The Debatable Land

by Graham Robb

  ‘suspicious and taciturn’: G. M. Fraser, 2.

  ‘racial composition’: G. M. Fraser, 2.

  ‘Border types’: G. M. Fraser, 1.

  ‘the people of that countrey’: Bowes (1550), 243.

  6. Mouldywarp

  ‘spies and lookers into the privity [secrets] of the country’: Mayor of Berwick on ‘the Drie Marches into Northumberland’, 1584: CBP, I, 142.

  marks cut in a smooth patch of turf: W. Scott (1803), I, lxxxiii–lxxxiv.

  a complex communications network: E.g. Godfrey Watson, 132–3.

  bedsheets spread on hedges and hillsides: Tradition reported to R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, 78 n. 1.

  ‘rumours are swift messengers’: T. Scrope to R. Cecil, 1598: CBP, II, 569.

  a recent book about the border line: Crofton, 68.

  the origins of the Armstrongs: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, pp. 175–7 (the name is recorded in Cumberland from 1235).

  grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne: Fletcher, 46.

  7. Beachcombing

  ‘May still thy hospitable swains be blest’: J. Armstrong, 66 (‘Exercise’, vv. 79–85); Mack, 126.

  8. Blind Roads

  ‘savagely romantic’: Lockhart, 114 (letter of 30 September 1792).

  ‘These have been all dug up’: Lockhart, 113 (letter of 30 September 1792).

  ‘wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale’: Lockhart, 115.

  ‘for about 16 miles along the Liddal’: Arkle, 73; Chambers, I, 111.

  ‘blind roads’: W. Scott (1815), 117 (ch. 22).

  ‘the people stared with no small wonder’: W. Scott, Guy Mannering, note at end of ch. 38 (omitted from some editions).

  ‘England and Scotland is all one’: R. Carey to R. Cecil, 1 August 1600: CBP, II, 674.

  ‘hideous and unearthly’ sounds: Lockhart, 117.

  ‘suited himsel’ to everybody’: Lockhart, 117 (quoting Robert Shortreed).

  ‘the bloodiest valley in Britain’: G. M. Fraser, 39.

  ‘the Edge’: E.g. Rutherford, 234–5.

  ‘the hardest of all the routes’: Foxwell, 563.

  ‘leane, hungry, and a wast’: Camden (1610), 786.

  twenty-three-year-old Queen of Scotland: On Mary’s official (rather than romantic) visit to Hermitage Castle, see especially A. Fraser, 330–31; Mackie, 322.

  ‘the insolence of the rebellious subjectis’: ‘Instructionis to oure trusty Counsallour the Bischope of Dunblane’, May 1567 (Keith, I, 594).

  ‘the most offensive’: E. Aglionby to Burghley, 1592: CBP, I, 394.

  Queen’s Mire: E.g. W. Scott (1803), I, xxxvi; Mackie, 138 n.

  another Queen’s Mire: On the Roman road from Raeburnfoot (Margary, 463).

  ‘Sorbytrees’: The Times, 25 April 1851, p. 8, and 9 September 1851, p. 8; New York Times, 27 September 1851 (from The London Examiner). Summary and pictures in Moss.

  Black Knight of Liddesdale: W. Scott (1812–17), II, 163.

  types of boulder clay: Davitt and Bonner.

  a silver spur, several bronze spurs and a gold signet ring: Elder, 70; Murray, 32; A. Strickland, V, 19.

  ‘supposed to have been deposited’: T. Elliot, 92.

  this ‘pass of danger’: W. Scott (1803), I, xxxvi.

  Reivers . . . would ‘entice their pursuers’: W. Scott (1812–17) (English), II, lxiii; see Lesley (1677), 61–2 (Latin) and Lesley (1596), I, 99 (Scots).

  ‘I ken very weel’: Chambers, I, 113.

  ‘Every farmer rides well’: W. Scott (1815), 141 (ch. 26).

  ‘a great disgrace’ to go on foot: W. Scott (1812–17), II, lxiii; Lesley (1578), I, 62; Lesley (1596), 99.

