by Graham Robb
the limits of ‘the debetable landis’: ‘Act in favouris of James Maxuell and Robert Douglas’ (1605: RPS, 1605/6/108).
two quite separate commissions: C. Ferguson, 106.
‘mysguyded menn’: Dr Magnus to Cumberland, [1526]: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. 231.
‘All theeves, murderers, oppressouris and vagabondis’: ‘1604. King’s Memoriale’: Salisbury, XVI, 405.
other presumed murderers of Carmichael: W. Scott (1803), I, 122–3.
‘utterlie frustrated and expyred’: C. Ferguson, 105.
‘Ireland or other far parts’: Council of Scotland to Earl of Cumberland, Warden of the West March of England, 4 July 1527: R. B. Armstrong, pt 1, p. xxiii.
‘no hope of amendment’: Muncaster, 229 (‘The King to the Commissioners’).
‘banish us (as a tumultuouse Collony)’: Spence (1977), 99; also Muncaster, 244.
Flushing and Brill: Muncaster, 230–35; Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 93.
walking openly in the streets of Edinburgh: Muncaster, 236–9, 248; also M. Green (1857–72), I, 237: ‘Some loose Grahams have returned’ (24 October 1605).
Sir Ralph Sidley: CSPRI, I, 577; Spence (1977), 113. Generally: ‘Transplantation of the Graemes’, in CSPRI, III, xcv–ciii; J. Graham, 133 ff.; T. Graham (1930).
‘their minds are so much at their homes’: CSPRI, II, 246.
A pathetic petition: J. Graham, 194.
his ‘race’ had been blackened: J. Graham, 190.
‘My thoughts must turn from intercepting of carracks’: Williamson, 235.
‘Even from their cradles’: TNA SP 14/6/43: Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 87. See also M. Green (1857–72), I, 73: ‘Statement [by the Earl of Cumberland] of the condition of the country since his arrival.’
‘both the time and anything they had’: CSPRI, II, 491.
‘a factious and naughty people’: ‘Lord Deputy’s Advices to Sir Thomas Ridgeway’, 1 April 1610: CSPRI, III, 421.
‘so turbulent and busy’: CSPRI, II, 245–6.
‘mossy ground’ or ‘marshland’: Hutchinson, II, 530; Nicolson and Burn, II, 465.
‘known ground’: Hutchinson, II, 530; Nicolson and Burn, II, 465.
‘the arable, lay-meadow, pasture’: Mordant, I, 420.
A list drawn up in 1602: Spence, ‘The Graham Clans’, 93–100 (from Richard Bell’s manuscript ‘History of the Borders’, ff. 211–15).
‘the poore are oppressed’: T. Musgrave to Burghley, end 1583: CBP, I, 126.
‘the poorer and least dangerous sort’: ‘The Commissioners of the Middle Shires to the Earl of Salisbury’, 13 September 1606: CSPRI, I, 578.
‘loth to take away the lives of his subjects’: Lords of Council to Sir Arthur Chichester, 3 June 1607: CSPRI, II, 16.
they had ‘impeded and stayed’: Masson and Brown, VIII, 292–3 (26 February 1607).
‘letter of approval and indemnity’: W. Fraser (1878), I, 230–32.
‘that letter . . . is a very important testimony’: W. Fraser (1878), I, 230; also Oliver, 265–6.
‘the stirring career of the Lord Buccleuch’: W. Fraser (1878), I, 233.
‘the rottin and cankered memberis’: Quoted in Meikle, 191.
‘Do you see that boy?’: Carey (1759), 56–7; Carey (1972), 24.
‘wet moorish mossy ground’: Lowther, 174.
‘The debateable land is three miles long’: Lowther, 175.
‘to inform the lawless people’: Carlisle Treaty of 1597: Spence (1977), 84. On the rebuilding of Debatable Land churches: Winkworth.
‘lewd vices’: Sir Richard Graham’s petition to the King, 2 June 1631: Spence (1977), 148.
‘By this church [Arthuret] is the Howe end’: Lowther, 174.
Sir Richard Graham: See Spence, ‘The First Sir Richard’.
‘having some spark of wit’: Sandford, 50 (interpolation in an unknown hand).
‘jested himself into a fair estate’: Lysons, 13.
‘Changes of Times surely cannot be small’: A. Armstrong, 6.
‘By my soul, . . . Had ye but four feet’: W. Scott (1803), I, cviii–cix.
‘From the foot of Sark’: R. Ferguson, 297.
24. Graticules
Klaudios Ptolemaios: The principal reference is the two-volume Greek–German edition: Ptolemy (2006). The variants provide the coordinates of Codex Vaticanus Graecus 191 (‘X’). Two other Vatican mss. give the correct coordinates of Lincoln (Lindum): Ptolemy (1508), 46 recto, and Ptolemy (2006), 154 n. 7. For an ‘annotated translation of the theoretical chapters’: Ptolemy (2000). The following notes refer to the traditional divisions of the Geography.
some ‘precise maps’: Ptolemy, I, 19.
