*1

Geoffrey W. S. Barrow

The Anglo-Scottish Border: Growth and Structure in the Middle Ages*

The border dividing from runs on a roughly south west - north eastEngland alignment before thefor secondapproximately half of the110 nineteenth miles (176 century* km), 2.from It has the always head beenof the a Solway Firth - an arm of the Irish Sea - on the west to a point 3 1/2 miles north of the mouth of the River Tweed on the east. In the medieval period the border line followed the midstream line of the River Esk as it flows into the Solway Firth, and the midstream line of the River Tweed as it flows into the sea at Berwick [see Figure 1], for until 1482 the burgh and castle of Berwick upon Tweed lay in 'Berwickshire' Scotland, not England, and that fact explains why 'Berwickshire' is a Scottish, not 1 an English, county1.county . Even although Berwick was occupied and elaborately fortified by the English in the generations following 1482, it was not formally annexed to 2 England before the second half of the nineteenth century . It has always been a 'Berwickers' point of pride among its inhabitants - 'Berwickers' - that they are still in a state of war with Tsarist Russia, for although Queen Victoria's government declared war upon Russia in 1854 in the name of England, Scotland, Ireland etc. and Berwick upon Tweed, they forgot to specify Berwick when making peace by means of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. Looked at historically, the Anglo-Scottish border could be seen as an artificial creation, the product of a series of compromises between northern rulers, who failed to extend their power as far south as they would have wished, and southern rulers who despite their greater wealth and potentially bigger armies lacked the resources to subjugate and permanently occupy the northern part of the island of Britain. But the Border is not wholly artificial if by that we mean that it has no basis in the hard facts of geography and geology. Between Solway and Tyne the British island narrows to about 70 miles (112 km), a fact of which the Roman army engineers took advantage when they built first of all the Stanegate, a military way, and then in Emperor Hadrian's reign a wall, mainly of stone but partly of turf, 3 'Waistline' from Wallsend on Tyne to Bowness on Solway3.Solway . That natural 'Waistline' produces

Ail works cited are published in London unless otherwise stated. 1 Nicholson, R., Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (, 1974), 507; Macdougall, N., James III (Edinburgh, 1982), 154-5, 169. 2 2 Scott, J., Berwick upon Tweed (1888), 478. By the Reform Act of 1884, Berwick ceased to be a parliamentary burgh and became part of the Berwick upon Tweed division of the County of 'Liberties . Previously the 'Liberties of Berwick', as the small district immediately around Berwick upon Tweed was known, lay in a species of limbo or no-man's land, although clearly subject to English rule. The Local Government reforms of 1974 (20 and 21 Eliz. II, c.10, schedule 1) have confirmed Berwick's status as an English borough. 3 3 Breeze, D. J. and Dobson, B., Hadrian's Wall (3rd edn. 1987).

197 198 one inevitable division between north and south. Another is provided by underlying geological features which have placed a large tract of high, barren 'the moor land and hilly country - commonly though incorrectly called 'the Cheviots' - between the Solway Firth and a point only fifteen miles up the River Tweed from 4 the North SeaSea4.. Even although those historians who have seen this as some kind of 'no political 'no man's land' are in error - for the line of the Border was always pretty clearly understood in medieval times, and even demarcated in places - nevertheless 'no the tract of inhospitable wilderness formed a geographical 'no man's land' which must often have discouraged one side or the other from sustained aggression. The existence of the Cheviot barrier, averaging around 400 m. above sea level, meant that English aggressors would find it necessary to push as far north as the Firth of Forth to fix a secure and worthwhile frontier, while Scottish aggressors, correspondingly, would wish to incorporate the northern English river systems of Eden and Tyne. For much of the medieval period it was beyond the resources of either the English or Scottish kings to hold such extended frontiers for more than a few years together. There were thus powerful considerations working in favour of the Solway-Esk-Cheviot-Tweed alignment in the formative period when the medieval kingdoms of England and Scotland were taking shape. It was of decisive significance for the location and structure of the Borders that these historic kingdoms grew out of, respectively, a southern (i.e. West Saxon) and a northern (i.e. Scoto-Pictish) kingdom. Only thus can we understand how a region which otherwise possessed a high degree of unity - Northumbria on the eastern side and 5 Cumbria on the western side - came to be divided across the middle5.middle . The unity of at least the northern half of Northumbria (what had been the ancient kingdom of Bemicia) was still recognized well into the thirteenth century before the king of Scots, by the Treaty of York of 1237, was persuaded to abandon finally his 6 ancestral claims to the four northernmost counties of England6.England . Of these, the two lying east of the Pennine watershed, Northumberland and Durham, formed essential components of Bemicia. The western pair, Cumberland and Westmorland, were equally integral parts of the ancient kingdom of Cumbria or Strathclyde. Even after Scottish royal claims upon them were abandoned in 1237 the bishops of Glasgow could still declare publicly and formally that the southern limit of their diocese was marked by the Rey or Rere Cross on Stainmore Common, the boundary dividing Westmorland from Yorkshire, thus effectively

4 Geological Map of the United Kingdom, North (Institute of Geological Sciences, 3rd edition solid, 1979). 5 "The 5 Blair, P. Hunter, "The Bemicians and their northern frontier", in: Studies in Early British History, ed. "Strathclyde Chadwick, N. (Cambridge, 1954); Kirby, D.P., "Strathclyde and Cumbria: a survey of historical development to 1092", in: Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, New Series, 62 (1962). For the general background, see Barrow, G.W.S., The "Frontier Kingdom of the Scots (1973), 139-61 and Barrow, G.W.S., "Frontier and Settlement: which influenced which? England and Scotland^ 100-1300", in: Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. Bartlett, R. and Mackay, A. (Oxford, 1989), 2-21. 6 Stones, E.L.G., Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174-1328. Some Selected Documents (Oxford, 1970), 38- 53.