  9. Harrowed

  ‘for they have a persuasion’: W. Scott (1812–17), II, lxv; Lesley (1578), I, 63; Lesley (1596), 100–101.

  ‘a highly successful fashion model’: G. M. Fraser, 288.

  ‘remained attached to the Roman Catholic faith’: W. Scott (1803), I, lxxxv.

  This ‘bauchling’: CBP, II, 724 (‘Manner of holding days of truce’, 1600): ‘Bawchling is a publicke reprooffe’, etc.

  to ‘deal the more deadly or “unhallowed” blows’: Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 89. Cf. Henderson, 16: ‘the reason alleged is . . . that he may gather riches’.

  ‘[Bernard] Gilpin did preach’: Collingwood, 166.

  ‘they’re a’ buried at that weary Caerl’: Whellan, 18. First reported by Bruce (1852), 482.

  believed to conceal the remains of enemies: Godfrey Watson, 180. ‘Deid-stane’ is Middle Scots for ‘tombstone’ (Scottish National Dictionary).

  10. ‘Loveable Custumis’

  The laws and customs of the borderers: See especially W. Nicolson; also CBP (e.g. II, 724), but beware of self-serving misinterpretations by Border officials: e.g. here. Generally: Balfour; Leeson; Neville; Rae; Reid; Tough.

  ‘The lawis of marchis’: Balfour, 602.

  the last and still lively remnant: E.g. Neville, 2.

  ‘commoun and indifferent to the subjectis of baith the realmis’: Balfour, 602.

  ‘decentralized system of cross-border criminal law’: Leeson, 473 and 499.

  An entire season’s reiving: CBP, I, 346 ff.

  between 1579 and 1587: CBP, I, 314–15.

  One of the largest raids in the winter of 1589–90: CBP, I, 348.

  ‘They sett him on his bare buttockes’: CBP, I, 431.

  ‘in the dead of winter’: In a letter to R. Cecil: CBP, II, 629.

  ‘never heard of in those parts before’: Carey (1759), 114; Carey (1972), 48.

  ‘run brandy’: Lockhart, 119.

  11. Accelerated Transhumance

  ‘Liddesdale drow’: Jamieson, II, 41; also George Watson, 118.

  ‘I set furthe’: CBP, I, 166.

  the human population: Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 86; Stedman, 33; Tough, 26–8.

  ‘Ride, Rowley, hough’s i’ th’ pot’: Sandford, 50. ‘Rowley’ was a Graham.

  a dish of spurs: Rev. John Marriott, ‘The Feast of Spurs’, quoted in W. Scott (1806), III, 452–6; also reported of the Charltons of Hesleyside in Tynedale. The Scott family legend is depicted in a drawing at Abbotsford: ‘The Dish of Spurs’, by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.

  ‘Every now and then, about sundown’: McMurtry, 21.

  ‘there cannot be a greater mark of disgrace’: W. Scott (1812–17), II, lxv; Lesley (1578), I, 63; Lesley (1596), 100–101.

  ‘this bribenge they call Blackmeale’: CBP, II, 164.

  ‘such money as he had expended’: CBP, II, 144.

  making blackmail a capital offence: T. Scrope to Privy Council, June 1600: CBP, II, 665.

  12. Skurrlywarble

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

  not to be cultivated, ploughed or ‘opened’: ‘Proviso semper quod nemo utriusque regni edificet, aret, aut colat vel aperiat terram’: Bowes (1550), 177. A similar text in October 1531: LPH8, V, 220 (‘A proclamation made at Dumfries by the Commissioners of Scotland’).

  ‘there is no strife for the boundes’: T. Dacre to Scots Privy Council, 6 July 1517: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. 209 n.

  ‘batable’ or ‘battable land’: ‘Batable landez or Threpelandez’ in 1449 (CDRS, IV, 247; also 251, 256, 261); ‘Batabelle Grounde’ in 1484 (Cardew, 13; Gairdner, I, 56); ‘Super Bundis Terrae Batabilis in Marchiis Scotiae’ in 1493 (Rymer, XII, 551); ‘Batable Land’ in 1510 (Caley, II, 574); ‘Bayttable grond’ in 1526 (R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. 231 n.). Also Wharton to Henry VIII, June 1543 (LPH8, XVIII, 1, 444); Bowes (1550), 171–3 and 175; letters to and from Lord Dacre, 7, 21 and 29 August 1550 (Nicolson and Burn, I, lxx–lxxiii); M. d’Oysel to M. de Noailles, 23 August 1555 (Vertot, V, 93–4); T. Scrope to Burghley, April 1597 (CBP, II, 301); Camden (1610), 782; Leland, 56.

