dumfries-1920/04-046

Transcription

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS (SCOTLAND) COMMISSION.

and Lag, made a personal band with him of mutual support, and Maxwell with
two thousand men proceeded towards Lockerbie. Johnstone, however, was aware
of what was coming, and had added to his immediate supporters his easterly friends,
the Scotts of Ewesdale, the Grahams and Elliots of Esk. Johnstone, having an
inferior force, played a common Border ruse. A few horsemen pricked forward
and drew a considerable body of Maxwell's men in pursuit. These were received and
driven back by a larger Johnstone body, in their retirement throwing their friends
into confusion. Immediately Johnstone flung his whole weight on his disordered
foes and scattered them in flight with little loss. Such was the battle of Dryfesands,
7th December 1593, the last of the clan battles on the Border. Maxwell, "a tall man
and heavy in armour," was killed. ¹
This, of course, was an outrageous defiance of public authority, and no Government
could do less than put the offending Johnstone under ban for rebellion; no Scottish
Government in the circumstances could do any more. Again, therefore, the old feud
blazed out more strongly then ever. There is no need to dwell upon its incidents;
a sample of such has been afforded above, and there was little chance of variety. The
only notable point is that in these plundering raids the number slain was remarkably
small, a fact which bears out Leslie's comment upon such Border affairs; aggressors
were out for plunder rather than blood (see p. xxxvi.). Necessarily all the dales were
implicated in this civil warfare. Maxwell was supreme in Nithsdale and Eskdale,
thus carrying with him the upper Nithsdale lairds, notably Drumlanrig, while his
"friends" the Carlyles and Bells and the town of Annan carried his interests into the
lower Annan, and in Eskdale the Armstrongs were clients from of old. The John-
stones covered Annandale from Lockerbie northwards, and their principal allies were
the Irvings along the Sark, while they could draw upon the Moffats and Scotts of
upper Eskdale, above the Armstrongs, and the Grahams in the lower portion of the
Debateable Land. Meantime the Privy Council postponed decisive action in the
Johnstone case, and accordingly in October 1595 that clan added another item
to its calendar,when the Warden, Lord Herries, going "to seke some of the John-
stones at Lockerbie," was driven off with loss. ² Obviously a Maxwell Warden could
not hold his own on the West March, so the whole problem was characteristically
solved by the appointment of Johnstone as warden in 1596. For such a course there
was already a Maxwell precedent (see p. xliii.), but the step was little likely to mollify
the Maxwells. And Johnstone, though not yet thirty years of age, had not less than
twenty murders to his credit, both Scots and English. ³
None was so active on the Maxwell side as Drumlanrig, between whom and
Johnstone a settlement was struck in 1597, only to be speedily broken, each accusing
the other of perjury. A feature of the complaints here illustrates that procedure of
forcible settlement referred to above (p. xxxix.). Carlyles and Bells entered upon some

1 Spottiswoode's History, ii. p. 446.
"Adieu! Drumlanrig, false wert aye,
And Closeburn in a band!
The Laird of Lag, frae my father that fled,
When the Johnston struck aff his hand."
("Lord Maxwell's Good-night," in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.)
As to the allegation that Maxwell's right hand was struck off when raised for quarter, the historian
says: "I can affirm nothing." In the Border Papers, i. (No. 918), Scrope explains that the fray was
due to Maxwell's attempting to cast down Mungo Johnstone's house in Lockerbie.
2 Calderwood, v. p. 385.
3 Border Papers, ii. No. 485.

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