The Steel Bonnets. George Fraser MacDonald
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Название: The Steel Bonnets
Автор: George Fraser MacDonald
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007474288
isbn:
Nor could the reivers count on watches always being in the same place; small mobile patrols were also used, and “plump” watches of unusual strength were liable to be set up as occasion demanded.
To man the frontier efficiently, about 1000 watchers were necessary; it follows that in spite of the regulations, there was some defaulting. Young Scrope found difficulty in maintaining plump watches of forty horse in the West, and at Morpeth in the winter of 1597 there was a flat refusal to stand watches, so that a plump watch had to be moved in. Possibly owing to shortage of men, day watches seem to have been indifferently kept in young Scrope’s time.
Watches on the Scottish side seem to have been less organised, which may be significant, but here as in England there was a system of beacons on hilltops and the roofs of towers to give the alarm. Owners of towers were obliged to light their beacons on learning of any fray by night; the penalty for failure was a 3s 4d fine. In Liddesdale the approach of a raid in daylight was signalled by spreading a white sheet over a prominent bush on a hillside or crest, this being repeated all along the valley.
England had another line of defence, in the establishment of numbers of “slewdogges”3 for the tracking down of raiders; money was raised for their maintenance, and from the number of them stolen in raids it is obvious that they were highly prized. They could be worth as much as £10.
So, even allowing for those watchers who were in league with the reivers, or were too terrified to give them away, the business of raiding was fraught with hazards. From the moment the March limits were crossed, the marauders were riding in the shadow of the gallows; if some of their exploits were undoubtedly mean and cruel, they can hardly be called cowardly. Even when they were riding into a frightened countryside (which was often the case in the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign), and were sufficiently expert to avoid or evade the guards, tracker dogs, and mobile patrols, to lift their plunder and shake off pursuit, there were some dangers which could not be anticipated. No band could ever be sure that they were the only ones out on the fells at night; half a dozen raids might cross each others’ tracks in the dark, and although hi-jacking was not common, it did happen at least once, to an Elliot party who made a quick dawn foray into Bewcastle only to be jumped by a returning band of English night raiders, who lifted the Scots’ booty of eighty head.
1. The names attached to some of the Middle March riders’ passages are highly evocative: Murders Rack, Hell Cauldron, Keilder Edge, Thrust Pick, etc.
2. The penalty was eventually relaxed, and after 1570 watchers in the English West and Middle Marches who failed to raise a hue and cry against thieves were only held liable for goods stolen.
3. Also given as sloughdogs and sleuthdogs. Scott traces the name from the sloughs and mosses through which they followed the scent, but it seems more likely that it came from sleuth, meaning a track or trail. Trail hounds are common in Cumberland today, where they are used for long-distance racing. They travel at surprising speeds after scent, and it seems possible that the sleuthdogs of the sixteenth century were of this breed, rather than bloodhounds.
It is this side of the reiver’s work—the danger, the bravery, the almost sporting spirit in which he rode out—that has been emphasised by the romancers. It was there, no doubt of it, and it is easy to treat him as a hero figure because sometimes he was indeed heroic. People like to remember him at his best, as a jolly, daredevil Robin Hood, rough but generous, a product of his times who was no doubt full of mischief, but was decent at bottom, and had some peculiar patriotic aura glowing round him as he went about his work of pillage. It is not difficult, by a judicious selection of cases and evidence, to justify this view.
Isabell Routledge, a widow, owning a small herd and a house of her own in the English West March, saw him rather differently. On April 2 1581 she was visited by thirty Elliots, who ransacked her home, took her four oxen, her six cows, and her only horse, and made off with all her possessions. At that, she was luckier than another woman named Hetherington, who a few years later was raided, again by Elliots, who murdered her husband and another man, and stole her herd of forty head.
And both were more fortunate than Hecky Noble who, within a few nights of Mrs Hetherington’s widowhood, was a victim of that gay desperado, Dickie Armstrong of Dryhope,1 and his 100 jolly followers. Apart from reiving a herd of 200 head, and destroying nine houses, the raiders also burned alive Hecky’s son John, and his daughter-in-law, who was pregnant.
For Dick of Dryhope this was part of the night’s work. Two days earlier he had murdered a miller named Tailor and another man, burned the mill and twelve houses, and reived 100 beasts. Two months later, he and his friends were despoiling another woman, Margaret Forster, of Bewcastle, stealing her eighteen cattle and rifling her home.
These are not isolated cases. On the contrary, they are typical of Border raiding. The lists are endless of small herds lifted, of homes burned, of “insight” (household goods) removed, value a few pounds, of men wounded, or kidnapped, or occasionally killed. To give an idea of what this meant, one can only examine figures for certain areas and periods.
When the Elliots of Liddesdale were riding in the summer of 1581, they were moving in bands generally 100 strong. In June and July alone they stole in the West March of England 274 cattle and twelve horses, ransacked nine houses, “wounded and maimed” three men, and took one prisoner. Statistics are deceptive; if one tries to see it in the light of a modern newspaper report, it is easier to imagine the horror of thirty sturdy hooligans descending on a woman’s house in the night, looting and smashing, and then riding off. This happened along the Marches day in, day out, year after year.
It is instructive to consider the havoc wrought by only one of the Border raiding tribes, over a period. Figures are available for the forays run by the Elliots over a decade from the early 1580s; they are almost certainly conservative figures, since they take account only of actual raids complained of and recorded. And they include only raids in which the Elliots were in a majority; other forays in which the Elliots took a hand, but were not the ringleaders, have been excluded.
There were more than forty of these “exclusively Elliot” raids, and the total score, at the lowest estimate, was more than 3000 cattle stolen, over £1000 worth of insight taken, sixty-six buildings destroyed, СКАЧАТЬ