (those having business in the city but living outside) and “foroners” (complete strangers), so the Scots were not alone in being specially classified.
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Enforcing the discriminatory rules in the cities, and resisting the mass immigration which Hunsdon deplored in the Middle March, depended on being able to tell who was Scottish and who English. This was not always easy. Names were not a reliable indication, since many Border families were represented on both sides of the line, and adopted nationality accordingly. Although the Armstrongs were predominantly Scots, there were plenty of English Armstrongs who had lived in Cumberland from time immemorial, and who felt no kinship whatever for their Liddesdale namesakes. The muster roll of Askerton in England in 1580–81 contains fourteen Armstrongs out of a total of forty-nine names. The Grahams have already been mentioned as the classic example of a divided family; the Nixons and Crosers, important names of Liddesdale, were also as much English as Scottish; the Forsters, Halls, Bells, Littles and many others were to be found on both sides (see Chapter VII).
This was not just a case of small groups having left the parent clan and drifted across the Border; it may have been quite the reverse. Many of the leading Scottish families were in fact English in origin—the Maxwells, Armstrongs, Carlisles, and possibly the Johnstones, among others.
One can pity the innocent “non-Borderer” Wardens, or the unfortunate Frenchman who once held the Scottish East March, when confronted with this kind of mixture. An Armstrong might be an Englishman of unimpeachable standing—but he might well have Scottish relatives, and anyway before he could be safely pigeon-holed it would be necessary to find out if he was at feud with anyone, or to whom he was paying blackmail, or what professional alliances he might have. In the absence of computers, an “outsider” Warden could only call on God.
Birthplace and antecedents, when they could be established, provided a guide to a man’s nationality, but were not infallible. A heated dispute broke out between James VI of Scotland and young Scrope over one Robert Graham, whom the king claimed as “a Scottisman, borne, bapteist, mariit and bruiking (holding) land in Scotland”—powerful qualifications. Possibly so, said Scrope, but he could prove otherwise; for one thing, he had Graham’s admission that he was English. This, of course, was usually the decisive argument in doubtful cases: a man had to be accepted as what he said he was. Enterprising Borderers made the most of this; in 1550 Sandye Armstrong, ostensibly English and living in the Debateable Land, drove Lord Dacre to involved correspondence with London by threatening to become Scottish if the English Warden did not give him proper protection from his enemies.
These nationality cases baffled officialdom, who had no means of settling them. When Sir John Maxwell, Warden of the Scottish West March, laid before the Scottish Privy Council in 1564 a proposal that he should “admit George and Arthur Graham as Scottismen”, the council played a master-stroke. “Efter the mater wes resonit, and all motives and perswasionis were considerit”, Maxwell was told to use his own discretion.
In practice, there probably was one good test that could be applied to a Borderer whose nationality was in dispute, and whose antecedents were unknown: his accent. Even today, dialect has a habit of stopping dead at the Border line; to the native there is all the difference in the world between the harsh, resonant growl of the Cumbrian, the extraordinary guttural Northumbrian voice which makes “r” a drawn-out clearing of the throat, and the up-and-down cadences of the Scottish side. I suspect that on the Eastern Border a dialect expert would find that the accents have come closer together than they have in the West, where the social and cultural barrier between Scotland and England is today as solid as a wall, but in general the difference is strong and unmistakable. Too strong, at any rate, for any local person to confuse a Scots voice with an English one.
Yet there is a widely-held theory that in the sixteenth century there was a common Border accent, and that it was hard to tell Scotch from English. Possibly this belief has arisen because the vocabularies of the two sides are and were very close; the North-country Englishman says “ken” for “know”, and “ower” for “over”, and “cuddy” for “ass”, just as the Scot does. But the pronunciations are quite different, although this may not be so evident to the outsider’s ear.
The common-accent school cite as evidence the passage from a seventeenth-century London play in which a Northumbrian is mistaken for a Scot. “I was born in Redesdale,” he says, “and come of a wight riding sirname, called the Robsons; gude honest men, and true, saving a little shiftynge for theyr living; God help them, silly poor men.”
A woman answers: “Me thinke thou art a Scot by they tongue,” and the Robson denies it hotly.
This does not demonstrate anything satisfactorily except that a Londoner had difficulty in telling the difference; one is inclined to prefer the contemporary evidence of the letters in which Borderers, with their eccentric spellings, set their accents on paper. Take the Laird Johnstone, a Scot, writing in 1597:
“I resavit your lordschipis lettre this Vodinsday at four efter nowne,” he begins, and later continues “… and siclyk hes resavit ane lettre fra Thomis Senws (Senhouse?) desyring me to be in Cairlell this Vodinsday at iij, the quihilk lettre I gat nocht quhill fywe houris efter none.”
Now there, as clear as a bell across four centuries, is a Border Scot writing as he talks, with a broad Scottish accent. Could anyone believe that Johnstone spoke with the same accent as a Northumbrian like John Forster, who can be heard muttering gruffly as he writes to Walsingham:
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“For we that inhabit Northumberland are not acquaynted with any lerned and rare frazes, but sure I am I have uttered my mynde truly and playnely … where as I am wonderfully charged with aboundance of catell fedinge and bredinge uppon the Borders, as is aledged—I assure your honour I never solde non.”
