The Anglo-Scottish Border Line. In 1966 the Anglo-Scottish Border was described by a leading historian of Scotland as one of the major creations and institutions of medieval Britain (Barrow 1966: 21). Given this judgement, it is perhaps surprising that no detailed study has subsequently been published of the actual Border Line itself. Indeed, as the late Denys Hay pointed out in 1974 there has been very little discussion of the frontier in ordinary surveys of Scottish or English history (Hay 1974: 79). According to Hay, the standard narrative remained George Ridpath s Border History of England & Scotland a text first published in 1776 and revised in 1848 (Hay 1974: 79 fn.7). Although acknowledging the work of D.L.W. Tough, The Last Years of a Frontier (1928) and T. I. Rae, The Administration of the Scottish Frontier (1966) Hay gave further credit only to J.L. Mack s The Border Line (1924) a careful account of a frontier demarcation which nevertheless does not seem to have attracted much attention, since major conflicts between the two countries were affected only marginally by the ambiguities of the Tweed-Solway line (Hay 1974: 79). For Hay, the establishment of a fixed boundary has been somewhat taken for granted and yet the Border was not merely a line, notionally following rivers and burns and leaping to standing stones and ditches or dykes. It was a tract of territory separated in some senses from the countries on either side of it. It was thus a frontier of a peculiar kind (Hay 1974: 80). In the past 25 years or so since Barrow and Hay made these remarks, a number of important studies and collections have been published which examine in great detail the nature of the Anglo-Scottish frontier. These include: S.J. Watts, From Border to Middle Shires 1586-1625 (1975); C. Neville, Violence Custom & Law: The Anglo- Scottish Border Lands in the Later Middle Ages (1998); A. MacDonald, Border Bloodshed: Scotland & England at War 1369 1403 (2000); M. Meikle, A British Frontier? Lairds & Gentlemen in the Eastern Borders 1540-1603 (2004); R. Bartlett & A. Mackay, Medieval Frontier Societies (1989) and A. Tuck & A. Goodman, War & Border Societies in the Middle Ages (1992). Illuminating as these works are on many aspects of the frontier zone, none focuses specifically upon the exact positioning of the Line that has served to distinguish Scotland from England. In the meantime, a new generation of historians has emerged eager to tackle the very largest and most perplexing questions of Scottish national identity and consciousness. Amongst these may be included: R. A. Houston (et al) Literacy and the Scottish Identity (1985); D. Broun & B. Webster, Medieval Scotland, The Making of an Identity (1997) and N. Davidson, The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000). The best and most recent general histories of Scotland - M. Lynch, A New History of Scotland (1991) and R.A. Houston & W.W.J. Knox, The New Penguin History of Scotland (2001) are likewise much exercised by this identity and consciousness theme.
Just exactly what ideas of Scotland might have meant to the various degrees of men and women who happened to live in that part of the world lairds, burgesses, husbandmen, cottars or whatever and just exactly when these ideas meant what they did to these very different groups of people, are profound and difficult questions. This paper does not try to answer them at least not directly. It simply asks: where exactly is this Scotland? When, exactly, was a line drawn between Scotland and England? Why was the line drawn in this very particular place and what does this Border Line actually mean? These, of course, were always very practical and immediately compelling questions for those living in close proximity to the Border Line. And while such marginal people may have been of little significance to those whose purpose it has been to forge (in both the blacksmith s and the counterfeiter s senses of the term) national identity & consciousness in the capital and other major centres of population, the exact positioning of the Border Line was, as we shall see, an everyday and sometimes even a life and death concern to them. In the Anglo-Scottish frontier zone, which came first: did people living there first acquire a sense that they were distinctly Scottish and English so that a Line had then to be drawn accordingly or did a Border Line have first to be drawn before the people living immediately on either side of it could become convinced that a vitally important set of international distinctions now lay between them? When exactly did it first occur to people living right next to the Anglo-Scottish Border Line that some kind of fundamental & non-negotiable difference clearly lay between them? In frontier zones like the Anglo-Scottish Border, do people develop a stronger sense of national identity and consciousness than those living at a distance; do they develop this sense of identity & consciousness earlier and do they do this because their day to day experience of the national enemy is closer, more intimate and hence better informed? Alternatively, is the sense of national identity & consciousness altogether weaker; is it just slower and much less likely to develop in frontier zones because common economic interests, trading partnerships, intermarriage and so on must inevitably bring people together across the Border Lines which lie between them? Or are we to suppose that the sense of national identity & consciousness develops uniformly and in a wholly undifferentiated fashion throughout the populations and territories of countries whose elites are getting round to the business of claiming nation statehood? Where is Scotland? To answer this question we must examine the maps included in the Powerpoint presentation. From this presentation we can see that, leaving aside the possibility that either Kingdom might at some point have swallowed the other whole, there are many possible Border Lines between Scotland & England which make at least as much sense as the one which was actually chosen.
