rode at a great pace through the Grahams' country without
spreading the alarm, crossed the Esk, and by two hours after
daylight were on Scottish ground. The blacksmith's house
between Loughton and Langholme where ^^'illie's fetters were
knocked off was shown to Sir Walter Scott when in the
neighbourhood.
It was a great performance, and not a drop of blood had
been shed. But EHzabeth when she heard of it set no bounds
to her wrath, and gave the Scottish Government the choice
between war and the surrender of Buccleuch. After lengthy
negotiations the bold warden was induced or compelled for
the sake of peace to give himself up to her. When he
appeared before the angry Queen, a story runs that she asked
him how he dared to venture on so audacious and desperate an
undertaking. "What is there that a man dares not do?"
proudly replied Buccleuch. The wrath of Elizabeth, it is
said, was melted by so brave an answer, and turning to her
attendants she remarked, " With ten thousand such men our
brother of Scotland might shake the firmest throne in Europe."
Once launched, however, upon the sea of border song and
story, one might run some risk of remaining up here on the
walls of CarHsle Castle indefinitely and forgetting how nearly
is the tether of our space run out.
A DESOLATING WAR
281
With Henry VII., who gave his daughter to the Scottish
King, a brief season of comparative quiet fell upon the border,
and to this time some good authorities have attributed much
of the minstrelsy which in such quaint but stirring language
tells the story of perennial strife. The Scots appear to have
been most prolific in this type of song, but such supremacy might
partly be accounted for by the fact of the north side of the
border having contained more habitable country and carrying
a larger population.
After Flodden, where the men of Carlisle did doughty work
under a Dacre, Scotland was smitten hip and thigh. Henry
'S
Dacre Castle.
VIII. offered her peace if she would abandon her old and
vexatious French alliance. But she refused, and the King,
who had treated Wales with the highest statesmanship, turned
in fury upon Scotland and swore he would make the marches
harmless by depopulation if other means failed. Carlisle
became more than ever a place of arms and the normal hatred
of the men of Cumberland for their northern neighbours was
stirred to frenzy by the King's violent measures. A frightful
period of strife and devastation, conducted with devilish energy
and method, set in, and the reprisals were of a like nature.
The English Government was now sowing the wind, and was
to reap the whirlwind. Bad as they had been before, the marches
282 "A STARK MOSS-TROOPING SCOT WAS HE" chap.
now became in this sixteenth century, when England at large was
growing peaceful and domestic, more miserable than ever. The
old clans or tribes were swollen by refugees from justice ;
outlaws and broken men of all sorts who ranged themselves
beneath the battle-cries of Scott or Armstrong, Elliot or
Gr?eme. All semblance of respectability was erased from
border strife. Dacre, who with a handful of men had repelled
a Scottish army of 15,000 from the walls of Carlisle, rode with
2,000 men against the Armstrongs, but was defeated. The
Scottish warden then attacked them with no better fortune. They
became the terror of Cumberland and mustered 3,000 horse.
The Duke of Northumberland was now appointed " warden
seneral," a new office. The measures he took show the
desperate state of affairs, for watches were now kept day and
night along the frontier, as in the days when Roman soldiery
held Hadrian's Wall against the Picts. Every district had to
furnish its own quota ; while elaborate laws were laid down for
the blowing of horns and the lighting of beacons. Every man
who crossed the border had to account for himself. No
Englishman might speak to a Scot without permission, nor
might any Scot live in Carlisle, or even walk the streets,
unaccompanied by a native, and, more durable than these
fitful and passionate enactments, miles of thorn hedges were
planted to hamper the raiding of stock.
Sir Walter Scott in his spirited and inimitable style has
given us a graphic picture of the borderer of the Tudor period :
A stark moss-trooping Scot was he
As e'er crouched Ijorder lance by knee.
Through Solway sands, through Jarra's moss,
Blindfold he knew the paths to cross,
By wily turns, by desperate bounds,
Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds.
In Esk or Liddel fords were none
But he would ride them one by one.
Alike to him was time or tide,
December's snow or July's pride;
X EMIGRATION OF BORDERERS 283
Alike to him was tide or time,
Moonless midnight or matin prime:
Steady of heart and stout of hand
As ever drove prey from Cumberland.
