The Debatable Land

by Graham Robb

  1579

  Lord Herries (John Maxwell, warden of Scottish West March), report on Debatable Land population: ‘in the year 1542, they did not exceed the number of 20 or 30 men at most. Now they are grown to three or four hundred’.

  1583

  Thomas Musgrave, Captain of Bewcastle, report on ‘the riders and ill doers both of England and Scotland’.

  1587

  February 8 – Execution of Mary Stuart; July 29 – James VI, Act of Parliament ‘for the quieting and keeping in obedience of the disordered subjects, inhabitants of the borders, highlands and islands’.

  1593

  December 6 – Battle of Dryfe Sands (Johnstone–Maxwell feud).

  1594–97

  Poor harvests and famine.

  1596

  March 17 – Arrest and imprisonment in Carlisle Castle of Kinmont Willie; April 13 – Rescue of Kinmont Willie; early August: Thomas Scrope, warden of English West March, invades Liddesdale.

  1597

  May 5 – Treaty of Carlisle: Anglo-Scottish cooperation in policing of the border.

  1598

  Summer – Plague in Carlisle, Penrith and Kendal.

  1600

  June 16 – Murder of Sir John Carmichael, warden of the West March, by Armstrongs and Carlisles; November 14: Thomas Armstrong hanged in Edinburgh.

  1601

  June – July – Siege of Tarras Moss and defeat of Armstrongs by Robert Carey.

  1603

  March 24 – Death of Elizabeth I; ‘Busy Week’ (or ‘Ill Week’); July 11 – Union of the Crowns; James VI becomes king of ‘Great Britain’; Border counties renamed the Middle Shires; post of warden abolished; Border strongholds to be dismantled; March law replaced by the law of the land.

  1604

  ‘Survaie of the Debatable and Border Lands, Belonginge to the Crowne of Englande’; February 14 – Borderers ‘forbidden the use of all manner of armour and weapons, and of horses saving only mean nags for tillage’; offenders to be ‘removed to some other place’.

  1605

  April – August – Deportation of Grahams to the Netherlands.

  1606

  February – Hanging of other murderers of warden Carmichael in Edinburgh; Summer – Deportation of Grahams to Ireland.

  1608

  Purge of Borders and Debatable Land by Lord Scott of Buccleuch.

  1609 -

  Rebuilding of Arthuret Church.

  1625

  March – Accession of Charles I.

  1628

  Richard Graham (knighted 1629), MP for Carlisle, acquires Netherby estate.

  1707

  May 1 – Creation of the United Kingdom (Acts of Union, 1706–7).

  1745

  Jacobite Rebellion: November 18 – Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) enters Carlisle.

  1757 -

  Development of Netherby, Longtown and Sarkfoot by Rev. Robert Graham.

  1771

  November 16–17 – Eruption of Solway Moss.

  1792

  Late summer – Walter Scott enters Liddesdale for the first time.

  1793

  Newcastleton (Copshawholm) founded by Duke of Buccleuch as a centre for the weaving industry.

  Footnotes

  1 A ‘lonning’ (Scots, ‘loaning’) is a lane along which farm animals, especially cattle, are allowed to pass. The word is commonly applied to any farm track.

  2 ‘Newcastleton’ is the name on maps and road signs; locally, it is known as Copshawholm (the site on which the village was built in 1793) and even more locally as ‘the Holm’ or ‘the Village’.

  3 The name of the city is pronounced variously Carlisle, Carlisle, Ca(e)rliol and Caerl. The Latinized Celtic name, Luguvalium, produced ‘Luel’ or ‘Liol’. A ‘caer’, in Cumbric or Welsh, was a fort.

  4 ‘I curse their head and all the hairs of their head; I curse their face, their eyes, their mouth, their nose, their tongue, their teeth, their skull . . . and every part of their body, from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, in front and behind, within and without.’

  5 Committed ‘perpetually to the deep pit of hell, to remain with Lucifer and all his companions . . . first to be hanged, then torn and pulled apart by dogs, swine and other wild beasts, abominable to all the world’.

  6 ‘A den and hiding place of thieves’.

  7 Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815), ch. 24.

  8 ‘I know full well that if I took two coats, they’d be wet through and there’s no point burdening both myself and the animal with wet clothing.’

  9 ‘Nebless’ = noseless; ‘pyntle’ = penis.

