The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald

only a small number of men involved and the need for passing undetected of the first importance.

      Raids varied in size. Bands of a dozen to fifty riders were normal, but there were one-man operations, and great forays in which upwards of two or three thousand reivers took part. The objectives also varied, from a single animal—as in the case of the black horse which helped to rekindle the Maxwell-Johnstone feud—to an entire town, or even several towns. Distance was no object for rustlers who were expert at covering their traces, or who ventured out in sufficient numbers to be able to defy pursuit. Border raids are recorded within three miles of Edinburgh, and as far south as Yorkshire. What is striking is that the thieves far more often than not got away with it, which suggests that Leslie’s skilful captains and men of excellent heads were by no means uncommon.

      Night-time was the popular hour for riding, although day forays of all sizes were frequent. There is some evidence that the reivers liked moonlight—“There’ll be moonlight again” is a slogan long associated with the Scott family—but even more to suggest that they preferred complete darkness. The expert guides seem to have known their ground to an inch, and the kind of leader typified by Hobbie Noble, the legendary English fugitive, could pick his way through the wastes at night with ease.

      The size of the foray naturally dictated the technique employed. While small bands depended heavily on stealth and secrecy, the great raids went much more openly; they had less to fear from a hot trod or the country’s rising against them, since they were strong enough to fight off anything short of an army. Consequently, their leaders planned these forays like miniature military campaigns, often spending several days in enemy territory, or even longer, depending on the danger of the general situation.

      A master of the large-scale foray technique was that old Walter Scott of Buccleuch who flourished in the first part of the sixteenth century, was an inveterate English-hater, spent several terms in confinement in Scotland for political and other reasons, and was eventually cut down by the Kerrs in the great Kerr – Scott feud. When he swept into the English Middle March in the winter of 1532 it was with 3000 lances, most of whom he held in reserve while smaller forays were detached at chosen targets. The main body thus served the double purpose of base camp, established on an English village, and ambush for any English trods which might pursue Buccleuch’s smaller raiding bands.

      The ambush was a common variation of the large and medium-sized raids, the reivers leaving a strong party posted on their proposed return route, so that pursuers chasing a raid frequently found themselves surrounded and beset by an unexpectedly large enemy force. This was a favourite stratagem of the Armstrongs, who practised it memorably against Lord Dacre in 1528 (see pp. 233–4).

      The raiding season, although it was never closed in practice, was autumn to spring, when the cattle and their owners were in their permanent winter quarters in the valleys. As the summer waned, anxiety grew along the frontier; “the longer the nights growe, the worse they will be”, wrote Robert Carey one late August, and young Scrope in November was lamenting: “The depe of winter and most unquiet season is come upon us.” Carey made a study of this aspect of reiving, and pronounced the last months of the year as the worst, “for then are the nights longest, theyre horses at hard meat, and will ride best, cattel strong, and will drive farthest.”

      Of those closing months, the worst period was from Michaelmas (September 29) to Martinmas (November 11): “then are the fells good and drie and cattle strong to dryve”. The dead of winter was comparatively less troublesome, because of foul weather and the weaker state of the cattle. This weakness had reached a peak by Candlemas (February 2), when with the nights growing shorter and oats dearer, the reivers’ horses were less well fed and ready to be put to grass.

      Thus Robert Carey, waxing technical on an admittedly technical subject: he even noticed that the thieves “will never lightly steal hard before Lammas (August 1), for fear of the assizes, but beeing once past, they returne to their former trade”. In fact it was probably not the assizes, but the removal of the cattle to the high sheilings during the summer that restrained the robbers. But his observations show up some of the finer points of reiving, although judging by Border records the pattern of raiding was spread more generally over the year than his findings suggest.

      As to any geographical pattern of raids, it is difficult to say more than that the general trend from Scotland was south-eastwards, the Western end of the frontier containing by far the most troublesome elements, while from England the Middle March raiders forayed in all directions. Edward Aglionby’s report to Burghley of 1592 is quite definite that the English West and Middle Marches suffered most from Liddesdale, but that Teviotdale “doth never offend the West Border”. Lord Willoughby, at Berwick, was equally positive that all the spoils in the English East March were committed over the Tweed fords.

But it is dangerous to take these generalisations too much for granted, just as it is unwise to emphasise too strongly the importance of the so-called “reivers’ roads” which cross the Border at various points. It is tempting for a geographer to pick on well-defined paths and passages, and suggest that these were used habitually by the rustlers. The last thing a Border reiver wanted was to follow a known route, especially on the way home. There were, by contemporary calculation, more than forty passages into the English Middle March,¹ but unless the Border character has changed considerably, they were probably often ignored in favour of going “over the tops”. Men who know their business can take cattle over some unpromising country.

      One thing is sure: the ground most often crossed by raiders was the Bewcastle Waste, a wild area of fell and moor lying south-east of Liddesdale on the English side. It was the very hub of the Middle and West Marches, and there is ample documentary confirmation of Lord Dacre’s assertion in 1528, that “theye come thorow Bewcastelldale, and retirnes, for the moste parte, the same waye agayne”.

      But not invariably, according to Thomas Musgrave fifty years later. Writing to Burghley, he described two Liddesdale routes quite specifically; one, directed at the Coquet Valley, skirted Bewcastle to the east and ran “by the Perlfell without the Horse Head near Kelder, and so along abone Chepechase”. The second, to Tyne Water, was by Kershopehead, skirting Gele Crage, and by Tarnbek, Bogells Gar, Spye Crag, and Lampert. Musgrave was an expert frontiersman, and his information can be relied on. But these were routes which would be fashionable for a time—as in the Elliot – Fenwick feud; for the most part, the reivers were liable to ride anywhere, at any time, in any numbers.

To understand how good their scouting and woodcraft was, we should see what they were up against, quite apart from the dark, the weather, and the rough country. On the English side the most expert of all Wardens, Lord Wharton, had established a formidable guard system in the 1550s, whereby the entire frontier, from Solway to Berwick, was under watch night and day, from October to mid-March; local gentlemen were made responsible for arming and horsing their people, and setting and inspecting the watches, which were posted on hilltops, fords, valleys, and every conceivable passage over the Marches. Wharton, a hard man who believed in hanging first and asking questions later, reinforced his system with harsh penalties for neglect of duty; it was death not to resist raiders,² all intercourse with Scots was forbidden, and gentlemen were under the strictest instructions to see his rules enforced. He knew his Borderers, and was determined to stamp out any fifth column activities on the raiders’ behalf.

      Nor could the reivers count on watches always being in the same place; small mobile patrols were also used, and “plump” watches of unusual strength were liable to be set up as occasion demanded.

      To man the frontier efficiently, about 1000 watchers were necessary; it follows that in spite of the regulations, there was some defaulting. Young Scrope found difficulty in maintaining plump watches of forty horse in the West, and at Morpeth in the winter of 1597 there was a flat refusal to stand watches, so that a plump watch had to be moved in. Possibly owing to shortage of men, day watches seem to have been indifferently kept in young Scrope’s time.

      Watches on the Scottish side seem to have been less organised, which may be significant, but here as in England there was a system