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This booklet is
essentially about Ferniehirst and the family who lived there, but we
should never forget that many other families, nearly all of whom remain
in the Borders to this day, shared the burden of holding the Line and
the profits and adventure of frequent raids across it. Due to
constraints of time and space it has not been possible to include all
the Border families which should logically have been given a place in
this Chapter. The selection given here was to some extent arbitrary and
depends in part on how difficult it was to obtain and check the
necessary information. If this booklet runs to a second edition I hope
to include sections on the ARMSTRONGS and DOUGLASES as well as a chapter
on the KERS of CESSFORD. This Chapter, however, should be enough to
establish that the defence of the Border was very much a joint
enterprise and not a single-handed effort by the Kerrs.
FOOTNOTES
1.Until about that time,
Earls were the only "peers" in Scotland, i.e. permanent and
hereditary advisers to the King with an automatic right to be called to
any Parliament that was held. A "baron" was simply the holder
of a "barony", that is, a large estate which traditionally had
that description (others, equally large, might not be
"baronies". He might be called to Parliament but had no
automatic entitlement. English barons were, since the thirteenth century
or earlier, the equivalent of our "Lords of Parliament";
English Earls were very substantial landowners and there were fewer of
them than in Scotland.
2.James III was affected
by the spirit of the Renaissance somewhat earlier than his nobles. He
therefore surrounded himself with men of non-noble background but
considerable artistic talent (Cochrane, for instance, who was of
"better" family than most of them, was an architect; others
were musicians or painters), spent much of his time with them (instead
of governing the country) and gave land and money to them (instead of
giving it to his nobles, who naturally felt aggrieved). A number of
these favourites were seized and killed in the King’s presence at
Lauder. Thereafter a dispute arose between James III and the Homes
regarding the patronage of Coldingham Priory. The Homes regarded it as
theirs, the office of Prior and the revenues that went with it being
given to an unmarried member of their family, but James awarded it to
another of his friends. This, and the king’s continuing activities as
a ‘culture vulture" led to the rising of 1488.
The Earl of Angus, the
Homes and other nobles banded together and defeated James III at
Sauchieburn near Stirling; the king was murdered while fleeing from the
scene and his son Prince James immediately succeeded as James IV.
3.This followed on the
loss of a by-election in Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, for which Sir
Alec was unfairly blamed. The Tories had already lost much of their
support locally through the persistent non-residence of the previous M.P.,
the seat was now marginal and the Liberal candidate, David Steel, was
exceptionally able and energetic. The writer of this booklet, who fought
as an Independent Scottish Nationalist, considers the seat would have
been extremely difficult for the Tories to hold. The feeling that Sir
Alec had been stabbed in the back did far greater harm to party morale
than the by-election itself.
4.The office of Foreign
Secretary, unlike that of Prime Minister, can very conveniently be held
by a peer; the last to hold it was Lord Carrington, who resigned in
1982. Peers have no constituency commitments and are not needed for
vital divisions in the House of Commons. The job itself is very
demanding and calls for a great deal of travel in any event (and more
still if the Foreign Secretary has to fly back to vote and then return
immediately to whatever business he was transacting abroad). The strain
killed a recent Labour Foreign Secretary, Tony Crosland, at a relatively
early age.
5.The difficulty in
controlling this area lay in (i) the existence of several "binational"
families straddling the Line itself (the Elliots, however, were entirely
Scottish) and (ii) the presence of a shifting population of "broken
men" and outlaws, some sheltered by powerful families, others
banding together in bothies or hiding out on their own, and raiding
indiscriminately in all directions. The terrain, rugged in some places
and marshy elsewhere, made it difficult for both sets of national
authorities to deal with these unruly elements.
6.The Elliots, the
Turnbulls and some others generally describe themselves as
"clans" (and there is a Scots Act of Parliament of 1589
mentioning them as such) while the Kerrs are a "family’. In the
period of the Border Wars "clan", "family" and
"name" or "surname" were all used to cover much the
same concept.
7.What is normally
referred to as "The Boer War" (1899-1902) should properly be
called the Second Boer War. The first was very brief (1881) and the
Boers won it.
8.After the Reformation,
Scottish Catholicism flourished mainly in areas where hiding-holes as
such were not necessary. and where Catholics could generally be quite
open about their beliefs. Many English country houses, however, still
have them.
9.The Rutherfords hold
some sort of a record for the variety of spellings of their name —
more than twenty-five, including some only used in France or Germany —
but I have kept to the most usual form to simplify matters, regardless
of what individuals in succeeding generations actually called
themselves.
10.This seems to confirm
the validity of the legend. allowing "King Ruther" to have
been Malcolm II or less probably Malcolm III Canmore, and the enemy to
have been Ethelred or William the Conqueror rather than the Ancient
Britons. Anybody of sufficient standing to witness a royal chatter would
normally have to be a well-established landowner, or a senior churchman.
11.The year of Magna
Carta. The King of Scots. who was of partly English descent through St.
Margaret, was also a very substantial landowner in England. ranking as
an earl, and was one of the leaders of the Barons at Runnymede. This is
one of the rare occasions when a Scottish army has been seen south of
York, the others being in 1644-46 (from Marston Moor to Charles l’s
surrender at Newark) and in January 1660. when Monck, as GOC Scotland,
took the forces stationed there from Coldstream to London as a prelude
to the Restoration. Feudal obligations being what they were, it is
reasonably certain that many Borderers were present at Runnymede, though
their names have not been recorded for posterity.
12.These sons were
respectively the ancestors of the Rutherfords of that Ilk (the senior
branch of the family) and of the Rutherfords of Hunthill and Hundalee.
13.It is not clear what
constitutional arrangements he envisaged, since James VI and I was
already King of both countries; possibly that he should be succeeded in
England by his eldest son Henry (who died soon after) and in Scotland by
his younger son, later Charles I. This might have been a very good thing
for Charles, as the Scots were prepared to defy him on occasion but not
to behead him. His arguments also are not stated, but one may assume
them to have been similar to those of Lord Belhaven in 1706-07 and of
the SNP today. i.e.. in any union of the two countries under the same
government, the decisions that mattered would always be taken in England
and in England’s interest. At that time no one could envisage that the
two countries might have the same reigning but "non-ruling"
monarch, with quite distinct Governments and Parliaments (the system
which Belhaven sought to maintain and which the National Party seeks to
re-establish): the Government consisted of the King and whomever else he
chose, and Parliament was an occasional rather than a permanent body,
meeting essentially when the King needed to raise large sums of money or
enact important legislation.
14.At the Restoration he
was summoned to appear before Parliament to answer for the publication
of his allegedly seditious book "Lex Rex" (the Law as King)
which had been banned and publicly burnt. His last illness had begun and
he replied; "Tell them that I have got a summons already from a
superior judge and judicatory, and ere your day arrives I will be where
few kings and great folks come".
15.The Scottii or Scots,
who gave their name to this country, originally lived in Northern
Ireland and began to migrate in large numbers to Argyll and Galloway in
the fifth century. though small groups seem to have come earlier: the
first of our national heroes, Galgach (Galgacus) was probably a Scot
rather than a Pict and held the Romans to a standstill at the Battle of
the Grampians in AD 84:
the Romans were left in
possession of the field but did not pursue their campaign. The Scots
combined with the Picts in the ninth century; at the time "Scotus"
could still mean "Irishman", as in the case of the philosopher
Scotus Erigena; and for some generations thereafter the Gaelic language
was called "Scots" and the "Scots" language, derived
from Northumbrian with a large admixture of Celtic and Scandinavian
words, was known as "Inglis" (this was also the name of the
part-owner of Branxholm, who exchanged lands with Sir Walter Scoff in
the fifteenth century). The Scoffs may have acquired their surname by
holding on to Gaelic longer than their neighbours, as the Wallaces
probably got theirs by being the last Welsh-speaking family in
Strathclyde, or possibly immigrants from Wales itself.
16.Only the King, the
Wardens of the Marches and a few others were generally entitled to
conduct capital trials and pronounce the death sentence. There was one
important exception. however, the right of "pit and gallows"
held by many if not most landowners of any real substance. This entitled
them to imprison and execute criminals caught in flagrante delicto on
their land, but nowhere else.
They could also accept
suitable compensation and often did; in an earlier generation Willie
Scoff could have been required to enter into a "bond of
man-rent" and accompany Elibank on his raids (transactions of this
kind are actually on record); the unmarriageable lass would then have
been thrown in as a bonus. Serious raiding, however, was now nearly at
an end, so the marriage was the whole of the penalty. It proved very
happy and successful.
