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Border feuds: Percy and
Douglas.
A skirmish up in Annan glen,
In which the English played
The devil with the Scottish men—
But were at last repaid.
In the iron age of Gretna,
there befel a most piteous matter in those parts.
The innocent waters of the
Sark ran blood, and the shame of the English was dyed in sorrowful hues,
blushed over with crimson for the Scots harvested glory with their martial
rcap-hooks, and drove their foes before them like bolts from a catapult.
Forays and raids for plunder,
inccndiarism, and such like, were of nightly perpetration, mutually carried
on between the marchmen of the two countries; not only for the absolute
purpose of furnishing their larders with store of good beefins and kine,
being that which none can live without; but furthermore for the wanton
purpose of making pastime and promoting good neighbourhood. A community of
effects was the custom of all those who were puissant enough to enforce it;
that is, of all those who needed, and were puissant enough to take from the
rich : and that which a moss-trooper thus seized on, he held without any
pangs of compunction, considering it morally his own rightful property until
— when ? why, until a stronger than he snatched it from him, against his
ability to resist; and then he resigned it, even with the same grace as it
had been resigned to him by the former possessor— swearing oaths that would
split oak-planks two inches thick, and vowing revenge in time to come.
Edward I. had sown the
poisonous germens of a deep-rooted animosity between the two kingdoms, when
he so unamiably usurped the dominion of Scotland; for, before that fatal
era, it is noted in history, and, still better, in tradition, that the
deadly feuds, and predatory inroads, had not commenced. His preposterous
demands, so rudely urged, called the rankest simples out of the congeries of
passions whereof the human mind is made up, from their hiding-places into
action; and, when the devil in man has been awaked, passing strong must be
the narcotic that shall be able to put him to sleep again. Hence it is, that
he slumbered not on the frontier from the days of the first Edward of"
England, till the translation of the last James of Scotland; but raved like
the foul fiend up and down the land, late, early, night, morning, at all
tides and seasons, knowing no peace, and seeking no quietude.
The hereditary devil of
hatred was awake upon the borders. In the particular year, 1380, an evil
conjunction of fifteen thousand English took their hostile way right over
Carlisle sands, the great Moss, and the district of Gratney at the head of
the Firth, directing their course northward along the banks of the rivers
where the best pasture grew, and consequently where the fattest beeves were
wont to browse. Many were the bastle-houses and peels walled round about
with their yard-thick barnkin, that stood upon the strongest braes rising
above the torrent, wherein dwelt the head of the clan, or some principal
laird of the wilderness. Such of these they attacked as seemed fitting: in
some they found not a soul to dispute their entry, as the occupiers had fled
to the labyrinths of Tarras Moss, or some other wild ; so they set fire to
the building and went their way : in others they found the barnkin secured,
and the turrets covered with spearmen, speaking javelins, and also tossing
them down.
These bastle-houses, as they
were called, differed essentially from the baronial castles of the lordly
English, being neither so extensive in their ranges of buildings, towers, or
battlemented walls, nor so largely stored in provisions as to enable the
garrison to resist a protracted siege; but were rather peels of compact
build, massive and well cemented, and placed upon crags or eminences, or
other situations wisely chosen for natural strength. The less wealth of the
lairds, as compared with the possessions of the Neustrian peerage from the
south,—their less expanded ideas of chivalrous luxury,—their smaller
knowledge of the pomps, splendour, refinement, and exclusiveness of the
feudal system of the Normans as more thoroughly established in England, and
their more inveterately confirmed habits of predation, as judged with their
more civilized neighbours,—these were in a great measure the reasons that
directed the inferior architecture of their fortresses.
The lands, also, in the
vicinage, were less carefully tilled, than with the Southrons of that day;
since they depended for subsistence rather upon the cattle of those whom
they chose to plunder, than on the vegetable productions of the soil; and
thus it was, that on the approach of an invading enemy, they either shut
themselves up with bolts and bars, and defended themselves against a short,
though fierce assault, such as they thought they could repel, or else, if
the invaders appeared too numerous for them, or seemed to purpose a system
of protracted warfare, they hastily retired to the mountains, driving their
sheep and beeves along with them.
In this case they left their
lands to be wasted and their dwellings to be burnt—but we are told that
neither the wasting nor the burning chagrined them much; for, in the first
place, the indifferently cultivated state of the country left very little to
destroy; and, in the second place, such was the massiveness of their
masonry, that the fire did but very little injury to their walls ; the only
damage being the destruction of the floors and roof. These, being made in a
rude fashion, were easily reconstructed when the spoilers had retired.
Hence, it is not to be
wondered at, that the borders for centuries, and to a very late period,
continued to be more barren and more neglected than any other inhabited part
of the two kingdoms whatsoever; for the practice of incursion, incendiarism,
and ruination, was not of rare occurrence, befalling as it may be
peradventurc, once or so in the generation of a man, but on the contrary,
came to the moss trooper as naturally as the setting of the evening sun, so
that blind indeed was that owl who opened his eyes at cock-shut time, if he
did not witness preparations for a raid regularly every night.
