by Ian Crofton
But on the other side of the Border Armstrong’s freebooting had exhausted the patience of Thomas, Lord Scrope, Warden of the English West March. These wardens – one from each side of the Border – were meant to keep the peace, meeting regularly on appointed Truce Days to discuss and resolve grievances and disputes. There was a long-standing Border convention that on a Truce Day all who attended were granted safe conduct:
Upon paine of death all persons whatsoever that come to these meetings should be safe fra any proceiding or present occaisioun, from the time of meeting of the Wardens, or his deputies, until the next day at the sun rising.
Yet one fateful day in March 1596 Lord Scrope ignored the fact that a truce was in force and ordered his deputy, Thomas Salkeld, to apprehend William Armstrong. Armstrong was in the small retinue of Robert Scott of Hayning, deputy to Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale and Warden of the Scottish West March.
This particular Truce Day meeting was held at Dayholm of Kershope – a meadow adjacent to the confluence of the Kershope Burn and the Liddel Water, just west of the old Waverley Line at Kershopefoot. It seems that after this Truce Day meeting, Salkeld spotted Armstrong on the Scottish side of the Liddel, making his way home. Seeing that Armstrong was accompanied by no more than two or three men, he decided to take his chance. So he led his force of several hundred across the river and pursued Armstrong on horseback for three or four miles before seizing him and taking him in chains to Carlisle Castle.
Buccleuch was outraged when he heard the news. Whatever crimes Armstrong may have committed, he had at the time of his seizure been in Buccleuch’s service, and the English had violated diplomatic conventions by taking him on a Truce Day. Furthermore, Armstrong had been seized on Buccleuch’s own land, where only Buccleuch’s word was law. In vain Buccleuch remonstrated with Scrope for Armstrong’s release. Not even King James’s requests to the English ambassador, or to Queen Elizabeth herself, bore fruit. So Buccleuch determined to mount an expedition to free Armstrong, ‘in sae moderate ane fashion as was possible to him’.
An hour before sunset on 12th April the peace of the evening at the Tower of Morton on the River Sark was shaken by the arrival, from all points of the compass, of two hundred armed horsemen. Buccleuch had assembled a rescue party from among his followers, insisting that no heads of houses should take part, only their brothers or younger sons. If the raid ended in disaster, he calculated, the fabric of his following would not be entirely shredded. Three heads – Gibbie Elliot of Stobs, Auld Wat of Harden and the Laird of Commonside – ignored Buccleuch’s order and insisted on taking part.
They rode out through the darkness. Some among them must have known secret ways through the treacherous marshes of Solway Moss. They’d no doubt chosen a moonlit night, when they could ride without torches or lanterns. Some two hours before dawn they crossed the River Eden, then in spate. And so, unsuspected and undetected, they came to Carlisle.
There may have been those who knew of their coming – Englishmen who owed more loyalty to their kin on the Scottish side than to their own crown. In particular it has been suggested that inside Carlisle Castle there were certain Grahams and Carletons – to whom Armstrong was tied by marriage – who aided the rescue attempt.
Buccleuch selected fourscore men to break into the castle, leaving his main force in reserve. At first they tried to scale the walls, but their ladders turned out to be too short. Then a smaller force of two dozen men forced an entry through a postern gate on the western side of the castle – or perhaps the gate had been left unlocked? While six guarded the entry, the remainder, having had intelligence of Armstrong’s whereabouts, made their way to the place where he was kept, bound in chains. The rescue party then gave an agreed signal, a blast on a trumpet. Hearing this, Buccleuch ordered his main force to let out a great roar, to frighten the garrison and the citizens of Carlisle into thinking a far vaster army had fallen upon them. With some satisfaction, a Scottish chronicler recorded that:
The people were perturbit from their nocturnal sleep, then undigestit at that untimeous hour, with some cloudy weather and saft rain, whilk are noisome to the delicate persons of England, whaise bodies are given to quietness, rest, and delicate feeding, and consequently desirous of more sleep and repose in bed.
