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

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page xxxi:-
  Border Wars
  The Marches

V. Having said what may be thought perhaps more than enough on dialects, I proceed to make some observations on the incursive wars that so particularly prevailed on the Borders: but as what has been already said has anticipated a good deal of what belongs literally to this head, and as a regular account of those bickerings belongs not to my purpose, I shall be contented with a few quotations from different authorities, which will serve at least to shew, that the observations which I have laid down in my fifth paragraph are not without foundation.
When I mentioned Expedition and Plunder as the requisite and object of these incursions, I meant not only a reference to almost every part of the history and character of the people, but an allusion to the monuments, which are still to be seen, of the velocity and transient nature of their attacks, In the first place, to the circles of very old thorns, or of other inclosures in which the people of each village or hamlet used to collect and watch their cattle by night for fear of a surprise; these are now called Lodges. The great distance of many of them from the Border proves that the speed and secrecy of the assailants must have been great indeed; especially if we consider a second circumstance, viz. the beacons, erected for more speedily conveying information of an enemy's approach: add to these Sluth-hounds, with which they were obliged to trace the march of their invisible enemy when retreating; and we shall have no occasion of recurring to particular accounts for being satisfied with respect to the encouragement which night or by-ways would furnish to such adventurers.
When again we consider that these counties are not mentioned in Doomsday-book, that the boundary of the two kingdoms was at one time upon Stane-moor, and another time at the foot of Sark; that Stephen surrendered Cumberland and Westmoreland to the Scots King, and that they were recovered by his successor, we need not wonder that the inhabitants could not very well know to which kingdom they ought to belong, and therefore could hardly, by means of a reciprocity of interests, form any particular attachment to either. The consequence of this, added to the opportunity and habit of rapine, must not a little add to their broils and instability: thus in the times of Edward I. when those countries had long been considered as a part of England, we find, that several of the Cumberland gentlemen, amongst whose names I remember that of Seaton Lord of Gamelsby, and Glassonby, forfeited their estates for taking the part of Robert Bruce and the Scots against him. Indeed there long subsisted an intimacy, by means of very close family-connections, between the principal families of Cumberland and those of the opposite side of the Firth, particularly of Annandale: before that period, the disturbances had a more irregular, though perhaps a less pernicious direction; and he, by inflaming former animosities, and by putting an end to all such connections, (at least as far as the severity of his government could do it,) made the distinction between as Englishman and Scotsman observed with a more rancourous nicety than before. It is true, we are informed, that when the Romans first quitted their rampire and forsook Britain, the fury of the Barbarians was such as to destroy even every thing that might be a vestige of itself; but the retreat of many of the Saxons northward, on the Norman invasion, and several circumstances prior to that event, had produced considerable, though only temporary changes; for though one remembers the horrid fury of the Gallovegians in their invasions, yet one also calls to mind certain intervals of tranquillity, wherein the temper of individuals produced no such continual effects as took place afterwards. We find, moreover, the Cumbri mentioned as composing a part of the army which the Scots King David led against Stephen, before that country was regularly ceded to the Scots; and as in the next reign they composed a part of the English forces, one may infer that their attachment to neither could be very strong. Likewise, when we are told that Cumberland, long before the period of which we are speaking, was ceded to the Scots on the condition of paying homage for it "for fear it should revolt," we may be pretty well satisfied in what light the attachment of its inhabitants to their Southern neighbours was viewed: nor is it wonderful, that such attachment was considered as suspicious when one reflects that these Cumbri were a part of the Britons whom the intrusion of their Saxon conquerors had forced to
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