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Book: The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers
Quotes of Book: The Steel Bonnets: The Story
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  1. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    Blackmail was paid by the tenant or farmer to a "superior" who might be a powerful reiver, or even an outlaw, and in return the reiver not only left him alone, but was also obliged to protect him from other raiders and to recover his goods if they were carried off. It reached the proportions of a major industry, with the blackmailers employing collectors and enforcers {known as brokers}, and even something like accountants.
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  2. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    The 1563 agreement between England and Scotland speaks of "lawfull Trodd with Horn and Hound, with Hue and Cry and all other accustomed manner of fresh pursuit"; according to Scott, this obliged the pursuer to carry a lighted turf on his lance-point, as earnest of open and peaceful intentions.
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  3. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    the fatal privilege". It enshrined the right to recover one's property by force, and in practice to deal with the thieves out of hand. A trod might lawfully be made at any time within six days after the offence; if it was followed immediately it was a hot trod, otherwise it was known as a cold trod. In either case it was governed by strict rules; a careful line was drawn, under Border law, between a trod and a reprisal raid.
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  4. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    he was a man of his hands, and most were, he might decide to wait and plan for the day when he could raid the robbers in his turn, and get his revenge illegally with interest. Or he could decide on pursuit, across the frontier if necessary. This was a strictly legal, almost a hallowed process, known by the descriptive name of "hot trod".
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  5. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    Other March law offences included truce-breaking, attacking castles, impeding a Warden, importing wool, and a delightful local custom known as "bauchling and reproaching". This meant publicly vilifying and upbraiding someone, usually at a day of truce; such abuse might be directed at a man who had broken his word, or had neglected to honour a bond or pay a ransom. The "bauchler" {also known as brangler, bargler, etc.} sometimes made his reproof by carrying a glove on his lance-point, or displaying a picture of his enemy, and by crying out or sounding a horn-blast, indicating that his opponent was a false man and detestable.
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  6. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    The Border, in a sense, was a bloody buffer state which absorbed the principal horrors of war. With the benefit of hindsight, one could almost say that the social chaos of the frontier was a political necessity.
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  7. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    Unfortunately, to the ordinary people, war and peace were not very different. The trouble with all Anglo-Scottish wars was that no one ever won them; they were always liable to break out again.
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  8. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    They scorched the earth, destroyed their own homes and fields, took to the hills and the wilderness with their beasts and all they could move, and carried on the struggle by onfall, ambush, cutting supply lines, and constant harrying.
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  9. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    People who have suffered every hardship and atrocity, and who have every reason to fear that they will suffer them again, may submit tamely, or they may fight for survival. The English and Scots of the frontier were not tame folk.
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  10. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    One thing the war ensured; whatever treaties might be made and truces agreed at the top, however often a state of official peace existed, there was never again to be quiet along the frontier while England and Scotland remained politically separate countries.
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  11. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    The golden age, of Scotland, of Anglo-Scottish harmony, and of the Border country, ended when King Alexander III of Scotland fell over a cliff in 1286. Few stumbles-if indeed His Majesty was not pushed-have been more important than that one.
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  12. George MacDonald Fraser _ The Steel Bonnets: The Story

    And my good lord, for your honors better satisfaction, that it was not so barbarouslie nor butcherlie don as you thinck it to be, it should seeme your honor hath bene wrongfullie enformed, in sayinge he was cutt in manye peeces, after his deathe-for if he had bene cutt in many peces, he could not a lived till the next morninge, which themselves reported he did-which shewes he was not cutt in verie many peeces!
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