Sir Walter Scoff gained
much of his knowledge of history and genealogy from the family
historian, Walter Scoff of Satchells, a near-illiterate old soldier who
had researched them thoroughly and then dictated his account of them to
the boys from Hawick High School, whom he hired for the purpose. His
considerable knowledge of the Highlands was largely derived from one of
the last survivors of the Forty-Five, the Fifteen and pre-Union
Scotland, Alexander Stewart (1695- 1795) who was one of his father’s
clients. He promoted the "Tartan revival" of the 1820’s,
which closely followed the last independent Scottish rising (1820). The
modern Home Rule Movement was started in the 1880’s by men who had all
been influenced by Sir Walter Scott, and some of whom could actually
remember him.
17.At this time, the
knowledge of Greek had almost entirely died out in Western Europe. apart
from Sicily and the heel and toe of Italy, where it survived among
peasants and fishermen, rather than scholars, and therefore could not
have been used directly to retrieve the classical heritage of Athens and
the other city states, or the science of Alexandria and Hellenistic
Greece. The study of Aristotle was only possible in translation, and
came back to the West by a strangely roundabout route. Arab scholars
from the Eastern Mediterranean first translated the original Greek text,
or what was available of it, into Arabic, and brought it to Spain and
specifically to Cordoba and Toledo. Two sets of rabbis then took over,
one working from Arabic to Hebrew and the other from Hebrew to Latin
(which would have been their third language, after early Castilian and
Hebrew!) By learning Arabic, Michael Scott eliminated one of the steps
in this three-stage translation. Direct study of Greek, by educated men
who already knew Latin, was resumed on a small scale towards the end of
the twelfth century. Though the Greek-speaking peasants and fishermen
mentioned above were themselves illiterate, they were served by priests
from whom basic literacy in the language could be acquired, after which
the Roman, Florentine and Neapolitan scholars were on their own. It
became a more serious pursuit in the fourteenth century, but the real
impetus came with the unsuccessful negotiations for a reunion between
the Eastern and Western Churches in the 1430’s and the Fall of
Constantinople in 1453. This was followed by a massive emigration of
Byzantine academics, students and clerks, together with their books. The
exiles then set up as professors if they were lucky or renowned, and as
more or less impoverished private tutors otherwise, and Greek quickly
became fashionable.
18.The Rus, who gave
Russia its name, were Swedes who established themselves first in
Novgorod (about 100 miles south of Leningrad), and then in Kiev, setting
up and controlling a profitable trade route with the Middle East. At one
time it was fashionable for young Anglo-Saxon thanes to join them for a
while, as it later became fashionable for Anglo-Norman knights (and many
others) to fight in the Holy Land or in Spain.
19.Unlike England,
Scotland was never conquered by the Normans. But many of them were
invited by St. David I to build castles and help to defend the country,
while others sought refuge here, having (like St. David himself) backed
the losing side in the wars of Stephen and Matilda. Frenchmen and
Flemings also came direct from the Continent during his reign, brought
in by him to build towns and abbeys: it is due to them that Kelso, for
instance, has a distinctly North French or Flemish appearance.
20.There was a more or
less permanent Crusade in both countries, against pagans in one case and
Muslims in the other.
21.ln any event he used
this as his defence at his trial. But it is also possible that he was
alienated by the inept way in which the clergy interfered with General
Leslie’s command before the battle of Dunbar, snatching defeat from
the jaws of victory. He joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and
wrote many tracts in support of their principles.
22.This involved a
prolonged lawsuit, compelling the Swintons to sell the fine tower at
Cranshaws — which had been in the family for 300 years — in order to
pay the heavy legal fees.
23.The first working
television system, also devised by a Scotsman, John Logie Baird,
involved fairly cumbersome mechanical apparatus and had a limited range.
It was superseded by the modern system, based on Campbell Swinton’s
theories and relying on electronics (and in particular on the cathode
ray tube). Campbell Swinton was a contemporary of Lord Rutherford and
also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and they worked to some extent in
related fields. He was responsible for many other inventions and
technical improvements, and introduced Marconi to the Post Office.
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