I confess to some sympathy for him; his was an impossible duty, on such a frontier, where national and local politics had to be conducted in a confusion of crime and feud and contrary loyalties, and only a rigidly upright outsider, untrammelled by border ties, could hope to steer a straight course. Thomas Carleton was practically horizontal, and a borderer to his backbone, but while he was frequently deep in knavery, and ever ready to resort to deceit and betrayal — just now and then we have a sense of a clever, worldly and probably weary man doing his best, or at least not his worst. He spent a dangerous lifetime in negotiating and dealing and making do, and when all else failed, fighting it out whatever the odds.
His duty, and his courage, cost him his life in the end. A Scots prisoner in his charge, David Elliot, had killed one of the English Ogles in feud; the Ogles, thirteen strong, took advantage of Carleton’s absence to ride to the house where Elliot was held, and murdered him, taking care to injure no one else. Knowing Carleton’s many “understandings” with the Scottish thieves, it is quite possible that he had been sheltering Elliot rather than holding him prisoner; in the event he “voud to have the lives” of the Ogles and ran them down with a posse of six riders. The Ogles tried to reason with him, but he came raging at them with lance and pistol, unhorsing one of them. In desperation the Ogles opened fire and that was the end of Thomas Carleton, “the expert borderer”.
What happened to his brother Lance is a mystery; he was last heard of in 1602, writing to the government offering to murder the Earl of Tyrone. Since Tyrone survived until 1616, we may assume that the offer was not accepted.
Other real borderers of the time appear briefly or are mentioned in the story: the murderous Willie Kang Irvine, the “great thief” John Charlton of the Bower, Hutcheon Graham, Auld Wat of Harden, and various Wardens – the Carey brothers, Robin and John, and their tempestuous father, Hunsdon, widely believed to be a bastard son of Henry VIII. Thomas “the Merchant” Hetherington, one of that refractory English tribe who descended on Carlisle in 1569 intending to murder the Bishop, was a blackmailer and associate of Richie Graham, a colourful ruffian who in addition to his protection racket also ran a counterfeiting business in his tower at Brackenhill, a few miles from Carlisle. Since many of “the Merchant’s” blackmail clients were Hetheringtons, I suspect some ingenious family ploy was being worked; Richie Graham may have reached the same conclusion, for we read of him “denying” Thomas Hetherington shortly after. Those tenants who would not pay, incidentally, were raided and plundered by Richie’s Scottish nephews, and when one of the victims appealed for help to Thomas Carleton (“then in company of said Richard Grame”) the Land Sergeant “replied that he could do him no good”. No wonder young Scrope despaired.
The Nixon raiders were in fact as I have described them in fiction. The tribe was a bi-national one, living in scattered pockets in both West Marches, but the main branch of the Scottish Nixons formed an unholy quadruple alliance with the Armstrongs, Elliots, and Crosers (Croziers) of Liddesdale which was the scourge of the frontier – indeed, I doubt if, in British history, including that of the Highlands, there is to be found such a reign of crime and terror as those four families inflicted on their neighbours from the Middle Ages to the end of the sixteenth century. The list of bills “fouled” against them is an appalling one, and it can have been only a fraction of their raids, murders, burnings, extortions, and kidnappings; they were the worst of a bad border, and all the more fearsome for their concentration in numbers in one valley: at their strongest they could put more than two thousand lances in the saddle in time of war, or in the great sweeps through the northern counties in which whole townships and tracts of countryside were despoiled. Raids in hundreds were more common, and forays by small family gangs of anything from six to twenty riders most common of all. And they were not the romantic outlaws of minstrelsy and folklore, but ruthless pillagers and killers who survived centuries of war and reprisal and large-scale punitive expeditions by both governments, which devastated their valley without dislodging them.
“Ill Will” and “Fingerless Will” were reivers of the early 1500s; Clemmie “the Clash” Nixon and “Half-drowned Geordie” Nixon were raiding Gilsland in October, 1595. “Hungry Jock” is based on Geordie Burn, mentioned earlier.
