John Bell

John Bell is a Dumfries man, and also one of our members, who has founded a trust which has the porpose of raising money to erect a statue to the Border reivers in Dumfries.

John sets out his justification for it in the document reproduced below:

Many of the residents of Dumfries bear one of the 77 or so Border Reiver surnames, or in their veins runs reiver blood. However, they could be forgiven for not knowing, for the story of their ancestors is an almost forgotten chapter in British history. In fact, perhaps because reiving was so localised, and is now so long ago, the name reiver is barely a folk memory. It should not be like this, because at its zenith in the sixteenth century, reiving was as much a part of the Dumfriesshire folk's lives as agriculture.

The Border Reivers were in fact a tough breed of people who lived by their own laws and for over three hundred years until the end of the sixteenth century terrorised the Anglo-Scottish frontier. Hailing from all levels of society, the Border Reivers were not only excellent fighting men and guerrilla soldiers to whom the arts of theft, raid, tracking and ambush were second nature, but were also professional cattle rustlers, outlaws and gangsters. It was the reivers that gave the words blackmail and bereavement to the English language, and it was men from the reiver families that perfected a protection racket that Al Capone and his mobsters would have been proud of. Their blood has flowed through the veins of world leaders, as well as the first man on the moon. Today their descendants can be found all over the world.

The wars of aggression instigated by Edward I, and carried on by his successors, is the reason behind the emergence of the Border Reivers along the Border of two aggressive and formidable nations. Three centuries of violent warfare between England and Scotland were enough to reduce the Borders to a charred wilderness. The land was wasted and burned and despoiled, its people robbed and slaughtered. Inevitably, the conditions under which the Borderers were forced to live, or rather to exist, led them to look for other means to sustain themselves and they took to reiving, the raiding of sheep, cattle, and just about anything else that could be transported.

In an attempt to regulate and govern the Border region more effectively, the two governments had reached an agreement in 1249 known as the Laws of the Marches. By its terms the Borderland was divided into six areas, called Marches. Both sides of the Border had an East, West and Middle March, and each March was to be administered both judicially and militarily by a March Warden, with a fourth official on the Scottish side who had special responsibility for Liddesdale.

The Scottish West March, which had a reputation for being the roughest quarter on the frontier, comprised the Stewarties of Kirkcudbright and Annandale, and included the Sheriffdom of Dumfries which served as both its judicial centre and headquarters of the Warden.

Lying on the boundary of the Scottish West March and English West March, and worthy of special mention, was the Debateable Land. When driving from Dumfries to Carlisle on the A75 one comes to the Metalbridge, and on one's left the country which stretches away in a narrow strip north-eastward from the bridge for a dozen or 50 miles was the Debateable Land. The whole area extended to no more than twelve miles by three and a half to five, but assumed a nuisance value out of all proportion to its geographical size. It was so called as its ownership was disputed between England and Scotland. The trouble was that neither side would acknowledge responsibility for the people living in the Debateable Land. And so, naturally, it became a resort for thieves and outlaws, who used the Debateable land as a base for their marauding. As the situation became increasingly intolerable, Wardens on both sides agreed that anyone should be free to rob, burn, plunder, and kill within the Debateable Land without being guilty of any crime. The idea was to discourage anyone from dwelling there but the result was in fact quite the reverse and the area became more dangerous than ever. Eventually, in an attempt to solve the problem, the two countries set up a commission to divide the troublesome strip of land and after much wrangling, this was achieved by the erection of an earthen rampart known as the Scots Dyke. Although the extent of each countries responsibilities was now defined, the area still retained its name and continued to exist there was a nest of professional thieves who plundered and murdered Scots and English alike.

Before we go on to the meat of why the story of the Border Reivers is an important theme in the rich heritage of Dumfries, it is necessary, we feel, to make a few points which are perhaps not commonly known. Firstly, although some reivers lived in outlaw bands, like those in the Debateable Land, most of them were ordinary members of the community, and they were everywhere in the Marches. Secondly, reiving was not a straight case of England v Scotland. Scot robbed Scot and Englishman plundered Englishman. And finally, reiving was not restricted to the Border proper. Ambitious reivers penetrated deeply on both sides of the Border, English reivers sacking villages on the outskirts of Edinburgh, whilst the Scots probed as far south as Yorkshire.

What became increasingly clear to us as we studied numerous books, and looked at articles in periodicals, was how important the town of Dumfries was to the story of the Border Reivers. By any measure Dumfries was the capital place of the Scottish West March. It was both the main judicial centre and headquarters of the Warden, it was where justice courts were held, it was where the Warden supervised regular courts and sessions, it was where Border Reivers were hanged and imprisoned, it was a centre of Border Law, and it was where marauding reivers 'hung-out'.

The Border Reivers were accustomed to come to Dumfries during the day to buy in the market, to drink at the alehouses, and generally to pass the time of day with the locals. To some townspeople the reivers would be friends, to others blood relations. The newspaper editor, William McDowell, who wrote his History of Dumfries in 1867, describes the townsfolk mingling with the Border Reivers, as 'filling the streets the drabber countrymen mingled: the town minstrel in his blue, red and yellow cloak: plaids and blue bonnets clashing with fashionable Elizabethan clothes: flamboyant Border Reivers like "Reid-Cloak", chief of the Bloody Bells: townsmen, like Peter Lumisdaill, evil Thom Maxwell and perilous John Newall...

Dumfries, as previously stated, was the headquarters of the Warden. As a rule, on the Scottish Border, the Wardenship generally fell to the headman of the most powerful Border Reiver family, and in the West March the Maxwells had a virtual monopoly until it was broken late in the sixteenth century by their arch-enemies, the Johnstones. The Warden was the master of his March and his powers and responsibilities were enormous, but, in general, his duties were to command his March in time of war, and the most important in peace-time were to guard against reivers, to apprehend reivers from his own March who had raided into the other country, and to co-operate with the opposite Warden in punishing the offender and compensating the victim.

Dumfriesshire was in a constant state of turmoil thanks to the lasting enmity of the Maxwells and Johnstones, and Dumfries features heavily in the almost forgotten deadly feud between these two powerful Border Reiver families. Aside from Dumfries being attacked twice by the Johnstones in the spring of 1581 , two incidents deserve to be brought to the reader's attention. The first involves a contest for the Provostship of Dumfries: the Chancellor of Scotland, Arran, tried to engineer the appointment of a Johnstone as Provost of Dumfries, which was traditionally a Maxwell office. Maxwell with his reivers behind him barred Johnstone's
entry to the town in July 1584, and after the Johnstone Laird departed, a Maxwell was once more appointed Warden.

The second incident involves Lord Maxwell threatening to hang the chief of the Johnstones. In August 1585 John Johnstone, the Johnstone leader and Warden of the Scottish West March, was captured by the Maxwells, and Lord Maxwell erected a great gallows in Dumfries and promised to hang the Warden and his followers unless the castle surrendered, which it did.

As a matter of interest, a company of two hundred townsmen from Dumfries with their Provost, Homer Maxwell, is listed as being part of Lord Maxwell's army at the Battle of Dryfe Sands, fought on December 6 1593, which was a Maxwell-Johnstone head-on collision and the bloodiest family fight in British history. The Johnstones won the battle and Lord Maxwell was killed with many of his closest kinsmen.