English Scottish Border In The Tudor/stuart Sixteenth Century. The Border Reivers And Dacre's Raid

In the autumn of 1569 the north of England rose in rebellion. It was a short-lived unsuccessful affair orchestrated by Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland. Percy would die at the cutting edge of an axe, beheaded, in York in 1572; Neville in penury having fled the country.

Ostensibly the reason for revolt was the north's unwavering affiliation to the 'Old Religion', Catholicism, in a country that had espoused a newer and different course to reach out and grasp the hand of God. Protestantism had followed Henry V111's break with Rome in the 1530's and his formation of the Church of England. By the 1560's the whole of England and Scotland was caught up in the relentless stride of the new religion. There were those who were determined to follow the older course to salvation.

In the late 1560's a young Mary Stewart, reared in France and a confirmed Catholic, had arrived back in Scotland to take up her Scottish throne after the death of her youthful French husband. At odds with her Protestant Lords which led to a civil war which she lost, she threw herself on the mercy of her English cousin, Elizabeth1. Her pleas for help in regaining her Scottish throne fell on deaf, embarrassed ears and she was held under house arrest whilst her future was resolved.

The northern rebellion sought to set her free and installed as monarch of England; a catholic queen in what would be a catholic country.

In the north the new tenets of a new religion had not been readily accepted. There were many who clung to the old ways and they were rooted out and victimised by a government that demonstrated a stance of no tolerance to those who would not conform to the new.

Thus the people of the north were 'ripe for the picking' and followed the call to arms when Northumberland and Westmorland sought to restore the religion that had been followed for over a thousand years.

One of the north's premier land-owner's and prominent Border lords, Leonard Dacre, gladly joined the cause of the rebellion and incited many of his followers to join and help overthrow what was viewed as an intolerant government and monarch. He did so for his own reasons. His grievances did not centre on the ideal that every man should follow his own conscience, religious conviction, and be happy with it, but because he had been thwarted in what he felt was his right to inheritance. He nursed a hatred based on the government's rejection of his petition to rule in the lands of his forebears. He was ready to revolt, but for no other reason than his simmering resentment of his perceived maltreatment.

The rebellion, known as the 'Rising of the North', was badly orchestrated, ill led by the northern Earls, and failed miserably. Long before its demise Dacre could see the 'writing on the wall' and spurned his alliance with the northern Earls and made his peace with Elizabeth 1.

However the story of Leonard Dacre does not end there.

On the 23rd of January 1570, the regent of Scotland, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was assassinated in the streets of Linlithgow by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. He had ruled the Scottish Border Marches with an iron fist. He was ruthless, hard and disciplined; a man not to trifle with. He had played a major part in the suppression of the Border Reivers of Liddesdale, the Armstrongs, Elliots, Crosiers and others. He was resented by the English Border Lords, who almost to a man, sympathised with the plight of his half-sister, Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots, and were adherents of the 'Old Faith'. Significantly they despised him for the part he had played in the capture of Thomas Percy following the failure of the rebellion.

The Border Reivers, released from the shackles of his domination, thought they could take up the cause that had failed under the rebel English Earls and thus provoke a war between Scotland and England. They were hell-bent on promoting disorder throughout the English Scottish Borders.

In England they had a willing adherent - Leonard Dacre. Still smarting from his failure in the inheritance of Gilsland, the thoughts that an insurrection might resurrect his cause, he let it be known that he would willingly support the Scottish Border Reivers. He had over three thousand lancers at his command. The Scots, in turn, planned to ride to Dacre's assistance.

Henry, Lord Scrope, West March Warden of England was to say 'this city stands in peril' referring to Carlisle, the great Border city with its immense castle, and the hordes of Scottish Border Reivers who were advancing from the north of the city. But all was not lost for the English. For, having received news of the insurrection in the English West March around Carlisle and Brampton, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon and the rascally seventy year old Sir John Forster arrived at Hexham, thirty five miles to the east of Carlisle. Hunsdon was ordered to take Naworth castle, home of Leonard Dacre, but his forces of fifteen hundred were outnumbered two to one.

Knowing that the Scots were on the move and mustering to come to Dacre's aid, Hunsdon decided to avoid immediate confrontation and head for Carlisle where the numbers opposing Dacre and the Scots would be enhanced with the forces of Lord Scrope, the English West March Warden.

Dacre, though, impatient and volatile, was spoiling for a fight. His forces shadowed the Queen's army under Hunsdon and Forster for four miles as it headed to Carlisle. A more rational man than Dacre would have held the desire to attack and wait for the Scottish re-inforcements, but his blood was up; he knew he had the superior numbers.

Dacre confronted Hunsdon as he prepared to cross the river Gelt on his way west to Carlisle. The battle that ensued was small in comparison to some of the sixteenth century encounters that ravished the Border lands, but the outcome was crucial. Should Dacre vanquish the government forces then Carlisle would surely fall and leave an open gateway to incursions from the north, from the Scots. The whole of the English West Marches, Cumberland and Westmorland, would be under siege. The Border Reivers of the Middle March of Scotland would quickly follow suit and invade Tynedale and Redsdale, Northumberland, with little opposition. Should the East March Border Reivers join the advance south then the Queen's forces at Berwick castle on the eastern seaboard and England's premier fortress on the Border, would not be in a position to help their allies to the west.

A small battle yes, but one which held the future of the whole of the north within its outcome!

After an initial charge on the meadows above the confluence of the river Gelt and the angry, tumbling force of the aptly named stream of the Hell Beck, near Brampton, Cumbria, Hunsdon was to say that Dacre gave him 'the proudest charge upon my shot that I ever saw'.

The valley of the Gelt is narrow, steep-sided, and the battle soon resolved itself into series of melees, hand-to-hand confrontations along its length, following the surge of the man to man, horse to horse bloody engagement above its course on the flat heath. Outnumbered but not to be outdone, Hunsdon's little army prevailed and Dacre's force was eventually broken.

He fled north to the all welcoming arms of the Border Reivers of Liddesdale. Four hundred of his army lay dead or writhing in their death throes, two hundred were taken prisoner.

As Hunsdon and Forster reached Carlisle, fifteen hundred Scottish riders under Scott of Buccleuch and Kerr of Ferniehurst could be seen waiting to the north. Had Dacre waited for their arrival instead of making a feckless strike at what he perceived to be an inferior force, the outcome of the battle, sometimes known as the 'Battle of the Hell Beck', might have paved the way to savage incursions from the north, from the Scots. War between the countries of England and Scotland might have followed.

Leonard Dacre eventually fled abroad alarmed at the government forces sent north by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in a bid to teach the Scottish Border Reivers that he did not take lightly to their harbouring of English rebels.

Leonard Dacre died penniless in Brussels. Today the ground in which he was buried is a cemetery no more.