199 claiming that the Glasgow bishopric was coterminous with the kingdom of 7 Strathclyde7.Strathclyde . Nevertheless, even while we emphasize the fact that in securing a well-defined Border on the Solway-Esk-Cheviot-Tweed line the rulers of England and Scotland were prepared to see ancient units of kingship (to which they laid claim) cut in half, we need to make one important qualification. The English kings of the twelfth and thirteenth century were heavily committed to territorial and dynastic ambitions south of the English Channel, as dukes of Normandy, counts of Anjou, dukes of Aquitaine or Gascony etc. It would have suited their interest to preserve and consolidate the West Saxon character of their kingdom, even if this had not already been deeply entrenched in the geography of English government, the location of royal headquarters at Westminster, Windsor, Winchester, Clarendon and Gloucester, the distribution of royal demesne and of the richest sources of royal revenue. Although the kings from William Rufus (1087-1100) to Edward I took very seriously their grip upon Cumbria and Northumbria, they could not spend much time visiting these regions which were remote from the castles, hun¬ ting lodges, monasteries and rich trading towns of southern England, Normandy, Maine, the lower Loire valley, Poitou and Gascony whence their power was derived and where, one feels, their hearts really lay. The much poorer Scottish kings, by contrast, were drawn to the northern sections of Cumbria and Northumbria which the Solway-Tweed Border allowed them. Even a casual glance at the maps which scholars have constructed of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland would show how important in this period were the valleys of Tweed and Teviot, the (by Scottish standards) agriculturally well- favoured province of , and, further west, Clydesdale and the Ayrshire 8 plain8.plain . Here with few exceptions were the wealthiest Scottish trading towns (burghs'), Berwick upon Tweed, Roxburgh, Haddington, Edinburgh, Stirling, 9 Rutherglen, Renfrew and Ayr9.Ayr . Here also, again with relatively few exceptions, were the religious houses on which the royal house and its most favoured followers lavished their surplus wealth (chiefly in the form of land), the abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose, Newbattle, Holyrood and Paisley, the priories of 10 Coldingham, Haddington, Manuel and Lesmahagow10.Lesmahagow . Of the numerous centres of royal government in active use in the earlier medieval period only Aberdeen, Perth and Forfar, north of the Forth, could compare in importance with Stirling, Linlithgow, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Rutherglen, Ayr and Berwick south of the Forth.

The consequence of this was that the Border was of much more immediate concern to the rulers of Scotland than it was to the rulers of England. At least this was true

•j •j Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. Stevenson, J. (Glasgow, Maitland Club, 1839), 65. 8 8 E.g., McNeill, P. and Nicholson, R., An Historical Atlas ofScotland, c.400-c,1600 (St. Andrews, 1975), maps 22-3, 28-30, 36-8, 50-1. 9 9 Ibid., maps 28-29; Pryde, G., The Burghs ofScotland (Oxford, 1965).

1 ® 1 ® Cowan, I.B. and Easson, D.E., Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland (1976).

200 11

until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the failure to make a permanent 'wars settlement following the 'wars of independence' (the excellent and statesmanlike Treaty of Edinburgh of 1328 lasted precisely four years and three months)months)1111 had the effect of placing the entire Border region, both north and south of the line, on a builtwar footing. the earliest In the royal earlier castle period at Dumfries11 the Border 12. had'Private' been castlessurprisingly on the unmilitary. Scottish sideOn the Scottish side there were royal castles (early twelfth century?) at Berwick upon Tweed, Roxburgh and Jedburgh - all on the east. , first built by the English king William Rufus in 1092, was actually in Scottish hands from 1136 to 1157. About ten years later the king of Scots, William the Lion, seems to have 12 'Private' built the earliest royal castle at Dumfries . castles on the Scottish side were not numerous: Hawick had a motte (and bailey?) fortification built by the Lovels c. 1150,1150,1313 the de Soules lords of Liddesdale had another motte at Castleton dating from the same period, and built the earliest phase of Hermitage Castle c. 14 1244124414.. The Maxwells began the splendid castle at Caerlaverock at about the same time.15time. 15 The Bruce family, to whom David I had given the whole of Annandale c. 1124, had two castles, at Annan and Lochmaben, the former of which seems to have been contemporary with the king's grant, while the latter was in existence 16 well before 1173-41173-416..