The Northern English voice is unmistakeable—the last four words alone will clinch the matter for anyone who knows the Border voices.
(#ulink_51292211-fa1f-53b9-9adb-8def5d61e93e) Both letters fit precisely into modern Scots and Northumbrian speech, so it seems reasonable to assume that the modern difference in accents is no greater than it was four hundred years ago.
However, even if the outsider Wardens did learn eventually to tell Scot from English by listening to them, they can never have recovered entirely from the shock of discovering just how deep and strong were the links and ties of culture, marriage, outlook, and behaviour between the supposedly opposite sides. Perhaps there are lessons in race relations on the old Border which might be studied with profit by modern sociologists. It was all there—race discrimination, victimisation by law, illegal immigration, and inter-racial marriage—and Border experience seems to suggest that whatever laws may be passed about segregation and integration are fairly irrelevant unless the people closely involved want to go along with them.
1. (#ulink_a376a509-ba0d-568a-8215-dc5167115a02) Eure thought it politic “to draw some of the headsmen from friendship with the Scots” in 1597. He was particularly anxious about the Fenwicks, Erringtons, and Robsons.
2. (#ulink_fe50178e-3929-53a8-86f2-5ee84db12798) This may have been a well-founded complaint, in spite of the debasement of English coinage throughout the century. It is worth noting that in 1543 the Scottish Privy Council had forbidden the import of the English groat, because they “ar nocht silver and are false”.
3. (#ulink_e3c1a3bd-0e1d-5810-9c50-ad8e54886ab0) The Smiths’ Guild of Carlisle went even further, specifically discriminating against “Francis forringers”. Anyone speaking a foreign tongue was, to Carlisle, simply a Frenchman.
4. (#ulink_616e43fc-1b64-55f2-8cfa-2d9b24b595f8) Sir Francis Walsingham (1530–90), secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth from 1573 to his death, and famous as chief of intelligence and counterespionage.
5. (#ulink_84522ea4-4a70-556d-866b-02bdb3274593) One wonders if Shakespeare knew the Northumbrian accent—he could capture regional voices expertly, as he did in Henry V with Fluellen the Welshman and Jamy the Scot. Hotspur’s lines in Henry IV, Part 1, go beautifully in Northumbrian, especially his “I remember when the fight was done” speech; it is remarkable just how many words and phrases designed to emphasise the Northumbrian vocal peculiarities are contained in this passage—“perfumed like a milliner”, “guns and drums and wounds”, “untaught knaves, unmannerly”, and so on. The same is true for the whole of Hotspur’s part; it is hard to believe that this was accidental. (There is, of course, a tradition that Hotspur had a speech impediment, and that Shakespeare knew this. But as one gentleman living in the Coquet Valley has suggested, this apparent impediment may have been no more than an ordinary Northumbrian accent).
IX (#ulink_a6c3a59f-96b5-5eb1-9fe2-072915e14b9b)
Bangtail and company (#ulink_a6c3a59f-96b5-5eb1-9fe2-072915e14b9b)
The Borderers were unusual in so many things that it is not surprising to find that they had their own peculiar customs in the matter of forenames and nick-names, which fell into several categories.
The first, and most confusing of these, arose from the frequency with which men of the same clan and surname also bore the same Christian name—one index to the Calendar of Border Papers, for example, contains no fewer than twelve Hob Elliots, and there is an abundance of Jock Armstrongs, Walter Scotts, Richard Grahams, Andrew Forsters, and so on. It was necessary to distinguish them, and one method was to combine their Christian name with that of their father: thus Christie Armstrong the son of William Armstrong was Will’s Christie, while Christie Armstrong the son of Simon Armstrong was Sim’s Christie. This was sometimes carried on to a third generation, so that there were Gibb’s Geordie’s Francis, Dick’s Davie’s Davie, and Patie’s Geordie’s Johnnie. Occasionally the mother was cited, as in Bessie’s Andrew and Peggie’s Wattie.
A second method was to call a man by his place or land: Kinmont Willie, Lancie Whithaugh, Hob of the Leys, Jock of the Side, Jock of the Park, etc., or by his rank—Sim the Laird, for example. By a combination of the two methods we get Whithaugh’s Andy, the Laird’s Jock, Kinmont’s Jock, Hob the clerk’s brother, and the like.
All too often contemporary documents dispensed with surnames altogether, and since Armstrongs called the Laird’s Jock or Rynion’s Archie had a habit of cropping up generation after generation, the task of sorting them out becomes complicated. This happens well up the social scale, too, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the various Kerr family leaders, since they are almost invariably referred to not by their given names, but by their estates. One Cessford can look very like another, and the same is true of the great breed of Ferniehurst.