It is a frightful picture, and yet this was a bit of Tudor
England, the same England that contained the Devonshire of
Raleigh and the Warwickshire of Shakespeare ! Carlisle was so
continuously in the thick of battle it is hopeless to attempt
here any serious relation of its exploits. Once it was attacked
from the south, for in that futile protest against the conditions
created by the Reformation known as the Pilgrimage of Grace
8,000 men of Westmorland, under a Musgrave, rose, and
regarding Carlisle as the nearest centre of a Royal authority,
marched against it. But the soldiers and citizens of Carlisle
were more inured to war than the men of Westmorland, and
shattered them utterly, hanging over seventy from the city
walls as a warning to reactionaries in general. But, in regard
to the border clans, hanging the worst offenders and levelling
their peel towers was not the only method of quieting them.
Emigration to Ulster, which James I. was busy planting,
was largely resorted to, and indeed under the new regime of
law and order the mere plundering borderers were by no means
loth to go. Armstrongs, Grahams and Johnstones flocked
over by hundreds, and many a family famous to-day in Ulster
has sprung from them, while the wars in the Netherlands and
those of Gustavus Adolphus carried away a still greater share
of this superfluous and turbulent humanity.
One of Carlisle's greatest triumphs too was of this date or
thereabouts, when the garrison and townsmen drove back
with slaughter and confusion an army of 10,000 Scots,
hundreds of the fugitives perishing in the waters of the vSolway.
Of grief and this disaster the last King of Scotland died,
leaving an infant daughter a week old, the famous Mary Stuart,
who in after years when flying from Scotland, as we know, came
to this very castle of Carlisle in her rash resolve to throw
284 CIVIC LIFE CHAP
herself on Elizabeth's hospitality. Yonder, in the south-east
angle of the castle, remnants of the tower yet stand which
was her dwelling for many weeks. Down there in the meadows
below she went hare-hunting or hawking or watching football
matches almost daily, being, with her followers, so amazingly
well mounted that, as her discontent and distrust increased,
her custodians were in constant fear lest the young Queen some
fine morning should show them a clean pair of heels and gallop
off to Scotland again.
But it must not be supposed that Carlisle was so wholly
given over to blood and iron that commerce and religion had no
place. On the contrary the merchants did a thriving business,
particularly in leather, not being particular, it is said, from
which side of the border the hides came or to whom they
belonged ; while a mayor and aldermen on great occasions
went to church in state at the Cathedral as in more common-
place towns. Carlisle took the plague too very badly, and lost
nearly a quarter of its population. With the union of the
Crowns, fresh efforts were made to civilise the borders, and
there is some grim humour in the fact that as King James
crossed the eastern march on his way to mount the throne of
England a force of Scotsmen simultaneously crossed the
western border and raided down the Eden valley as far as
Penrith.
But it was King James, after all — or at any rate men acting
vigorously under his orders — that put an end to the old border
conditions, as we have endeavoured thus briefly to depict them.
It was not" of course the mere fulminations that he issued to
his subjects in what was no longer politically a border country
that had this effect, nor his futile attempt to rename Cumber-
land and Northumberland the Middle Shires, nor even a
successful haul of Scottish moss-troopers and a liberal use of
halters at Carlisle, which celebrated the first year of his reign.
The gentry of the border would have paid but scant attention
to the King's commands to pull down their peel towers, or to
X BELTED WILL 285
his platitudes on the utility of agricultural pursuits, if un-
accompanied by pressure of a more insistent kind. And this
was brought to bear, not violently and of a sudden, but
patiently and with a strong hand, by Lord Howard of Na-
worth, who had married an heiress of the great house of
Dacre.
" Belted Will " is of course one of the heroes of border
history and fiction. But the character of a heady, merciless,
hard-riding, iron-fisted administrator, with which legend and
Sir Walter Scott have invested him are wholly fanciful, and
partly due, no doubt, to the wild deeds of the Dacres,
whose honours and estates he inherited. The real Lord
William was a scholar, book collector, and antiquary ; a
grave and learned person, and, above all, a high-minded
gentleman, with an inborn hatred of all that was base or
'ignoble. He and his lad}', the younger of the two heiresses
who merged in their husbands the great house of Dacre, had
a passion for country life, and Lord A\'illiam a great talent for
rural administration. But his work was done entirely in legal,
orderly fashion. Above all, he kept a sleepless eye on those
entrusted with authority, and promptly rebuked any sign of
weakness or connivance with offenders. The chief raiding
clans fought long against these innovations. But gradually
the better classes began to call the avocation of the moss-
trooper by another name. No fortified houses except those
belonging to the nobles and gentry were any longer permitted.