The Bells, once “a great surname”, were to be found in both West Marches. They had solid credentials in raid and feud, but by the end of the century had become less aggressive, although individuals like Willie “Redcloak” Bell and his brothers, who had taken part in the Kinmont rescue, and Christopher Bell, outlaw and hired assassin, did their best to keep the family’s bad name alive. The Triermain Bells of my story are loosely based on the Bells of Gilsland, a contentious and (by their own account) much injured community; they do seem to have endured more than their share of raiding and blackmailing in the ’90s, when we find them complaining of their wrongs to the Privy Council, thanking the Wardens for the liberation of 100 of their number kidnapped in one day foray by Scots riders, protesting their respectability and loyalty, and warning that unless protection is forthcoming they expect to be “cleane rooted out of those parts”.
A moving tale, until we look further in the papers for 1596 — 7, and find these same Gilsland Bells charged with plotting the assassination of Thomas Carleton “and all his kin” because he had delivered Christopher Bell to execution for eleven murders; they had also procured the hanging of two Carleton adherents by false witness, were at feud with the Grahams, and were alleged also to be feuding with the Armstrongs and at the same time assisting Armstrong raids into England (by no means impossible). After which it is rather an anticlimax to find them being advised to “mend theyre manners” by Henry Leigh – an active and interesting border officer who was at various times deputy Warden, confidante of James VI, government spy, and fugitive, last mentioned in the records as hiding in a wood in Lancashire in a false beard. Not that that necessarily had anything to do with the Bells, but it may be an instructive sidelight on border affairs.
As to the sins and injuries of the Bells, it depends entirely on which untrustworthy witnesses you believe; there is no doubt that they were heavily raided and blackmailed, and well qualified for the role of victim. There were many George Bells, and I had in mind those “poore and dailye suppliantes . . . utterlye beggered and spoiled” whose lament of November 18, 1597 may have moved the Privy Council, but not Thomas Carleton, who simply called them liars, “which God forgeve them”.
Finally, my narrator, Frey Luis Guevara, although he is a fictional character, had his counterparts on the Tudor frontier, where the folk were as likely to be Roman or pagan as Protestant, and many priests of the old faith were to be found, more or less anonymous as prudence and local feeling dictated. His name had no modern inspiration; there were two Guevaras on the border at this time, though they were not priests. John Guevara was a deputy Warden of the East March, with a talent for snatching English fugitives out of Scotland undetected; he seems to have come under a cloud for questionable activities on behalf of his Warden, Lord Willoughby, and his troop command was passed to his brother, Harry Guevara, of whom I know nothing more.
So those were the materials I used to make The Candlemass Road, a fiction which is simply an echo of events which happened every day along the border. In that, it is a true story, and its people, noble and simple, reiver and officer, once lived on the Marches, not so long ago. They were indeed a strange folk, terrible and admirable, and anyone who studies them – even if it is just to read through that part of their story which is to be found in the two volumes of the Calendar of Border Papers – will learn much about the matter of Britain, and perhaps feel indebted to them. Whatever their faults, they were realists who learned about life and death the hard way, and had at heart the lesson that when the walls of the ivory tower are broken down, and survival is in the balance, one must shift as best can, according to the custom of the country.
GLOSSARY
a-kenbo akimbo, hand(s)
on hip(s)
amain forcefully; also, with speed
Anthropophagi legendary cannibals, not mentioned in “Mandeville”, but described by Bernard Gilpin in a sermon before Edward VI in 1552
Babees Booke fifteenth century children’s book on table manners, etc.
baggies minnows
balladine comic dancer
bantling infant, brat
barnekin wall enclosing ground of peel tower or house
bastel fortified house or tower
bell (racing) the usual prize at border race meetings; the Carlisle Bell is said to be the oldest racing trophy in existence. One such bell was run “for my lady Dacre’s sake”.
billy close companion, comrade
brangling heated argument
caliver light musket
Carel Carlisle
chestayne chestnut
cingle girdle
clarting smearing with mud, dirtying
Cloudsley, William a legendary Cumbrian bowman, hero of the ballad “Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudislee”. He is one of many Northern archers credited with shooting an apple from his son’s head.
cotch coach
dag pistol
Debatable Land a strip of land, about twelve miles by three, just north of Carlisle at the western extremity of the frontier, and claimed by both countries. It was finally divided between the realms in 1552, but continued to be a notorious nest of outlaws.
Derrick, Thomas Tyburn hangman (fl. 1600) who gave his name to hoisting equipment.
double and sawfey a fine commonly imposed on a convicted thief, amounting to three times the value of the stolen goods
fast secured, stuck
featly deftly, neatly
fenny goose marchland goose; dropped feathers were supposedly best for fletching arrows
fyled, fouled found guilty, case proved
gleek jibe, jeer, but also to look sidelong or sly
handfasted engaged to marry; also trial marriage
handsel well-wishing, welcoming, inauguration
hobby, hobbler small, nimble border horse
hot trod lawful pursuit of thieves
hot water spirits
insight household goods
jack leather jacket plated with horn or iron
jealously closely, vigilantly
Jedburgh axe a form of poleaxe, a.k.a. a Jedburgh staff
Jeddart justice execution without trial (from “Jedburgh”)
jordan chamber-pot
kie, kye cattle
la’l little
Land Sergeant officer in charge of barony or district, with duties of guard, pursuit, and arrest
let prevent, hinder. Archaic term meaning
precisely the opposite of “let” (allow, permit); it lingers on in tennis.
Lickingstone Cell a dungeon of Carlisle Castle where the only water available came from a permanently moist stone. The groove licked by generations of prisoners, and the hand-print beside it, can still be seen.
Mandeville, Sir John reputed author of a celebrated travel book c. 1366. Part of it may be a genuine record of journeys in the Middle East but its fame rests on “Mandeville’s” descriptions of mythical monsters and freaks, including basilisks, the Head Right Hideous, and the one-footed folk.
mind (v.) remember, bear in mind
October ale brewed in that month (cf March ale)
plump watch a fixed guard, not patrolling
pomaunder pomander, small case or bag of aromatic herbs
poniard dagger
potched poached (cookery)
powdered beef spiced beef; also pickled, preserved
prime first hour of day (in Frey Luis’s case, 9 a.m.)
privado comrade
reiver raider, rustler
russled wrestled
scaur scar
skilly skilful
snell bitter, biting (of weather)
speer ask, inquire
stoupe, stoup tankard
strappado torture in which victim’s arms are dislocated by hoisting and dropping with cords
truce day frontier meeting at which Wardens of both sides tried complaints before a jury of borderers
vagrom vagrant
visor mask
Warden governor, law-giver, military commander, and guardian of a March, of which there were three (West, Middle, East) on either side of the border
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1 One of the many spellings of “Elliot”
2 Carlisle
3 How close a man may come to guilt without being guilty.
4 comic dancer
5 comrade
6 spirits
7 A bill “fouled” or “fyled” was a case proved at a truce day meeting where the Wardens of both sides heard complaints and gave redress.
8 “Scrope” is the usual spelling, but Border writers frequently rendered it as Scroop.
9 The Steel Bonnets, The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers (Harvill)
10 I installed her at Askerton because it seemed the obvious residence for her, as did Triermain for her tenants; both places were geographically suitable, and had Dacre associations, although in fact Askerton had passed to the Crown following Leonard Crookback’s treason, and towards the end of
the sixteenth century was one of the “fees” of the Land Sergeants of Gilsland — one of whom, ironically, was “Thomas Carleton, gentleman”. See the Muster of Gilsland, September 5, 1598, taken by his successor, John Musgrave, (Calendar of Border Papers, ii, 990) and the Certificate of Gilsland Barony from Mr Auditor King (August 16, 1598, C.B.P., ii, 982).
The Candlemass Road Page 16
