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The most feared clans on the Scottish side of the border were the Armstrongs, Elliots, Scotts and Kerrs; on the English, the Grahams, Fenwicks and Forsters. The author’s Turnbull ancestors were a small but effective gang inhabiting Teviotdale. (See whether your ancestors were involved by searching online for ‘reiver surnames’.)

A record of those times is found in the Border ballads collected by Sir Walter Scott 200 years after the event. But they live on also in the defensive pele towers still standing above empty fields. Smaller fortified farms called bastles are in England only; the Scots ones were all destroyed. ‘Thieves’ roads’ still run across the hilltops. Horseback ‘march ridings’ re-enact the battles around the stout, rugby-playing Border towns that stood through the anarchy. And the Border’s harsh history is shown in the emptiness, even today, of the green glens that run south to the Tyne and northwards to the Tweed.

The Covenanters

In the times up to and including the English Civil War, Scotland developed its own Presbyterian form of Protestant religion – one in which spiritual leaders were democratically elected by a Presbytery council of church members. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles II re-imposed bishops, and with them the king’s authority over the church. Those who rejected king and bishops in Scotland were known as Covenanters. Often they held their illegal church services (‘conventicles’) in remote hollows of the hills.