  10 ‘Ill-Wild’ = ill-willed.

  11 Copshawholm is the older name of Newcastleton (here). ‘Clatter’ = gossip.

  12 The ‘hot trod’ allowed for deadly force if the thief was caught ‘red handed’. Alternatively, he could be held to ransom. The trod was announced ‘with hound and horn, with hue and cry’ to proclaim its legality and to encourage others to join in. If action was delayed for six days or more, the pursuit would be a ‘cold trod’ and subject to the wardens’ permission.

  13 Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577 and 1587) mention ‘two fertill and plentifull regions’ in eastern Scotland ‘both verie notablie indowed with batable pastures, and by reason thereof are verie full of cattell’. British pasture in general is ‘verie fine, batable, and such as either fatteth our cattell with speed, or yeeldeth great abundance of milke and creame’. The term ‘batable’ made a late appearance in Jonathan Boucher’s Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1833): ‘land . . . such as is rich and fertile in nutrition, grass and herbage, calculated to batten, or to make fat, the animals that graze on it.’

  14 Spellings are modernized for clarity but the place names are unchanged. This text probably reflects the 1542 survey. It is followed by a description of the English and Scottish portions of the Debatable Land, anticipating the division of 1552 but following watercourses rather than the geometrical line of the final settlement.

  15 Older maps show the Sark entering the Solway much closer to the Lochmaben Stone, which was then the south-western tip of the Debatable Land. The diminutive Sark is entitled to be called a river because it flows directly into the sea, unlike Liddel Water, which flows into the Esk. The same distinction exists in French: the Esk would be a ‘fleuve’ and its tributary the Liddel a ‘riviere’.

  16 Stobs (or stubs) and staiks were wooden posts used to measure a plot of land and to serve as boundary markers. ‘To have stob and stake’ is to have a fixed abode.

  17 Sometimes misnamed ‘Gilnockie Tower’ and confused with ‘Gilnockie Castle’, which is the earthwork five hundred metres downstream on the opposite bank of the Esk (perhaps the tower or bastle labelled ‘Ye Thornwhate’ on a map of 1590). Hollows Tower would have been built for a descendant of Johnnie Armstrong, who was hanged in 1530. No tower is shown on the 1552 map by Henry Bullock.

  18 ‘From the date of this proclamation, all Englishmen and Scotsmen are and shall be free – without the need for reparation – to rob, burn, steal, slay, murder and destroy any person or persons, including their bodies, property, goods and livestock, which remain on or inhabit any part of the said Debatable Land, except for the purpose of pasturing animals between sunrise and sunset, in accordance with the ancient practice and custom applied to all Englishmen and Scotsmen who do not take up permanent residence there.’

  19 ‘Onsett’: farmstead; ‘graunge’: barn; ‘kene’: kine, cattle; ‘gete’: goats; ‘insight’: furniture, household goods.

  20 The Brittonic or Brythonic languages (Cumbric, Welsh, Cornish and Breton) developed from the ‘insular’ as opposed to ‘continental’ Celtic spoken in Iron Age and Roman Britain south of the Forth–Clyde line.

  21 See fig. 4. On Bullock’s map, north is tilted to the right in order to fit the drawing onto the paper, which explains why the commissioners’ ‘indenture’ (24 September 1552) refers mistakenly to the ‘Western
’ and ‘Eastern’ halves of the Debatable Land.

  22 ‘Wherever they go they leave nothing behind, / Whatever is hidden they surely will find.’

  23 Umfraye Graham had three sons, despite his nickname, ‘Shag’, which meant ‘an ox which has been castrated incompletely or when fully grown’ (Scottish National Dictionary).

  24 ‘Shieling’: ‘An upland or outfield pasture-ground to which sheep and cattle were driven from farms on the lower ground for the summer season and where their herds and attendants lived in temporary bothies’ (Scottish National Dictionary).

  25 ‘With plate armour on his shoulder.’

  26 ‘Keen’ = ‘avaricious, driving a hard bargain, looking sharply after his own interests’ (Scottish National Dictionary).

  27 Harraby Hill, south-east of Carlisle, the traditional place of execution.

  28 Branxholm Hall or Castle, near Hawick, seat of the Scotts of Buccleuch.

  29 ‘Low’ = flame or blaze; ‘sloken’ = quench.

