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III
England v. Scotland, 1286–1500

The golden age, of Scotland, of Anglo-Scottish harmony, and of the Border country, ended when King Alexander III of Scotland fell over a cliff in 1286. Few stumbles—if indeed His Majesty was not pushed—have been more important than that one.

Until then, as we have seen, the frontier had not been an unusually troubled place. It had suffered, but not too severely by medieval standards; the two countries had been growing up and finding their feet. The year 1286 was to see the opening of a new era. From then onward Scotland was to be of increasing importance to England. This was bound to happen as England developed as a nation state; inevitably, too, a new Anglo-Scottish relationship was born. The reasons why these things happened are simple enough, but they are fundamental to British history, and they changed the shape of the world. The new Anglo-Scottish attitudes which were assumed after 1286 have developed and been modified, but even today they bear the imprint of those decisive years in the late thirteenth century when the relationship between England and Scotland was so decisively altered.

It may not be out of place to leave the mainstream of history just for a moment, to look closer at what I have called Anglo-Scottish attitudes. In simple terms—one might call them historically colloquial—and with tremendous daring, one can try to look at the traditional English-Scottish relationship from what, one hopes, is as nearly impartial a British point of view as possible. (Practically every word of what follows will be denied, refuted, and laughed to scorn somewhere or other; I would only remark that the conclusions have been reached by a Scot born and bred in England, and accustomed to being regarded as a Scotsman south of the Border, and an Englishman north of it. Which in itself is probably significant of the attitudes on both sides).

The Scot has, and one suspects always has had, something of an inferiority complex where his big, assertive, overpowering neighbour is concerned. It is no wonder. The English race are certainly the most dynamic in history since the Romans. Within a few hundred years they turned themselves from a little nation state on an off-shore European island into the most profound influence in the world; they spread themselves, their language, their products, and above all, their ideas, over the face of the earth. There has never been anything quite like them. Admittedly, at their peak they had the Scots helping them, and only a national extremist would worry about whether the Scots’ contribution, per capita, was above or below average. The point is that the English were by far the major share of the effort; as a national powerhouse, they were in a class by themselves.

Scotland has lived with and alongside this for several centuries, and that in itself is an achievement. If anything in their history demonstrates that the Scots are remarkable, it is that in spite of being physically attached to England, they have survived as a people, with their own culture, laws, institutions, and, like the English, their own ideas.

But it has not been easy, and the marks show. The Scots are an extraordinarily proud people, with reason, as they are quick to point out, and like most geniuses, highly sensitive. Where England is concerned, this sensitivity borders on neurosis. Buried deep in the Scottish national consciousness is the memory of a cliff-hanging struggle for independence, which lasted more than three centuries in the physical sense, and in the minds of some Scots continues today. They know, better than anyone, how easily England spread itself, often apparently without trying, and the fear of English domination by force has to some extent been replaced by a fear of English supremacy almost by default

In fact, if the Scot would look, or could look, objectively at his history, he would see that the English menace was perhaps over-rated, not in physical terms, for there it was truly immense, but in what can only be called a spiritual sense. Scotland’s vitality has always been strong enough, and to spare, to resist outside influence.

But a small country that survives in Scotland’s situation, under the shadow of a reigning champion, becomes quite naturally suspicious, sensitive, and fiercely jealous in regard to its neighbour. It fears him, but cannot help imitating him and being drawn to him. England appreciates this situation completely; the canny Henry VII put it into words when he noted that the larger inevitably attracts the smaller. And from its position of superiority it is natural that England should tend to overlook its smaller neighbour, and take Scotland very much for granted. Indeed, to England, Scotland is an appendage, an extension of the English whole, and when Scotland, resenting this attitude, makes its indignation known, the English are well aware that to find the indignation trivial or amusing is the very way to drive the Scot to distraction.

It must not be thought from this that the English under-rate the Scots. Far from it; they may forget or ignore Scotland, and patronise manifestations of Scottishness, but for the Scots people, for the Scot as an individual when he comes to their attention, they reserve a higher respect than they show to anyone else. They recognise the Scots as formidable, and are secretly just a little frightened of them. In their case it may not be folk-memory, although Scotland in its time was a very real danger to England, simply by virtue of its existence on the same island; more probably it has its roots in the knowledge that a Scotsman on the make is a terrible thing.

The present state of Anglo-Scottish relations, if one can call them that, and the beginning of their peaceful relationship in the sixteenth century, are to be traced to the same root: England was a menace to Scotland because Scotland was, by its separate existence, a constant anxiety to England. In the sphere of medieval politics, and in the politics of a later day, Scotland was a key to England—a foreign and potentially hostile and dangerous state on her very border, offering a stepping-stone to England’s enemies, and not infrequently joining in against England when the latter was busily engaged on the Continent. How great a menace this posed was seen even after the union of the crowns, when only two centuries ago the London government found itself within an ace of falling to northern invasion.

To successive English monarchs Scotland was an embarrassment; for the safety of the English realm a neutral if not amiable Scotland was a necessity, and the surest—indeed, some thought the only—way to that happy state was to have Scotland firmly under English control. A reasonable enough point of view, but an objective to be realised only by the most skilful management, great strength, and endless patience. It took almost 500 years, in the long run. The period from 1286 to 1500, with which we are now concerned, in which the condition of the people in the Border districts was so radically influenced, occupied about half that time.

One can take as a starting point the night in March 1286 on which the Scottish King, Alexander III, in haste to return to his beautiful wife, set off in the dark against his counsellors’ advice, and broke his neck in falling from the path. Scotland was left, for once, in a reasonably quiet and prosperous condition, united and in a viable national state. But with the death of Alexander the throne passed from a good king, in the prime of life, to an infant, his grand-daughter Margaret, who was not even in the country.

Subsequently Edward I of England saw the possibilities of bringing Scotland under control. A marriage between his son and the infant queen seemed the logical step, but Margaret died in 1290, and Scotland was left with a most difficult question of succession. To cut a long story short, Edward used the situation to realise his own claim to overlordship of Scotland. Balliol, his puppet on the Scottish throne, so far forgot himself as to conclude an alliance with France, and Edward’s high-handedness and interference in Scottish internal affairs was answered by Scottish inroads into Cumberland and Northumberland in 1296. “They wrought some mischief”, and whatever the immediate damage done to the English Borderers, the consequences were dramatic.

The preliminaries to open war included, on Edward’s side, the seizure of property held in England by dissident Scots, and the massacre by the Scots of English sailors at Berwick. Edward, at Newcastle with a considerable force, demanded Balliol’s appearance in vain; while he was waiting he learned that the lord of the English castle of Wark had abandoned his charge and gone over to the Scots, “the violence of his passion for a Scotch lady … proving too strong for his bond of duty to his king”. Edward sent reinforcements to Wark, but the fugitive English lord returned unexpectedly with a Scottish raiding party and cut the reinforcements to bits in the dark. (Not a major incident in the campaign, but a perfect example of how national and personal affairs crossed and countered each other on the Border, and how Anglo-Scottish attraction could be even more powerful than Anglo-Scottish distaste. Here was the Borderer, self-sufficient and apart, using the frontier for his own ends in despite of central authority.)

Edward is said to have thanked God that he hadn’t started the war; he did not doubt his capacity to finish it. He waited at Wark with his army, which included some Scottish nobles, among them a rugged young knight named Robert Bruce.

Nor did he have to wait long. The Scots, arming on the Borders for the crunch which was obviously coming, struck first across the western march. They devastated the country north of Carlisle, burned the city’s suburbs, and stormed the walls which were England’s bastion on the north-west frontier. The city held, not for the first or last time, with its womenfolk lending assistance in hurling stones and hot water down on the besiegers, and the Scots retired over the Border again.

Edward ignored them. He had made his plan, and he carried it out with ruthless efficiency. He took Berwick, the Scots suffering dreadful loss. No one can be sure quite how extensive or callous the massacre was, yet it is of some importance, because certain historians fix on Berwick’s fall as a turning-point in Anglo-Scottish relations. The general opinion is that 7000 to 8000 Scots were killed; it does appear that Edward deliberately killed every man capable of bearing arms. One version says that later the women—and presumably the children—were sent into Scotland.

On the other hand, it has been suggested that the English slaughtered everyone in the town, regardless of age or sex. “Indiscriminate butchery”, says one historian,¹ and the total of dead has been placed as high as 17,000. It is certainly not impossible that Edward ordered a general massacre, pour encourager les Ecossais; he was perfectly capable of it. If he did, then there may be grounds for the contention that this, more than anything else, bred hatred of England north of the line. I would doubt it; at least, so far as its lasting effect is concerned, it seems unlikely that Scottish reivers three centuries later were galloping south thinking “Remember Berwick”. But even if its effect has been overstated, the Berwick massacre was another strong link in the chain of Anglo-Scottish hostility.

Edward now addressed himself to bringing Scotland to heel. It was not difficult. He marched through eastern Scotland as far as Elgin, defeating the Scots at Dunbar en route, received submission on all sides, appropriated the Stone of Destiny, and so back to Berwick again. He had taken five months over the campaign, and only once had to spend a night under canvas.

But Edward, like many native Scottish kings, was to discover that it was easier to get control of Scotland than to keep it. His triumphal progress had been designed to show Scotland who was master; in the place of the abject Balliol he left only a governor, John de Warrenne, but with English garrisons in the castles, English justice, and English taxes. It was not enough for the task, as Edward should have realised. To subdue Scotland, he would have had to treat it as he had treated Berwick. Instead, he made his tour, left behind an elderly and incompetent governor, and hoped for peace. What he got was William Wallace.

The story of the Scottish revolt has been told so many times that one need not go into it again. Its political effects were enormous, not least along the Border. While first Wallace and later Bruce carried the torch, while Edward, probably the ablest soldier-king England ever had, came again and died, old and done, in the Cumberland marshes, while the battles were fought and the English gradually borne southward again, the Borders learned what it was to be a no man’s land. After Wallace’s victory at Stirling, where the Scots gave a foretaste of things to come by flaying the corpse of Edward’s detested treasurer, Cressingham, Northern England had been invaded; Northumberland was subjected to systematic plunder and devastation; to the west, Carlisle again held out, but Cumberland was laid waste as far as Cockermouth and the Lakes. The county struck back, and Clifford’s Cumbrians harried Annandale, slaughtering and burning. So it went on, to and fro, and while Scotland and England settled the great issue, the Borderland was being created in a sense that neither set of national leaders would have understood. Edward and Wallace left a terrible legacy, and to the people of the Marches it hardly mattered who had started it all. One thing the war ensured; whatever treaties might be made and truces agreed at the top, however often a state of official peace existed, there was never again to be quiet along the frontier while England and Scotland remained politically separate countries.

Bannockburn was the high point in Scotland’s fight for independence. Bruce, whatever reservations may be held about his character, was that rare combination of an inspiring leader, a good general, and a personally expert fighting man. Under his supervision, the finest army England had ever put into the field was destroyed in two days; the English chivalry broke its heart against the steel rings of the Scottish infantry, and by night on the second day England’s king was in flight, the best of his country dead or captured, and his father’s dream of a unified Britain had evaporated. Indeed, it had been easier to take a kingdom from the son than a yard of ground from his father.

It was a smashing victory, and the general dismay in England was especially strong in the north, with good cause. Scottish forces under Edward Bruce and James Douglas poured into the English East March; Northumberland was pillaged again, and Durham only escaped similar treatment by paying a mighty ransom. Yorkshire and Westmorland were less fortunate, being plundered of cattle and prisoners; Appleby was sacked and burned, along with other towns; Redesdale and Tynedale, favourite targets of later raids, were ravaged, and Cumberland was forced to disgorge tribute to the Scottish king.

Bruce had been humane to his beaten enemies at Bannockburn; it is interesting to note that the surviving invaders of Scotland probably received better treatment than the civilian inhabitants of the northern shires who had taken no part in the campaign. Not that this was inconsistent with the chivalric code; indeed, it seems to have been part of it.

A significant feature of this Scottish invasion was that it saw the levying of vast indemnities from the English Borderers; Bruce set the example, on a large scale, for those later generations of Border gangsters who made blackmail and protection racketeering systematic.

Without going into further detail of the great raids and counterraids of this period, it can be judged in what condition the War of Independence left the Borderland. It had been most brutally used; in addition to the ravages of the contending armies, there had been an unusually heavy rainfall in the year after Bannockburn; seed rotted, crops could not be got in, sheep and cattle were dying. When Edward II again marched into Scotland in 1315 “bread could scarcely be found for the sustenance of his family”,² and the expedition was abandoned. It was as bad on one side as on the other—so bad, that another Border phenomenon emerged.

“Many of the English who dwelt nigh the Marches, wearied out with their sufferings, and despairing of protection from their own king, abandoned their country, and confederating with the Scots, became companions and guides of their incursions into England, and sharers with them of the spoils of their unhappy countrymen”.³

The guide-lines were being drawn with a vengeance; in the struggle for survival the Border was learning new rules. Before the war, raiding and foraying across the frontier has been less than a local industry; invasions and attacks there had certainly been, in time of war, but for more than a century before Edward I began to practise his Scottish policy, the Border had been at peace with itself. The years of Bruce and Wallace and the two Edwards changed all that; a new order was instituted, not by any positive attempt of policy, but by a gradual and inevitable development. People who have suffered every hardship and atrocity, and who have every reason to fear that they will suffer them again, may submit tamely, or they may fight for survival. The English and Scots of the frontier were not tame folk.

When the War of Independence began the Borders had been moving forward towards civilisation; when they ended the people of the Marches had returned to something like the cave ages. Centuries of progress had been destroyed in a generation, and the natives, to quote Scott, had been carried back in every art except those which concerned the destruction of each other.

Partly this arose from the type of war prescribed, says Fordun, by Bruce for the defeat of the invading English.

On foot should be all Scottish war

By hill and moss themselves to wear;

Let wood for walls be bow and spear.

In strait places gar keep all store,

And burn the plain land them before;

Then shall they pass away in haste,

When that they find naething but waste.

With wiles and wakening on the night,

And meikle noises made on height.

Che Guevara would have approved every word of it. The Scots, unable except on a few notable occasions to match the might of England in pitched battle, fought a campaign to which their people and country were particularly suited. They scorched the earth, destroyed their own homes and fields, took to the hills and the wilderness with their beasts and all they could move, and carried on the struggle by on-fall, ambush, cutting supply lines, and constant harrying. It was a wasting, cruel war, and they carried it into England whenever they could, so that both sides of the Border suffered alike.

What resulted was not only guerrilla warfare, but guerrilla living. In times of war the ordinary Borderers, both English and Scottish, became almost nomadic; they learned to live on the move, to cut crop subsistence to a minimum and rely on the meat they could drive in front of them. They could build a house in a few hours and have no qualms about abandoning it; they could travel great distances at speed and rely on their skill and cunning to restock supplies by raiding. All these things they were forced to do while English and Scottish armies marched and burned and plundered what was left of their countryside. This was how they were to live whenever war broke out for the next two and a half centuries.

Unfortunately, to the ordinary people, war and peace were not very different. The trouble with all Anglo-Scottish wars was that no one ever won them; they were always liable to break out again. There was no future for the Borderer in trying to lead a settled existence, even in so-called peace-time. Why till crops when they might be burned before harvest? Why build a house well, when it might be a ruin next week? Why teach children the trades of peace when the society they grew up in depended for its existence on spoiling and raiding?

And of course there was national hatred, ever growing. The other country was always the author of all ills, and it was natural to take revenge.

So they had to live as best they could, and in the two centuries following the War of Independence the Border developed its system of existence, which was seen in full flower in the sixteenth century, between Flodden and the accession of a Scottish king to the throne of England. It was a system of armed plunder, from neighbours as well as from subjects of the opposite realm. The astonishing thing about it was that, while both governments officially deplored what must be called the reiver economy, they exploited it quite cynically for their own ends. The Borders were an ever-ready source of fighting men, a permanent mobile task force to be used when war broke out. If by some strange process of mass hypnosis, all the Elliots and Armstrongs and the like on one side, and all the Forsters and Musgraves on the other, had suddenly been induced to burn their weapons and become peaceful peasants, there would have been consternation in London and Edinburgh. The Border, in a sense, was a bloody buffer state which absorbed the principal horrors of war. With the benefit of hindsight, one could almost say that the social chaos of the frontier was a political necessity.

In fairness to the two central authorities, they did try to pacify as far as they could, and this not being very far, they too adapted to the special conditions. Rules were drawn up for governing, if that is the word, the turbulent Anglo-Scottish Border society. The Wardens, again both English and Scottish, who were to be the nominal overseers of the community, made their appearance at the time of the War of Independence, and their roles as defenders of their respective national frontiers and co-operating governors of the Marches, developed from there. But the laws that were made specially for the Borders were self-defeating; they were in themselves a recognition of abnormality, and at worst they even encouraged it.

So the reiving system developed. From the Bannockburn era onwards the tenor of Border life was geared to it, and no medieval political development was strong enough to alter it. In a medieval context, what happened on the Border does not stand out especially, because it blended into those violent times. But with the advance of civilisation, the gradual alteration of human values, the tendency—admittedly not all that noticeable sometimes—to prefer diplomacy to violence, the anachronism of Border life was seen in greater relief. In the sixteenth century, when England at least was beginning to look far beyond her own coasts, when the spirit of Western man was being reborn, when internal peace was a not uncommon occurrence, the men of the Border were still going their old ways, lifting and looting, settling their disputes largely by force, clinging to their old customs and their own peculiar ethical code. Theirs was a frontier on which only the fittest had survived; what emerged in the 1500s was a very hardy growth.

1. Hume Brown.

2. Ridpath, p. 173. 3. Ibid.