On the English side, in the period before the wars of independence, fortification was even less impressive, and shows little sign of having been planned with an eye to the Border as a whole. The land immediately south of the Tweed, as far upstream as Comhill, formed part of the palatinate bishopric of Durham, and attempts by the Crown to erect a castle at , opposite Berwick, during 17 vacancies of the see came to nothing, chiefly because of Scottish opposition17.opposition . In 1121 Bishop Ranulf ('Flambard') built the massive castle of Norham which still 18 survives and which proved a thorn in the side of the Scots over many centuries18.centuries . Further south were the royal castles of Bamburgh and , the former of which (like its fourteenth-century companion at Dunstanburgh) lay too far to the east to present much of a threat to Scots invaders. Otherwise, Northumberland was relatively well supplied with baronial castles, few of which seem to be closely related to the Border save for the fact that they are almost invariably located south of the rivers or watercourses with which they are

11 Nicholson, R., Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, 127-9. 12 Scott, J.G., "An early sheriff of Dumfries?", Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 3rd ser., 57 (1982), 90-91. 13 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments of Roxburghshire, I, 135 (no. 233). 14 14 Ibid., 82-3 ; Bartlett and Mackay, Medieval Frontier Societies, 11. 15 Ibid. "Charter ^ Simpson, G.G. and Webster, B., "Charter Evidence and the Distribution of Mottes in Scotland", Château Gaillard (1972), 177-8; Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedict! Abbatis, ed. Stubbs, W. (Rolls Series, 1867), I, 48. 17 Duncan, A.A.M., Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (1975), 242-8. 18 18 Barrow, G.W.S., The Kingdom of the Scots (1973), 155.

201 associated - just as almost all southern Scottish castles are sited on the north side 19 of their associated rivers19.rivers . In the west the stronghold of Carlisle, immediately south of the River Eden, formed the centrepiece of a relatively well thought out defensive system as long as it was in English hands, and especially after 1157. In a wide arc to the east and north of Carlisle were the baronial strongholds of Bramp¬ 20 ton, Bewcastle, Liddel Strength and Burgh on Sands20.Sands . A fail-back line of sorts was provided by the fortresses of Egremont, Cockermouth, Greystoke, Appleby and Brough under Stainmore, but the true function of these castles was surely to serve 21 as headquarters of local lordship rather than as a defence against the Scots21.Scots . If the Border was not in its earliest phase military, neither was it linguistic. A form of Old English speech had replaced Brittonic P-Celtic on the east side of the country, probably by the time Bede was writing his Ecclesiastical History in the 22 'real' 730s22.730s . It is an interesting point in connection with the argument as to how 'real' *East the eastern Border or *East March' was that throughout the coastal plain of English Northumberland, between Tyne and Tweed, place-names of Celtic origin are 23 comparatively rare, and names of English origin predominate23.predominate . North of the Border, however, the proportion of Celtic place-names increases markedly, 24 although in Berwickshire the bulk of actual settlement names are Old EnglishEnglish24.. Inland from the coastal plain both south and north of the Border, the proportion of 25 pre-Anglian P-Celtic place-names is appreciably higher25.higher . But even in this hill country it seems to be the case that P-Celtic names have survived more successfully in the Scottish counties of Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles than in west Nor¬ thumberland (i.e. Redesdale, North and South Tynedale, West and East Allendale 26 and Hexhamshire)Hexhamshire)26.. By the twelfth century we can be pretty sure that a virtually single, undifferentiated dialect of Old English prevailed (or was in practice universal) from East Lothian southward to the River Wear: a story told of the siege of Wark Castle on the Tweed in 1296 turns on the identity of language among 27 Scots defenders and English attackersattackers27..

19 "Frontier 19 Barrow, G.W.S., "Frontier and Settlement" (as above, n.5), 19-20; Cadwallader Bates, The Border Holds ofNorthumberland (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1891). 20 Curwen, J.F., The Castles and Fortified Towers of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire north of the Sands (Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, extra ser. 16, 1913). 21 Ibid. 22 22 Campbell, A., Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), 4-5. 2211 Mawer, A., Place-names ofNorthumberland and Durham (Cambridge, 1920). 24 24 Williamson, M., "Non-Celtic Place-Names of the Scottish Border Counties", unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1942; Watson, W.J., The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1926), especially chapter 5. 2&lt;2< Mawer,Mawer, Place-names ofNorthumberland-, Watson, Celtic Place-names of Scotland. 26 Ibid. 77 Barrow, G.W.S., Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (3rd edn., Edinburgh, 1988), 69.