Public opinion turned against the old order of things ; and in
the seventeenth century the business of looting and catde-
lifting was confined to predatory bands of outlaws and broken
men, who found little sympathy and possessed no prestige.
Lord William, moreover, introduced bloodhounds for tracking
marauders, and, among other innovations, made the gentry
responsible for the behaviour of their tenants.
When Taylor, the Water-Poet, passed through Carlisle and
into Scotland in the seventeenth century, he reflected the views
286 A CONTEMPORARY PICTURE chap.
of the day in many lines descriptive of the anarchy that had
so recently existed in these parts, and winds up with the
unqualified opinion —
That whoso then did in the Borders dwell
Lived little happier than those in Hell.
But " now " he goes on to say —
Since the all-disposing God of Heaven
Hath these two kingdoms to one Monarch given,
Blest peace and plenty on them both have showered,
Exile and hanging have the thieves devoured,
That now each subject may securely sleep,
His sheep and neat, the black and white, doth keep."
In this last expression of opinion the excellent Water-Poet
was a little too optimistic even still perhaps.
But with this elimination of the border by the Union, and
the repression of border habits which followed it, Carlisle
dwindled sadly in importance and population. It had always
indeed been poor, and of a somewhat rude appearance in the
eyes of southerners. In 1634 the Cathedral gave the
impression to three strangers of " a great wild country church."
It is needless to say that in the civil war Carlisle and Cumber-
land stood for the King. It sustained a memorable siege of
eight months by its old enemies the Scots under Leslie, and
after being reduced to the verge of starvation only surrendered
at the battle of Naseby.
Three years later it had the remarkable and not very palat-
able experience of being garrisoned and defended by a force of
Scots, then fighting on the King's side, but was surrendered to
Cromwell, who placed there two large regiments of horse, one
to secure the city, the other to put down the moss-troopers who
had become active again during the war. Much of the Cathedral
nave and adjacent buildings was demolished by the Puritan
soldiers for repairing and strengthening the town defences.
I have dwelt so long on Carlisle, during the ages when in
varying fashion it stood unique and alone among English
X CARLISLE IN THE '45 287
towns, there is little space left for any of its later history when
this particular distinction had vanished.
Indeed, Carlisle had never before been quite so small and un-
important as the beginning of the eighteenth century found it,
though as a border capital, and a fortified as well as a Cathedral
town, mere numbers are not quite a fair test of consequence.
The first Jacobite rising, that of 17 15, avoided the city, going
by way of Penrith to Preston, where we know the motley gather-
ing of Highlanders and Northumbrians met its fate. But in
'45 Carlisle played both an ignominious and unpleasant
part. A few hundred raw militia comprised the sum total of
its defenders when the Highland army arrived before the walls.
The Prince had just completed his investment, when news was
brought that Wade was advancing on him from Newcastle, and
he moved his force to Brampton, as a better position for
offering battle to the expected marshal. Bad as the situation
was within the city, it was not without its humours. For it
seems that a fussy grocer, named Pattinson, was deputy mayor,
and had given much cause for offence by his officious assump-
tion of authority in the hour of danger. He went so far as to
assume that his activity had frightened the Prince away, and
was injudicious enough to send a special post to London to
that effect.
A\'ade, as we know, never got to Carlisle. The roads were im-
passable for artillery, and this fact is instructive of how little inter-
course there was in those days between the east and west marches.
When Prince Charles heard that Wade was not advancing,
he marched back to Carlisle and sat down before it in real
earnest. The local militia, who were half-hearted, though under
a good officer, and sore at being left unsupported by the
government, refused to fight. A few of the citizens
courageously proposed to garrison the castle alone, but the
lately active deputy mayor was very far from being one of
them. However, with the militia intractable. Colonel Durand
had nothing for it but to surrender. The mayor and corpor-
288 A GASCONADING GROCER chap.
ation were summoned to Brampton, and there on their bended
knees dehvered the keys of the city to the Prince, who on the
following day entered Carlisle to the shrill skirl of a hundred
bagpipes — an accompaniment which seems hard on the citizens
in the nervous condition to which anxiety must have reduced
them. No harm was done however by the garrison left there by
the Pretender while the main body went south, and some one
occupied the interval by immortahsing the valiant deputy mayor
in a still familiar jingle —
Oh, Paltinson ! olion ! ohon !
Thou wonder of a mayor !
Thou blest ihy lot thou wert no Scot
And blustered like a player.
What hast thou done with sword and gun
To baffle the Pretender,
Of mouldy cheese and bacon grease
Thou much more fit defender ?
Quite early in our tour we recalled the scenes at Penrith
when the Highlanders a few weeks later retreated before
the Duke of Cumberland's army toward Carlisle. Every-
body knows how the gallant Lancashire Jacobite Townely
remained with a trifling force to hold the city and face, so far as
he at least was concerned, almost certain death — a hundred
and twenty men of his Manchester regiment, twice as many
Highlanders and a few Frenchmen remaining with him. A
few days of bombardment sufficed to deliver Carlisle into the
Duke's hands on his own terms. The Prince's garrison were
confined in the Cathedral of all places, to the great indignation
of the clergy, but a fortnight after were taken south, the officers
mounted with their feet tied under their horses' bellies, and
each horse fastened to the tail of the one in front. The
common soldiers marched two and two, roped together with
their arms pinioned ; as melancholy a procession of a surety
as ever tramped along the Penrith road !
For the three months preceding the battle of Culloden
X CALLOWS HILL 289
Carlisle was charged with tlie maintenance of a large garrison,
and great was the outcry from all classes. After Cullodcn, the
castle was packed tight for a long time with nearly 400
prisoners, who endured much suffering through the heat of the
summer months. Ninety-six of these were condemned to death
and the rest to transportation. The executions began in
October and were continued in batches. The grim ceremony
always opened in the castle-yard, where the prisoners
were pinioned and seated on a black hurdle beside the
excutioner. Then, at the demand of the sheriff, they were taken
out through the gateway over the drawbridge and escorted in
solemn procession to Gallows Hill outside the English gate,
where they were hanged, drawn and quartered, with all the
barbarity of detail then in vogue, the heads of some being
subsequently set on pikes above the Scotch gate, the last
instance of that time-honoured and gruesome custom in this
country. The story of Carlisle henceforth, how in humdrum
modern fashion it grew steadily in wealth and population, yet
full of its own humours, its racy northern spirit, its pride in
its exceptional place in history, its intense provincialism till
modified by the stir of converging railways and abounding
travellers — is all interesting enough, but quite beside our
object, even if I had not already run to such length of tether
on the subject as to put further gossip on it out of the question.
Indeed I should perhaps have been all this time conducting my
reader round the castle, which in the matter of dungeons, cells,
gateways. Avails and towers, all teeming with memories, is
well worth seeing, instead of philandering on its past.
But for this purpose he will find an obliging and voluble
commissioner, whose conscientious eloquence I gladly bear
testimony to. Indeed I think it is some recollection of having
delivered myself over bound hand and foot, so to speak, at the
castle gate on my first visit that prompted me to rush my
reader up so breathlessly on to the castle walls. My man was
a new broom and swept every shred of sentiment from'
u
ago A CONSCIENTIOUS CICERONE chap.
dungeon, keep and chamber as he trumpeted his way
along, reading mostly from his guide-book, for he had not yet
learnt his part. Indeed he began outside on the drill ground
most vigorously with myself alone for an audience, and I am
convinced he greatly tried the decorum of a scjuad of recruits
who were practising the goose-step with a view doubtless to
hunting Ue Wet later on in South Africa. So I really know
very little of the internal structure of Carlisle Castle, though
I confess that does not greatly distress me. Once out upon
the walls however, I was a free man again, and much enjoyed
myself My ex-sergeant was a most worthy person, and has no
doubt by this time mellowed greatly as a cicerone, glib enough
at his part at any rate we may be sure, and perhaps even pass-
ing for an antiquary with bank holiday folk from Leeds or
Rochdale — more power to him.