  30 ‘The same 6 of Apryll 1596, the laird of Buccleugh past to the castell of Carleill wt 70 men, and tuik out Will. Kynmonth out of the said castell: the said Will. lyand in ironis wtin the irone zett [gate]. Yis he did with shouting and crying, and sound of trumpet, puttand the said toune and countrie in sic ane fray [uproar], that the lyk of sic ane wassaledge [daring deed] wes nevir since the memorie of man, no in Wallace dayis [not even in the days of William Wallace].’

  31 A ‘laroun’ was a thief. The usual transcription is ‘largin’, which has no meaning.

  32 ‘Pune’ actually referred to the lawful recovery or ‘reprisal’ of stolen property. Scrope was twisting the term into a synonym of ‘revenge attack’. He misdefined ‘pune’ as ‘armed justice, differinge from peaceable justice onely in forme, beinge in matter and substance one and the same’.

  33 ‘Bickering’: ‘skirmishing, exchange of missiles’ (A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue). ‘Pretty’ has the sense of ‘brave’ or ‘worthy’.

  34 In the 1790s, Walter Scott noticed that ‘there are now no trees in Liddesdale, except on the banks of the rivers, where they are protected from the sheep’. The great sheep flocks and consolidated farms of the Buccleuchs had already begun to transform the landscape in the 1590s.

  35 ‘In border raiding parlance: one who betrays his neighbour by leading a marauding party over secret paths to his stronghold, and who muffles his face that he may be spared recognition and retribution.’ (Scottish National Dictionary)

  36 The borderers’ sleuth hounds were considered one of the wonders of Scotland by the historical compiler, John Monnipennie. In 1594, he explained that the people who ‘live in sleuth and idleness’ neglect their own possessions, ‘then have they recourse to the Dog, for reparation of their sleuth’. (‘Sleuth’ actually comes from the Old Norse ‘slóth’, meaning ‘track’ or ‘trail’.)

  37 Cf. Micah 4:4: ‘But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.’ (King James Bible)

  38 ‘Factious’ = seditious; ‘naughty’ (or ‘noughtie’) = worthless or wicked.

  39 ‘Busy’ = troublesome.

  40 ‘Known ground(s)’ (unrecorded in dictionaries) apparently referred to any land that could be used, whether for grazing or planting crops. E.g., in 1761: ‘the arable, lay-meadow, pasture, and feeding commons . . . and all other the known grounds [sic] and lands, lying . . . within the parish’.

  41 ‘Bangstrie’: ‘violent or bullying behaviour’ (A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue).

  42 The Grahams who crept back to Scotland are said to have reversed their name and called themselves Maharg. The name ‘Maharg’ is Gaelic and unrelated to ‘Graham’ – a spelling which was almost never used at the time. The commonest forms, which still reflect the pronunciation of the name, were ‘Grame’, ‘Graym’, ‘Greme’ and ‘Greyme’.

  43 ‘Good man’ (or ‘gudeman’): the head of a household; also applied to the laird.

  44 There is a modern legal precedent in the Debatable Land for taking an older rather than the present course of a river as the border. Liddel Water once flowed at the foot of the cliff on which Liddel Moat was built. The engineers of the North British Railway pushed the river two hundred and fifty feet to the west, leaving one acre of Scotland on the English side.

  45 For the essential details: here and figs 7–12.

  46 The process of identifying unknown places on the map, which can also be used to test its accuracy, is described in fig. 11.

  47 Eskdale & Liddesdale Advertiser, 14 September 2016. Full report pending.

  48 Arthur’s Cross Farm was last shown on a map in 1823. The ‘stone which none might lift’ was probably the plinth of a cross. It was removed some time after 1847. According to the farming family, it now survives only as a field name on High Plains Farm.

  49 See here. The list excludes place names referring to later ‘Arthurs’ or to members of Clan Arthur or MacArthur. Fig. 14 includes four other places associated with early (rather than chivalric) Arthurian legend.

  50 Stewart Clark, ‘Ayrshire Fishing Guide’ (2011). Principal rivers were often renamed after one tributary or another. The Liddel, for example, was sometimes called the Kershope, from the name of its largest tributary.

