The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ oak reinforced with iron. The bottom storey was used as a store room, and the floors above were reached by a narrow curving stair, called a turnpike, usually going up clockwise so that a defender retreating up the flight had his unguarded left side to the wall, and his sword arm to the outside; his attacker, coming up, was at the disadvantage of having his sword arm to the wall. Tradition has it that the Kerrs, who were notoriously left-handed,⁴ built their stairs anti-clockwise.

      The upper floors were the living quarters, and at the very top there would usually be a beacon, to summon help in attack or give warning of an impending foray.

      The peel was normally a chief’s house, and no matter how rich or powerful a Border leader might become he needed a tower at least for his personal safety and to provide a rallying point and defensive centre for his dependants. Their great virtue was their simplicity and strength; they were impervious to fire from the outside, or indeed to anything short of artillery or a sustained siege. Once inside, with the doors shut, the defenders could hold out against a greatly superior force, firing from the arrow-slits and shot-holes, and hurling down interesting objects from the roof. Even when the doors were forced, determined men could fight from floor to floor.

      The situation of the towers varied. Sometimes a dwelling house was attached, and normally the chief’s immediate family and dependants, sometimes in large numbers, would live in and around the fortress. The peel might be surrounded by a large wall, known as a barmekin or barnekin; by statute of 1535 Scottish leaders on the Border were obliged to build them to regulation size, over two feet thick and between seven and eight feet high. The barnekin offered a refuge for people and cattle, and a defensible perimeter against minor attacks.

      Even when he had to abandon his peel in the face of a large invasion, and retire to the wastes or mosses with his folk and goods, the Borderer had an ingenious way of preventing its destruction in his absence. The interior of the peel would be stuffed tight with smouldering peat, which would burn for days, and made it impossible for gunpowder charges to be laid, or for the attackers to get inside and set to work with crowbars and axes. When the Borderer found it safe to return he would have to renew and repair his woodwork, but the framework of his tower would be little the worse for wear.

There were methods of capturing a peel tower, one of which is described in detail by a reiver in Chapter XV. The Bold Buccleuch’s⁵ method, described by young Scrope,⁶ of “fyre to the door” whereby the defenders were smoked out, was probably common practice, especially when attackers had succeeded in capturing the ground floor and driving the defenders upstairs. Another ingenious method was used by Robert Carey in attacking a Graham peel: “we set presently at worke to get up to the top of the tower and to uncover the roofe, and then some 20 of [the besiegers] to fall down together, and by that means to win the tower”.

      Carey was fairly new to the frontier at that time, and since the redoubtable Thomas Carleton, an officer of great experience, was at his elbow throughout the operation, we can guess whose bright idea it was to remove the roof.

The towers and block-houses were no doubt comparatively comfortable places, and decently if crudely furnished, although there was a total absence of such refinements as carpets or decorations, but the peasant huts and sheilings were primitive in the extreme. Heat was by peat fire, probably in the centre of the floor; the clothing, like the furniture, was of the simplest. “The husbandmen in Scotland, the servants, and almost all the country wore coarse cloth made at home of grey or sky colour, and flat blue caps very broad,” says our English traveller.⁷ The heads of tribes and leading landowners on both sides might use satin, silk, damask, lace, and taffeta, but among the poorer folk leather and buckskin for the men, and broadcloth, linen and woollens for both sexes were the common dress materials.

We get some idea of clothing and household goods among the Borderers from the lists of goods stolen in raids. These vary from the sumptuous apparel lifted from Robert Kerr of Ancrum, including fine hats and dresses, feather beds and plate, to the crude kitchen utensils of the peasants. An inventory of goods stolen from a servant of John Forster’s in 1590 is an interesting guide to the possessions of a “middle class” Borderer. It includes two doublets, two pairs of breeches, a cloak, a jerkin, a woman’s kirtle and pair of sleeves, nine kerchiefs, seven rails (shifts), five pairs of linen sheets, two coverlets, two linen shirts, a purse containing six shillings, another purse, two silk ribbons, a winding cloth, a feather bed, three shirts, a cauldron, and so on. Not a badly furnished establishment; Forster’s servant could obviously afford to spend money on his wife’s appearance—which is mentioned elsewhere as a common Border trait.⁸

      Within the towns conditions were somewhat different; Carlisle and Berwick were sophisticated by the standards of the rural communities, and on paper differed from southern towns only in that they were garrisoned and heavily defended. On the Scottish side, towns like Dumfries, Annan, Jedburgh, and Kelso were strong, organised communities, usually walled and fortified, run by their own councillors, and often containing houses of some strength. They were sturdily independent folk, quick to resent interference by rural potentates; Jedburgh especially, which carried on a feud with the Kerrs of Ferniehurst, was noted for the toughness of its inhabitants.

The standard of living was generally higher in the towns, as one would expect. A man in the Berwick garrison, in 1597, when times were hard and inflation had increased rapidly,⁹ got a daily ration of a twelve-ounce loaf, three pints of beer, one-and-a-half pounds of beef, three-quarters of a pound of cheese, and a quarter of a pound of butter—this was a considerable reduction in what his ration had been some years earlier.

      What is interesting about the Berwick garrison’s rations is that they do not seem to have been markedly better off than the civilians—at least they could not afford the strong beer which apparently found a ready civil market. Nor was their food always considered satisfactory; John Carey bluntly told Burghley on one occasion that it was not fit for a horse.

1. Sheep-raising in the sixteenth century was primarily for wool production, not for mutton, but Border wool was considered of poor quality. The demand for mutton increased gradually from Elizabeth’s reign onwards.

2. The better classes in the towns brewed ale, which was their “usual drink”.

3. The garrison of the fortress of Roxburgh laid in 1800 loaves among the winter’s victuals in 1548.

4. A left-handed person is still called ker-handed, car-handed, or corry-fisted in the Scottish Borderland.

5. There were many Walter Scotts of Branxholm and Buccleuch, the principal ones being that Walter Scott who fought at Flodden and Ancrum, was briefly Middle March Warden, and was murdered by the Kerrs in 1552; and his grandson, the “Bold Buccleuch” (1565–1611), a noted reiver who was also Keeper of Liddesdale from 1594–1603, and who is famous for his rescue of Kinmont Willie Armstrong from Carlisle in 1596. When Buccleuch is mentioned in this text it means the grandson, unless otherwise stated.

6. Henry and Thomas Scrope (or Scroop) were respectively 9th and 10th Lords Scrope of Bolton. Henry (1534–1592) was English West March Warden from 1563 until his death; СКАЧАТЬ