In the chaos, the chronicler continued:
. . . the assaulters brought forth their countryman, and convoyit him to the court, where the Lord Scrope’s chalmer [chamber] has a prospect unto, to whom he cried with a loud voice a familiar guid-nicht! and another guid-nicht to his constable Mr Saughell [Salkeld].
The rescuers quickly overcame what little resistance they met with, a few nightwatchmen being ‘dung on their backs’. Meanwhile, ‘both the Lord Scrope himself and his Warden Depute Salkeld, being there with the garrison and their own retinue, did keep themselves close’. So Armstrong was hustled away and, still in chains, put upon a horse.
Buccleuch was meticulous in his determination to limit the damage. He knew that, in carrying out his obligations to his own retainer and the defence of his own honour, he had lit the fuse to a diplomatic time bomb. He thus did everything he could to avoid embarrassing his king, or offending the English queen. A few prisoners who had escaped in the chaos he returned to their cells, while any booty his men had taken he ordered to be returned. Apart from the breaking of the postern gate and the iron door to the room where Armstrong was kept, no damage was done. Buccleuch might have taken the whole castle – Warden, Deputy and all – but his single aim was the freeing of his man, which, he said, ‘maun necessarily be esteimit lawful, gif the taking and deteining of him be unlawful, as without all question it was’.
By now the cat was out of the bag. Bells rang out, drummers beat their urgent tattoos, beacon fires were lit to warn the country of the danger. But Buccleuch made good his escape through the misty dawn. Coming to the Eden once more, he saw on the other side a small English force, alerted by the signal fires and bells from the city. Buccleuch urged his horse into the turbulent river, his men following and sounding trumpets. Seeing the determination of their opponents, the English force wisely gave way, and so, some two hours after sunrise, Buccleuch and his men returned to Scottish soil, and Kinmont Willie was a free man once more.
The general satisfaction on the Scottish side was reflected in the diary of Robert Birrel, a burgess of Edinburgh, who wrote ‘the like of sic ane wassaledge [vassalage, i.e. feat of arms] wes nevir done since the memorie of man, no in Wallace dayis’. More memorably, the ballad ‘Kinmont Willie’, collected some two hundred years later by Buccleuch’s descendant, Sir Walter Scott, celebrated the incident, with considerable poetic licence. The following verses recount Buccleuch’s victorious return:
Buccleuch has turn’d to Eden water,
Even where it flowed frae bank to brim,
And he has plunged in wi’ a’ his band,
And safely swam then thro’ the stream.
He turn’d him on the other side,
And at Lord Scrope his glove flung he;
‘If ye like na my visit in merry England,
In fair Scotland come visit me!’
All sair astonished stood Lord Scrope,
He stood as still as rock of stane;
He scarcely dared tae trew his eyes,
When through the water they had gane.
‘He is either himsel’ a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wadna hae ridden that wan water,
For a’ the gowd in Christendie.’
However punctilious Buccleuch might have been in his handling of the operation, the diplomatic time bomb duly detonated. Scrope sought to expunge his humiliation by leading a force into Scotland, burning the towns of Annan and Dumfries, and herding some two hundred prisoners back to England, ‘naked, chained together on leashes’.
From London, furious notes were dispatched northward. James stood his ground, and suggested the affair be submitted to an international c
ommission – knowing full well that the seizure of William Armstrong had been a breach of international law and that any commission would condone Buccleuch’s actions. Queen Elizabeth realised that if she acceded to such a commission the outcome would go against her and she would lose face. So she wrote a lengthy letter to her ‘dear Brother’ James, whom, she said, had been ‘seduced by evil information’. James’s refusal to hand over Buccleuch might, she said, be forgiven in a stripling prince, but was ‘strange, and I dare say without example’ in ‘a father’s age’. Elizabeth could barely contain herself. ‘Shall any castle or habitation of mine,’ she railed, ‘be assailed by a night larceny, and shall not my confederate send the offender to his due punishment?’ As for the idea of a commission: ‘For other doubtful and litigious causes upon our Borders, I will be ready to permit commissioners, if I shall find it needful, but for this matter of so villainous a usage, I answer you I will never be so answered . . .’
