clan-raids of the Border, and to narrate all the invasions that took
place on either side would be to repeat in great measure the general
history of England and Scotland. But at least two authentic reports,
covering little more than a year, may be quoted as showing the
extraordinary havoc and destruction caused by the latter. "In 1544 Sir
Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Latoun, with an English army, invaded the
Scottish Border, and between July and November they destroyed 192 towns,
towers, barmkyns, parish churches, etc.; slew 403 Scots and took 816
prisoners; carried off 10,386 head of cattle, 12,492 sheep, 1296 horses,
200 goats, and 850 bolls of corn, besides an untold quantity of inside
gear and plenishing. In one village alone--that of Lessudden (now St.
Boswells)--Sir Ralph Evers writes that he burned 16 strong
bastle-houses. Again in September of the following year, the Earl of
Hertford a second time invaded the country, and between the 8th and the
23rd of that month, he razed and cast down the abbeys of Jedburgh,
Kelso, Dryburgh, and Melrose, and burned the town of Kelso. At the same
time he destroyed about 30 towns, towers and villages on the Tweed, 36
on the Teviot, 12 on Rulewater, 13 on the Jed, 45 on the Kale, 19 on the
Bowmont, 109 in the parishes of Eccles and Duns in Berwickshire, with 20
other towns and villages in the same county. The places destroyed are
all named in the report to the English king, along with a classified
list of that terrible sixteen days' destruction, embracing 7 monasteries
and friars' houses, 16 castles, towers and peels, 5 market-towns, the
immense number of 243 villages, with 13 mills, and 3 hospitals."
It cannot be forgotten that upon Border soil were fought at least six of
the great historical battles of the nation, _viz._, Halidon Hill (1333);
Otterburn (1388); Homildon Hill (1402); Flodden (1513); Solway Moss
(1542); and Ancrum Moor (1544). Of mere internal contests there are the
fight at Arkinholm (Langholm, 1455), between Scotsmen, where James II.
broke the power of the Douglases; the battle of Hedgeley Moor (1464),
and of Hexham (1464) between the English adherents of Lancaster and
York, when the Lancastrians were defeated; the affair of Melrose
(Skirmish Hill, 1526) between Borderers under the Earl of Angus and
Buccleuch; and Philiphaugh (1645) when Leslie drove Montrose from the
field. Of what were purely faction fights and deeds of daring such as
the Raid of the Reidswire (1575), and the rescue of Kinmont Willie
(1596), the ancient ballads will keep their memory green for many a year
to come.
PLATE 5
VIEW OF NORHAM
CASTLE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 39, 60, 93_)
[Illustration]
Two great incidents of Border warfare stand out before all
others--Otterburn and Flodden. Old Froissart has told the story of
Otterburn. The Scottish barons, tired of the fickleness and
inactivity of their king, determined to invade England, met at Aberdeen,
and arranged the preliminaries for a great gathering at Southdean,
beyond Jedburgh. On the day appointed the best blood in Scotland was
assembled. "There had not been for sixty years so numerous an
assembly--they amounted to twelve hundred spears and forty thousand
other men and archers." The Earl of Douglas, the Earl of March and
Dunbar, and the Earl of Moray, with three hundred picked lancers and two
thousand infantry, burst into Northumberland, rode south as far as
Durham, and laid waste the country. In one of their encounters before
Newcastle-on-Tyne the Earl of Douglas had a hand-to-hand combat with Sir
Henry Percy--- Hotspur,--who was overthrown, Douglas seizing his
pennon--the silken streamer bearing his insignia, which was fastened
near the head of his lance. In triumph he exclaimed: "I will carry this
token of your prowess with me into Scotland, and place it on the tower
of my castle at Dalkeith, that it may be seen from afar." "By God, Earl
of Douglas," replied Hotspur, "you shall not even bear it out of
Northumberland; be assured you shall never have this pennon to boast
of." "You must come then," answered Douglas, "this night and seek for
it. I will fix your pennon before my tent, and shall see if you will
venture to take it away." On the following evening the Scottish army
"lighted high on Otterburn," in Redesdale, and there Sir Henry and Ralph
Percy, with six hundred spears of knights and squires and upwards of
eight thousand infantry, fell upon the Scots, who were but three hundred
lances, and two thousand others. The fight that followed was one of the
most spirited in history, and ended in the death of Douglas, the capture
of Hotspur, the serious wounding of his brother, and the killing or
capture of one thousand and forty Englishmen on the field, the capture
of eight hundred and forty others in the pursuit, and the wounding of a
thousand more. The Scots lost only one hundred slain and two hundred
captured. "It was," says Froissart, "the hardest and most obstinate
battle ever fought." The tragic incidents of this encounter have been
kept alive not historically but poetically. It is the immortality of
song which preserves the memory of Otterburn. No contest was more
emphatically the "ballad-singer's joy." Two ballads, the one Scots, the
other English, give their respective versions of the event with those
natural discrepancies between the two, which may easily be accounted for
on patriotic grounds. That given in Scott's "Minstrelsy" is
unquestionably the finer, and contains the lines so often quoted by
Scott himself, and at no occasion more pathetically than during his
visit--pretty near the end--to the old Douglas shrines in Lanarkshire,
the locality of "Castle Dangerous":
"My wound is deep. I fain would sleep;
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me by the braken bush
That grows on yonder lilye lea.
