Border Reiver Surnames
Lawless Clans
If you have one of the following surnames in your family lineage you may well be descended from a Border Reiver:
Armstrong; Beattie, Bell and Burn. Carr, Charlton, Collingwood. Cranston and Crozier. Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Douglas and Dodd. Elliot, Fenwick and Forster. Graham, Gray and Grey. Hall, Hedley and Heron. Laidlaw and Little. Middlemass, Milburn and Moffat. Nixon and Noble. Ogle and Oliver. Potts and Pringle. Reed, Ridley and Robson. Routledge, Rowell and Rutherford. Scott, Shaftoe, Stokoe and Storey. Tait and Thompson. Trotter and Turnbull, Widdrington, Yarrow and Young.
The above are just some of the surnames, many of which are still common throughout North East England and the Scottish Borders, that were associated with Border Reiving in times gone by.
Border history may well have been dominated by the political struggle between England and Scotland, but it would be wrong to assume that the story of the Borderland was always a saga of Englishman against Scot and vice versa.
In Tudor and Elizabethan times the Anglo-Scottish Border counties, including Northumberland, were the home to the notorious Border Reivers, the lawless clans of the border valleys, where a lifestyle of raiding and marauding was the only way to survive. The life of the Border Reiver was not necessarily ruled by his allegiance to the English or Scottish Crowns, but more likely by his allegiance to a family surname.
Feuds were often fought and raids were made, not in the name of England or Scotland, but in the names of Armstrong, Robson, Charlton, Elliott or Dodd, or in the names of other Border surnames, that are still common in the region today. Indeed it was a common occurrence for English families to side with Scottish families in border feuds, especially as some of the reiver surnames, like Armstrong, Hall and Graham were to be found on both sides of the border.
Tynedale Liberty
From Norman times, ‘Tynedale was a ‘Liberty‘ – an area of land so remote from the centre of power it was allowed a degree of independence – and although it was English the liberty was held by the Scottish Kings until 1286. After that time the raiding culture became particularly rife.
The Liberty was abolished by Henry VII in 1495 and from this time the Tynedale clans or ‘Graynes’ like Robson, Milburn and Charlton increasingly became a law unto themselves. However, the Border marches , established in the mid thirteenth century, where border wardens were entrusted to keep the peace, remained in force until the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Even Tynedale priests were described as “evil and irregular” and Thomas Wolsey closed the Tynedale churches in 1524. The Liberty included North Tynedale and South Tynedale but not the lower part of the dale around Hexham which lay within the regality of Hexhamshire.
Castles, peles and bastles
Northumberland has more castles than any part of England and a list compiled in 1415 found over 100 towers and castles. Fortifications included stone Pele (Peel) Towers with walls 3-4 feet thick and fortified farmhouses called Bastles. Most were inhabited by reivers but Vicar’s Peles were inhabited by local clergy. A small scattering of Pele towers can be found in Durham including Ludworth Tower which dates from 1422.
Murderous Robsons
There is a well-known tradition that the Robsons of North Tynedale once made a foray into the Scottish valley of Liddesdale and stole a large flock of sheep belonging to the Graham family, which they brought back into Northumberland. Later it was discovered that the Graham sheep were infected with scab, which spread like wild fire through the Robson’s flock.
The Robsons were so angry that they returned to Liddesdale in another raid, where they caught seven members of the Graham family and hung them until they were dead. They left a note to the effect that;
‘The neist time gentlemen cam to tak their schepe
They are no te’ be scabbit!
Such tales as this were typical of the Border Country many centuries ago, though it is not always easy to separate the fact from the fiction, since these stories were often constructed by people who had never even visited the borderlands.
Border Reivers and their way of life, were certainly feared by outsiders in days gone by and the Border Country had a certain element of mystique and danger about it. Even in the nearby walled town of Newcastle upon Tyne, there were rules forbidding the apprenticeship of North Tynedale and Redesdale men to certain Newcastle trades, for fear that there might be trouble.
Raids and murders
Border reiving raids are too numerous to list but include the Raid of Reidswire at Carter Bar in 1575. This was a border fray at a peace-making meeting in which George Heron, Keeper of Tynedale, was murdered.
The fray was provoked by the Border warden John Forster and rivalry between the Crozier and the Fenwick families. Durham generally escaped Border raiding but on December 8, 1569, Tynedale and Cumbrian reivers raided Weardale while the men were away supporting the Rising of the North. Those that remained fought off the invaders and the raid was recorded in the ballad The Rookhope Ryde
Fears may well have been justified for one Newcastle man writing of the Tynedale and Redesdale folk in 1649 records that:
“They come down from their dales into the low countries and carry away horses and cattle so cunningly that it will be hard for any to get them or their cattle except that they be acquainted with some master thief, who for safety money may help them to their stolen goods, or deceive them.”
Raiders beyond control
The crowning of James VI of Scotland as King of England in 1603 largely brought about an end to Border Reiving activity, though mosstroopers and horse thieves were still active in the borders throughout the seventeenth century. It did not help that thieving activities were sometimes supported by the very men who were supposed to be keeping the Border Reivers under control. Indeed in 1701 a horse thief confessed that:
“The county keeper of Tynedale provided that they did not plunder his territory would connive at their stealing what they pleased in Scotland and in the adjacent Bishopric of Durham and would prosecute no one save those who stole from his own district”
As stability, Law and order were brought to the Border region following the accession of James I to the throne in 1603, the activities of the Border Reivers gradually came to an end. Some of the most troublesome reivers were transported to Northern Ireland but many reiver descendants worked as coal miners in Northumberland and Durham. Some descendants emigrated to Australia and America and of course the first man on the moon was an Armstrong, descended from Border Reivers of that name.
Blackmail and Red-Handed
The legacy of the Border Reivers is not just in the surnames found throughout the English-speaking world but also in their ballads and in two notable phrases that have entered the English language via the Border Reivers: Blackmail and Red-Handed.
In Tudor times ‘mail’ was an old word for ‘tax’ or ‘rent’ in the Border Country and farmers in the region often paid rent to their landlords in the form of silver money which was known as ‘White Mail’. When they couldn’t pay in silver, payment was made in goods such as cattle or other livestock that was often of much higher value than the rent they would have paid in silver. It was the enforcement of paying in goods of a higher value that came to be known as ‘black mail’ (black rent).
Later, the reiver gangs on the Borders began extorting from farmers for protection money and this extortion was also known as ‘blackmail’. Such a criminal culture survived because of the difficulties of keeping law and order in the Borders. Over time the term blackmail developed into a term for different kinds of bribery.
Another phrase that may have its roots in the Borders and shared with Scotland too is ‘red-handed’ which literally means being caught with blood on your hands either in the slaughter of an individual or taking of livestock. The phrase is sometimes associated with Northern Ireland and the flag of Ulster features a red hand but the phrase was imported there from Scotland. In the Borders, robbers who were caught in the act of stealing were ‘caught red-hand’ and often executed on the spot.
Charlton spur
The Charltons often assembled for lunch at Hesleyside Hall in North Tynedale where the lady of the house would bring a salver and dish for her husband and retainers. The salver was sometimes lifted to reveal a dish containing a riding spur. It meant the larder was empty and that they must ride, reive and steal cattle or sheep if they wished to be fed. This practice is commemorated in a famous painting at Wallington Hall near Morpeth.
Armstrong clan
Thirty members of this mainly Scottish family were hanged at Newcastle in 1532, but it did not stop hundreds of Armstrongs settling in Cumbria in 1549. The most famous reiving Armstrong was Kinmont Willie who invaded Tynedale in 1579. He made off with 80 cattle and 1,000 sheep. Legend says Armstrongs are descended from a Scotsman called Fairbairn who lifted a fallen King of Scotland to his horse during a battle using only one strong arm.
Border clans English names
The Border Reivers, or at least those on the north side of the border are sometimes considered to be just another group of outlying Highland Scottish clans and that those on the south side are simply clans who have spilled over into England. In reality the Border Reivers formed a distinct group with few links to the Scottish Highland tribes to the far north.
The surnames of the Border Reivers on both sides of the border certainly seem more English or Anglo-Saxon in style. Unlike most of the famous clans of the Scottish Highlands, they all lack that Celtic element ‘mac’, (the Gaelic word meaning ‘son of’), which occurs in names like McDonald and McDougal.
It therefore seems probable that the Border Reivers on both sides of the border were largely and at least in linguistic terms Anglo-Saxon by origin with a bit of Norse and Celtic thrown in. This has a simple explanation; the boundaries of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, stretched far to the north of the modern Scottish border, towards Edinburgh and the Lothians and its people spoke the Anglo-Saxon language known as Northumbrian.
Border Ballads
The Border Reivers way of life does bear remarkable similarities with both the early Celtic inhabitants of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon and Norse warriors who later settled here from their homelands in northern Germany and Denmark in the sixth century A.D.
Perhaps the most striking similarity was the Border Reiver’s capacity, despite his violent nature, to produce the famous border ballads which, like the old Anglo-Saxon warrior poems, tended to glorify a life of war, raiding and revenge. Sometimes however, the ballads could be of a rather sad and pitiful nature, like the `Border Widow’s Lament’, a tune best sung to the accompaniment of the Northumbrian Pipes;
My love he built me a bonny bower,
And clad it all wi’ lilly flower
A brawer bower why ye ne’er did see
Than my true love he built for me.