James kept his nerve, despite risking his likely succession to the throne of England. In due course the furore died down, and good relations were restored between the two kingdoms.
Kinmont Willie does not appear to have found any reason to mend his ways, and his depredations continued in a sporadic fashion. The last we hear of him is in January 1603, when we find Lord Scrope writing to Lord Cecil in London, complaining that Armstrong has just wasted two villages in Cumberland. Armstrong himself died later that same year, apparently in his own bed. He was probably still in his forties.
As for ‘the Bold Buccleuch’, as he had become known, he had the temerity to pay Queen Elizabeth a personal visit in London, on the way back from founding a regiment in the Netherlands to help the Dutch fight their Spanish oppressors. The queen quizzed him why he had dared to undertake such a desperate and presumptuous enterprise. ‘What is it,’ Buccleuch replied, ‘that a man dare not do?’ Elizabeth was impressed. ‘With ten thousand such men,’ she said, ‘our brother in Scotland might shake the firmest throne in Europe.’
Whatever his contemporary reputation, Bold Buccleuch does not appear to have appealed to posterity in the same way as the man he rescued. In addition to the ballad immortalised by Sir Walter Scott, there was in the last century a racehorse called Kinmount Wullie, which won the Scottish Grand National in 1960. As it happens, it was owned by George and Dorothy Mackie, proprietors of Gretna Green’s Famous Blacksmith’s Shop.
Today, there is an oatmeal stout brewed in the Scottish Borders by Broughton Ales Ltd called Kinmont Willie. The brewers make great claims for it: ‘Indulging yourself with Death by Chocolate at a white tablecloth restaurant?’ they purr. ‘Slurping up oysters at a sawdust-floored raw bar?’ they coo. ‘In either case, savour your repast with the perfect malt beverage – Kinmont Willie Scottish Oatmeal Stout.’ Och aye. Broughton also produce a variety of other manly beers, such as Old Jock Ale, Black Douglas, The Ghillie, and Excisemans 80/- (with a picture of Rabbie B on the label). Hoots.
I was disinclined to join the salmon in the Esk, so from the end of Scots’ Dike I settled on a deviation from the exact course of the Border. The closest place to cross the Esk dryshod was about half a mile to the south, across the Thistle Viaduct.
The short section south along the A7 was the most dangerous stretch of my entire walk. Although a major trunk road, the A7 is narrow and windy. There’s no pavement, barely a verge, and the juggernauts and coaches rush by so close they force the unwitting pedestrian into the hedge.
With some relief I left the perils of the A7 and joined the course of the old Waverley Line, which once linked Edinburgh and Carlisle. At this spot the disused railway consisted of a narrow path between hawthorn and birch. I followed it northeast towards the Esk.
When I came to the river I found my deviationism was justified. ‘Private Fishing’, a notice firmly advised me. ‘No Swimming.’ So I couldn’t have followed the Border exactly even if I’d wanted to. Swimming wasn’t allowed.
The Esk here is a magnificent river, broad and easy, flowing gently to the sea. Above the water the air was full of birdlife: oystercatchers, swifts, martins, wagtails, all feeding on the river’s riches. The water looks shallow, but this may be misleading. In the eighteenth century the Welsh traveller Thomas Pennant wrote of the Esk:
The water was of the most colourless or crystalline clearness, no stream I’ve seen being comparable. So persons who ford the river are often led into distresses by being deceived as to its depth, for the great transparency gives it an unreal shallowness.
Just upriver from where I stood was the Thistle Pool, after which the viaduct got its name – or perhaps it was vice versa? The Esk is one of those rivers where the fishing’s so good the names of the different pools are marked on the Ordnance Survey map. Further upriver there’s the Willow Pool and the Mason’s Stream. Downriver, there’s Redbank Pool and Wax Pool.