"O bury me by the braken bush,
Beneath the blooming brier;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here."
The story of Flodden is the darkest, perhaps, on the page of Scottish
history, and like Otterburn, has been written in strains grand and
majestic, and certainly the most heart-moving in the whole realm of
northern minstrelsy. There Scotland lost her King, the Archbishop of St.
Andrew's, James's natural son, two abbots, twelve earls, seventeen
lords, four hundred knights, and fifteen thousand others, all sacrificed
to the fighting pride of James IV. of Scotland. Pierced by several
strong arrows, the left hand hacked clean from the arm, the neck laid
open in the middle, James's body was carried mournfully to Berwick. He
had died a hero's death, albeit a foolish one. His last words have lived
in the lines of the rhymer:
"Fight on, my men,
Yet Fortune she may turn the scale;
And for my wounds be not dismayed,
Nor ever let your courage fail.
Thus dying did he brave appear
Till shades of death did close his eyes;
Till then he did his soldiers cheer,
And raise their courage to the skies."
The era of Blood and Iron on the Borders has passed long since. Peace
and prosperity prevail on both sides of the Tweed. Old animosities are
seldom spoken of, and hardly ever remembered. A cordial amity and
good-will and co-operation evidence the strength of the cementing
element which no loyal heart, either north or south, can ever desire to
see broken.
PLATE 6
TWIZEL BRIDGE OF THE
XIV. CENTURY
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_Famous in connection with Flodden Field_)
[Illustration]
II. THE ENGLISH BORDER
NORTHUMBERLAND
A line drawn from Berwick to Carlisle, and across England to the Coquet,
thence north again, coast-wise, to the old Tweedside borough will give
us, for all practical purposes, the English Border Country. Only a part
of the Roman Wall, as far as Crag Loch and Borcovicus (Housesteads),
will come within the present purview, which excludes Newcastle itself
and the "coaly Tyne." We are to deal with rural Northumberland rather,
and with a little corner of Cumberland, the immediate and true Border.
Even at this time of day much of the English Border is still a kind of
_terra incognita_ to the tourist and holiday-maker. For travelling
facilities have not been of the best hitherto. But it is a new order of
things now, and even the most outlying spots can be reached with a
wonderful degree of comfort impossible not so very long ago. Bewcastle,
for instance, and the once wild and trackless "Debateable Land" between
Canonbie and the Solway, have come within comparatively easy distance of
railroad and coaching centres. The crossing of the Solway Moss by the
Caledonian Route, and the opening out of the line from Alnwick to Wooler
and Cornhill, together with the numerous driving tours that are in daily
operation during the summer at least, have become the _open sesame_ to a
district practically shut up even less than a half century since. It is
now possible to breakfast in Carlisle, or Newcastle, or much further
south for that matter (or north), and within an hour or two to be
revelling in the most delightful rusticities at the foot of the
Cheviots, or in the very heart of them. The remotest localities are
rendered accessible even for a single day's outing, and a holiday on the
English Border is not likely to be a disappointing one. There is
something to suit every taste. If one is archaeologically inclined, for
instance, Northumberland has one of the finest collections of military
antiquities in the kingdom, from the rude circular camps and
entrenchments of the primitive inhabitants to the great castles and
peel-towers of mediaeval times. The Romans have left a mighty monument of
their power--none more significant--in the huge barrier thrown across
the lower half of the county, and in the stations and roads connected
with it. In some respects the Roman Wall may be accounted
Northumberland's principal attraction, and a pilgrimage between Tyne and
Solway must always repay itself. If one is artistically inclined, there
are beauty-spots for all canvases--as befits the birthplace of such
masters as Bewick and Foster. And as an angler's paradise the Cheviot
uplands have long been popular. The historical memories of the English
Border are outstanding. For centuries this little fringe of country was
a continuous warring-ground for the two nations that are now happily
one. Upon its soil were fought some of the bloodiest, and it must be
added, some of the most fool-hardy and unjustifiable fights on record.