202 In the west the linguistic situation was much more complex, for the historical background was made up of a mixture of P-Celtic speakers persisting from the old kingdom of Cumbria, Old English speakers who had first settled west of the Pennines as early as the seventh century, and a double dose of Scandinavian speakers - Danes pushing north-westward from Yorkshire and Norwegians penetrating eastward up the Solway Firth (itself a purely Norse place-name), many of whom must have spent a considerable time or even have been bom and brought up in a strongly Gaelic (i.e. Q-Celtic) speaking region, most probably the Western 28 Isles of ScotlandScotland28.. It would therefore be rash to assert that there was any linguistic uniformity on the West March in the earlier middle ages, yet it is certain that the Border itself, the political line running from the upper Solway into the River Esk and following that stream to the confluence of the Kershope Bum (whence it ran up the Kershope to reach and then follow the Cheviot watershed), marked no linguistic division. The melting pot of languages was as much a feature of Scottish 29 Dumfries-shire as of English Cumberland29.Cumberland . Moreover, the evidence seems convincing that an almost common form of Middle English speech, doubtless possessing a strong Scandinavian element, was coming into general use in the thirteenth century in northern Cumberland and eastern Dumfries-shire. From the standpoint of social and political organisation it must be doubted whether the Anglo-Scottish Border marked any significant divide for the first three and a half centuries of its existence. North and south the underlying structure consisted 'shires' of multiple estates, usually called 'shires' (especially on the east side of the country), which were derived from the manner in which royal or princely lordship had been exercised in Dark Age times and indeed probably since an even earlier period. Upon this structure a military feudal organisation had been superimposed by the monarchy, from c, 1090 in northern England and from c. 1110 in southern Scotland. The lordships or baronies which were created by this imposed feudal order do not seem to have been significantly different in England and Scotland, at 30 'anomalies', least before the fourteenth century30.century . In both kingdoms there were 'anomalies', e.g. in England the remarkable lordship or liberty of Tynedale, the valleys of North and 'manor South Tyne, which was scarcely tamed into normality by being called the 'manor of 31 Wark' by English royal clerks in the later thirteenth century31;century ; or the archbishop of York's powerful liberty of Hexhamshire, centred upon the ancient church of Saint 32 Wilfred (674)(674)32.. Comparably in Scotland the prior of Durham's liberty of

28 Fellows-Jensen, G., Scandinavian Settlement Names in the North West (Copenhagen, 1985); Armstrong, A.M., The Place-Names of Cumberland (English Place-Name Society, 1950-52). Fellows-Jensen, G., Scandinavian Settlement Names in the North West, 307-321. 30 "Northern 30 Barrow, G.W.S., "Northern English Society in the early middle ages", in; Northern History 4 (1969), especially pp. 10-12, 18-20; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, chap. 1; Bartlett and Mackay, Medieval Frontier Societies, 9-12, 14-16. 31 A History of Northumberland (15 vols., Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland County History Committee), XV (ed. Dodds, M.H., 1940), 155-298; Stevenson, J., Documents Illustrative of the History ofScotland (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1870), I, 28-9, 37, 59 etc. 32 32 A History ofNorthumberland, III (ed. Hinds, A.B., 1896).

203 Coldinghamshire was a survival from pre-feudal times - as, in their way, were the perhaps rather superficially feudalized lordships of , Liddesdale, 33 Eskdale and Annandale33.Annandale . In both England and Scotland royal government established a system of shrieval control, with sheriffs of Bamburgh, Newcastle and 34 Carlisle appearing early in the twelfth century south of the border34,border , and sheriffs of 35 Berwick and Roxburgh about a generation later35.later . The fact that in at least the cases of Bamburgh and Roxburgh the royal sheriff or vicecomes seems to have simply evolved from the older pre-feudal scir-gerefa or officer in charge of a multiple estate only serves to emphasize the conservatism and continuity of 36 Northumbria whether English or Scots36.Scots . No doubt from the beginning the sheriffs convened and presided over courts of county or sheriffdom which maintained discipline over, and dispensed justice to, the communities of feudal barons and the ministerial lesser nobility of thanes and drengs which formed the topmost layer of freemen in both countries. Only with higher judicial administration do we see any significant differentiation by the second half of the twelfth century. In Scotland the 37 officer intermediate between king and sheriff was the justiciar37.justiciar . From the 1160s, if not before, the office was territorialised. The justiciar of Lothian was responsible for the general oversight of royal government, including the holding of courts superior to the sheriff courts, throughout Scotland south of Forth and Clyde. The maintenance of law and order along the frontier with England was primarily the responsibility of the justiciar of Lothian, although he would normally be assisted 38 by the sheriffs of Berwick, Roxburgh and Dumfries38.Dumfries . In England the sheriffs of Cumberland and Northumberland - together with the officers who administered and Islandshire on behalf of the bishops of Durham - undertook the 39 day-to-day duties of government39.government . From the later 1160s higher royal justice was 'justices administered by teams (normally pairs) of itinerant judges, the well known 'justices in eyre', restored by Henry II in place of territorial justiciars retained in the more

"The 33 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 31-2; Barrow, G.W.S., "The pattern of lordship and feudal settlement in

Cumbria", in: Journal ofMedieval History 1 (1975), 117-38, especially 130-2. 34 Ibid., 132; for sherifls of Newcastle and Carlisle see Johnson, C. and Cronne, H.A. (ed.), Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ll (Oxford, 1956), passim. 35 Dickinson, W.C., The Sheriff Court Book ofFife (Edinburgh, Scottish History Society, 1928), 349. Bartlett and Mackay, Medieval Frontier Societies, 15. 37 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 83-138. 38 Ibid., 117-8; The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, ed. Stuart, J. and Burnett, G. (Edinburgh, 1878), 9-10, 16-17, 21-3,27-30,35-6,43-6; Calendar ofDocuments relating to Scotland, ed. Bain, J., I (1881), no. 2680. 39 39 E.g., Stones, E.L.G., Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174-1328; some selected documents (Oxford, 1970), no. 8. The activity of northern English sheriffs is well illustrated in Bain, Calendar of Documents I and II (1884), passim, and in the series of Pipe Rolls, for details of which see Mullins, E.L.C., Texts and Calendars: An Analytical Guide to Serial Publications (Royal Historical Society, 1958), 7, 10, 232-8; idem, Texts and Calendars II: an analytical guide to serial publications (Roy. Hist Soc., 1983), 83-7.

