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page xxxii:-
to the northwards, in the same manner as it compelled
another portion to a similar refuge amongst the mountains of
Wales, and as many of those very Saxons were afterwards
forced to give way to, and seek refuge from the prevailing
power of the Normans. A cession of the country from Tweed to
Eden was again made by Edgar to Kenneth, on condition that
the inhabitants should retain their ancient name, language,
and customs: a cession which seems as if calculated for
keeping up broils, for laying the foundation of consequent
claims from the English, and for alienating the minds of the
inhabitants from both parties. Indeed the independence of
their chieftains must have been considerable, and not a
little flattered, when Malcolm refused the award of English
Peers in his dispute with Rufus concerning his possessions
in England, because it had been customary that disputes
should be settled by "principal men on the Marches."
After the Conquest, we find that the number and dignity of
the Saxon Refugees in Scotland was very great; but as a
cause of many very shocking outrages and butcheries that
there existed in the Highlanders and Gallowaymen, an
excessive hatred of the English-Scots, which hatred they
displayed on every opportunity. The Highlanders indeed to
this day chuse to be considered as a distinct people from
the Lowland-Scots, and it is said that a dialect of the
Galic, or Erse tongue, was spoke within the last 130 years
by the old people in Galloway and its neighbouring parts:
thence we are led to conclude, that they are a remnant of
those Cumbri or Guidbelian Britons, whose capital was
Dumbarton, and whom their extreme western situation, and
hatred of intruders, had in some measure, like the Welsh,
prevented from entirely blending with the neighbouring
people: and were they not in the accounts of the same times
called Gallovegians, one might suspect them to be the
Cumbri mentioned as composing a part of David's army.
Be this as it will, sure it is, that such varieties of
people frequently gave occasion to quarrels and bloodshed.
We know, moreover, that many of the great men in those parts
had possessions on both sides of the Border; nay, the
ancestors of Robert Bruce himself were of Cleveland in
Yorkshire, before they were Lords of Annandale: such were,
however, the men who are said to have invited Haquin of
Norway to invade Scotland; and after he was defeated at
Largs, we find Neville, apprehensive of the revenge
of the Scottish King, asking for more forces from his master
Henry III. This may serve for one specimen, out of a history
that teems with them, of the small respect paid by such men
towards the government under whose protection (little better
than nominal indeed) they enjoyed a part, or perhaps the
whole of their possessions: nor were such doings confined to
times of war; if a peace or a truce checked them for a
little, it was only to give occasion to feuds of more secret
nature, and wars carried on in covert, soon to break out and
embroil their neighbours.
Alexander of Scotland, to revenge the cruelties which King
John had committed in his dominions, ravaged Westmoreland
and Cumberland in a most compleat and dreadful manner. A
sort of accommodation was patched up with him in the reign
of Henry III. by which he was allowed L.200 a year in
lands whereon no castles stood in Cumberland and
Northumberland; a plan which, like the former, was feeding a
fire with moist fuel. After the battle of Bannockburn the
desolation of the North of England was still more general:
and not to recite a number of particulars, which any one may
find in history, I shall drop this subject, with observing,
that notwithstanding the great care that was taken in the
time of Richard II. to settle the disturbances, when it was
agreed (to prevent their causes) that thefts should be
pursued with hound and horn into either kingdom, and no one
on pain of death impede the pursuit; then also the code of
laws (such as they were) received their regular compilation:
all, notwithstanding, was of no avail: and in the days of
Henry IV. Cumberland and Northumberland were so entirely
ravaged, and made desolate, that the King remitted, even
after the rebellion of the Piercies, all their taxes and
crown-debts.
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