In its religious story it has much to boast of. By its missionaries and
by its sword it won England from heathendom to the Christian Church. The
development of the monastic system in Northumbria did more than
anything else to civilise and colonise the entire realm, Scotland
included. "Its monasteries," as Green says, "were the seat of whatever
intellectual life the country possessed, and above all, it had been the
first to gather together into a loose political unity the various tribes
of the English people, and by standing at their head for nearly a
century to accustom them to a national life out of which England as we
have it now was to spring."
The physical conditions, generally speaking, are similar on both sides
of the Border. Wide arable expanses, well-wooded and fertile, cover the
chief valleys and much of the Northumbrian coast-line. But in the main,
the landscape is purely pastoral for miles, showing few signs of human
life, and the nearest habitation often at a considerable distance. The
Northumbrian uplands are confined chiefly to the Cheviots, the Pyrenees
on a small scale; two-thirds of their whole three hundred square miles
are in the county, constituting perhaps the loveliest cluster of
pastoral hills in the island. Of this group, Cheviot--to be more
distinctive, _the_ Cheviot--(2676 feet) sits in the centre almost,
dignified and massive, the "recumbent guardian of the great lone
moorland." Others, taking them according to height, are Cairn Hill
(2545), Hedgehope (2348), Comb Fell (2132), Cushat Law (2020), Bloody
Bush Edge (2001), Windy Gyle (1963), Dunmore (1860), Carter Fell (1600),
and Yeavering Bell (1182)--a graceful cone overlooking the pretty hamlet
of Kirknewton. A climb to the broad back of the Cheviot, or the rounded
top of Yeavering, should be made by every tourist who rambles along the
Border. Both are reachable from the Scottish and English sides, as by
Bowmont and Colledge Waters, or by that loveliest of all the upland
dales, Langleeford. Despite the somewhat quagmire character of its flat
summit, the view from the Cheviot, as one might expect, is a truly
inspiring one, comprising the whole coast-line between Berwick and
Tynemouth, and the vast inland expanse from Midlothian to the
Solway--the Scottish Border _in toto_. The Cheviots are hills rather
than the "mountains blue" of poetic licence. Yet all are imposing to a
degree, and exhibit an excellent contour against the sky-line. They have
none of the wildness and savagery of the Highland ranges, and even the
steepest are grass-grown from skirt to summit, being easy of ascent, and
commanding the most varied and brilliant prospects.
Robert Crawford sings of them as "Cheviot braes so soft and gay," and
Gilpin likens the hirsels browsing on the most acclivitous to pictures
hung on immense green walls. From time immemorial those charming uplands
have been grazed by the quiet, hardy, fine-wooled, white-faced breed of
sheep which bear their name; and in the days of the raids (for this is
the true "raider-land" of history) they were resonant, more than any
other part of Scotland, with the clang of freebootery and the yell of
strife. Mrs. Sigourney's apostrophe to the present day flocks may be
quoted:
Graze on, graze on, there comes no sound
Of Border warfare here,
No slogan cry of gathering clan,
No battle-axe, or spear.
No belted knight in armour bright,
With glance of kindled ire,
Doth change the sports of Chevy-Chase
To conflict stern and dire.
