heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

142 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
of the Borders (or Marches, as they were termed) was anything but an
honorary or unnecessary office of title or dignity but in ancient days the
;
border counties were for many centuries in a state little favourable to quiet
or peaceful government. On the northern side of the Tweed, the Scottish
border counties were thronged with inhabitants divided into clans of Scott,
Kerr, Hume, Douglas, Cranstoun, Beeton, &c., and having chiefs whom
they obeyed in preference to the King or his officers placed amongst them
rough, unruly people, dwelling in a land of dales and valleys, morass and
forests, living by hunting or by plunder, sometimes on the English, sometimes
on each other, and sometimes on the more civilized country which
lay behind them, always going armed with shields of wood, bows and
arrows, large swords called claymores, poleaxes, daggers, and invariably
horsemen, "and with jedwood axe at saddle bow," for, says Froissart,
" Of a truth the Scottish cannot boast great skill with the bow, but rather
" bear axes, with which in time of need they give heavy strokes." On the
other side, the English Borderers, consisting of the great families of Dacre,
Fenwick, Lisle, Percy, Swinburne, the Herons of Ford, Chipchase and
Simondburn Castles, and many others equally unsettled and equally
warlike, were always ready to resort to similar measures. The ancient
chronicles are full of laments over the desolation and misery of the land,
and the ruin of the lords and people which reduced Northumberland to a
desert. A prior of Alnwick quaintly says
:
" Lugeat Northumbria nimis desolata,
Facta est ut vidua filiis orbata ;
Vesce, Merley, Somerville, Bertram, sunt in
O quibus et quantis et qualibet viduata."
fata,
A bitter retaliation followed upon
each successful raid. Wholesale
plunder, wanton destruction, indiscriminate burning and slaying became the
object on each side, and (in the absence of resistance) fire and sword were
turned against peaceful villages, and defenceless women and children so
much so that when we contemplate the continuous raids and counter-raids
we can but marvel how the population on either side escaped starvation.
Each side, of course, charges the other with atrocity, but there was probably
no greater leaning to humanity and mercy on the one side than the other.
If the English prior wrote so plaintively of Scotch barbarity, the Scotch
poet is equally pathetic of English. In 1296, when Berwick had been taken
by assault, he says
:
" The nobilis, all that war within the town,
And also thereout, were haillelie slaine down ;
Five thousand men that mickle were of thaine,
Within the towne that samye day war slain ;
Women and bairns, also young and old,
'War slain
that day
out of numbers untold."
* Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 26.