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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
In what follows I propose to discuss certain questions concerning frontiers as they affect historians. Most of my time will be devoted to the Anglo-Scottish frontier, for the reason that it displays phenomena much more easily identified and documented than those associated with the frontiers of Europe. Some of the lessons one may draw from Anglo-Scottish frontier history are, moreover, of relevance elsewhere within the Continent, not only between countries but in some instances inside countries.
1 New Haven, 1932.
2 Cipolla, Carlo M., Storia economica dell' Europa pre-industriale (Bologna, 1974), p. 200Google Scholar.
3 Feudal Society, trans. Manyon, L. A. (London, 1961), p. 355Google Scholar.
4 Braudel, F., La Mediterranée et le monde mediterranien à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949)Google Scholar, esp. part 1, chap. 1.
5 Powicke, F. M., The Thirteenth Century, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1962), p. 574Google Scholar.
6 Powicke, op. tit., is exceptional; now see Barrow, Geoffrey, ‘The Anglo-Scottish Border’, Northern History, i (1966), pp. 21–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Mack, James Logan, The Border Line (Edinburgh, 1924)Google Scholar, is a careful account of earlier descriptions and maps, together with an on-the-ground perambulation. The standard narrative remains Ridpath, George, The Border History of England and Scotland (Berwick, 1776Google Scholar; revd. edn., Berwick, 1848).
8 Reid, R. R., ‘Office of Warden of the Marches’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxxii (1917), pp. 479–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tough, D. L. W., The Last Tears of a Frontier (Oxford, 1928)Google Scholar; Rae, Thomas I., The Administration of the Scottish Frontier 1513–1603 (Edinburgh, 1966)Google Scholar.
9 Anglica historia, ed. Thysius, (Leyden, 1651), p. 12Google Scholar; cf. the anonymous English version, ed. H. Ellis (Camden Soc., 1846), p. 6.
10 Hay, , ‘Booty in Border warfare’, Trans. Dumfriesshire and Galloway Nat. Hist, and Antiquarian Society, xxxi (1954 for 1952–53), pp. 148–66Google Scholar.
11 Rae, , Administration of the Scottish Frontier, pp. 5–7Google Scholar; for the English side cf. Tuck, J. A., ‘Northumbrian society in the fourteenth century’, Northern History, vi (1971), pp. 22–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 27–28 and refs.
12 A fine brief picture of this in Miller, Edward, War in the North (St John's College Cambridge lecture 1959–60…at the University of Hull. Hull, 1960)Google Scholar. An older but equally unromantic picture in G. M. Trevelyan's essay, ‘The Middle Marches’, best read in the reprint published at Newcastle in 1934 for the Northumberland and Newcastle Society.
13 Ramm, H. G., McDowall, R. W., Mercer, Eric, Sheilings and Bastles (H.M.S.O., 1970)Google Scholar.
14 Hay, , ‘Booty’ p. 165Google Scholar and refs.
15 Tough, , Last Tears of a Frontier, p. 179Google Scholar.
16 Rae, , Administration of the Scottish Frontier, pp. 10–11Google Scholar.
17 Cf. Braudel, , La Mediterranée, pp. 650–52Google Scholar.
18 Tough, , Last Years of a Frontier, pp. 34–35Google Scholar.
19 See Glauser, Beat, The Scottish-English Linguistic Border. Lexical Aspects (Bern, 1974)Google Scholar; Speitel, Hans-Hennig, ‘An areal typology of isoglosses: isoglosses near the Scottish-English Border’, Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistic, xxxvi (1969), pp. 49–66Google Scholar. I have to thank Dr Speitel for allowíng me to consult him.
20 Dixon, P. W. in Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th ser., I (1952), p. 251Google Scholar.
21 ‘The religion of the Borderers’; in Tough, , Last Tears of a Frontier, pp. 61–75Google Scholar.
22 Hay, , ‘Booty’, p. 13Google Scholar. Was the general decline in the later medieval economy intensified or retarded in the Borders by war and reiving? I understand from Dr. Tuck that there is debate on the question.
23 Bean, J. M. W., ‘Henry IV and the Percies’, History, xliv (1959), pp. 212–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Tough, pp. 45–46.
25 Dixon, , loc. At., pp. 254–55Google Scholar, an extended assessment and supplement to Shielings and Bastles, above, p. 82, n. 13.
26 An excellent recent book is by Reed, James, The Border Ballads (London, 1973)Google Scholar.
27 Tough, , Last Tears of a Frontier, p. 36Google Scholar; again cf. Braudel, , La Mediterranée, p. 651Google Scholar.
28 Tough, , op. cit., p. 64Google Scholar.
29 Northumberland County History, xv (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1940), p. 312 (Gilpin at Rothbury)Google Scholar.Cf. Bossy, John, ‘The Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe’, Past and Present, 47 (1970), p. 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 James, M. E., ‘The first earl of Cumberland and the decline of northern feudalism’, Northern History, i (1966), pp. 43–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘The concept of order and the Northern Rising of 1569, Past & Present, 60 (1973), pp. 49–63.
