Reivers - The Border Lands are Pacified
The Reiver Clans are Persecuted Following the Union of the Crowns
Jul 26, 2009
In 1603, James V1 of Scotland became King of the countries of England and Scotland. He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and the blood of the English Tudors ran through her veins.
From early in his reign James decreed that the Border Marches existed no longer. They were to be known as the Middle Shires of a United Kingdom. The position of March Warden, so key to control of the Border Reivers, was likewise redundant.
A Border Commission
By 1605 James had set up a commission on the Borders to punish the Border people for their centuries of waywardness. Headed by prominent figures from both sides of the Border, it had licence to punish any-one suspected of involvement in Reiving activities. On his accession he had said that the crimes committed in Busy Week should be disregarded but now, in a move which was typical of the man, he demanded that those who were caught up in endless raids at that time, were guilty of 'foul and insolent outrages... in the Borders' and should submit to his mercy.
What's in a Reiving Name?Many of the Border Clans had been engaged in Reiving for centuries but not everyone with a name synonymous with the practice was a Reiver. Many families did their utmost to follow decent lives despite the constant war of attrition that surrounded them. To the men of the commission and the veritable armies that followed them an Armstrong, an Elliot, a Graham and a Milburn, to name but few, were Reivers and dealt with accordingly irrespective of their backgrounds.
The Reiving Clans are Persecuted
Many of the men of the Reiving Clans were rounded up and hanged. Mass hangings became a familiar sight in the Borderlands in the first decade of the 17th century. Most often the punishment was inflicted without trial. Whilst there were many who deserved their fate, others suffered just for their name.
Avaricious eyes, purportedly on the side of law and order, saw the potential of ridding the land of its former tenants, theReivers, and acquiring riches beyond their dreams. Thus began an era of ethnic cleansing. The lands of the river Esk were of particular interest to some and Hollows Tower was used a base to round up the reivers of this fertlile valley.
In the Middle Shires of the new United Kingdom, theReiver had no-where to go, no-where to hide. North of the Border into Scotland for an English Reiver, and vice -versa for a Scot was no longer an option. The relative safety of such a flight had ceased to exist.
The wives and children of those who died at the end of a rope were to suffer intolerably with neither breadwinner nor home to see to both present and future.
The Reivers and Holland
One of the options to remove the Reivers from the Borders was to send them to the Cautionary Towns of Holland where English garrisons existed at Flushing, Brill and Ramakins. These places were held by the English as insurance against a huge loan made Elizabeth 1 to aid the Dutch in their war against Catholic Spain. A number of the warlike Borderers would be an asset.
The Grahams of Netherby and Mote were singled out for this dubious distinction. Taken from imprisonment, many of them in Carlisle, they were shipped to Holland never to see wives or children again. Or so it would seem. In only a few months the more enterprising of the clan were back in the Borders!
Reivers Transported
Within a few short years of James coming to the throne of England yet another enterprise to rid the Middle Shires of the Reiving clans was enacted.
It was decided to transport the clans to Ireland, to the bogs of Roscommon. They were rounded up and taken to the west Cumberland ports and shipped to a life of subsistence and penury. Yet they survived and within a few generations had emigrated to the New World.
The Highland Clearances, so well documented and lamented over, were not the first in Scottish history.
A hundred and fifty years before the clansmen of the Highlands were flushed from the homes they had inhabited for centuries, a similar action was taking place in the Borders. And for the same underlying reason: avarice.
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