204 40 conservative northern kingdom40.kingdom . As a rule the eyres were held only once every ten years, so the sheriffs and the county courts over which they presided (or the equivalents in the palatinate bishopric of Durham) must have had plenty of work to 41 do41.do .

It is surely a remarkable testimony to the easygoing pragmatism of Anglo-Scottish 'liberty' relations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the lordship or 'liberty' of Tynedale, stretching some 42 miles southward into England from the Border to Cross Fell, was in the hands of the kings of Scotland, who held it with 42 considerable privileges42.privileges . In their own realm these kings were in the habit of appointing leading noblemen to serve as justiciars, whether or not they possessed 43 any special expertise in legal matters43.matters . Whenever the English crown commanded its itinerant justices (trained professionals) to hold a general eyre through the northern counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and Northumberland the king of Scots commissioned a small panel of four nobles - of the very same type as those who were justiciars or sheriffs in Scotland - to hold an eyre for Tynedale which 44 carefully followed English procedure and administered English law44.law . For the settlement of cross-Border claims, disputes and more serious quarrels there had evolved, probably over a considerable period, a set of rules and procedures known as the Leges Marchiarum,Marchiarum , the Laws of the Marches. In the earliest written form to have survived these Laws date from 1249, and may have been prompted by 45 particularly difficult boundary disputes dating to 1245 and 124845.1248 . But in general the Marcher Laws look very much older than the mid thirteenth century. Dr. George Neilson, who wrote a useful translation and commentary as long ago as 1902 (although they were not published till 1971), thought that the Laws were

40 Stenton, D.M., English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066-1215 (American Philosophical Society and George Allen and Unwin, London, 1965), 71-76 and elsewhere; van Caenegem, R. The Birth of the English Common Law (Cambridge, 1973), 19-22; Poole, A.L., Domesday Book to Magna Carta (Oxford, 1951), 399-400. 4*4 * Three Early Assize Rolls for the County of Northumberland, ed. Page, W. (Durham, Surtees Society 88, 1891); Hartshome, C.H., Feudal and Military Antiquities of Northumberland and the Scottish "Iter Borders (Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain, 1858), pp. lxviii, "Iter of Wark"; Northumberland Pleas 1198-1272, ed. Hamilton Thompson, A. (Newcastle upon Tyne Records Committee, 1922). "Some 42 Northumberland County History, XV, 155ff; Page, W., "Some remarks on the Northumbrian Palatinates and Regalities", in: Archaeologia 51 (1888), 143-55. 43 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 121-5, 133-6. 44 44 E.g., Hartshome, Feudal... Antiquities ofNorthumberland, p. IX; Calendar of Documents preserved in Scotland, ed. Bain, II, no. 168 (p. 50). Three of the justiciars for Tynedale named in 1279, Thomas Randolph, Simon Fraser and Hugh of Pearsby, had served as sheriffs of Berwick, Roxburgh and Peebles. 43 43 Summerson, H., "The early development of the Laws of the Anglo-Scottish Marches, 1249-1448", in: "The Gordon, W.M. (ed.), Legal History in the Making (1991), 29-42; Neilson, G., "The March Laws", ed. Rae, T.I., Stair Society Miscellany I (Edinburgh, The Stair Society, 26, 1971), 11-77.

205 46 composed about the middle of the twelfth century46.century . In my own opinion it seems likely that a number of elements in the Laws may well belong to the twelfth century but in general their archaisms point to an even earlier origin, perhaps as 47 long ago as the tenth or early eleventh century47.century . They lay great emphasis on compurgation, with six jurors from one side of the Border being matched by six 48 'wager from the other48.other . They also require 'wager of battle' (i.e. personal combat) in a good many cases. On the East March an island in the River Tweed, known as Tonsmidhop, or Midhope, may have been specially assigned as the venue of 49 Anglo-Scottish judicial combats49.combats . Much to the indignation of Pope Innocent III members of the clergy even of as high a rank as prior, abbot and bishop might be 50 compelled to engage in a judicial duel in person50.person . In fact only the kings of England and Scotland and the bishops of Durham and St. Andrews seem to have been accorded a privileged status in respect of the Border Laws, understandably exempted from trial by combat and from swearing oaths in pursuance of legal 51 'international pleading51.pleading . The Laws of the Marches were not 'international law' as we should understand that concept, a code by which nations could resolve their differences. They bear all the hallmarks of customary local law appropriate to an agrarian and especially pastoral society, much occupied with the ownership of cattle, horses, sheep and pigs. This body of law had to adapt itself to an essentially political situation in which a conservative rural society was not simply divided up into a large number of more or less homogeneous lordships governed by petty boundary regulations and provision for casual thefts and depredations but firmly allocated, to the north and south of a relatively arbitrary line, to two distinct and mutually distrustful feudal kingdoms. Down to 1296 the infrequency of open warfare between these kingdoms and the prevalence of peaceful intercourse meant that an archaic and pragmatic body of law sufficed in a general way, disturbed only occasionally by grave disputes. The war which broke out in 1296 between King Edward 1 of England and King John of Scotland (allied to Philip IV of France) led 52 to a completely new, unprecedented situation52.situation . Sheriffs and justiciars (territorial or itinerant) and the Marcher Laws could no longer cope when the communities on each side of the Border were on a more or less permanent war footing.

