Anglo-Scottish Border Crìochan Anglo-Albannach | |
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![]() The A1 road crossing the border between Scotland and England. Entry to Scotland is marked by three Scottish saltires and entry into England is marked by three flags of Northumberland | |
Characteristics | |
Entities | ![]() ![]() |
Length | 96 miles (154 km) |
History | |
Established | September 25, 1237 Signing of the Treaty of York |
Current shape | 1999 Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 |
Treaties | Treaty of York Treaty of Newcastle Treaty of Union 1706 |
Notes | See also: Wars of Scottish Independence |
The Anglo-Scottish border (Scottish Gaelic : Crìochan Anglo-Albannach) is a border separating Scotland and England which runs for 96 miles (154 km) between Marshall Meadows Bay on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west.
The Firth of Forth was the border between the Picto-Gaelic Kingdom of Alba and the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria in the early 10th century. It became the first Anglo-Scottish border with the annexation of Northumbria by Anglo-Saxon England in the mid-10th century. In 973, Kenneth, King of Scots attended the English king, Edgar the Peaceful, at his council in Chester. After Kenneth had reportedly done homage, Edgar rewarded Kenneth by granting him Lothian. [1] Despite this transaction, the control of Lothian was not finally settled and the region was taken by the Scots at the Battle of Carham in 1018 and the River Tweed became the de facto Anglo-Scottish border. The Solway–Tweed line was legally established in 1237 by the Treaty of York between England and Scotland. [2] It remains the border today, with the exception of the Debatable Lands, north of Carlisle, and a small area around Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was taken by England in 1482. Berwick was not fully annexed into England until 1746, by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746. [3]
For centuries until the Union of the Crowns the region on either side of the boundary was a lawless territory suffering from the repeated raids in each direction of the Border Reivers. Following the Treaty of Union 1706, ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united Scotland with England and Wales to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Border forms the boundary of the two legal systems as the treaty between Scotland and England guaranteed the continued separation of English law and Scots law. [4] The age of marriage under Scots law is 16, while it is 18 under English law. The border settlements of Gretna Green to the west, and Coldstream and Lamberton to the east, were convenient for elopers from England who wanted to marry under Scottish laws, and marry without publicity.
The marine boundary was adjusted by the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 so that the boundary within the territorial waters (up to the 12-mile (19 km) limit) is 90 metres (300 ft) north of the boundary for oil installations established by the Civil Jurisdiction (Offshore Activities) Order 1987. [5] The land border is near and roughly parallel to the 420 million-year-old Iapetus Suture.
The border country, historically known as the Scottish Marches, is the area either side of the Anglo-Scottish border including parts of the modern council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders, and parts of the English counties of Cumbria and Northumberland. It is a hilly area, with the Scottish Southern Uplands to the north, and the Cheviot Hills forming the border between the two countries to the south. From the Norman conquest of England until the reign of James VI of Scotland, who in the course of his reign became James I of England while retaining the more northerly realm, border clashes were common and the monarchs of both countries relied on Scottish Earls of March and Lord Warden of the Marches to defend and control the frontier region.
In 1333, during the Second War of Scottish Independence, Scotland was defeated at the Battle of Halidon Hill and Edward III occupied much of the borderlands. Edward declared Edward Balliol the new King of Scots, in exchange for the much of southern Scotland and absolute supplication, but this was not recognised by the majority of the Scottish nobility who remained loyal to David II and conflict continued. [6] By 1341, Perth and Edinburgh had been retaken by the Scots and Edward Balliol fled to England, effectively nullifying the supposed treaty. Edward would continue the war but was unable to restore the puppet ruler Balliol to the throne and with the Treaty of Berwick (1357) Scottish independence was once again acknowledged with any pretence to territorial annexations dropped.