But there is not a spot in England, as the late Bishop
Creighton, himself a native, has well said, that yields an outlook
so stirring of its kind, so rich in memories for those who love
to linger over a landscape for the tale it tells, as Carlisle
Castle wall, and this must be my plea. Nor have I left room
for more than a passing glance at the Cathedral, which, though
small, has like the town a moving story, and to this day carries
the scars of Roundhead volleys all over its outer walls. But
there is plenty of architectural as well as historical interest in
Carlisle Cathedral. Its western end is nearly eight centuries
old and was the original parish church, and with some later
additions forms the nave and transepts. It is built of local
grey stone, while the large choir, built and rebuilt in times of
stress and storm during the fourteenth century, is of red free-
stone. The older part is of pure Norman style, simple and
massive, though some of the arches are most strangely pressed
out of shape by a lapse in the foundation centuries ago, which
must have caused a world of terror at the time. The choir is
Early English and of fine proportions, but I must confess
what holds my fancy most within it arc the quaint mould-
X STILL NORTHWARD 291
ings of the capiuils 011 the pillars that supixMt the main
arches. On these are carved most realistic scenes from country
life. On one is a sower, on another a reaper, on another
a man gathering grapes ; but the masterpiece of all is a monk
sitting over a fire, on which a pot is boiling. The reverend
gentleman has taken off one boot, and is holding it out, as well
as his bare foot, to warm before the flame.
It would be asking almost too much of a visitor to Lakeland
that he should extend his operations beyond Carlisle. But
should these few pages of desultory gossip on the Castle wall
have stirred in any way his fancy or his curiosity a pleasant
half-day's run over good and level roads to the northward
forms an admirable sequel to such a train of thought. For
from Carlisle to Gretna Green, across the Esk and the Scottish
border, is but eight miles. Thence turning eastward for half
that distance, you may run through the " Debatable land " and
the edge of Solway moss — and recrossing the Esk again higher
up at Longtown another eight miles will bring you back again.
It would not be easy in all Britain to find another twenty miles
so palpitating with strenuous memories. For myself I confess
that, as I crossed the Eden and passing through Stanwix set
my face towards the Solway, I felt my pulses stirring in no
sluggish fashion.
The sun was bright but tempered, and the skies were clear ;
the wind blew gently, but in its breath was the exhilarating
crispness of the sea, as the great plain spread before me to the
grey hills of Scotland. A mile or so of long-drawn suburb, of
low stone cottages, slate-roofed and white-walled, of public
houses, ancient and modern, and the broad road parted. The
right hand sped away westward to Longwood, Langholme, and
the classic dales of Esk and Liddel. The other finger
pointed in laconic fashion to Gretna Green and Annandale, to
Lockerbie and Ecclefechan and other places famous in border
story — and this last was my outward route. Even those who
care nothing for tales of battle and murder, and sudden death,
V 2
292
THE ROAD TO GRETNA
CHAl',
for politics and princes, Romans or Picts, Normans, Danes,
or moss-troopers, or old, forgotten far-off things of any kind,
might allow themselves perhaps emotions of a gentler sort as they
press the dust which has whirled around the flying wheels of so
many generations of lovers. It is but some five miles hence to the
Border, and how the whips of the postillions must have cracked
over the smoking teams as the last stage of the great race lay
stretched like a white band across the plain before them. I
was surprised to find here even yet so lonesome a road and so
Gretna Green.
poor a land. Cultivation has come apparently with laggard
steps. Though no longer a moss, every bit of it tells the tale
of laboured reclamation. Even now great strips of heathery
bog land spread on either side of the straight highway ; and
recently cut peats were drying in the summer sun as I passed
along. Pastures were pale, and growing crops were thin;
banks of sod, crowned with yellow gorse and flanked by
ditches of dark peaty water, traced themselves over the spongy,
sandy land, so we'l calculated to drink u[) the blood that so
X FROM THE SOLWAY BRIDGE 293
often drenched it. Thick fringes of native fir woods, sombre
and lowering, spread along the middle distance, and over their
dark tops the pale grey forms of the Scottish hills rose in
curious contrast. Such dwellers as there were along or near
this classic highway seemed for the most part of the humble
sort, judging from the low-roofed cottages which with white-