Thus we are brought to the most famous period of Border history, the three centuries of Border raiders and reivers, hobelars and moss troopers, the steel 'surnames' bonnet, the hot trod and the rival 'surnames' locked in deadly feud. This was the period of Border history which so powerfully inspired the imagination of Sir

46 Ibid., 13. 47 Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 155-60; Summerson, "Early development", 29-31. 48 Neilson, "March Laws", 18-20. 49 49 Barrow, "Northern English Society", in: Northern History 4, 25. 50 50 Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1843), 94, no. 110. 51 Neilson, "March Laws", 19. 52 52 Powicke, F.M., The Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1953); Prestwich, M., Edward 1 (1988); Barrow, G.W.S., Robert Bruce and the community of the realm of Scotland, 3rd edn., Edinburgh, 1988.

206 53 Walter Scott53.Scott . No doubt it had its chivalrous aspect, and called forth many deeds of extraordinary sacrifice, loyalty and courage. It also called forth a truly popular and largely anonymous literature of Border ballads. In these poems and songs the violent and tragic quality of life along the frontier, the scarcely Christian, deeply fatalistic philosophy of the borderers and the grim humour which presumably served as an escape mechanism are memorably and sometimes poignantly 54 exemplified54.exemplified . Chivalry, romance and poetry aside, the plain fact is that throughout the Border region the quality of human life deteriorated drastically in the later middle ages and sixteenth century, when compared with the situation prevailing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the first place, trading towns or burghs shrank, affected by chronic warfare and the general economic recession. Berwick upon Tweed had been one of the richest and most populous of Scottish towns, Roxburgh had also flourished, while on the English side Carlisle had developed vigorously in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the later middle ages Berwick declined and became an inward-looking English garrison post; Carlisle also declined; while Roxburgh dwindled away to nothing but the site of the castle after the Scots 55 recaptured and dismantled it in 146055.1460 . Secondly, we must note that murder and homicide, often of the most revolting and barbarous kind, became commonplace, kidnapping, theft, robbery, arson and the maiming of livestock were rife for many 'days 'days generations. The old 'days of love' or 'days of peace' as they were known, when English and Scots convened to settle their differences at one or other of the customary trysting places, Norhamford, Reddenbum, Gamelspath, the Redeswyre, 56 Kershopebumfoot or the Clochmabenstane in Gretna parish56,parish , gave way to March Days to which men came armed and in armour, when even under the stem eyes of the respective Wardens of the March or their deputies insults came readily to men's tongues and tempers were easily lost. There was even a formal procedure, known *baughling’, as *baughling’, whereby one man could give the lie to another and charge him with 57 having deliberately failed to keep his side of a bargain or compact57.compact . We must of course deplore the fact that the worst side of human nature, especially where physical violence is concerned, appears to be uppermost through such a long period of Border history. But we in our day are in no position to be complacent or superior. When we ponder the fact that in, and in connection with, Northern Ireland in the past twenty-two years well over three thousand men, women and children (including mere babies and infants) have been murdered, again often in

53 53 See especially Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802), The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and Tales of a Grandfather (1827). 54 54 Chambers, E.K., English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1945), chapter 3; Lewis,

C.S., English literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1954), chapters 1 and 2. 55 "The 55 Barrow, G.W.S., "The aftermath of war", in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, *28 *28 (1978), 106-111; Summerson, H., History of Carlisle (unpublished: I am grateful to Dr. Summerson for allowing me to read his typescript). 56 "March 56 Neilson, "March Laws", 17, 31, 37-39, 51. 57 "Early Ibid., 64-6; Summerson, "Early Development", in: Legal History in the Making, ed. Gordon, W.M., 38.

207 pitiless and barbarous circumstances, we are forced to realize that given the appropriate stimuli perfectly ordinary human beings, women as well as men, can behave like deeply disturbed and uncontrollable psychopaths. Precisely what the stimuli were in the case of the Anglo-Scottish Border from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century is perhaps not entirely clear. Here it can only be suggested that a combination of on the one hand political and cultural nationalism, strongly marked in both England and Scotland in these centuries, and on the other deteriorating conditions of climate and food production were sufficient to generate racial animosity, even hatred, and a fierce hunger for land and livestock. It cannot be said that royal government in either country took a back seat, whether deliberately or faute de mieux. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that in this period certain powerful noble families, in England Percy, Neville, Dacre and Clifford, in Scotland Douglas, Scott, Ker and Hume, came to dominate the scene, tolerating - or perhaps not able to suppress - the conflict and rivalry of numerous lesser 'surnames' 'surnames' often at feud with one another even when they belonged to the same side of the frontier.