Beyond Wax Pool, close to an old Roman fort, is the site of something that in medieval times was known as the Fish Garth. The Fish Garth was a great bone of contention between the Scots and the English hereabouts. A garth is a kind of enclosure – so the Fish Garth was a giant trap to catch the salmon swimming upriver to spawn. This far south the Esk was usually reckoned to be in English territory, and certainly it was the English who owned and operated the Fish Garth. However, the Scots upriver were not best pleased that all the salmon in the Esk were being trapped by the English before they could swim into Scottish territory. So every now and again the Scots would come in the night and destroy the Fish Garth. And then the English would build it again. Then it would be destroyed again. In the end the matter was settled by treaty.
These days there’s no sign of a Fish Garth – probably because there’s more money to be had letting out the fishing to wealthy anglers than in industrial-scale netting of diminishing stocks.
The viaduct came to an abrupt end as the track stopped at a gap. The ground fell away in front of me. Presumably there was once a bridge here. I had to clamber down a crumbling wall of brick and rubble to pick up the line on the other side.
The track on the far side degenerated. At one point it went through an old cutting. If the cutting had once been well drained, it certainly wasn’t now. To escape the quagmires, I was forced up the thickly wooded side. I tried to make my way along the crest, but I couldn’t get myself and my rucksack under the low branches, so had to hop over a barbed-wire fence and walk along a field edge.
At another point the old line was covered in pools of slurry. In an effort to dodge the noxious puddles I jumped onto a pile of straw on one side. Except it turned out not to be straw, but manure. Very soft manure, into which I sank. Up to my knees. What were they going to think of me at the Bridge Inn?
The going improved as the line approached the confluence of the Esk and the Liddel Water. The Liddel is a smaller version of the Esk – a wide, gentle river, trickling over beds of small stones. Between me and the Liddel there was an expanse of butterbur, cow parsley and wild garlic, the scent of the latter doing something to dull the excremental aura in which I was enveloped.
For some miles, as it winds through a wooded valley, the Liddel forms the Border. The steep overgrown sides, in places scarred by cliffs of soft red sandstone, are flanked by gentler fields – a landscape combining the pastoral with the picturesque in a way guaranteed to appeal to the polite sensibilities of the eighteenth century. One amateur poet of the period apostrophised it thus:
Hail sacred flood
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence, thy mountains still team
With the fleecy race, thy tuneful woods forever flourish
And thy vales look gay with painted meadows and the golden grain.
These lines were penned by Dr John Armstrong, better known for his self-help manuals in verse, such as The Art of Preserving Health and The Oeconomy of Love (the latter offering advice on ‘how / Best to improve the genial joy, how shun / The snakes that under rosy pleasure lurk’). There was nothing Armstrong li
ked better, it seems, than to fish the Liddel, something he recalled with a fervour as heightened as that with which, in The Oeconomy of Love, ‘The madd’ning boy his bashful fetters bursts’:
In thy transparent eddies have I laved,
Oft traced with patient steps thy fairy banks
With the well-imitated fly to hook
The eager trout, and with the slender line
And yielding rod, solicit to the shore
The struggling panting prey.
Fly-fishing, in Armstrong’s hands, was a form of seduction. But though I scanned the waters of the Liddel closely, not a sign could I spy of the eager trout. This year, I was told, the water was running too low. In the fields above the defile, however, members of the fleecy race were everywhere apparent.
The charms of the lower Liddel also appealed to those of a more Romantic bent, such as the Tory MP Lord Ernest Hamilton. ‘As I rode under the birken-clad heughs,’ his lordship effused, ‘golden now in the death of their summer glory, sniffing the sweet fresh smell of the moorland, I wondered whether anywhere on God’s earth was to be found a fairer spot than this same Vale of Liddel.’ Regrettably Lord Hamilton – younger son of the Duke of Hamilton – turned in the 1920s to fascism and anti-Semitism.
This being the Border, the Liddel has not always been such an idyllic place. Somewhere above me, beyond the steep, tree-covered escarpment, were the remains of an ancient motte and bailey called Liddel Strength. No pussyfooting about the name. Liddel Strength was built by the Anglo-Normans in the twelfth century as a bastion against the Scots. In 1346 David II invaded England and took the castle by assault. Its keeper, Sir Walter Selby, was put to death. Before he was killed, he was forced to watch his two sons being strangled. The castle was then razed to the ground.