From The Milnholm Cross, Dec. 1983. Vol.II. No. 1.
Fact And Fantasy In Armstrong Affairs.

The writing of history is in large measure an exercise in propaganda, which by historical fact becomes as debased as the word ‘propaganda?itself - originally from a congregation of the Roman Catholic church which in 1622 was charged with the spreading of Catholicism: de propaganda fide (‘anent the need to propagate the faith?. In modern terms the word connotes a falsification, deliberate or unconscious, of the truth, ranging in degree from the political distortions of, say, a Josef Goebbels or a Lord Haw-haw to the partisan description in a newspaper of last Saturday’s performance by the local football team. It is in the nature of things that personal bias will tincture, even discolour, the picture of events that the historian paints in his propagation of what he hopes or thinks is the truth, try as he may to avoid such protagonism or prejudice. For he must base his findings on source materials which are themselves suspect of tendentiousness, depending on the nationality, religion, even the temperament, of the original scribe. One has but to leaf through, for example, the state papers of England’s Henry VIII and compare accounts of Border raids filed by his participating wardens with those of the wardens on the Scottish side to appreciate how far political paternalism can corrupt the attitudes of even the most apparently honest men. The historian, then, fishing for facts in an already muddied pool, will be hard put to differentiate between the foul and the fresh-run catch. Eventually there will be a consensus of judgement on this or that historical event or juncture which will be determined by the self-interest of whoever is in power, with influence to promote or retard ambition in the chroniclers of time. And so history, as Napoleon claimed, is but a fable agreed upon - or may at best be little more than that.

In this regard the romantic or popular historian must shoulder a heavy burden of responsibility, for in his or her case very often accuracy of report in inversely proportionate to readability. Had Sir Walter Scott, for example, seen fit to describe the 16th century Border reivers as they really were, without ascribing to them the specious glamour of crusading knights, could he have built an Abbotsford on the proceeds of such factual truth? Yet, since there is nothing more dispiriting than to be reminded of human callousness and greed, Scott and the many others who have written up history in glorious technicolour may be forgiven for their well-intentioned fantasies. Less forgivable, however, are the later generations of textbook historians who have accepted these fantasies as fact and, especially in the teaching of the young, have presented a picture of a Scottish Borderland that never did exist.

For the romantic historian as for the thriller-writer the conflict between good and evil is of the essence. For every saint there must be sinners, for every Shylock a chiding Portia, for every Hitler a Montgomery. The striving for dramatic effect then decrees we set the combatants even more in contrast and at variance with each other than nature would allow. We overglorify or underrate according to our personal animus, and conjure up white knights and black dwarves, incredible chessmen on history’s chequered board, when in fact there is very often nothing to choose between the virtues and the vices of the one lot or the other. It is likely that the Border men in the olden time, each subject to the same pressures if in different degrees depending on locality between two warring nations, were little different from their present-day counterparts, a hardy, independent breed with individual faults and failings indiscriminately shared, these having nothing whatsoever to do with the family name or nationality.

But Sir Walter, needing a foil for such caricatures as his "nine-and-twenty knights of fame" (these were, of course, Scotts), settled upon the Armstrongs to provide the baddie element in his imaginary scenario, a "tribe" he calls them, who would absorb and so divert the blame for most of the atrocities perpetrated in that area of dissension adjoining the Debateable land. He forbears to mention that their geographical location made the Armstrongs Scotland’s first defence on the west border against English raids, and as such they had to be involved, like it or not. When the so-called ‘broken men? outlawed and on the run from all the surrounding clan areas, took refuge in the Debateable land, they were all called Armstrongs by Sir Walter, whose influence on later scribes was such that even Robert Bruce Armstrong, author of the great "History Of Liddesdale", followed suit in his unpublished manuscript to the second volume. Having realised what he was doing, Robert, himself of the maligned ilk, hastened to score out ‘Armstrong? now become the generic name for any Border thief, and substituted more realistically a nomenclature like ‘rebel, ‘outlaw? etc. And poor contemporary Pitscottie, strong in his praise of the Johnie Armstrong so treacherously hanged by James V, was castigated long after for his presumption by Sir Walter, who dismissed him as a gossip.