There came a man by middle day
He spied his sport and went away
And browt the kin that very night,
Who broke my bower and slew my knight.
He slew my knight te me sae dear,
He slew my Knight and stole his yield,
My servants all for life did flee,
And left me in extremity.
I sewed his sheet marking my name
I washed the corpse my self alane,
I watched his body night and day,
Nae living creature came that way.
I took his body on my back,
And whiles I pray and whiles I sat
I digged a grave and I laid him in,
And covered him with grass sae green.
But think nae ye my heart was sair,
When I laid the clay on his yellow hair
Oh think nae ye my heart was wae,
When I turned about and went away
No living man I’ll love again
Since that my lovely knight was slain
George M Trevelyan the great British historian, (a Northumbrian) superbly summed up the nature of the Border Reivers and their ballads when he wrote;
“They were cruel, coarse savages, slaying each other like the beasts of the forest; and yet they were also poets who could express in the grand style the inexorable fate of the individual man and woman, the infinite pity for all cruel things which they none the less inflicted upon one another. It was not one ballad- maker alone but the whole cut throat population who felt this magnanimous sorrow, and the consoling charms of the highest poetry.”
Many of the Border Ballads still survive today, due to the avid collecting of the famous Border poet, Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), himself the descendant of a famous border clan.
Footballers
It’s noticeable that there seem to have been quite a few famous footballers with Border Reiver names over the years. This is perhaps no coincidence. The ‘freebooting’ Borderers who roamed the Border in Tudor times loved football and matches were played with great vigour, violence and enthusiasm. Some well-known footballers of more recent times like Ashington’s famous footballing sons (Jack Charlton, Bobby Charlton and Jackie Milburn) may be descended from the Milburns and Charltons who once inhabited North Tynedale, where they lived in close proximity to the Dodds and Robsons.
Together these families were known as the four ‘graynes’ or clans of North Tynedale. The Milburns were perhaps the least known of the four but played their part in many a border raid often siding with the Charltons and Dodds on their regular forays into Scotland.
Charlton, Milburn and Robson are famous footballing names of the twentith Century and it is worth noting that football was a very popular sport among the reivers in early times. In 1599 a six-a-side football match involving the Armstrongs at Bewcastle (just over in Cumbria) was interrupted by an enemy raid. A member of the Ridley clan had his throat cut and a Robson was killed.
In 1790 a great football match took place between the the men of Tynedale and Redesdale at Kielder Castle. Final score: Tynedale 3 Redesdale 2. It is not known who was in the team that day. This was about a century after the days of reiving had ended but since Tynedale was the traditional home of the Charltons, Milburns and Robsons there were probably some reasonably good players in the team. In those days football probably had very few rules and resembled rugby as much it did association football. Rugby and football are still, of course, popular sports in the Border country today.
Apostle of Houghton-le-Spring
English people once feared the Borders and were wary of travelling north of the Tees, let alone the Tyne. The Rector of Houghton, Bernard Gilpin who was known as the Apostle of the North because of his evangelical travels through the region around 1557 , had no fear. A formidable man “tall, lean with a hawk like nose” he preached to the Border folk and there is evidence to suggest the Reivers feared him.
List of Border Reiver Surnames
Border Reiver surnames from both sides of the border include:
Anderson, Armstrong, Beattie, Bell, Blackadder, Bromfield, Burn,
Carlisle, Carnaby, Carr, Carruthers, Charlton, Collingwood, Cranston, Craw, Croser, Crozier, Curwen, Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Dodd, Douglas, Dunn, Elliot, Fenwick, Forster, Gilchrist, Glendenning, Graham, Gray, Hall, Harden, Hedley, Henderson, Heron, Hetherington, Hodgson, Hume, Hunter, Irvine, Jamieson, Jardine, Johnstone, Kerr, Laidlaw, Latimer, Little, Lowther,
Maxwell, Medford, Middlemass, Milburn, Mitford, Moffat, Musgrave, Nixon, Noble, Ogle, Oliver, Potts, Pringle, Radcliffe, Reed, Ridley, Robson, Routledge, Rowell, Rutherford, Salkeld, Scott, Selby, Shaftoe, Simpson, Stamper, Stapleton, Stokoe, Storey, Tailor, Tait, Thompson, Thomson, Trotter, Turnbull, Turner, Wake, Wilkinson, Wilson, Witherington, Yarrow, Young.
See also North East Surnames.
Border Reiver Surnames of the Anglo-Scottish Border. Poster Print.
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