A 16th-century Act of the Scottish Parliament talks about the chiefs of the border clans, and a late 17th-century statement by the Lord Advocate uses the terms "clan" and "family" interchangeably. Although Lowland aristocrats may have increasingly liked to refer to themselves as "families", the idea that the term "clan" should be used of Highland families alone is a 19th-century convention. [7]
Historic Border clans include the following: Armstrong, Beattie, Bannatyne, Bell, Briar, Carruthers, Douglas, Elliot, Graham, Hedley of Redesdale, Henderson, Hall, Home or Hume, Irvine, Jardine, Johnstone, Kerr, Little, Moffat, Nesbitt, Ogilvy, Porteous, Robson, Routledge, Scott, Thompson, Tweedie.
During late medieval and early modern eras—from the late 13th century, with the creation by Edward I of England of the first Lord Warden of the Marches to the early 17th century and the creation of the Middle Shires, promulgated after the personal union of England and Scotland under James VI of Scotland (James I of England)—the area around the border was known as the Scottish Marches.
For centuries the Marches on either side of the boundary was an area of mixed allegiances, where families or clans switched which country or side they supported as suited their family interests at that time, and lawlessness abounded. Before the personal union of the two kingdoms under James, the border clans would switch allegiance between the Scottish and English crowns depending on what was most favourable for the members of the clan. For a time a powerful local clan dominated a region on the border between England and Scotland. It was known as the Debatable Lands and neither monarch's writ was heeded.[ citation needed ]
Following the 1603 Union of the Crowns, King James VI & I decreed that the Borders should be renamed 'the Middle Shires'. In the same year the King placed George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar in charge of pacification of the borders. Courts were set up in the towns of the Middle Shires and known reivers were arrested. The more troublesome and lower classes were executed without trial; known as "Jeddart justice" (after the town of Jedburgh in Roxburghshire). Mass hanging soon became a common occurrence. In 1605 he established a joint commission of ten members, drawn equally from Scotland and England, to bring law and order to the region. This was aided by statutes in 1606 and 1609, first to repeal hostile laws on both sides of the border, and then to more easily prosecute cross-border raiders. [8] Reivers could no longer escape justice by crossing from England to Scotland or vice versa. [9] The rough-and-ready Border Laws were abolished and the folk of the middle shires found they had to obey the law of the land like all other subjects.
In 1607 James felt he could boast that "the Middle Shires" had "become the navel or umbilic of both kingdoms, planted and peopled with civility and riches". After ten years King James had succeeded; the Middle Shires had been brought under central law and order. By the early 1620s the Borders were so peaceful that the Crown was able to scale down its operations.
Despite these improvements, the Joint Commission continued its work, and as late as 25 September 1641 under King Charles I, Sir Richard Graham, a local laird and English MP, was petitioning the Parliament of Scotland "for regulating the disorders in the borders". [10] Conditions along the border generally deteriorated during the Commonwealth and Protectorate periods, with the development of Moss-trooper raiders. Following the Restoration, on-going border lawlessness was dealt with by reviving former legislation, renewed continually in eleven subsequent acts, for periods ranging from five to eleven years, up until the late 1750s. [8]
The Debatable Lands lay between Scotland and England to the north of Carlisle, [11] the largest population centre being Canonbie. [12] For over three hundred years the area was effectively controlled by local clans, such as the Armstrongs, who successfully resisted any attempt by the Scottish or English governments to impose their authority. [13] In 1552 commissioners met to divide the land in two: Douglas of Drumlanrigg leading the Scots; Lord Wharton leading the English; the French ambassador acting as umpire. The Scots' Dike was built as the new frontier, with stones set up bearing the arms of England and of Scotland. [14] [15]
Berwick is famous for its hesitation over whether it is part of Scotland or England. [16] Berwickshire is in Scotland while the town is in England, although both Berwick and the lands up to the Firth of Forth belonged to the Kingdom of Northumbria in the Early Middle Ages. [17] The town changed hands more than a dozen times before being finally taken by the English in 1482, though confusion continued for centuries. The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 clarified the status of Berwick as an English town. In the 1950s the artist Wendy Wood moved the border signs south to the middle of the River Tweed as a protest. [18] In 2008 SNP MSP Christine Grahame made calls in the Scottish Parliament for Berwick to become part of Scotland again. [19] Berwick's MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan has resisted any change, arguing that: "Voters in Berwick-upon-Tweed do not believe it is whether they are in England or Scotland that is important." [20]
At the River Tweed the border runs down the middle of the river, however between the villages of Wark and Cornhill the Scottish border comes south of the river to enclose a small riverside meadow of approximately 2 to 3 acres (about a hectare). This piece of land is known as the Ba Green. It is said locally that every year the men of Coldstream (to the North of the river) would play mob football with the men of Wark (to the South of the river) at Ba, and the winning side would claim the Ba Green for their country. As Coldstream grew to have a larger population than Wark, the Coldstream men always defeated the Wark men at the game, and so the land became a permanent part of Scotland. [21] [22] [23]
It is a common misconception that Hadrian's Wall marks the Anglo-Scottish border. The wall lies entirely within England and has never formed this boundary. [24] [25] While in the west, at Bowness-on-Solway, it is less than 0.6 mi (1.0 km) south of the border with Scotland, in the east it is as much as 68 miles (109 km) away.
