button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page xii:-
It would seem indeed (by the bye) that the Scots excelled in the use of the spear, and (excepting the Borderers) neglected the bow; since one of their own Kings is thought to have recommended its more general use, by ridiculing their imperfect management of it. [See Poems of James I.]
A people accustomed to be called to the field on such trifling occasions, and inured to hardships by such causes, were also very ready to help forward commotions of a larger scale. Here Henry IV. had his first dawn of empire; and the Pierces, with their border-friends, afterwards almost shook him from his throne. The battle of Shrewsbury was one of the fiercest in the English history, and has moroever had Shakespeare for its poet. The north also was the nursery of those armies which supported the cause of Henry VI. and of Margaret, and serve to add to the miseries of England so much during the contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster.
Such are a few of the consequences that may, in my opinion, be fairly deduced from insignificant causes in those parts, viz. From the little piques of individuals where regular laws were wanting: and the consequent irregularities of life acquired great force, when their effects were united together, even in things not immediately pertaining to themselves. Their exact commencement is lost in antiquity; only I think one may venture to subjoin, that as these little things have occasionally produced considerable effects, so they themselves seem to have originated from causes still more considerable; i.e. the driving of the Northern nations Southward: a tendency which, though obstructed at intervals, continued still to exist, and make a figure in history, from the time when the Cimmerians broke into Upper Asia, to times which were long after the fall of the Roman empire. The traces remained, and these are some of them; which, whatever may be thought, were much elder than the animosities excited by the first Edward, though the appointment of Lord Wardens might somewhat alter their appearance. So much for a comment and application of the first paragraph: now I proceed to the second.
  borderers
II. From what motive it is I know not, except it is from the prejudices of habit, that persons, who have been accustomed to a wandering unsettled life, and such as cultivation would pronounce unhappy, reject the conveniences of regular life with wonderful perseverance; but gypsies and vagrants furnish daily and indisputable proofs of its being so. Their fondness for continual migration seems to have been sucked in with their mother's milk; and one would think, that they found amongst the comforts of society, certain restraints, which it not only irked them to bear, but which far overbalanced all its benefits. Surely there is in the mind of man a strange longing for freedom; and when custom, sometimes stronger than nature, accords with it, their united efforts must be very powerful. The Isaurians were a small nation in the heart of the Roman empire; they dwelt amongst mountains; they saw civilization on every side, yet they rejected it with scorn; and, on occasions, found employment for the Legions through the course of several ages. The Eskimaux returns with glee from our luxuries to his native desarts, and to feed on train-oil, or stinking blubber. The Indians, who have been educated in the schools of North-America, revolt to the barbarism of their fathers. The Swiss, when in the service of foreign states, have many of them died of a longing to revisit the mountains where they spent their infancy; and the disorder has acquired, as it justly merited, a name of its own. And thus the vagrant, who perhaps never slept in a cradle, yearns for a windy barn and a bed of straw, instead of our boasted conveniences; which, whilst custom has made grateful to us, it hath made uneasy shackles to him. It is silly to blame those prejudices in others which can retort so easily upon our own: besides, every single man hath some humor or other, which, though grateful to him, may be the reverse to another: and this makes me oft think, that no one should wonder at prejudices, till he has first tried to give their cause a fair investigation. The reference which these remarks have to our present business, is as follows.
The people who inhabited the counties contiguous to the borders of England and
Scotland
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