Ye wist not that ye press the spot,
Where Percy held his way
Across the marches, in his pride,
The "chiefest harts to slay;"
And where the stout Earl Douglas rode
Upon his milk-white steed,
With "fifteen hundred Scottish spears,"
To stay the invaders' deed.
Ye wist not, that ye press the spot
Where, with his eagle eye,
King James, and all his gallant train,
To Flodden-Field swept by.
The Queen was weeping in her bower,
Amid her maids that day,
And on her cradled nursling's face
Those tears like pearl-drops lay:
Graze on, graze on, there's many a rill
Bright sparkling through the glade,
Where you may freely slake your thirst,
With none to make afraid.
There's many a wandering stream that flows
From Cheviot's terraced side,
Yet not one drop of warrior's gore
Distains its crystal tide.
PLATE 7
FLODDEN FIELD AND
THE CHEVIOT HILLS
FROM A WATER COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 40, 48, 99, 103, 121_)
[Illustration]
Of the river valleys running south of the Border line, the chief are the
Breamish, or the Till, as it is termed from Bewick Brig--the "sullen
Till" of "Marmion"; the Aln, from Alnham Kirk to the sand-banks of
Alnmouth, a glen emphatically rich in legendary lore; the Coquet, the
most picturesque and most popular trouting-stream in the North of
England; and Redesdale, redolent of "Chevy Chase," rising out of Carter
Fell, and joining the North Tyne at Redesmouth, a little below the
pleasant market-town of Bellingham. The chief towns are Berwick and
Alnwick, Hexham being outside our present delimitation. Many of the
smaller places, and the villages, are models of their kind. Wooler, at
the base of the Cheviots, is a choice mountaineering and angling centre,
from which, by way of Langleeford, is the favourite route to Cheviot
top. It was at the Whitsun Tryst or Wooler sheep fair, that Scott's
grandfather spent his old shepherd's thirty pounds in buying a horse
instead of sheep, but with such happy results in the sequel. And hither
came Scott himself in August, 1791, to imbue his mind with the legends,
the history, and scenery of the neighbourhood. "Behold a letter from the
mountains," he writes to his friend William Clerk, "for I am very snugly
settled here, in a farmer's house (at Langleeford), about six miles from
Wooler, in the very centre of the Cheviot hills, in one of the wildest
and most romantic situations, which your imagination, fertile upon the
subject of cottages, ever suggested. 'And what the deuce are you about
there?' methinks I hear you say. Why, sir, of all things in the world,
drinking goat's whey; not that I stand in the least need of it, but my
uncle having a slight cold, and being a little tired of home, asked me
last Sunday evening if I would like to go with him to Wooler; and I,
answering in the affirmative, next morning's sun beheld us on our
journey through a pass in the Cheviots, upon the backs of two special
nags, and man Thomas behind with a portmanteau, and two fishing-rods
fastened across his back, much in the style of St. Andrew's cross. Upon
reaching Wooler we found the accommodation so bad that we were forced to
use some interest to get lodgings here, where we are most delightfully
appointed, indeed. To add to my satisfaction we are amidst places
renowned by feats of former days; each hill is crowned with a tower, or
camp, or cairn; and in no situation can you be near more fields of
battle--Flodden, Otterburn, and Chevy Chase. Ford Castle, Chillingham
Castle, Coupland Castle and many another scene of blood are within the
compass of a forenoon's ride. Out of the brooks with which the hills are
intersected, we pull trouts of half a yard in length, as fast as we did
the perches from the pond at Pennicuik, and we are in the very country
of muirfowl.... My uncle drinks the whey here, as I do ever since I
understood it was brought to his bedside every morning at six, by a very
pretty dairymaid. So much for my residence. All the day we shoot, fish,
walk, and ride; dine and sup on fish struggling from the stream, and the
most delicious heath-fed mutton, barn-door fowls, pies, milk cheese,
etc, all in perfection; and so much simplicity resides amongst those
hills that a pen, which could write at least, was not to be found about
the house, though belonging to a considerable farmer, till I shot the
crow with whose quill I write this epistle." (See Lockhart, chapter
vi.). In this passage we have an interesting glimpse of what
Northumberland was a hundred years ago, and of the great author enjoying
a holiday while yet reading for the law, and before fame began to blow
her trumpet in his praise.
