The Border Reivers of Clan Bell

What's the background to reiving?

During the late Middle Ages, specifically between the late 13th and late 15th centuries, Scotland and England were at war - and the people living in the border areas in both Scotland and England bore the brunt of it.

It was a dangerous time to live in the region, and life was hard. The frequent Anglo-Scottish wars meant that the border areas were often devastated by battles - and even when there wasn’t a war ongoing, tensions were always high, leaving the constant threat of further warfare lingering.

What was the point in trying to farm on a piece of land if there was the possibility that it might be destroyed at any time? And besides, arable farming wasn’t well-suited to the land in the area, much of which is hilly or open moorland. This type of land is much better for livestock farming, as it’s suitable for grazing cattle rather than growing crops - and this made it easy for reivers, as cattle could be easily stolen and smuggled away.

There were other factors at play that encouraged the reiving lifestyle in this region. At the time, it was common for land to be inherited through a system called gavelkind rather than primogeniture. That is, if a man died, his land was divided equally among his sons rather than it all going to the first-born son. Whilst this is arguably a much fairer method of doing things, it also meant that each person was left with less land, which sometimes wasn’t enough to survive on.

All of these things lead us to the Border Reivers. Because it was so tough to survive in the area during this time, families or kin would band together to improve their own lives at the expense of their enemies.

What did the Border Reivers do?

Reiving was a way of life, and a way of making a living. There were reivers on both sides of the border, and raids weren’t necessarily only cross-border attacks: Scottish reivers were just as likely to raid other Scottish clans as they were English families. Anyone could be a victim of an attack by the Border Reivers, so long as they weren’t direct family.

Indeed, the preference for kinship over nationality was one of the reasons that the reivers were so difficult to control. Marriages across national lines were so common that it made it difficult to enforce national laws, and so the courts in both London and Edinburgh passed legislation on intermarriage. At one point, it was a death sentence for a Scottish man to marry an English woman without first being granted permission to do so.

Reivers would hop on a sturdy pony or nag which was used to the rough terrain of the area, on the hunt for cattle, horses and any other easily transportable goods they could get their hands on. Raids weren’t usually ad-hoc affairs though, they were carefully planned raids and could involve anything from three men to three thousand, all armed with whatever they could get their hands on, whether a lance, crossbow or sword.

They dressed for battle, with light armour and metal helmets, earning the reivers the nickname “steel bonnets”. Raids, as they were called, could be a quick jaunt to the neighbouring village by the cover of darkness, or it could be an epic multi-day journey. There are reports of reivers journeying as far north as Edinburgh for raids, and as far south as Chorley in Lancashire.

The reivers as soldiers

Although they were often denounced by those in charge in both Scotland and England, the Border Reivers were also called upon by them to serve as mercenary soldiers, thanks to the horsemanship skills picked up on their raids. They proved to be a useful addition to the armies on both sides of the border, and after meeting one reiver, the Bold Buccleugh, Queen Elizabeth I even said “with ten thousand such men, James VI could shake any throne in Europe.”

However, because reivers played to family ties rather than national allegiances, this often proved tricky to manage for the army chiefs - and it was reported on more than one occasion that reiver soldiers were seen swapping sides and chatting with one another mid-battle! They also put their reiving skills to good use in the battle camps, plundering fellow soldiers. Once a reiver, always a reiver...

The Bells as reivers

There were Bells on both sides of the border - and to this day, many Bells can be found in the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway on the Scottish side as well as Northumberland and Cumbria on the English side.

Clan Bell were deemed, along with twelve other families, to be the “Devil’s Dozen” during the reiving years, and they were notorious for being unruly and causing trouble (even if that trouble was necessary for their survival).

The Bells were among a number of families who were issued with letters of warning by the Crown in 1517, instructing them to keep the peace. Towards the end of the same century, in 1587, an act was passed “for the quieting and keeping in obedience of the disordeit and subjectis inhabitants of the Borders, Highlands and Isles” along with a list of clans including the Bells.

The end of the reivers

During peacetime in the region, the borderlands operated under what’s known as March law. The area was divided into six ‘Marches’ and each had a warden appointed who was in charge of administering justice with duties including deterring raids and recovering loot.

Each side of the border had three Marches, East, Middle and West, and they had their own laws which were different to both Edinburgh and London law. One of the best known is a law called the “hot trod” by which a person who had been raided was allowed to launch a counter-raid within six days to recover their stolen goods. They had to announce what they were doing and make a racket whilst mounting their attack, and any passersby who came across the counter-raiders were required to join in.

Another law was that complaints were dealt with on “truce days”, when disputes were presented to the March Warden. That didn’t often lead to complaints being resolved, as many of the wardens were actually receivers themselves, and were biased towards those in their own family, or related clans.

The Marches were dissolved, however, when James VI came to power in 1603 when the Scottish and English crowns were unified. He began suppressing raiding activity in the border region and rounded up the reivers who caused the most trouble. Sadly, many reivers were victims of Jethart Justice, where they were hanged first and tried later. Others were deported, and others still were conscripted to fight.

Life was still hard in the border areas, despite the new rules and the lack of reiving meant that many families simply couldn’t survive in the region they’d lived for generations. Many Bells went to the Plantation of Ulster, with the result that there are still plenty of people with the surname in Ireland today.

The legacy of the Border Reivers can still be seen in the annual festivals throughout the Scottish Border towns, with the Riding of the Marches (a ride out on horses around the town boundaries) offering a strong link to these towns’ reiving heritage.

There are also a great many depictions of reivers in literature, most notably in Walter Scott’s collection of Border Ballads, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In these, the Border Reiver is depicted as a heroic figure with a strong moral compass and a code of honour, who was a decent person at heart despite any bloodshed.