‘by using the researches’: Ptolemy, I, 19.
painted landscapes: Ptolemy, I, 1.
in ‘a crude manner’: Ptolemy, I, 4.
people with ‘scientific training’: Ptolemy, I, 2.
‘2 by 3’ for Gaul, ‘approximately 11 by 20’ for the British Isles: Ptolemy, VIII, 5.1 and VIII, 3.1.
Discoveries like this: I realize that this might sound too elementary to have been overlooked for seven hundred years. All I can say is that complex problems – and there are complexities – do not always require complex solutions, and, once the principles have been deduced, it is a simple matter to put the map to the test. The main reasons appear to be an assumption that no barbarian culture could have outdone the Graeco-Roman world in cartographic accuracy and, conversely, an over-readiness to dwell on Ptolemy’s ‘gross errors’.
The most detailed attempt to decode Ptolemy’s coordinates was made by Alastair Strang (1994, 1997 and 1998), who had the merit of supposing that they might derive from ‘an authoritative map’. The extreme complexity of Strang’s ‘rotational groups’ is a result of several misconceptions. 1. There was not one but several maps, each with its own graticule and orientation. 2. The coastal data was quite separate from the ‘town’ data. 3. Latitude and longitude readings were not inherent in the original maps, which were not based on a ‘projection’: the most accurate ancient maps were based on rhumb lines determined by triangulation rather than by geodetic measurement. (Strang relied on Ordnance Survey maps, which use a complex modern projection.) 4. The ‘vital clue’ to the lower half of the British map (the alignment of Catterick, Aldborough and York) is in fact its weakest link (here). 5. Decoding of the ‘map of Scotland’ (which includes three English towns) was based on the a priori misidentification of Trimontium and Colania with Newstead and Camelon. 6. The plotting of the original data was inconsistent or based on an unreliable edition.
tin and gold mines: E.g. Dibon-Smith.
Its only obviously exotic feature is its orientation: Modern maps are usually oriented with north at the top, though adjustments are often made for the convenience of the user or the map-maker – for example, certain road atlases or the 1552 map of the Debatable Land, which is tilted sixty degrees to the east in order to fit it onto the sheet. The term ‘orientation’ is a reminder that maps were often designed to be read with east (orient) at the top. The original map of northern England was tilted nineteen degrees west of north and thus aligned with the rising sun of Beltane, the Celtic festival which marked the beginning of summer. Curiously, the map of Ireland – where a tribe called the Brigantes was also present – uses the same orientation (fig. 9). This map is the strongest material evidence for the native rather than Roman military origin of the maps.
maps produced by triangulation: Davies.
fifty-nine Roman miles: Ptolemy, I, 15.6.
the Roman fort of Whitley Castle: Whitley Castle is unquestionably ‘Trimontium’ on Ptolemy’s map (see fig. 11). On the evidence of a milestone (RIB, 2313; G. Maxwell, 379–83), the original location of which is unknown, Trimontium is currently identified with the fort of Newstead (Melrose), under the three Eildon Hills. (The name might mean ‘three hills’ or simply ‘place in the hills’.) Ptolemy attributes the place to the Selgovae, whose territory lies much farther to
the south. This would also be more consistent with the address on a Roman letter found under Tullie House Museum in Carlisle: ‘To Marcus Julius Martialis, either at Trimontium or Luguvalium’ (Carlisle): Frere, Hassall and Tomlin, 496–7.
25. The Kingdom of Selgovia
almost one-third were inland ports: See, for example, B. Campbell, 289; Edwards, 366 (medieval water transport); Pedley, 252.
Strabo had asserted: Strabo, II, 5, 8.
The most likely candidate is Corbridge: Not ‘Coria’ (like ‘Alauna’, a common place name). ‘Corbridge’ is unlikely to derive from ‘Coria’ or ‘Corstopitum’.
the ‘ancient Citie’: Camden (1610), 781.
‘Dimmisdaill, as the common people say’: ‘vulgari sermone vocati Dimmisdaill’: Nicolson and Burn, II, 517; Rymer, XV, 315.
Three other Dymisdales or ‘Doomsdales’: Gallows Hill in Inverness; a Doomsdale outside Linlithgow, presumed site of feudal courts of justice; the prison at Launceston.
‘of doubtful ownership’: Tacitus, Germania, 29.
‘English scaremongering’: Groundwater, 27.
26. ‘Arthur’
‘plain to be seen’ on Canonbie Moor: W. Maitland, I, 204; Roy, 105 (IV, 2).