  ‘terra contentiosa’: E.g. Nicolson and Burn, II, 516; Rymer, XV, 315.

  ‘There is a grounde’: Thomas Dacre, warden of the English West March, to the Scottish Privy Council, 6 July 1517.

  ‘
two fertill and plentifull regions’: Holinshed, V, 9.

  ‘land . . . such as is rich and fertile in nutrition’: Boucher et al., pt 2 (‘Batable’).

  the cantref or hundred of Arwystli: Smith, 191–2 (referring to a paper by A. D. Carr).

  It was not ‘common land’: On common land in Northern England and the Scottish Borders: Winchester (2000).

  ‘come to take away her grannie’s tombstone’: Mack, 111.

  ‘three parts surrounded by the Debatable ground’: ‘inveronned of thre partis with the Debatable grounde . . . soo that noo parte therof adjoynethe upon Scotlande, and hathe bene alwayes used as a hous of prayers, and newtre betuixt bothe the realmes’: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, pp. xxxii–xxxiii; also LPH8, V, 220. On Canonbie’s earlier history: Ratcliff, 151–7. Its status was officially discussed from 1493. Later claims that Canonbie was either English or Scottish are suspect and circumstantial. Its inhabitants paid to use Carlisle markets – a privilege denied to the Scots. See Mackay MacKenzie, 113–15. On the distinction of parish and Debatable Land boundaries, see here.

  13. Exploratores

  knowledge of the boundaries: The key documents are Bullock’s map of 1552 (TNA MPF 1/257) and the variant copy rediscovered by R. B. Armstrong (pt 2, f. 37). The main texts describing the boundaries are ‘The Boundes and Meares of the Batable Land Belonging to England and Scotland’ (Bowes (1550), 171–5); ‘The partitione of the laite Debatable lande’ (1552: CBP, II, 821); ‘A breviate of the bounder and marches of the West wardenrie betwixt England and Scotland’ (1590: CBP, II, 821); ‘A note of the devision of the bounders of the West Marches betwixt England and Scotland, and a devision of the Batable ground of both the Marches’ (T. Scrope to R. Cecil, 1597: CBP, II, 301); ‘An Abreviate of the survey of . . . the Debateable lands’ (Anon. (1604), 12–16); ‘Act in favouris of James Maxuell and Robert Douglas’ (1605: RPS, 1605/6/108); ‘Act in favouris of James Maxwell anent the debaitable landis’ (1609: RPS, 1609/4/40). The translation of RPS, 1605 is inaccurate: e.g. Quhitliesyde is Whitlawside, not Watleyhirst. See also Carlyle, 1–2.

  ‘wele knowne by the subjects of bothe the realmes’: T. Dacre to Scots Privy Council, 6 July 1517: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. 209 n.

  Surveys were conducted in 1494 and 1510: CDRS, IV, 418; LPH8, I, 304; Caley, II, 574; Rymer, XIII, 276–7.

  ‘wasted and destroyed in our passage’: Bowes (1550), 175.

  ‘The said bounds and meares’: Bowes (1550), 171.

  ‘Cocclay rigge’: Cf. the otherwise unknown version of Bullock’s map in R. B. Armstrong, pt 2, f. 37: ‘The great bough called also Cock key rig’.

  the ‘Bateable grounds’ in 1597: T. Scrope to R. Cecil, CBP, II, 301: ‘A note of the devision of the bounders of the West Marches’, etc.

  his ‘favourite cow’: W. Scott (1803), I, xxxii.

  a private estate track: Locally known as the Funeral Road – a corpse road probably dating from the seventeenth century.

  ‘in campo inter Lidel et Carwanolow’: Fordun, I, 136.

