A stirring world (2)

Smailholm, a classic Border 'pele tower'

 In 1593, after 'two winters and a summer at court', Elizabeth I's cousin went north to the turbulent Scots border. He had been invited by his brother-in-law, Lord Scrope, to act as deputy Warden of the West March.

To a soldier-adventurer such as Carey, this was an ideal opportunity. Bored to blazes at court, he seized upon the chance to play lawman on the wild and wooly frontier, where the (in)famous Border Reivers reigned supreme. These closely related gangs, the Charltons and Scotts and Robsons and Armstrongs and so forth, ran a vast criminal network of bribery, violence and exortion that ran from end of the border to the other. They were ennobled in 'Border ballads' such as Kinmont Willie and the Guid Graham, a corpus of folk songs later compiled by Sir Walter Scott, himself a descendent of a notorious Reiver family.

In reality, the Reivers were a public menace, bloodthirsty gangsters who imposed a reign of terror on the borderlands. The term 'blackmail' - money with menaces - originates from them. These not-so-romantic heroes also tended to pick on soft targets, isolated farms and the like, to rob and murder people who couldn't fight back.

The wardens of the Marches had the thankless task of hunting down these rogues and bringing them to justice - or 'Jedburgh justice', meaning to punish first and ask questions later. Carey's memoir contains several dramatic anecdotes of his adventures in the West March. One especially 'memorable thing of God's memory', as he called it, was triggered by a murder in Scotland. To quote the man himself:

'I had private intelligence given me that there were two Scottish men that had killed a churchman in Scotland, and were by one of the Greenes relieved. This Greene dwelt within five miles of Carlisle: he had a pretty house, and close by it a strong tower for his own defence in time of need'.

In other words, two Scotsmen had committed a murder in their own country, then fled over the border to take refuge with the Greenes, probably their kin. Carey got wind of this and decided to tackle the murderers in their lair:

'I thought to surprise the Scots on a sudden, and about two o'clock in the morning I took horse in Carlisle, and not above twenty-five in my company, thinking to surprise the house of a sudden'.

Before he could surround the house, the two Scots were bundled into the strong tower. Carey then spotted a boy riding away from the house at the gallop, but little suspected what it meant. Thomas Carleton, one of the English Borderers in his company, warned him that if Carey did not take action, they would soon all be killed or taken prisoner:

"Do you see that boy that rideth away so fast?" said Carleton. "He will be in Scotland within this half hour, and he is gone to let them know you are here, and to what end you are come, and the small number you have with you, and that if they will make haste, on a sudden they may surprise us, and do with us what they please."

Carey was being given a sharp lesson in Border gangland warfare. He was wise enough to take advice, and sent off gallopers to raise the militia of Carlisle. They responded quickly, and after 'some hours' Carey's little band had been swelled by over eight hundred town and country men. A few of these brave souls offered to clamber to the top of the tower, break open the roof and drop inside to drive out the Scots. This, apparently, was the approved method of storming a 'pele tower' on the Border.

At that moment, however, riders were spotted on the horizon. A band of Scottish horse had come to rescue their friends trapped in the tower:

'...we might see four hundred horse within a quarter of a mile coming to their rescue, and to surprise me and my small company.'

Carey, it is fair to say, was in a tight spot.