31 Tough, , Last Years of a Frontier, pp. 175–77Google Scholar, 187–278.
32 Bowes' survey of 1550 is reprinted in Mack, The Border Line, pp. 32–40.
33 Calendar of Letters and Papers relating… to the Borders…, ed. Bain, J., 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1894–1896), i, p. 31Google Scholar. O.E.D. gives the first use of ‘water-shed’ as 1803.
34 Bindoff, S. T., ‘The Stuarts and their style’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lx (1945), pp. 192–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 ‘Great Britain in the Middle Ages’, Proc. Soc. Antiquaries of Scotland, lxxxix (1955–1956)Google Scholar; I published a revised version of this as an appendix to the second edn. of my Europe—the Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh, 1968)Google Scholar. Much additional material could be adduced.
36 National Library of Scotland MS. 2517 (a miscellany of heraldic papers), fos. 67–68, consist of a folded sheet of designs for a union ‘jack’. Four of these are designs in colour; a further monochrome sketch displays a fifth way of combining the two national crosses. The earl of Nottingham (Charles Howard) signs, indicating his preference for a design where the colours will not run, presumably in his capacity as Admiral. None of these was the pappern adopted in 1606, on which see SirClowes, W. L., The Royal Navy. A History, ii (London, 1898), p. 25 and nGoogle Scholar.
37 Rae, , Administration of the Scottish Frontier, p. 212 and pp. 206–22, passim.Google Scholar
38 Ibid., p. 233.
39 Haldane, A. R. B., The Drove Roads of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1952), pp. 16–19Google Scholar. The drovers of course did not find it hard to avoid such taxes.
40 Graham, John, The Condition of the Border at the Union: Destruction of the Graham Clan, 2nd edn., (London, 1907)Google Scholar.
41 Trevelyan, , The Middle Marches, p. 29Google Scholar; I wish I could agree that ‘vulgarity has not invaded from the cities’, for it has since 1950.
42 Haldane, , The Drove Roads of Scotland, pp. 168–86.Google Scholar
43 Cf. above p. 83, n. 19.
44 Cf. Beckingsale, B. W., ‘The characteristics of the Tudor North’, Northern History, iv (1969), pp. 67–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Powicke, , The Thirteenth Century, pp. 329–30Google Scholar; Hay, , ‘The divisions of the spoils of war in fourteenth-century England’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 5th ser., 4 (1954), 108–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and refs.
46 Hay, , ‘Geographical abstractions and the historian’, [Irish] Historical Studies, ii (London, 1959), p. 12Google Scholar and refs.
47 I paraphrase Braudel, , La Mediterranie, p. 651Google Scholar; but the whole section, pp. 643–59, on poverty and banditry and the role of the noble malefactor, is relevant to Border conditions. Cf. also Braudel's comparison, p. 534, between well-governed Castile and anarchic Aragon, with its semi-independent lords, which can b e applied more or less to the Anglo-Scottish scene.
48 E.g. The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1817). The Confessions of a Justified sinner is by no means typical of James Hogg's work, as Professor Beattie, William rightly points out in his introduction to the Penguin Border Ballads (Harmondsworth, 1952), p. 25Google Scholar. For the change in fashion which made popular ballads so appealing see Reed, , The Border Ballads, pp. 1–8Google Scholar.
49 For this paragraph and for what follows see my Europe—The Emergence of an idea (cited above, n. 35). In that edition there is a new preface and a new conclusion. ‘Christentie’=Christendom, ibid., pp. 22–23 and refs; this is a Middle English usage, not specifically southern Scottish or Border.
50 Treaty of Rome, 1957; Renouard, Yves, ‘1212–1216. Comment les traits durables de L'Europe se sont définis au début du XIIIe siècle’, Annales de l'Universié dt Paris, xxviii (1958), pp. 5–21Google Scholar.
51 For some relevant considerations see Lestocquoy, Jean, Histoire du patriotisme (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar.
52 This lecture was delivered before I had the advantage of reading Mr A. C. Goodman's paper, ‘Reformation and society in the Scottish Marches’, delivered to the Second International Colloquium in Ecclesiastical History organized by the British Sub-Commission for the Comparative Study of Ecclesiastical History, Oxford, September 1974. I understand that this will be published. I have also now seen a useful summary by Dr D. P. Kirby, ‘The evolution of the frontier, Part II, 1018–1237’, contributed to the forthcoming An Historical Atlas of Scotland, edited by Peter McNeill and Ranald Nicholson.