On the occasion of which we
speak in this especial chaptcr, the incursors principally ravaged Annandale
and Nitlisdale, together with the other dells and dales that lay on their
line of transcursion; and here, from their irresistible numbers, they should
seem to have had their own way, and to have wrought their own will with the
riches of the land, such as they found.
The Scoto-Saxon "Red-shanks"
as they were termed, owing to their going bare-legged, and owing to the
severity of the climate, which turned them of that numb-cold hue, had
adopted a system of tactics much like what we find to obtain in the present
day amongst the savages of the back-woods. They avoided decided pitched
battles in the open plain, and rather preferred what is termed bush fighting
in the forest and on the prairie. They employed a wasting, desultory,
scattered, ambush-laying method, by which their foes "were harassed,
surprised, or perplexed: where they had previously put grain into the
ground, they destroyed it with vast assiduity, thus leaving no harvests to
be reaped by those who did not sow; and as they retreated off these fields
to the hills with their cattle, they viewed with little concern any further
works of devastation which might be perpetrated by the new comers.
Secured in these inaccessible
places, they cunningly watched their opportunity for taking vengeance and
making a full retaliation : they allowed their foes to work their will; they
suffered them to plunder whatsoever they had been unable to carry to the
mountains, and to burn the floors and roofs of their bastle-houses; they let
them overrun the plains without impediment, feeling they could do small
injury where everything was desert; and then, when the time came, they
rushed into England with incredible fury, and there enacted the same horrors
which had before been enacted in Scotland.
This ferocious and
uncompromising mode of warfare had been strongly recommended in the rhymes
considered as a legacy from Robert Bruce to his successors, and which indeed
do, at this very day, comprise the most effectual and almost the only
defensive measures which can be adopted by a poor and mountainous country,
when invaded by the overpowering armies of a wealthy neighbour.
The learned Fordun, in his
Scotichronieon, sets forth in "quaint Inglis" the practices of his
countrymen in such pastimes, showing how they should rather fight on foot
than on horseback, as being then more able in the glen to flit from rock to
rock, or the foe by retiring into secret places; that a bow and a spear were
the best walls of protection that a man could have; that it was their usage
to secrete their stores in unknown retreats, whilst they laid bare the
extended valley when their enemies approached,— and that, by loud alarums in
the night, they would terrify these enemies off their land. "This," says
Fordun, "is the sage counsel of King Robert's testament:—
"This is the eounsell and
intente
Of goode Kinge Robert's testamente."
But let us to the point—
So numerous was the host of
English that now forded the Sark and penetrated up the glens of the Annan
and the Nith, in comparison with the weaponshaw which the natives could
hastily collect on the instant, that they wisely slunk away on their
approach, scattering themselves about in the thickets so as to prevent the
possibility of being surrounded and overwhelmed at one fell swoop, and
securing to themselves by this dispersedness, the means of keeping good
watch, until the time should present itself when they might rush from their
concealments, and return the favour with a wannion. They were even pleased,
not only to destroy the crops that grew upon the bosom of Mother Earth, that
their foes should not gather, but they also dismantled their dwellings as
they retired, 'sometimes burning away the interior, leaving only a smoky and
blackened shell, and at others, going so far as to demolish the walls, and
eradicate the very foundations from the rock out of which they sprung. For
they had long discovered that, albeit they lacked nothing of animal courage
when debating it hotly with crossed blades hand to hand, still in systematic
invasions, they were far inferior in scientific stratagem to the belted
knights of England ; that they succeeded best in hasty attack, precipitate
escalade, and fierce charge; that they were deficient in the strict
^discipline which would take them. step by step patiently through a long
campaign ; and that though they could beat off their besiegers from a short
assailment upon their fortlets, they were, owing to their slender resources
in an impoverished district, and their deficiency of discipline amongst
themselves, rarely able to withstand the tedious approaches of a regular
blockade. The existence of* peel-houses, therefore, along the border, they
found to be rather a detriment to their safety than otherwise, since not
being strong enough to retain them to themselves, they found that they had
only been building them for their enemies. They were truly the sparrows who
built their nests, whilst the English were the cuckoos who turned them out
and dwelt in them.
The good Lord James
Douglas—he who was commissioned to carry the heart of his King to Jerusalem,
but which he flung at the Moors during the onset of a battle with them in
Spain on his way eastward—the good Lord James Douglas surprised his own
castle in Lanarkshire three several times, it haying been as frequently
taken from him and garrisoned by these superior disciplinarians, and on each
occasion, that they should not play the cuckoo thus with him, he was at the
pains of demolishing it.
The military system of
Wallace was on the same principle ; and in fine, with very few exceptions,
th£ strong and extensive fortresses which had arisen on the Scottish side of
the Marches during the better times preceding. the usurpation of Edward I.,
were levelled with the ground when the troublous period of the thirteenth
century commenced.
These facts have been acutely
commented on by that interminable writer, Sir Walter of Abbots-ford; and he
further assures us, in language of most pleasant reading, that the castles
of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, and divers others, erected in " the good old times,"
were infinitely more extensive than any which were built in after days,
—that they could not be pulled down, such was their massive solidity, and
such the unskilfulness of the Scotch in the arts of destruction,—and that,
to raze the stronghold of Jedburgh, it could scarcely be done without so
much time and labour as would render it necessary to impose a tax of two
pennies upon every hearth in the land to defray the expense. But the Duke of
Albany, then Regent, perceiving the unpopularity of the impost, drew the
required sums out of the Crown revenues. But we forget ourselves again :
We have told the most
forbearing reader, that an immense body of men out of Cumberland had entered
over the gentle soil where Gretna lies, and were, beginning a ferocious
herriment of all the parts adjacent.
Up Nithside they went without
let or hinderance, not because the dalesmen took pleasure at their coming,
or welcomed them with accolades and tender embracements about the neck, but
because they were impotent to oppose so large a company, and therefore were
enforced to let them have their own way. This expedition seems to have been
a pay-off against the Scots, who had been latterly intruding without
invitation into several of the counties lying south of the works of Hadrian
not pertaining to them, or shaded under the folds of that banner which bears
Azure, a Sal-tire Argent, for St. Andrew: for a fierce animosity had lately
arisen out of a murder committed at Roxburgh fair in a scuffle, when a
servant of the Earl of March fell dead, because a long piece of cold steel
had been spitted right through his delicate viscera—and men's viscera can in
no wise endure such usage.
To retaliate for this, the
said Earl, together with his brother german, the ditto of Moray, assembled
their followers, and duly attending the next fair at Roxburgh, slew all of
the offending party they could come within weapon's length of, and then set
fire to the town. The English, having suffered greatly on this occasion,
thought fit to invade Scotland forthwith, for the purpose of taking
vengeance on the Earls; and in their way they ruined the estate of Sir John
Gordon, a man of vast property thereabout: and as nothing tries the
equanimity of people's tempers so much as having their property wantonly
destroyed before their faces, we must not marvel if Sir John was a little
ruffled afterwards. Certain it is, he lost no time in rushing wrathfully
into England, where he made himself master of a large booty in cattle and
prisoners without commiseration, and savagely slew all and every one who
opposed him.
Lord Percy then drew together
seven thousand spears and bowmen, wherewith he ran a like career ; and the
consequence was, that the border war raged inveterately on both sides—and
continued to do so uninterruptedly for several years. Roxburgh fair again
became foul with deeds of slaughter ; the peers of each nation visited,
reciprocally, sometimes the lands of the one and sometimes the lands of
another, dispensing their favours to all in succession; and not long before
the expedition into Dumfrieshire, of which we have been endeavouring to
speak throughout this chapter, we find the Percy, now Earl of
Northumberland, hurling desolation around him at the head of ten thousand
slaughtermen.
When the English" had burnt
and destroyed, to their numerous hearts' contents, everything the}7 came
near in the dales of Nitli and Annan, they turned about and directed their
steps homeward, carrying a rich booty along with them. Being big with
success and assured of their triumph, they paced it easily right over the
territory of Gretna Green, until they neared the disemboguement of the Sark
into the Firth. As it had now become night, their progress was necessarily
retarded, first by the obscurity, and next by the badness of the ground near
the vicinage of the dangerous moss; but behold, these mighty victors were
incontinently stricken with a sore panic, so that their haughty souls began
to give way, and their stalwart limbs to tremble : for, there as they stood
round about where the toll-gate near the bridge may be seen, and of which
hereafter, the drums of their ears were dinned by the sudden sound of many
voices shouting in the dark.
At this the hitherto
conquerors quailed piteously, and not knowing how to cuff an invisible foe.
betook themselves to precipitate and ignoble flight. A handful of five
hundred Scots rushed in upon the host of fifteen thousand English, and
taking them much as Gideon and his men had taken the Midianites of old,
indiscriminately slew great numbers of the Southrons, driving the rest like
feathers before a whirlwind. And the English ran—oh ! how they ran—and in
their terror they jumped into the briny surges of the Solway, leaving their
plunder and their many dead behind, divers of them becoming unwilling divers
into the waters, where they perished because they could not breathe so
inspissated an element. Still the Scots fought, and the English fought, but
the Scots prevailed, and the English failed; and the Scots recovered the
lost treasure again, and took prisoners not a few over and above. Some
managed, by dint of much floundering, to gurgle their way across the Firth
and the Sark, till they crept out, somewhat humid, upon the opposite bank ;
and, without tarrying there for a change of dry linen, they ran on the nine
miles to Carlisle with the water rolling in their ears, and their hair
wetting their shirt collars; where they narrated to the Cumberlanders
therein dwelling, all the circumstances of their mishap. |