  ‘Arfderydd’ is plausibly identified with Arthuret: On the name: A. Breeze (2012).

  ‘While her mother did fret’: Marmion (1808), canto V, 12 (‘Lochinvar’).

  the ghosts of two children: Goodman.

  Lady Graham’s prized jewellery: Lady Hermione Graham is referred to locally as ‘Lady Graham’.

  a murderous ‘ladder gang’: Articles from the Carlisle Journal and the Carlisle Patriot, 1885–6, in http://www.longtown19.co.uk/­the_netherby_hall_burglars.83.xhtml#The Netherby_Hall_Burglars

  ‘strange and great ruins of an ancient Citie’: Camden (1610), 781.

  the West Marches were in an unusually peaceful state: T. Wharton to T. Cromwell, 26 December 1538: LPH8, XIII, 2, 476.

  ‘Ther hath bene mervelus buyldinges’: Leland, 47.

  Castra Exploratorum: The name is known from the second route of the third-century Antonine Itinerary. On early visitors to Roman Netherby: E. Birley (1953).

  ‘Men alyve have sene rynges’: Leland, 47.

  an inland port: On sea levels in the Solway Plain in Roman times (up to 4.8 metres above present levels): G. D. B. Jones, 291–2 n. Modern flood maps give some idea of the river’s former domain.

  ‘great marks of a ruinous Town’: Gordon, 97.

  ‘Scafae exploratoriae’: Vegetius, 4:37; also Emanuele, 28; Shotter (1973).

  the road from Luguvalium: On possible Roman roads in the area: Birley (1953), 28–30; W. Maitland, I, 204; Roy, 105 (IV, 2); Wilson (1999), 19 n.; also Richmond (Eskdalemuir).

  Another road, crossing the Esk: A crossing at Netherby on direct roads from Blatobulgium (Birrens) and Luguvalium (Carlisle) is implied by the (usually correct) distances of the Antonine Itinerary.

  Titullinia Pussitta: Collingwood, Wright et al.; RIB, 984.

  ‘As for the houses of the cottagers’: Stukeley, 58.

  The eruption of Solway Moss: Gilpin, 135–7; Hutchinson, II, 538–41 (account of J. Farish); Lang, 406–8; Pennant, 75–6.

  ‘several foundations of houses’: Richard Gough, in Camden (1789), III, 201.

  14. Windy Edge

  a temporary marching camp: Pastscape monument no. 1566735: photographed from the air by Dave Cowley in July 2010. The Roman road once thought to have branched off at Westlinton, where the flood defences were mistaken for a vallum, probably ran along the line of the Sandysike Industrial Estate road near Longtown towards the marching camp.

  ‘the greatest factory on Earth’: Its story is told in the Devil’s Porridge Museum at Eastriggs.

  smuggled across the Solway: McIntire, 168.

  first recorded in 1398 as the ‘Clochmabanestane’: Rymer, VIII, 58 (6 November 1398). Perhaps the ‘Locus Maponi’ of the Ravenna Cosmography (c. AD 700).

  Maponus, a Celtic god: Inscriptions at Birrens, Brampton, Corbridge, Ribchester and Vindolanda: RIB, 583, 1120–22, 2063, 2431.2 (in RIB II), 3482 (in RIB III).

  ‘Grass decays and man he dies’: Engraving in R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, facing p. 120.

  Debatable Land chapels: Generally, Brooke; Winchester (1987), 23–4.

  ‘I was on the central boss’: John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), ch. 5.

  the ‘dry march’ of the ‘Bateable grounds’: T. Scrope to R. Cecil, CBP, II, 301. Probably the same as ‘the marche of Auchinbedrig’ (James VI, ‘Act in favouris of James Maxwell anent the debaitable landis’, 12 April 1609: RPS, 1609/4/40). Auchinbetrig is the old name of Solwaybank (Burton (1849), 168), an Armstrong ‘hous of reasonable strenthe’ presumed to be in – rather than on the edge of – the Debatable Land in 1596 (CBP, II, 181); also D. Scott, 51.

  an artery of the northern Roman road system: ‘Sheppard Frere has drawn my attention to the possibility that the old road from Langholm to Annan might mark a Roman road from Broomholm to Birrens crossing the Esk near the Irvine burn’ (Wilson (2003), 115 n. 21). The straight road to Irvine is shown on Ainslie’s Map of the Southern Part of Scotland (1821) and on later nineteenth-century maps as one of the main roads of the area.