Arthur’s Cross: T. Graham (1913), 53–4.
last shown on a map in 1823: Christopher Greenwood, Map of the County of Cumberland.
The ‘stone which none might lift’: T. Graham (1913), 53.
he may never have existed: On the problems of a historical Arthur: Halsall; Higham; Padel (1994 and 1995).
The ‘Arthurs’ of the North: On a northern Arthur: A. Breeze (2006, 2012, 2015 and 2016); Bromwich.
‘from the dayly and daungereous incurtyons’: Anon. to Elizabeth I, 1587: CBP, I, 301.
‘bearing torches in a bid to convince Scots’: ‘Tory’s Hadrian’s Wall pro-Union torch protest plan’, The Scotsman, 6 February 2014.
‘100,000 English people lined up on a wall’: S. Campbell.
‘In divers places of the Borders’: Spence (1977), 147.
‘Na, na, we’s all Armstrongs and Elliots’: Walter Scott heard a different version, referring to Annandale: ‘we are a’ Johnstones and Jardines’: W. Scott (1815), ch. 26 (omitted from some editions).
The list of the twelve battles of Arthur: Nennius, 50.
‘heaping together all [he] could find’: Nennius, 3.
the prototype of the [later] Arthur: Principal references to Arthur before Geoffrey of Monmouth: Y Gododdin, 99 (‘he was no Arthur’); Marwnad Cynddylan (‘sturdy Arthur’s cubs’); Historia Brittonum, 56 (Arthur’s battles) and 73 (legends of Arthur); Welsh Annals, AD 516 (Battle of Badon; also in Gildas, 26.1) and AD 537 (Battle of Camlann).
a poet’s fabrication: Halsall.
if they could be identified: Detailed attempts to identify the battle sites: Alcock, 59–71; A. Breeze (2006, 2012 and 2016); Field (1999 and 2008); T. Green; Jackson (1945, 1949 and 1953–8); Nitze (1943, 1949 and 1950); Padel (1994 and 1995); see also Rivet; Rivet and Jackson.
The Scottish Earls of Lindsay: Crawford, I, 3 and 22. On some older maps (e.g. Blaeu), the area is called ‘Crawford Lindsey’.
‘strictly speaking, its parent stream’: Clark.
first raised in 1924: Malone.
The great ‘barbarian conspiracy’: Ammianus Marcellinus, XXVII, 8 and XXVIII, 3.
‘the biggest war’ fought anywhere in the Roman Empire: Cassius Dio, LXXIII, 8.
27. The Great Caledonian Invasion
‘they proceeded to do much mischief’: Cassius Dio, LXXIII, 8.
signs of destruction or rebuilding: Salway, 223–5; also Burnham and Wacher, 60.
began to surround themselves with earthworks: Frere (1984); Salway, 262.
The Caledonian warriors were ‘very fond of plundering’: Cassius Dio, LXXVII, 12.
‘They plunge into the swamps’: Cassius Dio, LXXVII, 12.
the river ‘Bassas’: Practically every place in the British Isles beginning with ‘Bas’ – from Basingstoke to the Bass Rock – has been suggested. The likeliest pre-Saxon origin is late-Latin ‘bassus’ or Brittonic ‘bass-’, ‘shallow’ (e.g. Padel (1985), 18). A stream in Lanarkshire is called Bassy Burn. There are only two occurrences of the name ‘Bassy’ or ‘Bassie’ south of the Antonine Wall. The unusual name ‘Bassie’ may have been assimilated to the more familiar ‘Bessie’ (which is only occasionally related to a person called Bessie). Three of the fourteen ‘Bessies’ in lowland Scotland also occur along the Annan, which is remarkably shallow until it nears Lockerbie.
Celidon Wood: The wood where Myrddin took refuge after the Battle of Arfderydd (here), ‘apparently thought of as [being] in that neighbourhood’ (i.e. by Arthuret and Netherby): Jackson (1945), 48 n. 12.
Celtic ‘drumo’ (‘ridge’) and Greek ‘drumos’: A. James, 116. On the fabulous primeval forest: Rackham, 390–93.
an inscription of the AD 180s: RIB, 946; E. Birley (1986), 27–8; Tomlin and Hassall, 384–6.
‘Guinnion’ . . . ‘Vinnovium’: On the (contested) etymology of ‘Guinnion’: Field (2008), 15, Nitze (1949), 592, and references.
vestiges of a Roman fort: E.g. Shotter (2004), and generally on Roman and British North-West England.
‘in the city of the Legion’: On ‘urbs Legionis’ as York: Field (1999). The eighth and ninth battles would thus have been fought in the territory of the Brigantes, who had rebelled against the Romans two decades before. See Speidel, 235.
‘rearward works establishment’: Strickland and Davey.
