dumfries-1920/04-040

Transcription

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS (SCOTLAND) COMMISSION

looking at the map, thought the place could be reached by sea. Wharton had to
explain that save in exceptional circumstances this was impossible.
But the English method at this stage was not that of the Edwards. It was
not to make Dumfriesshire a safe approach for a regular military subjection of Scot-
land, but to get astride the district and appropriate it piecemeal. Hence the anxiety
for the Maxwell holds, the acquisition of Langholm Tower, whose significance was
purely local, and in 1547 the seizure of Lochwood Tower, the seat of the Laird of
Johnstone (see No. 315).
This year, 1547, indeed saw the culmination of their local success. Dumfries-
shire, on paper, seems wholly English. The chief local lairds and the local clans
are in sworn allegiance to Edward VI. But Caerlaverock and Lochmaben were still
Scottish, though likely to suffer from lack of victuals. ¹ In July Langholm Tower
had fallen to the guns of the Scottish regent. Castlemilk, however, had been
surrendered to the English by James Stewart, its captain, and a Graham was put
in as commander (September). Lochwood, as we have seen, had an English garrison.
But there was no permanency in this transformation. In 1550 peace was made, and
two years later the constant friction over the Debateable Land was ended by its
division. At the time there were still accounted to be "bounde and sworne to serve
the Kynges majeste" in Dumfriesshire Beatsons, Thomsons, Glendinnings, and
Littles of Eskdale, Ewesdale, and Wauchopedale, "and surnames under them," to
the number of 304; Johstones of Gretna, 6; Bells of Middlebie, 104; Jardines and
Moffats, 55. ² But soon history, as it affected the two countries, was to have its
course violently deflected, and other aims and activities were to come to the surface.

V.

FORAY AND FEUD: THE WARDENSHIP. ³
By the middle of the 16th century, to the more settled and law-abiding
section of the Scottish population, the Borderers in general were simply thieves.
No literary glamour had as yet been thrown over their high-handed and irresponsible
life. In the nature of the case, too, as time went on and efforts to exercise control
over the state of things on the Border continued to take the form merely of spasmodic
outbursts of legalised violence, things could only grow worse. Lord Herries in his
Discourse and Advise on the Evil Estate present of the West Marches, presented to
James VI. in 1579, traces all the trouble to the intrusion of the Grahams on the
waste ground of the frontier (cf. p. xxxv.), their support by England, the failure of
James V. to suppress them, their consequent increase in wealth and numbers, and
their alliance and intermarriages with neighbours of similar character on the Esk,
Leven, and Sark. At the time of the death of James V. they were not more than
twenty or thirty at most; now with their "assisters" they numbered between three
and four hundred ready to take the field on horseback at an hour's warning, and

1 Calendar Scottish Papers, i. p. 20.
2 Ibid., p. 191.
3 The Warden had a deputy, and there was a Captain of Langholm with a company in the castle
there (No. 429), who was also known as the Keeper of Annandale, like the Keeper of Liddesdale -
another specially troublesome district. There was also a Sheriff at Dumfries with control over certain
royal tenants and subject to the Warden's orders; but he was rarely employed. The deputy and
the Captain of Langholm were the principal officers. (Border Papers, i. pp. 393-5.)

-- xxxviii