  ‘Tarras . . . was of that strength’: Carey (1759), 124; Carey (1972), 53.

  ‘Was ne’er ane drown’d in Tarras’: W. Scott (1803), I, 49.

  the ruin of a ‘chambered cairn’: Canmore ID 67899.

  15. ‘In Tymis Bigane’

  ‘rae’, ‘mere’, ‘har’: Ragill is now Rae Gill, the hagill is Haw Gill, Meere bourne is Muir Burn, Harla is Harelaw.

  the old, unimproved fields: Cole.

  The oldest documents: ‘the Batable Landez in the West-marchez’ (November 1449: Rymer, XI, 245); ‘Batable landez or Threpelandez’ (November 1449: CDRS, IV, 247); also 251, 256, 261.

  ‘in tymis bigane’: The Lords of the Council of Scotland, 1526: SPH8, IV, 433.

  in the reign of Edward VI: ‘Memoranda on the Borders’: CBP, I, 32 (in the hand of Walsingham’s secretary).

  ‘remained undivided’: Bowes (1550), 177.

  dated to the days of Alexander III: Ridpath, 287.
r />   ‘the time of King John and his predecessors’: CDRS, I, no. 827.

  obscure Brittonic name: A. Breeze (2008) suggests an origin in Welsh ‘serch’ (‘love’). On the significance of the Sark boundary: Barrow, 27; Todd.

  ‘the bounder of the forest of Nicholl’: Anon. (1891), 18.

  The jug was unearthed at Whitlawside: A bronze tripod ewer (Dumfries Museum): Canmore ID 86394.

  ‘between AD 684 and 947’: Pastscape monument no. 1358759.

  A hoard of rings: Canmore ID 67489; Hyslop, 144–5.

  Brettalach: A. James, 51; Johnson-Ferguson, 148 (Brettalach in 1190; Bretellaugh in 1336); Morgan, 43–4.

  Wobrethills: A. James, 51; T. Thomson, nos 212 (Wabritshill in 1653) and 242 (Wobrethills in 1661).

  ‘Bret’ place names: A. James, 51.

  a small copper terret: Canmore ID 183461, found near Mouldyhills.

  16. ‘Stob and Staik’

  the matter was discussed at Westminster: Rymer, XI, 836 (3 December 1474).

  ‘fish garth’: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, pp. 171–4 (from 1474) and p. xvi (1494).

  in 1494 and 1510: CDRS, IV, 418; LPH8, I, 304; Caley, II, 574; Rymer, XIII, 276–7.

  ‘the Fisigarthis on the West Marches’: Brenan and Statham, 74; Mack, 105–6.

  the system of partible inheritance: Bowes (1550), 243: ‘There doe inhabite in some place three or fower howsholde soe that they cannot uppon so smalle fermes without any other Craftes live truely but either be stealing in England or Scotland’ (on Redesdale). The example of the Grahams: Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 84–5.

  ‘broken men’ or ‘clanless loons’: Pease, 102.

  a ‘terra inhabitata’: Major (1521), I, f. 6 (ch. 5); Major (1892), 19.

  ‘peaceful Anglo-Scottish accommodation’: King and Penman, 6; Webster, 99.

  to build a new Hadrian’s Wall: Anon. to Elizabeth I, 1587: CBP, I, 300–302.

  ‘nor by lande nor by water’: CDRS, IV, 247, 251, 256, 261.

  ‘stob and staik’: E.g. ‘A Remembrance of an Order for the Debatable Lannde’ (1537): R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. xxxvii.

  ‘6 miles of the water of Esk’: T. Dacre to Privy Council, 17 May 1514: LPH8, I, 1261.

  ‘I have four hundred outlaws’: T. Dacre to Wolsey, 23 August 1516: original text in Ellis, 132.