The first War of Independence lasted with few intermissions from 1296 to 1328. The second War of Independence, which in some respects may have been even more destructive in the Border region than the first, was waged intermittently from 1332 to 135758.Unlike135758 .Unlike the Treaty of Edinburgh of 1328 which was intended to be a final settlement of the Anglo-Scottish quarrel, the treaty of 1357 was no more than 59 provisional59.provisional . Owing to the Scots' failure to pay the full ransom demanded for their king David II (captured in 1346), and to the support from France which the Scots could always count upon, the state of war with England continued indefinitely, although alleviated by lengthy periods of truce. Even the Treaty of Perpetual Peace made between James IV and Henry VII in 1502 did not bring an end to the chronic warfare, as the famous battle of Flodden in 1513, in which the 60 Scots king was killed, shows only too clearly60.clearly . In this situation of war and truce 'wardens the Border, from c. 1300, came to be administered by keepers, custodes, 'wardens 61 of the Marches' as they were usually known in the vernacular61.vernacular . The practice of appointing Wardens was begun by the English but was very soon copied by the Scots. At first they were purely military officers who did not supersede the sheriffs, stewards or justiciars. But before the end of the fourteenth century they had taken on a multipurpose role, military leaders, castle commanders, administrators and 'warden even legal officers empowered to hold 'warden courts' and also to meet their 'March 62 opposite numbers at the Border trysting points for 'March Days'62.Days' . It was quite normal on the English side to have teams or panels of wardens operating by

to Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, chapters 5-8. 59 Ibid., 163, 167-8. 60 60 Maedougall, N.. James IV, Edinburgh, 1989,248-76. 61 "The 61 Storey, R.L., "The Wardens of the Marches of England toward Scotland", in: English Historical Review, 73 (1957), 593-615. 62 Ibid., 594, 597; Reid, R.R., "The office of Warden of the Marches; its origin and early history", in: English Historical Review 32 (1917), 479-96, especially 483.

208 authority of a commission, rather as the justices of the peace (and other justices) operated. But from the 1380s it became more usual for the crown to appoint a senior nobleman to hold the office individually, although geography required that the East March had a warden different from the one appointed for the West March, and at various periods there was a threefold division into West, East and Middle Marches with a separate warden for each. From c. 1389 the wardens became paid officials, and great families such as the Percies could insist on being paid very 63 generously63.generously . At the end of the fifteenth century the crown having established the 64 King's Council in the North Parts, based on York64,York , succeeded in wresting the wardenship from locally entrenched noble families and acted through the Council and lieutenants, but the north-country nobility (especially the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland) remained a problem till the end of the 65 sixteenth centurycentury65.. On the Scottish side, where the threefold division of West, Middle and East March was more or less invariable, the wardens continued to be 66 important down to the of 160366,1603 , but for the most part they were closer to the monarch or government (often a regency) in Edinburgh, and the local noble families, Humes, Hepburns, Scotts, Kers and Maxwells had less opportunity than their English counterparts to act independently. Moreover, their military role declined; in this sphere they were replaced by lieutenants who tended 67 to be major national figures often in command of national armies67.armies .

The Anglo-Scottish Border was for most of the middle ages the only formally constituted, internationally defined land frontier in Britain, but it was not the only border nor was its hinterland to north and south the only border region. As is well known the country around the upper valleys of the Rivers Dee, Severn, Usk and 'Marches 'Grenzregion' Wye formed the 'Marches of Wales', a true 'Grenzregion' where complex differences of language and of law and custom, together with strategic military considerations enduring at least until 1295, made the history of the communities involved, Welsh and English, markedly distinct from that of purely Welsh Wales 68 or of most of EnglandEngland68.. In Scotland also, down to 1266, there was a de facto and in some measure de jure water frontier which kept the Western Isles, from Man to Lewis, under at least the nominal rule of the kings of Norway, as it was also to keep the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney part of the Norwegian or Danish-

63 Storey, "Wardens of the Marches", 597, 599-603. 64 64 Reid, R.R., The King's Council in the North (1921). 65 65 Black, J.B., The Reign ofElizabeth, 1558-1603 (Oxford, 1959), 135-44. 66 66 Rae, T.I., The Administration of the Scottish Frontier (Edinburgh, 1966); Tough, D.L.W., The Last Years of a Frontier (Oxford, 1928). *67 *67 Rae, The Administration of the Scottish Frontier, 109-11, 141-6. 68 Davies, R.R., Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282-1400 (Oxford, 1978); idem, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales, 1063-1415 (Oxford and University of Wales, 1987); Pugh, T.B. (ed.), The Marcher Lordships ofSouth Wales, 1415-1536 (Cardiff, 1963).