For centuries the wall was the boundary between the Roman province of Britannia (to the south) and the Celtic lands of Caledonia (to the north). However Britannia occasionally extended as far north as the later Antonine Wall. Furthermore, to speak of England and Scotland at any time prior to the ninth century is anachronistic; such nations had no meaningful existence during the period of Roman rule.
"Hadrian's Wall" is nonetheless often used as an informal reference to the modern border, often semi-humorously. [lower-alpha 1]
Cumbria and Northumberland have amongst the largest Scottish-born communities in the world outside Scotland. 16,628 Scottish-born people were residing in Cumbria in 2001 (3.41% of the county's population) and 11,435 Scottish-born people were residing in Northumberland (3.72% of the county's population); the overall percentage of Scottish-born people in England is 1.62%. [26] Consequently, almost 9% of Scotland's population is English-born (459,486), with higher than average percentages of English-born people in both Dumfries & Galloway and the Scottish Borders council areas, respectively, reaching as high as 35% or higher English-born. [27]
Berwick-upon-Tweed, sometimes known as Berwick-on-Tweed or simply Berwick, is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, 2+1⁄2 mi (4 km) south of the Anglo-Scottish border, and the northernmost town in England. The 2011 United Kingdom census recorded Berwick's population as 12,043.
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothian and, to the south-west, south and east, the English counties of Cumbria and Northumberland. The administrative centre of the area is Newtown St Boswells.
Lothian is a region of the Scottish Lowlands, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. The principal settlement is the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, while other significant towns include Livingston, Linlithgow, Bathgate, Queensferry, Dalkeith, Bonnyrigg, Penicuik, Musselburgh, Prestonpans, Tranent, North Berwick, Dunbar, Whitburn and Haddington.
The River Tweed, or Tweed Water, is a river 97 miles (156 km) long that flows east across the Border region in Scotland and northern England. Tweed cloth derives its name from its association with the River Tweed. The Tweed is one of the great salmon rivers of Britain and the only river in England where an Environment Agency rod licence is not required for angling. The river generates a large income for the local borders region, attracting anglers from all around the world.
Berwickshire is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in south-eastern Scotland, on the English border. The county takes its name from Berwick-upon-Tweed, its original county town, which was part of Scotland at the time of the county's formation in the twelfth century, but became part of England in 1482 after several centuries of swapping back and forth between the two kingdoms. After the loss of Berwick, Duns and Greenlaw both served as county town at different periods.
Coldstream is a town and civil parish in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. A former burgh, Coldstream is the home of the Coldstream Guards, a regiment in the British Army.
Border reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border from the late 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. They included both Scottish and English people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their victims' nationality. Their heyday was in the last hundred years of their existence, during the time of the House of Stuart in the Kingdom of Scotland and the House of Tudor in the Kingdom of England.
Norham is a village and civil parish in Northumberland, England, It is located 7 miles (11 km) south-west of Berwick on the south side of the River Tweed where it is the border with Scotland.
Northumberland, England's northernmost county, is a land where Roman occupiers once guarded a walled frontier, Anglian invaders fought with Celtic natives, and Norman lords built castles to suppress rebellion and defend a contested border with Scotland. The present-day county is a vestige of an independent kingdom that once stretched from Edinburgh to the Humber, hence its name, meaning literally 'north of the Humber'. Reflecting its tumultuous past, Northumberland has more castles than any other county in England, and the greatest number of recognised battle sites. Once an economically important region that supplied much of the coal that powered the industrial revolution, Northumberland is now a primarily rural county with a small and gradually shrinking population.
The Anglo-Scottish Wars comprise the various battles which continued to be fought between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland from the time of the Wars of Independence in the early 14th century through to the latter years of the 16th century.
The Debatable Lands, also known as debatable ground, batable ground or threip lands, lay between Scotland and England. It was formerly in question as to which it belonged when they were distinct kingdoms. The name either signifies litigious or disputable ground, or it comes from the Old English word 'battable'.
The Battle of Carham was fought between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Northumbrians at Carham on Tweed. Uhtred, son of Waltheof of Bamburgh, fought the combined forces of Malcolm II of Scotland and Owen the Bald. Their combined forces defeated Earl Uhtred's forces, determining the eastern border of Scotland at the River Tweed.
Wark or Wark on Tweed is a village in the English county of Northumberland. It lies about 15 mi (24 km) south west of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Scottish Marches was the term used for the Anglo-Scottish border during the late medieval and early modern eras, characterised by violence and cross-border raids. The Scottish Marches era came to an end during the first decade of the 17th century following the union of the crowns of England and Scotland.
The Scots' Dike or dyke is a three and a half mile / 5.25 km long linear earthwork, constructed by the English and the Scots in the year 1552 to mark the division of the Debatable lands and thereby settle the exact boundary between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England.
Carham or Carham on Tweed is a village in Northumberland, England. The village lies on the south side of the River Tweed about 3 miles (5 km) west of Coldstream. According to the United Kingdom Census 2011, it is the place in England with greatest proportion of Scottish-born people, at approximately 33%.
Clan Blackadder is a Scottish clan. The clan historically held lands near the Anglo-Scottish border.
March law was a system of customary international law dealing with cross-border dispute settlement, operating during the medieval and early-modern periods in the area of the Anglo-Scottish border or Anglo-Scottish marches. The word "march" is the Old English form of the Old French word "marche" meaning "boundary", and its use was not unique to the Anglo-Scottish border - the Anglo-Welsh border and the Anglo-Irish marches had their own versions of "the Law of the Marches". They were "essentially a set of regulations for the prosecution of offences committed by the inhabitants of one country inside the territory of the other, and for the recovery of property stolen or lent across their common border".
Wark on Tweed Castle, sometimes referred to as Carham Castle, is a ruined motte-and-bailey castle at the West end of Wark on Tweed in Northumberland. The ruins are a Grade II* listed building.
Marshall Meadows Bay is the northernmost point of England. It is located on the Northumberland coast, 2+1⁄2 miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and just to the south of the Anglo-Scottish border. Across the border in Scotland is the county of Berwickshire in the Borders region. The hamlet of Marshall Meadows lies to the west of the bay, and is the most northerly inhabited place in England. The Marshall Meadows Manor House Hotel is here, along with a farm and a caravan site. There is a disused tunnel from the caravan site to the bay below, and there is a small cave 300 m (1,000 ft) north of this tunnel, plus another small cave just around the corner of Marshall Meadows Point. Nearby is the A1 trunk road and the East Coast Main Line railway.
For the purposes of the English conflict of laws, every country in the world which is not part of England and Wales is a foreign country and its foreign laws. This means that not only totally foreign independent countries such as France and Russia... are foreign countries but also British Colonies such as the Falkland Islands. Moreover, the other parts of the United Kingdom—Scotland and Northern Ireland—are foreign countries for present purposes, as are the other British Islands, the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey.
It was Berwick which became the focal point for the direct action of one of the first modern Scottish nationalists, Wendy Wood in the 1950s. Controversially...she was regularly arrested for moving the border signs over the Tweed.
Media related to Border of England-Scotland at Wikimedia Commons