But the most interesting nick-names, and the ones in which the Borderers obviously took great pleasure, were those descriptive and often highly offensive appellations referring to personal appearance, habits, and behaviour. Thus we find Curst Eckie, Ill Will Armstrong, Fingerless Will Nixon, Nebless Clem Croser, the two Elliot brothers, Archie and George, who were familarly known as “Dog pyntle” and “Buggerback”, and an Armstrong called “Skinabake”. Names like these last three probably owe themselves to nothing more than the Borderers’ delight in thinking up irrelevant and poetic obscenities to attach to each other; Border children still bandy them about with disarming fluency.
On the other hand, one can guess how David Armstrong came to be known as “Bangtail”. Exploits of a sterner kind are commemorated in names like Ill-drowned Geordie, Archie Fire-the-Braes, Out-with-the-sword, Gav-yt-hem, Crack-spear, and Cleave-the-crune. These explain themselves, but one wonders how a reiver came to be known as Laird-give-me-little, or As-it-luiks, or Hen-harrow, or why the nickname Sweet-milk was so popular.
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Robert Bruce Armstrong, the Liddesdale historian, had a fine collection of these names, many of them given above, and one cannot do better than this representative selection:
Hob the king, Dand the man, Gib alangsyde, Hob-wait-about-him, Red Cloak, Unhappy Anthone, Sow-tail, Ower-the-moss, Lang Will, Red Rowan, Wantoun Sim, David-no-gude-priest, Evilwillit Sandie, Shag, Bull, Lamb, Mouse, Sore John and Wynking Will.
If we knew how they came to be awarded we would know more of the Borders than we can ever discover from conventional histories.
1. (#ulink_f0ff78a0-1566-5433-886e-62b0ba3fc645) There is a striking resemblance between some of these names and those of Red Indians like Alligator-Stands-Up, Thunder-Rolling-over-the-Mountain, and Crazy Horse. Many of these meant the opposite of what they appeared to mean—e.g. Man-Afraid-of-his-Horses, far from being a term of contempt, meant literally a man so formidable that even the sound of his horses terrified his enemies. Probably some of the Border names above have the same kind of hidden meaning.
X (#ulink_f66eee71-4611-5e44-882c-935ef58c75e5)
The game and the song (#ulink_f66eee71-4611-5e44-882c-935ef58c75e5)
Like so many warlike people, the Borderers were sports enthusiasts, and still are. The little Scottish towns, with their small catchment areas, produce Rugby teams that compare with the biggest club sides anywhere; within living memory the wrestlers of Cumberland, farm boys and Saturday afternoon amateurs, could send out a team to meet the best in the world and beat them.
There was no Rugby in the sixteenth century, but there was “football”, the father of Rugby, Soccer, and the American game. In its primitive form it lingers today in places like Jedburgh and Workington, where most of the young male population is supposed to take part, and the playing area covers the whole town. The old Borderers loved their football, and on the Scottish side even the nobility joined in, despite the laws against “futbawis, gouff, or uthir sic unprofitable sportis”. Mary Queen of Scots once watched a two-hour match on the meadow beneath Carlisle Castle, and Francis, Earl Bothwell, the notorious “King Devil”, played the game on the Esk with other “declairit traitours to his Majesty” in 1592. He occasionally played dirty too, if we can accept Robert Bowes’ account of an earlier match in which “some quarrel happened betwixt Bothwell and the Master of Marishal upon a stroke given at football on Bothwell’s leg by the Master, after that the Master had received a sore fall by Bothwell.” Every football fan will recognise this sequence of events; obviously some things about the game have not changed. Following the incident Bothwell and the Master agreed to meet secretly next day to fight the matter out, and the king had to intervene.
Football incidents were not always so trivial, however. One match, the fore-runner of the Scotland v. England internationals, perhaps, resulted in slaughter. It happened in 1599, when six Armstrongs came to Bewcastle to play a match against six of the local English boys, and after the game there was “drynkyng hard at Bewcastle house”. However, it happened that a Mr William Ridley, an Englishman, “knowing the continual haunt and receipt the great thieves and arch murderers of Scotland, had with the captain of Bewcastle”, determined to capture the Armstrong footballers while they were on English ground. No sportsman, he assembled his friends and lay in wait, but somehow the Armstrongs had been tipped off, and Mr Ridley’s ambush party found themselves suddenly set on by more than 200 riders. Ridley and two of his friends were killed, thirty taken prisoner, “and many sore hurt, expecially John Whytfeild whose bowells came out, but are sowed up againe”.
The result of the game is not recorded.
Even more popular was horse-racing, in which the Borderers excelled, especially in the West Marches. The prizes were usually bells, and the oldest, dating from the 1590s, is in Tullie House Museum, Carlisle. Like the football matches, race meetings were frowned on by the authorities because they attracted the dregs of society, and were commonly used as covers by plotters: the rescue of Kinmont Willie was planned, in its later stages, at a Scottish race meeting, and the murder of Sir John Carmichael, a Scottish Warden, by Armstrongs, was plotted at a football match.
However, Wardens and officers sometimes attended the races. Young Buccleuch was a race addict, Lord Willoughby
