Family Lessons 23: Border Reivers

The borders between England and Scotland were traditionally rather lawless, violent places. Owing allegiance to neither the Scotch nor English Crowns, the hard folk who lived there were a law unto themselves. Those families and clans were akin to Italian mafia with regards to their conduct. George MacDonald Fraser, famous for his Flashman novels, wrote an excellent history of the period. His book, The Steel Bonnets, explains:

“From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, outlaws and ‘border lords’ reigned supreme on the contentious frontier between England and Scotland. Feud and terror, raid and reprisal, were the ordinary stuff of life- and a way of survival. Power was held by the notorious border reivers: clan-loyal raiders, freebooters, plunderers, and rustlers who robbed, murdered and wreaked havoc.”

From the ranks of these delightful folk hailed my Hetherington ancestors. Occupying the area around Lanercost and Brampton on the English side, the Hetheringtons were not the worst of families, but they were still pretty despicable. MacDonald Fraser lists their penchant for blackmailing people, usually extorting ‘protection money’, as well their attempt to murder John May, the Bishop of Carlisle, in 1569. By 1603, their crimes were less tolerated by the monarch, James I, who now reigned over both kingdoms and could not afford to have these thugs murdering and pillaging. My 9x great-grandfather, William Hetherington of Lanercost (born 1670), and his father of the same name (dates unknown) therefore lived several decades after the reivers’ halcyon days. I dare say cattle rustling and running protection rackets still proved lucrative, even if they pursued them less openly than their fathers and grandfathers.

People sometimes muse that one can choose friends but not relatives. My Hetherington forbears were probably quite a vile lot and I’m relieved I have never had to meet them. Yet their blood courses through my veins. From them I inherited my own selfish and violent inclinations, and they from their ancestors, whose details history has not recorded. Many are disappointed by even the best of fathers, whose lifestyles were less than honest, whose affections were less than loving, whose faithfulness was less than genuine. Each of us bears the impression of Adam the First, who, through hundreds of ancestral mediators, bequeaths to us evil desires and fallen, selfish natures. Thankfully, the gospel provides us with a Second Adam, Christ Jesus, who gladly adopts us into the family of God. Now belonging His line, we increasingly reflect His nature while He crafts and reshapes our character. I might have once resembled a thuggish Border Reiver, but I am progressively becoming more like the Lord Jesus.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 ESV

Even the livestock of north Cumberland seem 'hard'. In Lancashire, sheep respectfully get up and run off when a stranger approaches. These ones, sitting in the grounds of a ruined peel tower (built to protect reivers from other reivers) just stared at me as it chewed its grass, not even bothering to get up. Had it been able to speak, I am under the impression it would have asked me for a fight.