Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (35 page)

Border Reivers: Kinmont Willie Armstrong

by Tom Moss

K
inmont Willie was, without doubt, one
of the most notorious Scottish Border Reivers of the 16th century. His raids into England, in particular Tynedale in Northumberland, are particularly well documented. The primary sources from his day speak of big, organised raids involving hundreds of the Scottish Border Reiver fraternity intent on theft, spoil, and destruction south of the Border in England.

As such, Kinmont was well prized by the English.

Some of the raids into England in which Kinmont took part resulted in complete penury for the English families, but he was never brought to justice even though the English hotly demanded that he should be made to answer for his crimes. Yet for all his infamous notoriety and his successful and uncontested raids into England, Kinmont was to suffer the greatest of indignities when he was captured by the English at a time when he thought he was protected by the law of the Border at a “Day of Truce”.

On 17 March 1596, a “Day of Truce” was held at the Dayholme of Kershope. The Dayholme was an area of flatland adjoining the little Kershope burn. It was a place traditionally used to hold “Days of Truce”, a time when felons and miscreants were brought to the Border Line to answer for their crimes against the Border Law.

Written into Border Law was an “Assurance” that all who attended to witness fair play did so on the understanding that they were immune from confrontation with any enemy from the opposite side of the Border who might also be attending or, indeed, fellow countrymen with whom they might be at feud.

The “Assurance of the Truce” was thus the vehicle which gave all confidence that they could attend with impunity. The “Assurance” lasted not only for the time that the trials were in session but until the following sunrise, so that all who had attended would have time to return to their homes in safety. Kinmont attended the “Day” only as a witness.

The “Day of Truce” at the Dayholme of Kershope was over before sunset. Kinmont with a few compatriots from the Scottish West March rode down the Scottish side of the river Liddel whilst his English counterparts made for home down the English side. All were confident that the “Assurance” of the Truce still held and would do so until sunrise of the next day.

Suddenly, the English turned and rode furiously across the river and chased Kinmont down the Scottish bank. Not far from where the rivers Liddel and Esk join forces and run from there to the Solway Firth, the Scottish party was overtaken and overcome. Kinmont was bound to his horse and conveyed, under guard, to Carlisle castle to await a decision on his future from Thomas Lord Scrope, English West March Warden.

Scrope wrote to Elizabeth I, queen of England, asking what he should do with Kinmont. In his opinion, the Border Reiver was such an important prisoner that he needed the ruling of the English monarch as to the course he should take.

Scrope did not receive a reply and thus deemed that it was best that Kinmont should stay where he was, warded in Carlisle castle.

The whole of Scotland—monarchy, lords, and church—were incensed at what they saw as a blatant and expedient exploitation of the Border Law.

Working behind the scenes as the episode unfolded were the premier English Border Reiver family, the Grahams. They were friends with Thomas Carleton, erstwhile Captain of Carlisle castle, who had been dismissed by Scrope because of his double-dealing with the Scottish reivers.

The Grahams requested that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Kinmont’s superior as Keeper of Liddesdale, should meet them to discuss the Kinmont affair. At the meeting, the Grahams ventured the thought that Buccleuch, suitably accompanied with a party of Scottish reivers mainly from the Scottish vales of the rivers Liddel, Ewes, and Annan, should raid Carlisle and force their way into the castle and rescue Kinmont. When the Grahams intimated that there would be not only inside help from members of the garrison of the castle but also a journey south through English territory uncontested by any of the English reivers, Buccleuch warmed to the notion.

On 12 April 1596 the rescue party, about seventy strong, assembled at Mortonrigg, Kinmont’s tower in the Debateable Land, and headed south for Carlisle at sunset. Just before dawn, twenty-five or so of the raiders, mainly Armstrongs, were looking across the river Eden, near its confluence with the river Caldew, at the formidable pile of Carlisle castle. Leaving their horses on the north bank, they swam the river, and made their way to a postern gate in the western wall of the castle. The gate was opened from the inside, probably by one of Thomas Carleton’s servants still employed there.

Only five of the raiders entered the castle. They knew the exact whereabouts of Kinmont’s warding because on the previous day a Graham, on legitimate business, had been told by one of the garrison, sympathetic to the cause, where Kinmont was held.

The weather on the night was horrendous. On the ride south, the rescue party had been buffeted by torrential rain. On entering the castle they were served by the weather as the watch, almost to a man, were under cover, protecting themselves from the worst of the elements. Thus their entry was hardly contested. Only two men attempted to impede their progress to Kinmont’s cell, and they were soon dealt with. Another guard, marshalling the entrance to the cell, was badly wounded.