But the worthy gossips of the dales, the Byerses, the Beatties, the Halls, the Satchells - and many more are not easily silenced. True, they may have found it extraordinarily difficult to persuade canny publishers in Scotland to do justice to their rebellious works - for God’s sake dinna fash the laird! They had, in fact, in most cases to publish and be damned on their own account. Now their books are out of print, and becoming scarcer and more valuable every day. However, since by its articles of association the Clan Armstrong Trust is committed to a reassessment of Border history and to the re-education of the misled, the Milnholm Cross newsletter will carry from time to time extracts from such volumes as still exist, in the hope that the natural justice of a balanced viewpoint will prevail, especially among those who teach the young.

We begin with an extract¹ from the Rev. James Snadden’s history of Liddesdale, reproduced here without comment except for a reminder on the endemic frailties of historians. In the 1890s the Rev. James was much involved in protest at the treatment of his parishioners in Copshawholm (Newcastleton) by the then Duke of Buccleuch, concerning an issue which had eventually to be referred to central government in London. Snadden had also in mind no doubt that forty years before, the kirk in Newcastleton had been similarly at odds with the third duke in a case that went all the way to the House of Lords. (See David J. Beattie’s "Lang Syne In Eskdale", pp. 255-290). In this previous instance as in the latter, contemporary opinion was caustic in its condemnation of His Lordship’s inhumane treatment of the local tenantry. Sir Walter, on the other hand, was somewhat more ingratiating in his "Journal", where he dwelt on the merits of this ennobled relative of his, claiming that "his kindness sometimes mastered his excellent understanding."

"Sir Walter Scott," writes Snadden, "betrays a considerable amount of prejudice towards the Armstrongs. In his notes to the Border Ballads he hardly ever does them justice and sometimes he even goes out of his way to relate things to their discredit. He is indeed responsible for having created an impression that the Armstrongs were the greatest sinners on the border. He attempts even to make them out to have been exceptionally ferocious. No doubt this prejudice was a family inheritance coming down from the days of Wat o?Harden. The mischief is that Scott in the exercise of it has given a lead to others - to many at least who seem to take his "Minstrelsy" as a kind of Border bible.

"In going through their old records I have been unable to find that the Armstrongs differed much from any other Border clan except perhaps that they were more capable leaders and hardier warriors in the conflicts of the times, or perhaps I should say that the only difference is to their credit. The Elliots were certainly more notorious reivers. If any warden’s court list of complaints of the 16th century be examined, this statement will be found abundantly borne out. In some great Northumbrian lists the Armstrongs scarcely figure at all, while the Scotts and other clans of Teviotdale may certainly be credited with a great deal more ferocity. In their (the Scotts? raids on Northumberland there was much more bloodshed than in any carried out by the men of Liddesdale. Some of them were indeed comparable in ferocity only with those of the Grahams of Eskdale.

"The Lairds of Mangerton seem on the whole to have been a very respectable race of men as things then went, acting usually with a sense of responsibility and dignity. In one of the Scott raids on Tynedale which was both fierce and bloody, a laird of Mangerton who was present is reported by the warden as intervening on the side of mercy and to protect the English prisoner from instant death. But Sir Walter never heard this story! I have pointed out elsewhere the magnanimity of Jock of the Syde in giving protection and the shelter of his humble dwelling to the rebel earl of Northumberland and his countess, as according to March Law anyone sheltering a rebel did so at the price of his life, yet this same earl’s father, a number of years before, had captured and hanged Jock’s father - the famous Jock of the ballad. The earl was eventually forced to leave the Syde by Martin Elliot of Braidle with an armed force. But Scott, a Jacobite and partisan of Mary Stuart’s, very strangely had nothing to say against Elliot, but manages his story rather so as to leave Jock of the Syde and his humble shelter in the very worst odour. In the same way he has contrived to convey the impression that John Armstrong of Hollows was a kind of robber chief living on plunder. I have shown (in a previous volume) how false and absurd this notion is. In fact he was in possession of a very considerable landed estate which made this mode of life unnecessary. But what is more to the point - we have no records of any raids carried out by him for plunder. His chief fault alike at the English and Scottish courts seems to have been that he was such a capable leader and defender of his part of the Border that a strong body of men acknowledged him as chief, and he became so formidable that the English feared him and the Scottish barons were jealous of him in that a large number of people sought his protection in the violence of the times. Contrast Scott’s treatment of the delinquencies of Wat o?Harden, his own ancestor. He was certainly a most notorious thief living by plunder. But he is portrayed by his famous descendant as a valorous gentleman and his robberies are treated as a kind of jest.

"So inveterate was Scott’s prejudice against the Armstrongs that in one of his notes he even goes out of his way to tell a tale he had heard as showing their ferocity - to the effect that sometime in the 18th century four Armstrongs living in Northumberland and a man named Burley lopped off the ears and cut out the tongue of a man who had gone to the authorities and informed upon them as bad characters. This story at the third or fourth hand, he tells us, shows the peculiar ferocity of the Armstrong blood. (Snadden goes on to point out that although a clansman of Scott’s one day hanged 30 men in Tynedale it would be improper to brand with infamy the name of Scott because of the ferocity of one man; and further, that with the official tortures of the thumbscrew, the boot and the rack commonplace, and with corpses hanging from gibbets outside every town, indications of ferocity could be more easily found in many high quarters not excluding the throne itself, than among the Armstrongs of Liddesdale). ‘No doubt they were very far from impeccable. But not only is Scott’s want of chivalry towards them blatant, his jealousy is sometimes quite ludicrous. The author of the ballad Dick of the Cow happens to give the Laird’s Jock a very good character as a fine fellow who deprecated stealing in England:-

"Then up and spak the guid Laird’s Jock,

The best fella in a?the cumpanie,

‘Set down thy ways a little while, Dickie,

And a bit o? thy ain cow’s hough I’ll gie to thee.?

And again addressing his kinsmen:-

"Ye wad ne’er be bauld," quo the guid Laird’s Jock,

"Have ye not found my tales fu?leil?

Ye ne’er wad out of England bide

Till crooked and blind and a?would steal."

‘This is too much for Scott. He puts in a footnote to blow up the eulogy, to the effect that at a warden’s court it was complained that Jock and several accomplices had driven away a large number of cattle from the Drysyke in Bewcastle, conveniently forgetting that in all probability they were Jock’s own cattle or the Laird of Mangerton’s or their equivalents.

‘In his eagerness to secure that Jock did not ride off with any bit of fair fame Scott chooses to remain ignorant of the fact that Liddesdale was the great hunting ground of the reivers of Bewcastle, with Captain Musgrave or Scroope’s soldiers at their head, and that sometimes they did not even spare the tower of Whithaugh and the byres of Mangerton, though they usually had to pay for it sooner or later.

"In the same spirit Scott, in commenting on the brilliant exploit of the rescue of Jock of the Syde by the Laird’s Jock, his brother Wat and Hobbie Noble, calls it "a common event in those troublesome and disorderly times," a thing which he somehow did not remember when he was glorifying the much tamer exploit of the rescue of Kinmont Willie as having stirred the whole country with enthusiasm. It probably annoyed him that an Armstrong stepped in before a chief of the Scotts. In celebrating that event also he did the Armstrongs a great injury. For in the ballad and notes he sets forth that the actors were all Scotts, with one exception, Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobs, the truth being that only four Scotts were present with Buccleuch, the rest of the attacking company of 40 with two or three exceptions were Armstrongs.² It is quite true that he must have sinned here through ignorance, or rather by following Scott traditions. Probably, had he known that the breaking of Carlisle castle was really an Armstrong affair, we should never have seen the ballad.

‘His notes to The Raid of the Reidswire afford another instance. He there sets it down to the special discredit of the Armstrongs that the Laird of Mangerton and some of his men came under English assurance when Somerset invaded Scotland. He does not mention the host of Scottish nobles and gentry on the border who did the same. He also there asserts that Armstrongs of Liddesdale under the command of Sir Ralph Evers raided the whole of the West March, a statement not borne out by the lists. The balladist himself seems of a different spirit towards this clan. In awarding praise to the different groups of combatants in this famous fight he places Liddesdale in the forefront:

"Except the horsemen of the guard,

If I could put men to availe.