  51 There is only one other candidate. The great ‘barbarian conspiracy’ of 367 – which was more coincidence than conspiracy – involved various tribes from Caledonia, as well as Franks and Saxons from across the North Sea, but the main attack was concentrated in the far south-east, on the coasts facing Gaul; the crucial victory over the invaders took place at London, and the northern incursions were a series of raids rather than a wide-ranging war.

  52 The probable course of the invasion is shown in figs 14 and 15.

  53 Not to be confused with the legendary Caledonian Forest – a confusion anticipated by the writer: ‘the Celidonian forest, which is to say the Battle of Celidon Wood’. On Ptolemy’s conflation of Celtic ‘drumo’ (‘ridge’) and Greek ‘drumos’ (‘oak wood’), see here. The position of the ‘Kaledonios Drumos’ on Ptolemy’s map suggests the mountainous region which begins at the Highland Boundary Fault: fig. 7.

  54 The City of Legions, the river Duglas, the forest of Caledon, the province of Lindesia, the river Cambula.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  ALHTS: Dickson et al., eds, Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland.

  APCE: Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England.

  CBP: Calendar of Border Papers (i.e. Bain, ed., The Border Papers).

  CDRS: Bain et al., eds, Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland.

  CSPRI: Russell and Prendergast, eds, Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland.

  CSPRS: Bain et al., eds, Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Scotland.

  HP: Bain, ed., The Hamilton Papers.

  LPH8: Brewer, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.

  Muncaster: Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Westmorland, Captain Stewart, Lord Stafford, Lord Muncaster, and Others.

  RIB: Collingwood and Wright et al., eds, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain.

  RPS: Brown et al., eds, The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707.

  SPH8: Strahan et al., eds, State Papers Published Under the Authority of His Majesty’s Commission: King Henry the Eighth.

  1. Hidden Places

  ‘all Englishmen and Scottishmen. . .’: ‘A Remembrance of an Order for the Debatable Lannde’ (1537): R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. xxxvii.

  2. Outpost

  A hundred years ago: Earliest recorded version: ‘The Widow in the Train’: Wood (attributed to ‘Colonel Ewart’).

  ‘Down a steep bank we slid’: Evens, 57.

  3. Panic Button

  ‘It is hard to be right with the Scots!’: Ridley (Baron Ridley of Liddesdale), 125.

&nb
sp; 4. The True and Ancient Border

  Hugh de Bolbec: Shirley, I, 186–8 (Latin text); Stones, no. 8 (edition of text). See also Barrow, 36–7. Often misdated 1222 (CDRS, I, no. 832) or 1249, which is the date of the subsequent Border treaty (W. Nicolson, 1–7 and Reid, 479–80; T. Thomson et al., I, 413 ff.).

  the Chevyotte ‘mounteyne’: Bowes (1550), 203.

  ‘ingates and passages forth of Scotland’: LPH8, XVIII, 2, 285.

  5. ‘The Sewer of Abandoned Men’

  ‘surnames’ or ‘clans’: E.g. Cardew, 83 ff.; Groundwater, 52–5.

  government officials known as wardens: On March wardens: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, pp. 2–7; Pease; Rae, 24 and 100; Reid; Godfrey Watson, 37–8.

  appointed in the early fourteenth century: The title ‘Warden of the Marches’ dates from October 1309, when Robert Clifford was appointed ‘custodem Marchie Scotie in partibus Karlioli contra inimicos et rebelles nostros’ (Reid, 482). In 1301, ‘keepers of the march’: CDRS, V, 167.

  ‘Nae living man I’ll love again’: ‘The Lament of the Border Widow’, vv. 25–8: W. Scott (1803), III, 84.

  Great Monition of Cursing: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, pp. 223–5; SPH8, IV, 371 and 416–19.

  ‘from their cradells bredd’: TNA SP 14/6/43: Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 87.

  ‘a set of wild men’: Carey (1759), xxviii (editor’s introduction).

  ‘ane spelunc and hurd of thewis’: Thomas Scott of Pitgorno to T. Cromwell, in SPH8, V, 126.

  ‘the sink and receptacle of proscribed wretches’: Clarke, x.

  ‘a land of contention, rapine, bloodshed’: Hutchinson, II, 535–6.

  a ‘degraded piece of land’: Hutton, 46.

  ‘the sewer of abandoned men’: Pease, 62.

  ‘a monument to the intractable character of the natives’: Hay, 82.