| Year 1601
The uncertain and fluctuating limits of two neighbouring nations,
which were always jealous of each other, and often hostile, afforded
ample field for the depredations of robbers. We find, accordingly,
the Scottish borders infested by clans of banditti, who transmitted
their predatory pursuits from father to son, like a common profession.
The minute and troublesome regulations established by the Warden of the
English marches, appointing a relief of sentinels, at every pass, by
night and day *
, within a large
district, evince, that the confines of England were no less infested
with thieves and robbers.
Their depredations were carried on upon so extensive a
scale, and exercised by such numerous bands, as enabled their leaders to
live in power and affluence; and sometimes required the whole executive
force of the State to crush those robbers. From a statutory
prohibition (James VI. Parl. 11th, chap. 101.) against persons bringing
Scottish or English thieves in their company to His Majesty's Court, or
to the city of Edinburgh, it appears, that as little discredit had
attended their profession, as if they had been plunderers of the East.
In the reign of James V, their robberies had arisen to so daring a
height, that the King, with a military force of about 8,000 men, pitched
his camp on the banks of the river Esk, in order to check these
depredations **.
Even this mighty force was not thought sufficient, without the aid of
stratagem, nay of fraud, to the apprehending of those robbers, whose
extirpation could alone restore peace to the borders.
Johnnie
Armstrang, the Captain of this lawless band, kept his residence
at Gilnockie *** , on the
river Esk, between Langholm and Carlisle, where he lived the terror of
the neighbourhood. And the English borders, for many miles, paid
him tribute. Being seduced by the spies of the Court, on the
pledge of public faith, he appeared before the King, attended by fifty
horsemen, who had laid aside their hostile armour for the splendid array
of a tournament. They were thrown into prison; forty seven
of them finished a life of rapine and bloodshed upon growing trees;
and one of them atoned for his signal cruelties in the flames.
Thus, by one act, public faith was broken, and public peace was
restored.
In the minority of Queen Mary, and of her son, and
amidst the convulsions of the reformation, the weeds which had taken
such deep root in the borders, and which James V. had endeavoured to
eradicate, must necessarily have sprung up afresh. When Queen Mary
held a Justice-eyre at Jedburgh, the ravages of a troop of banditti in
Liddisdale made it requisite for her to despatch the Earl of Bothwell,
with a military force, to suppress these disorders. The robbers
gave the Earl battle, wounded him dangerously, and repulsed his
followers. And the attention which the Queen showed him upon this
occasion, excited the jealousy of her husband, and attracted the obloquy
of her people.
John Armstrong, the
prisoner, was tried before the Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the
14th of November 1601, for the murder of Sir John Carmichael of that Ilk
****, warden of the west
marches. In the indictment which was raised against him by Thomas
Carmichael of Eddrem,the prosecutor, brother to the deceased, it was set
forth, that the prisoner, his father, and many border-thieves and
traitors, had assembled, of a Sunday, in the month of June 1600, for the
purpose of playing at foot-ball. That, being informed Sir John
Carmichael was to hold a Court next day at Lochmaben, they devised his
murder. Accordingly, the prisoner, and twenty accomplices all
completely armed, way-laid the deceased next morning, and murdered him
as he was going to the Court, bu shooting him through the body.
The prisoner being convicted by a Jury, was sentenced
to be taken to the Cross of Edinburgh, his right hand to be struck from
his arm, then to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead, and his body to
be taken to the gallows on the Borough muir, and hung in iron chains.
This is the first instance I know of in Scotland, of the body of a
malefactor being hung in chains. One of the
prisoner's accomplices, Adam Scot
of
Tushielaw, was at the same time condemned to be hanged. |
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