The rescue party, now with Kinmont in their midst, left the castle, swam the river, and were soon on their way home to Scotland. The Irvines and Johnstones, stationed as ambush parties should the Scots be pursued north were soon to swell their numbers.

Scrope was to claim in letters to Lord Burghley that the castle had been attacked by 500 men from the Scottish Borders. In a letter to the Privy Council he wrote:

Yesternighte in the deade time therof, Walter Scott of Hardinge
[Harden, south of Hawick]
, the chief man about Buclughe, accompanied with 500 horsemen of Buclughes and Kinmontes frends, did come armed…unto an outewarde corner of the base courte of this castell and to the posterne dore of the same-which they undermined speedily…brake into the chamber where Will of Kinmont was
[and]
carried him awaye… The watch, as yt shoulde seeme, by reason of the stormye night, were either on sleepe or gotten under some covert to defende themselves from the violence of the wether….

He was soon to point the finger at his own subordinates for the ease with which the castle was breached:

And regardinge the myndes of the Lowthers to do villeny unto me, havinge beene assured by some of their owne, that they woulde do what they coulde to disquiet my government, I am induced vehementlye to suspect that their heades have bin in the devise of this attempte, and am also persuaded that Thomas Carlton hath lent his hand hereunto; for it is whispered in myne eare, that some of his servauntes, well acquainted with all the corners of this castell, were guydes in the execution herof.

The amity between England and Scotland, even as late as 1596, ploughed an uneven furrow. The relationship between James VI of Scotland and Elizabeth I of England had been fraught with confrontation, especially about the state of the Borders. On receipt of a letter from James to Elizabeth saying she should listen to both sides of the Kinmont affair and that he was not prepared to hand over Buccleuch as demanded until she did, Elizabeth threatened to discontinue the pension granted to him at the Treaty of Berwick in 1586. Even her fertile mind, however, had not given due consideration to what this action would cause.

The Scottish Council quickly perceived that James could not now conform to the wishes of Elizabeth. Had he done so and handed over Buccleuch to the English, it would appear to the people of both nations that he had done so for the pension. In due course, as a result of this, Elizabeth softened her approach. Elizabeth was to write to James and say
:

I beseech you to consider the greatness of my dishonour, and measure his
[Buccleuch’s]
just delivery accordingly. Deal in this case like a King who will have all this realm, and others adjoining. See how justly and kindly you both can and will use a prince of my quality.

The plea of Elizabeth was initially ignored and she resorted to a firmer approach.
“If the king of Scotland…keeping the said offenders in his grace and protection…therefore involves himself in their guiltiness, leaving the queen to have her remedy by another nature….”

Buccleuch was finally warded in Berwick in October 1597 much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, though he was treated with respect and eventually freed.

The Kinmont affair, which had raged for over a year, slowly lost its impetus at a time when both countries saw nothing to gain by endless confrontation. Thus, it was consigned to history. It remains to be verified exactly what Elizabeth meant when she spoke of a “remedy by another nature.” Perhaps one day that quandary may be resolved.

“Carrying Away the Booty”: Drake’s Attack on the Spanish Silver Train

by Jenny Barden

I
n April 1573
Francis Drake attacked the Spanish “Silver Train” near Nombre de Dios in Panama—this was the mule train loaded with bullion from Peru en route to King Philip II’s treasury in Spain. The attack was a success, a triumph after almost a year of failed attempts in an enterprise that had been beset by disease and misfortune, including the loss of Drake’s two younger brothers and over a third of his crew.

With the exception of the fatal wounding of Drake’s ally, the Huguenot Captain Le Testu, Drake suffered very few casualties and the Spanish put up little resistance. Effectively they ran away, leaving Drake and his motley band of pirates, black runaway slaves (the Cimaroons), and French privateers in possession of the equivalent in gold and silver of about a fifth of Elizabeth I’s annual revenue.

But what to do with so much bullion? This is where the story of Drake’s first great enterprise becomes particularly fascinating because he was left with so great a weight in treasure that he and his men could not carry it all away.

Historians continue to debate over exactly how much was involved. In
Sir Francis Drake Revived
, the best English account of the raid (one which Drake presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1593), the weight of silver seized is stated to have been “near thirty tons”. There were 190 mules in total, each carrying the standard load of 300 pounds. But the mules were also carrying much more valuable gold which the Spanish, smarting from the humiliation of the raid and no doubt wishing to play down the loss, put at “more than 100,000 pesos” including 18,363 pesos of fine gold from Popayan “consigned to your majesty.”

This weight in gold alone would have been close to half a ton, and most of it would have been in the form of unminted gold discs or “quoits”.

Drake had fifteen men with him on the raid, as well as twenty French corsairs and maybe forty Cimaroons. They had attacked the Silver Train about two miles from Nombre de Dios along the
Camino Real—
the “Royal Road” by which Spanish bullion was carried from the Pacific to the Caribbean—and their boats had been left “seven leagues” away at the Rio Francisco (probably the modern-day Rio Cuango twelve miles to the east).

Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society has done some excellent research in retracing the route they would probably have taken and calculates that the most they could have carried was sixty pounds each. So, of the thirty tons of treasure, Drake’s men could only have taken away just over two tons—and they had to march through a storm that night.

Imagine what those men must have gone through, burdened with as much as they could possibly carry, sure that the Spanish soldiers from Nombre de Dios would be in hot pursuit, scrambling along a difficult trail through thick rainforest known only to the Cimaroons, in the dark, lashed by a tropical storm and without any sleep. Then, when they arrived back at the Rio Francisco, they discovered that the boats which should have been waiting to take them to safety were nowhere to be seen.

With typical undaunted panache, Drake improvised a raft out of driftwood left by the storm, with a biscuit sack for a sail, and set off by sea for his ships moored at a hideout in the Cativas (the modern-day San Blas islands), only to come across the pinnaces intended for the getaway at the mainland point (Punta San Blas). The boats had been driven back by the storm, but that night they returned for the rest of Drake’s men and the bulk of the booty.

What happened to most of the silver which they had been unable to carry? In desperate haste, in the immediate aftermath of the raid, all the treasure that could not be carried had been buried under fallen trees, in the sand and gravel of the shallow islands of the Rio Nombre de Dios, and in the burrows of giant land crabs. A vast number of silver bars, each weighing between 35 and 40 pounds, were simply popped into crab holes.

A few days later, a small party of Drake’s men returned to the scene of the ambush intent on retrieving this treasure, but they only recovered thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold. The Spanish had found and decapitated Captain Le Testu and then tortured one of the two Frenchmen left with him into revealing where the bullion had been hidden. According to the Spanish, all the buried treasure was recovered, but plainly Drake’s men were able to find some that they had missed. Perhaps there is still more waiting to be unearthed....

Sources

“Report of the Royal Officials of Panama to the Crown.” 9 May 1573.

Sugden, John.
Sir Francis Drake.
Pimlico, 2006.

Turner, Michael.
In Drake’s Wake
.
Boston, England: Paul Mould Publishing, 2005.

“El Camino Real”: A Path Worn through Time

by Jenny Barden

W
hat is left of
el Camino Real
? Stones disappearing int
o the undergrowth, lost in darkness, veiled by forest mist. Very little remains, but what does conjures up the shadows of the pack trains that used to traverse this vital road across Panama, bringing bullion from the mines of South America from the Pacific side of the isthmus to the Caribbean by the quickest overland route.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
el Camino Real
, “the Royal Road”, bore the riches that helped sustain the might of the Spanish Empire and its domination in Europe. It stretched from the city of Panama in the south, across mountains and through rainforest, to Nombre de Dios in the north. Over the stones once laid by some 4000 native slaves under the command of Gaspar de Espinosa in 1517-9, pack trains in convoys, often of two or three together totalling some 200 mules or more, would walk, plod, climb, and struggle over this path until their hooves wore hollows that can still be seen in places today.

The road was never easy. It was only just over sixty miles in length, yet it passed through thick forest and vegetation that proliferated so rapidly the road was in constant need of repair. In the rainy season it became impassable because of the many rivers that had to be forded which turned into torrents once swollen by tropical storms, and even without rain (as I know only too well from experience) the high humidity would soon leave the clothes of any traveller completely saturated.

Those who took the Royal Road had to contend with mosquitoes that carried malaria and yellow fever, and up in the mountains, where drops were precipitous, when a mule lost its footing it would be gone forever. There were other dangers too: the risk of ambush by Cimaroons—bands of runaway African slaves—and towards the end of the sixteenth century there was the very real threat of pirate attack.

Chris Haslam noted some of the hazards in his article “The World’s Wildest Walk” for the
Sunday Times
(3/9/2006):

Some 300 ft below, the Nombre de Dios river roars through unseen cataracts, a constant reminder of where you end up if you fall. And falling is a constant possibility. The problem is that if you slip, you need to grab something to stop you falling, and if you grab something it will either bite you, spike you or try to tear your hand off. Scorpions, tarantulas and lethal bullet ants lurk in the leaf litter. Deadly eyelash vipers and enormous fer-de-lances lie disguised as branches and roots, and even the flora threatens armed response. Thorns, hooks and barbs shred clothes and skin, causing wounds that go septic in hours, and peaceful looking leaves cause cruel and unusual burns. It’s hard enough hauling a rucksack around here: imagine driving a stolen mule train.