We can also see, focusing in more narrowly upon the Line which was in fact chosen, that much of the Border Line was more or less continuously in dispute some sections of it being in dispute until 1799, long after the two Kingdoms & Parliaments were united in 1603 & 1707. When was Scotland thus delineated? To answer this question we must examine the lists of dates included with this paper. From these we can immediately see that the Border was not fixed, once and for all, at one particular date in time. (And that, indeed, scholars have been in considerable disagreement as to the key dates in the fixing process.) We can also see that the Border Line distinction between Scotland & England is more deeply structured (in ways that we do not yet fully understand) by the histories of the lost Kingdoms of Northumbria/Bernicia and Strathclyde/Cumbria. The settlement of the Border Line, that is to say, was not simply the outcome of a struggle between Scotland & England. The eastern Scottish Borders and Lothians of today were once English (at least in the sense of the term English that would have been understood by Bede when he was writing his Ecclesiastical History of the English People at Jarrow in c731) long before it occurred to anyone that these territories might in some sense be Scottish. And the western Scottish Borders were British (at least in the sense of the term British that would have been understood by Ptolemy of Alexandria when he was writing his Geographia in the first century AD) long before the people known as Scotti left the shores of Ireland. We can also see, moreover, that the precise location of the Border Line gave considerable aggravation to communities immediately on either side of it until the beginning of the nineteenth century and that the tidying up of minor peculiarities & anomalies continues to this day. Why was Scotland delineated thus? The present Border Line does not make any geographical sense. That is to say, the Line chosen does not have geographical features which, so to speak, are more outstanding or significant than those of any number of alternative lines. In no sense, therefore, is it a natural frontier (whatever that might mean). The present Border does not distinguish between people who belong to different racial or ethnic groups (whatever these terms might mean). It does not divide people who speak different languages. It does not separate different religious groups. It is not positioned in accordance with any major pre-existing cultural difference whatsoever. The chosen Border Line does not make any military sense. It was and is completely indefensible. The rivers Tweed and Esk are not the Rhine and Danube. The Cheviots are not the Alps.
The present Border Line does not make any historical sense. It crudely bisects the ancient kingdoms of Northumbria/Bernicia and Strathclyde/Cumbria. It cuts straight through and without acknowledgement the patrimony of the venerable St Cuthbert. Today s Border does not follow the meanderings of some Dark Ages earthwork monument like Offa s Dike. The major and nearby Dark Ages linear earthworks of the Borders Region Heriot s Dyke, the Catrail, & the Wheel Causeway - are nowhere employed to help define the present Border. The present Border has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever underlying realities and divisions of peoples the Romans were recognising when they established their frontiers at the Antonine and Hadrianic Walls. It would seem therefore that the answer to our question (why has the Border been placed in this particular position?) is this: it is there for no discernible reason whatsoever. It could just as easily have been put somewhere else. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest otherwise. What does Scotland thus delineated mean? It means that there is a perfectly dreadful clutter of visually unappealing road signs at Coldstream Bridge and other Border crossing points. These monster signifiers of national difference, all profitably provided by the French multinational corporation Dupont in a superlative gesture of post-modern irony, carry a bewildering range of stoutly patriotic and other no doubt essential messages: Scotland, England, Coldstream: Scotland s First Toun, The Border Country, River Tweed, Northumberland, Cornhill, Bide A Wee, Haste Ye Back, Slow, 30 and so on. It means that those of us who were born and brought up in this frontier zone ought to think for a while before joining people who like shouting Scotland in preference to England or England in preference to Scotland. There is no very good reason why today s Borderers should be enthusiastic about shouting either of these slogans. And every good reason for them either to dissimulate or to keep their mouths shut. But for the accidents of comparatively recent history, the Scottish Borderers of today might just as easily have ended up feeling obliged to shout England and English Borderers Scotland. And times change. Whatever it is that Borderers might feel like shouting today, they might not feel like shouting quite so loudly tomorrow. Such a conclusion about the kinds of changing circumstances which might shape, alter or constrain the patriotic and other enthusiasms of Borderers is at least consistent with their reputation in the late Middle Ages: Scotsmen as they will, English at their pleasure; if Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive Him. I would suggest also that the history of Scotland thus delineated conveys a harsh lesson: people who live in frontier zones need to be as prudent and as flexible in their allegiances as they must be with everything else if they want to survive and prosper. The fact of the frontier means they must be ready always to bend with the prevailing
wind. They must be ready to make a friend in every adverse circumstance. Borderers are first of all Borderers and only secondarily Scottish or English. Again, as I suggested at the outset, here on the Anglo-Scottish Border we may also be seeing a useful and positive lesson in how to defuse the kinds of problems that characteristically beset frontier zones. The Anglo-Scottish Border was once an appallingly violent place in which to live as bad as anywhere on the planet. It is entirely peaceful now. Barrow G.W.S. (1966), The Anglo-Scottish Border in Northern History, I, 22-41. Hay D. (1974), England, Scotland and Europe: The Problem of the Frontier, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 25, 77-91. David Welsh Northumbria University. Dave.welsh@unn.ac.uk