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Showing posts with the label English Middle March

FOR THE PEACE AND QUIET OF THE FRONTIERS

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On the 12 th and 13 th of September 1543, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a consultation involving Lord Wharton, the English Lord Deputy Warden General, the three deputy wardens and the captains of the castles at Carlisle, Norham, Wark and other strategic spots, appointed a number of watches to be set on the Border for ‘Peace and Quiet of the Frontiers.’ The watches were to be set nightly, with some in day time, ‘according to the ancient customs of the Marches’ and other clauses included that every man should follow a trod, upon pain of death, no man to harbour, aid or abet any fugitives, rebel, felon, murderer, English or Scottish, or ‘practice with them,’ also punishable by death. Those that signed the document were Lord Wharton, Lord Eure, Deputy Warden of the East March, Lord Ogle of the Middle March and Sir Thomas Dacre of the West. Sir Richard Musgrave, captain of Carlisle, Mr. Dunye, captain of Berwick, Sir John Horsley, captain of Bamburgh, Richard Bowes, captain of No...

Hadrian's Wall

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The reivers had a ready cut source of stone available for building their pele towers and bastles and made full use of robbing out Emperor Hadrian’s world-famous boundary for their own purposes. Even Carlisle Cathedral has grey stone taken from the wall mixed in with the red sandstone of the impressive building. The Wall runs from Wallsend on Tyneside cutting right through the heart of Northumberland and on to Bowness on Solway in Cumbria. The best-preserved parts of the UNESCO World Heritage site are contained in the Middle March at Chesters and Housesteads Roman Forts and at Corbridge Roman Town. During the late reiver period an English antiquarian called William Campden complained that he couldn’t visit Housesteads because of the ‘rank robbers thereabouts’ known as the Busy Gap Rogues. A family of Armstrongs were living at Housesteads and continued their reiving ways until as late as 1704 when Nicholas Armstrong was hanged and his family dispersed to America. Visit hadr...