Sweeter villages than Etal and Ford could scarcely be imagined out of
Arcadia. Etal Castle was destroyed by James IV. previous to Flodden,
and has never been restored. Ford Castle, built originally in 1287, has
been frequently renovated and enlarged, and is now a most excellent
example of the military style of architecture plus the modern mansion
house. Formerly held by the Herons, its chatelaine figures in "Marmion"
as the syren who detained the King when he ought to have been in the
field. The frescoes in Ford schoolroom, painted by the late Lady
Waterford, are objects not only of good art but of a well-conceived
philanthropy. Ancroft and Lowick, Chatton and Chillingham are delightful
summer resorts. Chillingham is famous for its Elizabethan Castle, but
still more so, perhaps, for its herds of wild cattle, the survivors of
the wild ox of Europe, and the supposed progenitors of our domestic
cattle. Other summer resorts are Belford and Doddington, but the whole
coast-line, indeed, is dotted with the most desirable holiday-nooks in
the county.
PLATE 8
VIEW OF WARKWORTH
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 39, 51, 52, 56_)
[Illustration]
The Coquet bears the palm for picturesqueness amongst Northumbrian
valleys, and is about forty miles in length. From Alwinton, the first
village after crossing the Cheviots, where the Alwine joins the
Coquet--"a place of slumber and of dreams remote among the hills"--to
Warkworth Castle, the stream carries history and romance in every league
of its course. Here are such names as Biddlestone, the "Osbaldistone,"
of "Rob Roy" (there are other claimants such as Chillingham and
Naworth); Harbottle, a hamlet of venerable antiquity; Holystone,
mentioned already in connection with Paulinus; Hepple, with the remnant
of a strong peel tower of the Ogles; and Rothbury, the capital of Upper
Coquetdale, a snug township in the midst of an amphitheatre of the
wild, stony Simonside hills. In the old days it was a reiving centre of
notoriety. All this part of Northumberland, indeed, was a constant
freebooting arena, neither Scots nor English being content without some
fray on hand. There is not a village, or a town, or farmhouse even, but
has some tale to tell of that uncanny period. Cragside, Lord Armstrong's
palatial seat, reclaimed, like Abbotsford, from the barren mountain
side, is within a mile of Rothbury. Then come Brinkburn Priory, "an
ancient fabric awful in repose," founded by William de Bertram, lord of
Mitford, in the reign of Henry I.; Felton, a neat little village, where
Alexander of Scotland received the homage of the Northumbrian barons;
and Warkworth, "proud of the Percy name," one of the quaintest and
oldest towns in Northumberland, and teeming with historical and romantic
associations. So near the sea, and with some of the rarest river scenery
in the county close at hand, the place is in high favour as a holiday
resort. A Saxon settlement, all interest centres around its dismantled
Castle, believed to have been built by Roger Fitz-Richard, to whom Henry
II. granted in 1158 the manor of Warkworth. Strengthened from time to
time, it became a Percy possession, and was the chief residence of the
family to the middle of the 15th century. At the height of its power it
must have been well-nigh impregnable, encircled on three sides by the
winding banks and overhanging woods of the Coquet, and on a commanding
eminence above it; and though time and many devastating hands have long
since riven its ancient walls, the pile still presents a splendid
example of a baronial stronghold, second to few on the Borders.
Among Northumbrian towns, Alnwick (the county town) ranks next to
Newcastle. But whilst the rise of the latter and its prosperity and
colour have been each affected by the great industrial changes of the
century, Alnwick's development has been very different. Lying peacefully
amidst pastoral hills, by the side of a river unpolluted by modern
commerce, this ancient Border town still presents the plain and austere
aspect which it wore when the great stage-coaches passed through on
their way from London to Edinburgh. In Newcastle, despite its numerous
relics of antiquity, one's mind is ever dominated by the potent Present,
whereas in Alnwick, it is ever under the spell of the dreamy Past. The
quaint, irregular stone-built houses are touched with the sober hues of
antiquity, and seem to take their character from the great baronial
relic of feudal times. The history of the town is chiefly a record of
"Old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago."