AD 1528, 28 February. Territories on both sides of the border were divided into three "Marches": east, middle, and west, with each March governed by an appointed Warden. The reiving families of Liddesdale (Scotland) and the Debatable Lands had grown so powerful as to be a law unto themselves. Most notorious among the reiving clans, the Armstrongs were reported able to raise a force of 3,000 armed English and Scottish followers, including some of the surname Routledge.
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The Lads of Wamphray is Child ballad 184, existing in fragmentary form. According to Walter Scott and others, the ballad concerns a 16th-century feud between reiving families from Wamphray in the Scottish Borders.
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The Halls were one of the sixty major riding families of the Scottish Marches and were involved in reiving as other border clans were. During one of the 'Day of Truce' occasions, a Robert Spragon 'fyled' a complaint against two Halls that had rustled 120 sheep. As with all Reiving families, they would consider themselves loyal to neither the English or the Scots, the family name holding allegiance over all else. As recounted in the song "The Death of Parcy Reed", the Hall's betray and stand idly by as the Laird of Troughend, Parcy Reed is murdered by the Crosier Clan.
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During truce or peace times, with their homelands neglected or ravaged by fire and sword, borderers, prompted by physical need or self-righteous anger, made a living rustling livestock, usually by cross-border incursions into enemy territory or maybe even closer to home if some feud or another needed settling. Rather than planting crops only to see them razed to the ground, reiving became normal routine for border inhabitants. Some 70+ surnames, including certain Routlege families, made a sporting game of these raiding activities, and the prize was booty; any goods that could be carried or livestock herded was fair game. Reiving parties sallied forth on horseback over bog and moss trails known only to the initiated.
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Way of Plean; Squire (1994): p. 17. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the incidents of feuding between clans declined considerably. The last "clan" feud that led to a battle and which was not part of a civil war was the Battle of Mulroy, which took place on 4 August 1688. Cattle raiding, known as "reiving", had been normal practice prior to the 17th century.
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The Clan Heron was one of the lesser Border reiving clans, a people who practised raiding and cattle rustling along the Anglo-Scottish border.The Book of Ulster Surnames; Bell, Robert However one of the clan's branches were a landed family with their seat in Kirkcudbrightshire. Members of the clan held many positions of power on the borders and throughout Scotland and England. Walter Heron was the clerk to William the Lion.
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It was also known as , where young men took livestock from neighbouring clans. By the 17th century, this had declined and most reiving was known as , where smaller numbers of men raided the adjoining Lowlands and the livestock taken usually being recoverable on payment of (information money) and guarantee of no prosecution. Some clans, such as the Clan MacFarlane and the Clan Farquharson, offered the Lowlanders protection against such raids, on terms not dissimilar to blackmail.
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At the beginning of his reiving and cavalry days, Henry and his brother Richard were remained and tried for the abduction of Jane Statham. This happened after the latter become widowed at the outcome of the battle of Bosworth in 1485. The heiress of the House of York was also forcibly married to Richard and taken from her family. As a consequence, the Willoughbys had to pay large sums in compensation to the victim and affected family members, the marriage having also been annulled.
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Johannes Rutledge was admitted in 1607 and Georgius Routledge was admitted later on in 1640. Preceding these two were Hector Rowtlidge, a tailor, who had been admitted in 1584, and Edwardus Rutleedge, also a tailor, admitted in 1604. AD 1605-1625. Unifying Scotland and Britain would take decades to accomplish, and reiving activities continued to plague the newly-termed "middle shires" despite every attempt to pacify truculent borderers and eliminate a way of life inbred during three previous centuries of sporadic warfare and associated depredations.
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Church of England records show that some border surnames had tired of the reiving way of life long before the dawning of the 17th century. Routledge families were certainly among those who searched for land and peace away from border strife by the mid-1500s. Numerous baptisms, marriages, and burials are recorded by parish vicars all over southern Britain, albeit with the outlandish spellings typical of the era but nonetheless bearing some proximity to Rutledge or Routledge. Perhaps the earliest available baptismal record is for a Humphrey Rettleg christened in Staffordshire England in 1516.
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Meanwhile, as the first rumblings of the steam-powered Industrial Revolution began making noise across the land, the reiving way of life fell into folk story and legend while its former adherents pursued legal livings in every sort of new-age craft and profession in every part of Great Britain. A census taken in 1800 recorded Routledge and Rutledge families living in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York as well as in the Carolinas and with the usual variety of odd spellings such as Ratledge, Ruttidge, Rudleage, and Ruthlidge.
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In the rest of Ireland, the name Biadhtach (Betagh; "public victualler") was changed to Beatty or Beattie. In Scotland, the Beatties were a reiver clan in the Langholm area of Eskdale. George MacDonald Fraser has written about the reiving clans in "The Steel Bonnets : The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers". An Irish origin of the name Beattie is supported specifically by the Irish-specific marker S169 which is most common in Leinster, Ireland, but also "found in Scotland, especially among men with the surnames of Beattie and Ferguson".
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No archaeological remains of the port from this time are known, and there was probably little infrastructure beyond mooring posts, and possibly wooden jetties. The topography of the river and mudflats would provide a sheltered beaching-point for vessels. Alnmouth was attacked and greatly depleted by the Scots in 1336: in 1296, twenty-eight people had been listed as being liable to pay tax; in 1336 this fell to just one. Further depredations were caused by the Black Death in 1348; and Border Reiving was an ever-present threat.
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Sooner or later "hot- trod" posses and/or retaliation raids followed wherein the victims became perpetrators. Betrayal, ambush, and blind-siding all had a place in the game so that a raid might turn into a rout. Ludicrously, the political elite of both countries branded the reiving surnames as thieves and traitors, which would have been true enough if the so-called authorities had included themselves in those criminal categories. History shows that kings to nobles to officers of both crowns either complicitly or actively employed marauding tactics, each and all claiming their ends justified whatever means.
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The names of the Reiver families are still very much apparent amongst the inhabitants of the Scottish Borders, Northumberland and Cumbria today. Reiving families (particularly those large or brutal enough to carry significant influence) have left the local population passionate about their territory on both sides of the Border. Newspapers have described the local cross-border rugby fixtures as 'annual re- runs of the bloody Battle of Otterburn'. Despite this there has been much cross-border migration since the Pacification of the Borders, and families that were once Scots now identify themselves as English and vice versa.
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The old manse near the 1834 church has become a hotel; the historic church has been used for regular services over the past few years. There are various historic and pre-historic sites near Newton Wamphray, including standing stones and the remains of a motte-and-bailey. A feud between local reiving families in the 16th century is remembered in the ballad, The Lads of Wamphray. One of the more prominent local residents was John Brown of Wamphray, or "John Broun of Wamfrey", a Church of Scotland theologian who served as the minister of the local parish during the mid-17th century.
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The Candlemass Road is a historical novel from George MacDonald Fraser set in the time of the Border Reivers, a period Fraser had earlier written about in The Steel Bonnets and would later return to in The Reavers.Stanley Reynolds, "George MacDonald Fraser: He created Harry Flashman, tormentor of Tom Brown turned comical anti-hero", The Guardian, 4 January 2008 accessed 23 November 2012Books: Reiving up on the Borders Cameron, David. The Daily Telegraph09 Oct 1993: 27. Fraser later described it as "a rather dark morality tale - at least I meant it to have a moral - in what I hope was a reasonable imitation of Elizabethan English".
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Being a defensive structure, royal warrants were required before a yett could be added to any house or castle. These were frequently issued with other licenses for defensive features; for example, in 1501 John Murray of Cockpool was given a licence to build a tower at Comlongon with machicolations and "irneztteis and windois". Aggressors might attempt to remove yetts: in February 1489 the Hepburns in Stirlingshire brought an action against the Grahams who had taken away the iron yett of Bruce's Tower in order to gain possession.Acts of the Lord Auditors, (1839), 132; see RCAHMS Stirlingshire, Bruce's Tower or Over Carnock Following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, efforts were made by the government to control the disorder and reiving in the borders.
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The most striking feature of Milburn is the consistency of its layout. This appears to imply a high degree of planning, and the history of the village may most usefully be described in this context. The houses round the green present a continuous frontage broken only by narrow lanes giving access to the farmyards, barns and fields which lie behind. Roads and tracks enter at the corners of the green and access is so restricted at some points that it has been suggested that the village has been constructed on defensive lines – possibly against the Border Reivers. Disappointingly, however, no buildings from "Reiving" times (late 13th to the end of the 16th century) survive, at least within the vicinity of the green itself.
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Parcy Reed arrests the reiving outlaw Whinton Crosier. The Crosier clan then vows to destroy the house and lands of Troughend in revenge. Parcy Reed goes hunting with three Halls, who are neighbors and friends from nearby Girsonfield. Unknown to Parcy Reed, the Halls have forged an alliance with the Crosiers to betray him. After hunting throughout the day “all Reedwater round”, the hunting party stops to rest at Batinghope, where Parcy Reed falls fast asleep. While he is asleep, the three “false Halls” steal his powder horn, pour water into the barrel of his gun, wedge his sword in its sheath, and remove the bridle from his horse, thus depriving Parcy of the means to either fight or flee.
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Historic view of Carlisle After the Pilgrimage of Grace, Henry VIII, concerned at the weakness of his hold on the North, employed (1539) the engineer Stefan von Haschenperg to modernise the defences of Carlisle. von Haschenperg was sacked in 1543 for having "spent great treasures to no purpose"; but (by him and his successors) at the north end the castle towers were converted to artillery platforms, at the south the medieval Bochard gate was converted into the Citadel, an artillery fortification with two massive artillery towers. The death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 and her succession by James VI of Scotland as King James I of England allowed more determined and coordinated efforts to suppress reiving. The borderers were not quick to change their ways and many were hanged and whole families were exiled to Ireland.
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The Musgrave family was a prominent Anglo-Scottish Border family with many descendants in the United States of America, Australia and the United Kingdom a so-called Riding or Reiver clan of Cumberland and Westmorland. The earliest record of the Musgraves is Gamel, Lord of Musgrave, noted as being "of the county of Westmorland and divers manors in county Cumberland, living in the time of King Edward the Confessor (1042-1065) predating the Norman Conquest." The Musgraves though often Wardens of the West March during the times of the Reivers and among the fourteen most notorious of the reiving clans were known locally as de’ils (devils) dozen and consisted of the following families: Armstrong, Bell, Carleton, Dacre, Elliot, Graham, Johnstone, Kerr, Maxwell, Musgrave, Nixon, Routledge, Scott and Storey. Whether the family origin is Anglo-Saxon, Norman, or Strathclyde Briton is unclear.
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