The tenth battle, at ‘Tribruit’: ‘Tribruit’ means something like ‘blood-spattered’. The Vatican manuscripts of the Historia Brittonum call it a ‘traeth’, which, in this case, would indicate the strand of a tidal estuary. A battle site with an almost identical name – ‘Traethev Trywruid’ – is mentioned in an early Welsh poem, ‘Pa Gur yv y Porthaur?’. A warrior called Arthur fought at Edinburgh and then ‘on the strands of Trywruid’. The two places are paired twice, as though they were adjacent on the army’s route. Since the identifiable battles of the Historia Brittonum lie within a few days’ march of one another, the Traeth Tribruit may have been within striking distance of Breguoin, which is commonly agreed to be Bremenium. Thus: a tidal estuary on the North Sea, no great distance from Edinburgh and High Rochester, with a broad shore on which a battle might have been fought, served by a Roman road and quite possibly a port. It was also a place familiar to British readers several centuries later since the Vatican manuscripts refer to it, in the present tense, as ‘the riverbank which we call’ Traeth Tribruit.
South Shields: The port of Arbeia was served by two Roman roads, and, like many other northern forts, seems to have suffered damage in the 180s. Between the Roman fort and Trow Point, the Herd Sand has yielded evidence of a Roman shipwreck and finds dating from the late second century.
Bregion or Bregomion is the fort of Bremenium: Summary of discussion in Falileyev. Other manuscripts have ‘on the [unidentified] hill which is named Agned’. ‘Breguoin’, ‘Bregion’ or ‘Bregomion’ might have suited the rhyme scheme.
Three items of cookware: The Amiens Skillet (‘MAIS ABALLAVA VXELODVNVM CAMBOGS BANNA ESICA’); the Rudge Cup (‘A MAIS ABALLAVA VXELODUM CAMBOGLANS BANNA’); the Staffordshire Patera (‘MAIS COGGABATA VXELODVNVM CAMMOGLANNA’). See D. Breeze.
‘foundations of walls and streets’: Camden (1789), III, 201.
‘fallen in through age’: RIB, 1988.
The blight of landscaping: Bruce (1966), 185.
borrowed, corrupted and mislocated: Geoffrey of Monmouth, IX, 1–4.
the Insula Avallonis: Geoffrey of Monmouth, XI, 2.
‘he fought no battle’: Cassius Dio, LXXVII, 13.
From ‘Glan’ to ‘Camglann’: In the emerging Brittonic language, ‘Camboglanna’ became ‘Camglann’, and by the time the name was recorded in the Welsh Annals, the ‘g’ had disappeared by the process of ‘soft mutation’. ‘Camglann’ – from ‘glan’, ‘riverbank’ – might ha
ve echoed the name of the first battle, at the mouth of the river Glein – from ‘glan’, ‘clear’.
28. Polling Stations
urban and rural voters: S. Thomson, 4–5.
‘Hands Across the Border’ cairn: Stewart.
adits were dug into the riverbank: Limeworks day book, 1829–31: Cumbria Archive Service, DCL/P8/24.
the vast Canonbie coalfield: E.g. Gibsone, 71–6.
the workable seams were exhausted: Canmore ID 92597.
30. The River
‘a little world within itself’: Shakespeare, II, 1.
Works Cited
Alcock, Leslie. Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology, A.D. 367–634. 1971; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
Ammianus Marcellinus. Römische Geschichte. 4 vols. Ed. W. Seyfarth. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968–71.
Anon. The Complaynt of Scotland, Written in 1548. Edinburgh: Constable, 1801.
Anon. A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents That Have Passed within the Country of Scotland Since the Death of King James the Fourth till the year M.D.LXXV [1575]. Ed. T. Thomson. Edinburgh: The Maitland Club, 1833.
Anon. ‘A Booke of the Survaie of the Debatable and Border Lands, Belonginge to the Crowne of Englande, Lyinge Betwixt the West and East Seas, and Aboundinge upon the Realm of Scotland . . . Taken in the Yeare of our Lorde God 1604’. Ed. R. P. Sanderson: Survey of the Debateable and Border Lands Adjoining the Realm of Scotland and Belonging to the Crown of England, Taken A.D. 1604. Alnwick: n. p., 1891.
Arkle, Rev. James. ‘Parish of Castletown’. In The Statistical Account of Scotland. Edinburgh: William Creech, 1791–9. Vol. XVI (1795), pp. 60–87.
Armstrong, Archibald. Archy’s Dream, Sometimes Jester to His Maiestue, But Exiled the Court by Canterburies Malice. 1641. In The Old Book Collector’s Miscellany. Ed. C. Hindley. Vol. V. London: Reeves and Turner, 1873.
Armstrong, Dr John. The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem. London: A. Millar, 1744.
Armstrong, Robert Bruce. The History of Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewesdale, Wauchopedale and the Debateable Land. Part 1. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1883.