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
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The following are case-histories of three Border reivers, pieced together from the records of the time. They are incomplete, but they may be sufficient to give an idea of a typical raider’s activities, and show the kind of factual basis on which so many legends rest.
William Armstrong of Kinmont
Kinmont Willie, perhaps the best-known of Border reivers, deserved his reputation. He raided on the big scale, striking not at single farms and villages, but at whole areas, at the head of bands 300 strong. He liked to ride by day, usually eastward from his tower at Morton Rigg, which was right on the Border not far north of Carlisle. His favourite target was Tynedale.
The first of his raids recorded was against the Milburns in that valley, in August 1583, when Armstrong was probably in his forties. Eight separate villages were attacked, several houses burned, 800 cattle stolen, £200 worth of goods taken, six men killed, eleven wounded, and thirty prisoners carried off.
The following year he and Nebless Clem Croser were back on another day foray with 300 riders, lifting 1300 cattle, sixty horses, and £2000 worth of goods, burning sixty houses, and killing ten men.
In 1585 Kinmont Willie was occupied with raiding in his own country; he accompanied the Earl of Angus’s campaign against the Earl of Arran, and took the opportunity to pillage in Stirling. It was this raid that made his name, and turned it into a byword for violent crime. But his biggest raid of all occurred eight years later, when he was in Tynedale with 1000 men, carrying off more than 2000 beasts and £300 in spoil.
He seems to have been fairly quiet until 1596, when his famous capture and rescue from Carlisle Castle took place (see Chapter XLI), and after that some of the old fire died. Perhaps he was just getting old, but his raids thereafter were minor affairs. He took the Captain of Bewcastle and sixteen others prisoner in 1597, ransomed them, stole twenty-four horses, and committed some “slaughter”; the bill (charge) against him for this was fouled by confession—which means he pleaded guilty to it. At this time he was being raided himself, from the English West March, his house sacked twice and burned once, 300 of his beasts stolen, and two of his men killed. He fell into English hands again on one of these occasions, but was released.
By this time the former leader of the great day forays had declined to the joint command of an outlaw gang called Sandy’s Bairns; in 1600 he attacked the village of Scotby with 140 riders, burning, taking prisoners and over 100 cattle, and with a last spark of his old bravado, riding on to Carlisle the same evening with some “English disobedients”. They smashed in a few doors at the Rickergate, damaged the bridge chains, took some prisoners, and rode under the Castle wall roaring, “Upon them, upon them, a Dacre, a Dacre, a red bull, a red bull!” which caused some alarm; the citizens stood to arms and the beacon was lit, but presently the raiders retired, no doubt to sober up.
Next year the old ruffian was operating a protection racket at Scaleby, and doing a little in the way of illicit horse-trading and receiving stolen goods. In 1602 he rode his last foray, probably on Low and High Hesket, south of Carlisle. He was still alive two years later, and his four sons who had helped to get him out of Carlisle Castle in 1596, are frequently named in the later Border raids. But the old robber, full of years and dishonour, probably died in his bed.
Walter Scott of Harden
“Auld Wat” of Harden has been represented as the Falstaff of the Borders, a fierce, big-bellied humorous old rascal who is supposed to have passed a haystack on returning from a raid and muttered: “Aye, if ye had fower legs ye wouldnae stand there lang.” A number of Border myths are connected with him, and possibly they have some truth, but the bare facts of his foraying are as follows.
He and a handful of Elliots stole two mares and a foal from the Gelt in July 1595, and sixty head of cattle from Triermain two months later. In the following year, with the same Elliots, he ran a day foray in Gilsland with 400 men, took 300 cattle, twenty horses, burned twenty houses, “taking and burning [sic] gold money apperrell worth £400” and “mutilating” several persons. Another raid yielded him 300 beasts and the spoil of two houses, worth £100.
He raided Bellingham in 1597 with more than 300 horse, killed three men, and carried off 400 head, the March being too weak to pursue him. “With shame and grief I speak it,” wrote Eure, “the Scotts went away unfought withall.”
Auld Wat was a principal in Kinmont Willie’s rescue, and in his preliminary report young Scrope mistakenly credited him with being the actual ring-leader. Yet although he is referred to as Buccleuch’s right-hand man, he does not appear to have been well known south of the frontier. Scrope refers to him as “one Wattie Harden”, and Eure even gave his surname as Elliot. But he was important enough on the Scottish side to have been involved in the Raid of Falkland in 1592, in which the wild Earl of Bothwell tried to capture King James VI;1
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