None stoutlier stood out for their laird³

Nor (than) did the lads of Liddesdaill."

‘Buccleuch was guilty of high treason on more occasions than one. Wat o?Harden was in the attack on the king at Falkland. Of Mangerton Scott cannot say the same. Akin to these (noted quoted) is one of his notes to Kinmont Willie. There it is made to appear that when Angus, Home and Buccleuch attacked the king in Stirling Castle it was the Armstrongs under Kinmont who pillaged the town. As a matter of fact it was the borderers generally in Buccleuch’s following who did so:- Scotts and all. Sir Walter then passes on, cleverly veiling the high treason of Buccleuch and the others by this account of the notorious thieving of the wicked Armstrongs.

‘But perhaps worst of all, in his notes to Hobbie Noble particularly Scott broadly charges the Armstrongs with treachery because in their long history there are two men of the clan charged with the sin of bad faith: Sym of the Mains and Hector of Harelaw. The guilt of the latter Scott had no warrant for affirming. He quotes no valid evidence to show that Hector did betray Northumberland. As a matter of fact there is none, and the true history of the affair is directly in the teeth of such a construction, as I have shown, and demonstrates by Scott’s tale of treachery this Armstrong has been made the victim of gross and cruel injustice. The value of the note in Percy’s Reliques upon which Scott founds his charge of treachery may be judged from this, that it affirms in order to show the treachery of Hector that he had given pledges to the Regent Moray just before. He, or at any rate his clan, had indeed given pledges for good behaviour. But how can this be construed into an evil action is quite baffling except on the assumption of utter ignorance of Border rule. Only by such ignorance could Hector be called an outlaw or be suspect for having given pledges of good behaviour to the ruler of Scotland.

‘We have another case in the history of Willie of Westburnflat, who is set forth in lonely distinction as the last of the outlawed cattle thieves of Liddesdale, a kind of incorrigible, one in whose bosom "the ruling passion of a debased tribe" survived to the end of the 17th century. It is impossible to understand how Scott came to believe this tale. No doubt he saw a kind of fitness in it that blinded him to its defiance of the social condition of the time. Who should more fitly be set forth as the last representative of Border barbarism than an Armstrong?

‘Other instances of Sir Walter’s injustice to the Armstrongs might be given, all from The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The truth of the matter is that this clan and the Scotts were at the end in deadly feud, which is not at all surprising when we consider the part which the Scotts, both chief and clan together, played in first deserting, and then in assisting of their former confederates. The Scotts, in order to justify their conduct, would naturally be anxious to make out the Armstrongs as bad as possible, and Sir Walter was faithful to the hostile feeling of his clan and kept up its tradition. He was a great partisan in this as in other matters.

‘It is futile to single out any clan on the Scottish border for special condemnation. All were in the same cruel circumstances and pursued the same methods of life and warfare exactly. Barbarism was no doubt equally diffused and certainly the Scotts had no reason to consider themselves on a higher level than others, although Sir Walter’s romantic imagination had no difficulty in setting them there. For them it may be said that it is the way of human nature not to be greatly in love with those on whose misfortunes you have prospered, nor to speak well of former friends whom you have turned upon as foes.

‘The fact that the Armstrongs were so unfortunate and suffered such disaster when the king got his new crown imparts an element of tragedy to their case. That their long, valorous and successful struggle with England ended with their destruction at the hands of their own king and countrymen evokes towards them generous feelings of regret and sympathy. They knew not the day of their visitation. Had they been more crafty they would have changed sides with the king, and perhaps assisted him in "quieting the borders". Alas, failing to change promptly with the times proved their undoing. But this does not give any warrant for trying to justify the ferocity and illegal violence with which they were destroyed, by straining the record to make them out to be worse than their neighbours. And that Scott used his talents to this end in a book which but for its Liddesdale interest would now be unread, may be rightly thought a poor way of repaying the years of warm hospitality he received within the circle of their hills."

W.A.Armstrong.