Border Reivers - A Warden of the English West March
Border Reivers - A Warden of the English West March
The Border Reivers raided the lands of the country on both side of the English Scottish Border for centuries. They appeared in the land as result of great deprivation and loss. In the line of fire of the confrontations that would become known as the Scottish Wars of Independence when England endeavoured to impose what it perceived as its overlordship of the Scottish nation, the Border people would suffer in the conflict: the means of providing the necessary to hold body and soul together.Turn by turn both Scots and English armies, living off the land and harbouring an intense and illogical hatred of anyone they encountered once they had crossed the Border Line, killed and maimed all in their path, stole their crops and beasts, fired and demolished what they could not use. The Border country became a waste land with men, women and children starving. Slow at first to respond to the dire necessity, death was inevitable. But armies did not measure the resilience of the people. The Border folk were hard and obdurate. Something in their psyche, their birthright, spoke of centuries past when they suffered unbearable loss. Then, prior to the eleventh century, they were subject to a similar fate as England and Scotland, both emerging as single nations, and contesting every inch of ground in the buffer zone at the edges of their territory, terrorised the land and its people and laid it waste in the quest for dominance. The Border folk stirred and rose and faced the hardship yet again in the fourteenth century. If their homelands could not provide the sustenance that their families craved, then they would steal where they could, be it from countryman or the families on the opposite side of the Border: they would become the Border Reivers. To 'reive' is an old English word meaning to 'rob'.Long before the great 'Hammer of the Scots', the English king Edward 1, breathed his last on the sands of the Solway Firth in 1307, looking for one last time with aggression and hatred across the water into Scotland, the country he had endeavoured to conquer, the Border Reivers had become a problem. Their thieving and killing had upset the delicate balance of power in the Border country: the efforts to consolidate a meaningful barrier, a frontier which would stand the blast of marauding armies from either side. And so it came to pass that the Border Reivers would be subject to national and international control with the institution of the Marches: geographical divisions of the Border country subject to administration by a wealth of appointed officers. To both north and south of the Border Line between Scotland and England, three Marches were determined: West, Middle and East. They were to be presided over by powerful men, men who could control the clans and families (surnames) of the Border Reivers and bring peace to a troubled land. These men were known as the March Wardens.In the English West March at the end of the sixteenth century, Thomas Lord Scrope reigned over the land as English West March Warden. His background lay easy with the role, his father before him, Henry Lord Scrope, married to Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Surrey, had filled the position with effectiveness if not success for some thirty years before young Thomas arrived in Carlisle to succeed him in 1593. Thomas was twenty-six years old.He came from an ancient and well respected English family whose ancestral home was in north Yorkshire: Bolton castle in Wensleydale.One notable member of the family, William le Scrope, was knighted at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, the battle that would see the Scots defeated by the English army of Edward 1. The Scottish defeat would be the beginning of the end for William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland; better known to everyone today as 'Braveheart'. Sir William le Scrope had two sons who were both Chief Justices to the King's Bench as well as notable lawyers, soldiers and diplomats. The youngest son, Richard, became first Lord Scrope of Bolton, was appointed Chancellor of England and knighted at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. Thomas Scrope's wife was Philadelphia Carey. Her grand-mother, Mary Boleyn, was the sister of Ann, the second wife of Henry V111. When a son was born to Mary in 1525, there were many people who thought that the father was Henry V111 even though she had been married to William Carey since 1520.It is yet to be proved that Henry V111 was the father of the child, who was also named Henry and became the 1st Baron Hunsdon. Philadelphia Carey was one of his eleven children. Philadelphia became lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth 1 and, it is said, removed the ring from the finger of the dead queen in March 1603, and urged her brother to ride hard for the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. The presentation of the ring to the Scottish king, James V1, would let me him know that Elizabeth was dead and that he now ruled in both realms, Scotland and England.Thus Thomas Lord Scrope moved in exalted circles, close to the ruling monarch and the upper echelons of English society. The presence of such a man in the hell that was the English Scottish Border country might appear somewhat incongruous; a man of refinement as overlord of the rough and ready Border folk with their total indifference to law of any kind, be it local or national, and a Border hierarchy who were, in most cases, as bent as the people they presided over. Elizabeth 1, queen of England from 1558 to 1603 chose to appoint men of a similar background to Thomas Lord Scrope. Time and experience had bred caution in an English monarch who was suspicious of the Border Lords and previous Wardens. She felt they had grown rich on the product of the Border Reivers incessant raiding and robbery by affiliating themselves with particular Border Reiver families and turning a 'blind eye' to their wanton crime: as long as there were a percentage of the takings wending its way to their door-steps.Little was ever proved; some Wardens were as wily as the monarch but Elizabeth, particular and mindful, would have no truck with promoting the local lords to such a position as Warden. Thomas Lord Scrope, following in the footsteps of his father, was seen as an excellent choice to fill the role. He proved to be upright and incorruptible but incapable of accepting that his deputies, including some of the Border Lords, had a meaningful part to play in the administration and furtherance of justice. He was intolerant of their approach and not averse to voicing his criticism of what he saw as their doleful performance as his assistants. He soon fell foul of their wrath and conspiracy to see him belittled. For the most-part he was oblivious to their machinations to achieve his downfall. Thomas Lord Scrope presided over the Kinmont affair, the capture and rescue of the most notorious of the Scottish Border Reivers, Kinmont Willie Armstrong in 1596. Along the way he fell foul of his queen, Elizabeth 1, the Scottish king, James V1, and his opposite number in Scotland, the Keeper of Liddesdale, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch. Thomas Salkeld, Sir Richard Lowther, Thomas Carleton and Richard Graham, all English and all within his employ, schemed against him, secretly espousing the scheme to free the Scottish Reiver Kinmont.He was humiliated when Kinmont was rescued from Carlisle castle by a party of the Scottish Border Reiver clans, aided and abetted by the English Lords, and never truly lived it down. Yet as the 16th century closed he was to prosper. In 1599, on St. George's Day, he was knighted. No ordinary knighthood for this man. He was made a Knight of the Garter, an illustrious position enjoyed by only twenty-four commoners at the same time. He is buried in the peaceful village of Langer in Nottinghamshire, England. His tomb is magnificent; an effigy of himself robed as a Knight of the Garter, and his wife Philadelphia, is embellished with a statue of his son Emmanuel, kneeling between them. Emmanuel was the first Earl of Sunderland.Thomas, Lord Scrope, died in 1609, he was forty-two years old. He was, in effect, the last Warden of the English West March as the Border as a frontier between two nations had ceased to exist in 1603 at the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland.
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