209 Norwegian kingdom until 1468-9.691468-9. 69 Although the water frontier was truly international it seems to have been much less sharply defined than the Border and it was certainly never policed. The people of the west highlands and the isles came and went freely regardless of nominal Norwegian or, it has to be said, often nominal Scottish royal overlordship. The great nobles of the region, many of 'king', whom used the standard Gaelic style of righ, 'king', ruled over extensive lordships whose boundaries ignored the technical divide between a mainland in the kingdom 70 of Scotland and islands in that of Norway70.Norway . The treaty of Perth (1266) did little more than formalize an already established situation, although it was important for the Scots monarchy that the great men of the west - MacDougalls, MacRorys, 71 MacDonalds and so on - were thenceforward their liege subjectssubjects71.. In the far north, the stormy waters of the Pentland Firth which separate the islands of Orkney from the Scottish mainland probably presented more serious problems of weather and navigation than of politics. For at least a century before the Northern Isles were pledged to Scotland in the reign of James III Scots had been settling in Orkney, perhaps also in Shetland. By the end of the fourteenth century the earl of Orkney was a Scot, and by 1461 there had been several Scottish bishops of 72 Orkney72.Orkney . 'border' One final and rather elusive 'border' in medieval Scotland may be mentioned. This was a cultural frontier which to some extent was connected with the advance and expansion of English speech - which confusingly came in the sixteenth century to 'Scots' 'Scottish', 73 be called 'Scots' - and the retreat of historically 'Scottish', i.e. Gaelic, speech73.speech . 'Norman', Military feudalism, often called 'Anglo-Norman' or even simply 'Norman', came into Scotland from the early decades of the twelfth century with the active encouragement of the royal house - especially of David I and his three grandsons Malcolm IV, William the Lion and David earl of Huntingdon, whose reigns or 74 active careers spanned over a century from 1113 to 12 1 974.9 . An immediate result of this feudalism was the allocation of large lordships to major feudatories almost all with a continental or English or mixed background. They in turn subinfeudated to 'knights' their dependants, creating many scores or hundreds of 'knights' fees'. These tended 'motte to be provided with fortified residences of the 'motte and bailey type', though we 'motte' must note that in Scotland the bailey is often absent, and we have only a 'motte'

69 Duncan, A.A.M. and Brown, A.L., " and the Isles in the early Middle Ages", in: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 90 (1956-7), 192-220; Barrow, G.W.S., Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000-1306 (2nd edn., Edinburgh, 1989), 105-121. 70 Ibid. 71 71 This appears clearly in the period of die first War of Independence (1296-1328), for which see generally Barrow, G.W.S., Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland. 72 "The 72 Crawford, B.E., "The pawning of Orkney and Shetland: a re-consideration of the events of 1460-9", in: Scottish Historical Review 48 (1969), 35-53. 73 73 See map no. 74 in: McNeill and Nicholson, .4/7 Historical Atlas ofScotland C.400-C.1600. 74 74 Barrow, G.W.S., The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980).

210 75 with a large ditch round it75.it . It appears that lords' settlements involving simple castles of this class were given the name - evidently by the lord's own English- 'Ingliston', speaking followers - of 'Ingliston', i.e. tun or permanent settlement of a 'English' distinctively 'English' (we might say Anglo-Norman) character, as contrasted with 76 a typical Cumbric, Scoto-Pictish or Scandinavian settlement76.settlement . If we plot the place-name Ingliston on the map [see Figure 2] we come up with a cultural frontier of some interest, which belongs most probably to the period c. 1150-1250. It is only tangentially related to the ever-shifting language frontier, and bears little if any relation to the political ambitions of the Scottish kings. Nevertheless, it is a useful reminder that in the middle ages, as in all other periods of history, Borders are not invariably fixed lines on maps, demarcated on the landscape and furnished with frontier posts, customs officials and guards.

7 ~* "The 7~* Cruden, S., The Scottish Castle (3rd edn. Edinburgh, 1981), 6-10; Talbot, E.J., "The defences of earth and timber castles", in: Caldwell, D.H. (ed.), Scottish Weapons and Fortifications (Edinburgh, 1981), "Norman 1-9; Tabraham, C.J., "Norman settlement in upper Clydesdale: recent archaeological fieldwork", in: Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society 53 (1977- 8), 114-28. 76 76 The first scholar to notice a correlation between Ingliston place-names and motte castles seems to have been W. Mackay Mackenzie {The Mediaeval Castle in Scotland, 1927, 29). He saw the name as indicating the nationality of the community dependent on the castle and cited five occurrences. I would 'defensible suggest rather that the name Ingliston effectively meant 'defensible (or fortified) settlement of Anglo- Norman type' without specific reference to the ethnic origin of the settlers. This seems to be supported by "Engliscasteltown" the form of one of the eighteen examples in Figure 2, "Engliscasteltown" ((RegistrumRegistrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, I, ed. J.M. Thomson, Edinburgh, 1984 reprint, p. 510), if this may be relied upon.

211 Distribution of Place Name Ingleston/Ingliston "defensible Ingleston/Ingliston M — Motte or comparable settlement - "defensible settlement of Anglo - Norman type" earthwork within 1 km

212