The Steel Bonnets Quotes

“England was a menace to Scotland because Scotland was, by its separate existence, a constant anxiety to England.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“Most of us do not think of ourselves as criminals, but possibly there are things in our daily lives which we regard as our “inheritance” which will move future generations to critical disgust.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“If anything in their history demonstrates that the Scots are remarkable, it is that in spite of being physically attached to England, they have survived as a people, with their own culture, laws, institutions, and, like the English, their own ideas.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“On occasion they were cut down in cold blood or hanged on the spot; in the saying of the Border, which has passed into the language, they had been taken “red-hand”, which was “in the deede doinge”, and the law was not likely to call a trod-follower to account if his rage got the better of him and he despatched a reiver out of”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“And both were more fortunate than Hecky Noble who, within a few nights of Mrs Hetherington’s widowhood, was a victim of that gay desperado, Dickie Armstrong of Dryhope,49 and his 100 jolly followers. Apart from reiving a herd of 200 head, and destroying nine houses, the raiders also burned alive Hecky’s son John, and his daughter-in-law, who was pregnant.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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!”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“the Borderers regarded reiving as legitimate (which is true), but that they held murder to be a crime, and consequently were reluctant to commit it—except in the heat of action or when covered by the virtual absolution of deadly feud. It is rather like saying that a heavy drinker, in his sober moments, is an abstemious man.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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”.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“England had another line of defence, in the establishment of numbers of “slewdogges”48 for the tracking down of raiders; money was raised for their maintenance, and from the number of them stolen in raids it is obvious that they were highly prized. They could be worth as much as £10.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“the guard house of the bloodiest valley in Britain. One is not surprised to learn that an early owner was boiled alive by impatient neighbours; there is a menace about the massive walls, about the rain-soaked hillside, about the dreary gurgle of the river.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“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.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“And then peace broke out. It seems surprising, in view of what had been and what would one day follow, but there now began an era of tranquillity between England and Scotland, and consequently along the Border, which was to endure almost uninterrupted for nearly two hundred years.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“Now Malcolm was back again, but he came once too often, and was killed at Alnwick in 1093.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“Out of the historic tangle, there certainly emerged among English kings a belief that they had, traditionally, some kind of superiority over the Scottish king, and no doubt a feeling that for the sake of political security and unity—one might say almost of tidiness—it would be better if Scotland were under English control, or at best, added to England. This attitude can be charitably seen as politically realistic, or at the other extreme, as megalomaniac; it is all in the point of view.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“before serious Anglo-Scottish political differences began, there was a north-south dispute over the manner in which priestly heads should be shaved.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“On the credit side, there is a Border virtue which in the human scale should outweigh all the rest, and it is simply the ability to endure, unchanging. Perhaps the highest compliment that one can pay to the people of the Anglo-Scottish frontier is to remark that, in spite of everything, they are still there.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

“the English general was less concerned for the moment with what he was going to do in Scotland than with the problem of actually getting his army there in working order. His main worry was a shortage of beer for the troops; on September 2 he was indenting for “vi or vii hundred tonne of bere”, five days later he was noting that “I feare lak of no thyng so moche as of drynk”, and this despite the brewing that was taking place at Berwick, and on September 11 he was announcing flatly that he could not hope to get his army to Edinburgh without beer. Like”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets

“And it was understood that Scottish Borderers did not take kindly to outside Wardens. The oustanding example was the unfortunate Frenchman, Anthony Darcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, who in 1516 was ill-advised enough to accept the Wardenry of all the Scottish Marches, with particular responsibility in the east. This was Hume country, and they regarded Darcy with “horrid resentment”. He seems to have been a brave, honest and conscientious Warden, which no doubt rendered him all the more odious. The outcome was that the Humes finally caught up with him near Duns, cut off his head, and took it home in triumph, tied by its long locks to a saddle-bow.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets

“To attempt to apply normal law and government to the Border area was a waste of time, and both countries had long recognised this. Thus there grew up a body of local law and custom, often extremely complex, seldom consistent, and in practice all too rough and ready, by which the two governments attempted to keep their frontier subjects in order. It can probably be said to have worked moderately well, in that it prevented a decline into complete anarchy; it was at least practised by both sides with some co-operation. The wonder is that it worked at all.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets

“The Border reivers were aggressive, ruthless, violent people, notoriously quick on the draw, ready and occasionally eager to kill in action, when life or property or honour were at stake. They were a brave people, and risked their lives readily enough; when they had to die, they appear to have done so without undue dramatics or bogus defiance which would have been wasted anyway. They lived in a society where deadly family feud was common, and when they were engaged in feud they killed frequently and brutally, as we shall see. When they were not engaged in feud, they certainly killed less readily. Their ordinary reiving did not, perhaps, entail quite as much bloodshed as one might expect in the violent circumstances. Bishop Leslie and Scott explain this by pointing out that the Borderers regarded reiving as legitimate (which is true), but that they held murder to be a crime, and consequently were reluctant to commit it—except in the heat of action or when covered by the virtual absolution of deadly feud. It is rather like saying that a heavy drinker, in his sober moments, is an abstemious man.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets