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The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

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THE STEEL BONNETS by George MacDonald Fraser is a prodigious and esoteric historical narrative about the Anglo-Scottish border. The time is the 16th century. The place and players are indicated by the book's subtitle, "The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers", reivers being raiders. The place is more specifically the six administrative areas called Marches (3 English and 3 Scottish - West, Middle, and East on each side of the line) which straddled the border to serve as a buffer zone.

Having grown up in Carlisle, the former bastion of the English West March, Fraser has written a work of love divided into five parts. In the first three, Fraser describes the genesis of the Border Marches, the Wardens, one per March, that were responsible for the maintenance of order, the raider families that lived there, and the culture and practice of violence that characterized the area. The author's catalog of depredations, based on research of contemporary records, includes murder, arson, blackmail, kidnapping, rustling, racketeering, feuding, plunder, and banditry - all made infinitely worse by the indifference and/or cynical scheming of the English and Scottish central governments which tolerated the not-infrequent participation in the mayhem by the Wardens themselves. Part 4 is a sequential narrative history of events along the Border during the 16th century, the last before James VI of Scotland united the island's thrones as James I of Great Britain. Part 5 describes this monarch's brutal suppression of both the violence and raider families of the Marches during the first decade of the 17th century, an effort that finally brought peace to the region.

THE STEEL BONNETS offers a surfeit of detail. At times, as Fraser brings on stage the multitude of principal characters and attempts to unravel the maze of ever-shifting family alliances and feuds (Scot vs. Anglo, Scot vs. Scot, Anglo vs. Anglo, everybody vs. everyone), the reader may decide the author went over the top. However, the story is never uninteresting, and the social chaos is appalling.

If the reader was delighted by the humor in Fraser's other books, e.g. the McAuslan and Flashman series, there may be some disappointment as this narrative is relatively straitlaced. However, even here the author's dry wit occasionally shows. Regarding the assumption of the English East March Wardenship by Henry Carey in 1588:

"... his notion of Border justice was that the only good reiver was a dead one - a point of view which has much to be said for it. Possibly the fact that he suffered from gall-stones made him irritable, for he started in office as he meant to continue, by hanging Scottish thieves."

And, as always, Fraser's prose is a joy to behold, as demonstrated by his closing remarks:

"Only now and then, if your romantic imagination is sharp enough, there can come a little drift from the past ... most vivid of all, perhaps, in a little fellside village at night, when there is a hunter's moon and a strong wind, and the black cloud shadows hurry across the tops, and beasts stamp in the dark, and an inn door down in the village opens and slams with a blink of light, and the rough Norse voices sound and laugh and die away ... The old Border is buried a long time ago, and there is hardly a trace now to mark where the steel bonnets passed by."

In this wonderful look at a dark and fascinating period in Anglo-Scottish history, Fraser brings the same quirky attitude and deep appreciation of man's inherent rascality that make the "Flashman" books and his novel "Mr American" (q.v.) so iminently readable to the explication of the complex and violent history of the Border reivers.

Beginning with a Foreword that, among other things, describes the jolt he got watching Richard Nixon's Inauguration on television, when he saw Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Billy Graham standing together on the platform, he explains, in typical fashion, that Johnson, Nixon and Graham are all names that figured strongly in the reiving years, and thateach, as well, wore faces that might well still be seen in the Border country today.

He delves into the history of Hadrian's Wall ("Any Englishman can tell you why it was built -- 'To keep the Scots out!'"), and speculates how Anglo-Scottish history might have been changed were the Wall a few milse north or south.

And then he dives off into the history of the Border and the Reivers.

This is *not* a standard, dry history text, laying everything out in a straight line,with dates and battles to memorise and all the juice sucked out of it.

No, Fraser skips around; first giving us an outline of the whole period, he then, in subsequent chapters, cover different aspects of the history in depth, and not necessarily chronologically.

He gives us fascinating details, such as why the spiral stairs in the watch towers built by the Kerr family tended to spiral anti-clockwise instead of the usual clockwise, in the process defining and explaining the origin of the term "correy fisted".

He writes of the great feuds among the reiving families, many of whom were to be found on both sides of the Border, of the practise of blackmail (somewhat different than the meaning the term has today) and in what manner one might legally pursue raiders back across the Border to attempt to retrieve one's property.

Explaining the administrative setup of the Border, he describes the careers and personalities of several of the more prominent Border Wardens, lawmen assigned by both England and Scotland to keep the peace, but never given the budgets or forces they needed.

He introduces us to several of the prominent reivers, including some of Sir Walter Scott's ancestors, and recounts their deeds.

He analyses the economy of the Border and the reiving system, as well as anyone can, at this remove and from extant records, and shows howthis all affected the overall history ofAnglo-Scottish relations.

And, for good measure, he includes the truly "Monition of Cursing" issued by the Archbishop of Glasgow against the reivers, a masterful piece of vituperation that runs four or more full pages depending on the edition.

Not a history text in the classic sense, not a novel, because it's all true, Fraser has presented the reader with a corking good reading experience that opens the window on another time and place whose influences still reverberate in the world today.

((About the spelling of Eliot... or Ellet ... or Eliott...: The family seemed to not mind how their name was spelt -- Fraser lists a large number of variant spellings with various permutations of "L"s and "T"s. He then points out that almost any were acceptable -- *except*, for some reason, the double "L" and double "T", a spelling the family affected, for some reason, to despise...))

Infectiously well written like all Fraser, this look at the Border Reivers is full of quirky, anecdotal history of the region and the period. Fraser writes almost conversationally in this book, which is a nice change from drier, more academic histories. The only problem here is a slight lack of narrative line -- at times, the book jumps from subject to subject a little too randomly. But this is a minor flaw.

While a wonderful book in its own right, Fraser's work also sheds some interesting light on David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed." That work examines the four major waves of English immigration to the new world. The fourth and final wave comes from among the region and people Fraser describes so well.

Fraser has completed a difficult task in this book. He brings his novelist sensibilities for the reader to the task of clarifying one of the more difficult and confusing periods in Anglo-Scottish history. It is highly readable and full of primary source material that enriches the read. He also includes detailed history of the various reivers families - a fascinating read for those who family roots are in the Border.

Most of us think of Elizabethan Britain as a reasonably peaceful place. Shakespeare and Marlowe writing plays, Edmund Spenser writing "The Faerie Queen," Sir Francis Bacon inventing science to replace natural philosophy, the English Renaissance.

However, there was one part of Britain that underwent continuous terror and warfare, the Borders. The area lying around the border between Scotland and England was an almost lawless place. Great numbers of the people inhabiting the Border Marches lived by despoiling each other. The 16th Century was when great tribes feuded continuously among themselves, when robbery and kidnapping were everyday professions, when raiding, arson, murder and extortion were an important part of the social system. This had little to do with war between the two countries, who spent most of the century at peace with each other. Much of the raiding was not cross-border, but rather English attacking English and Scots stealing from other Scots. It was a way of life pursued in peace time, by people who accepted it as normal. The seamen of the first Elizabeth might sweep the world's greatest fleet off the seas, but for all the protection she could give to her Northumbrian peasants they might as well have been in Africa.

While the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled the relatively secure hearts of their kingdoms, the narrow hill land between was dominated by the lance and the sword. The tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary farmers of the valleys, in their own phrase "shook loose the Border." They continued to shake it as long as it was a political reality, practising systematic robbery and destruction on each other. History has named them the Border Reivers.

Fraser explains, in very well written words, how the situation on the Borders came about. He describes the manner of people who lived there, who were the leading robber families, how they lived and ate and dressed and built their houses and so forth. He tells how the reivers practised such crimes as the protection racket, robbery and cattle rustling. He also explains about the feuding that went on. He describes how Border law operated under the March Wardens and how the two governments tried to quell the reivers. Lastly the book tells how the reiving ended when England and Scotland came under one king, and the older Borders ceased to be.

Loved it!
This book is about the conditions on the "no man's land" between England and Scotland in the 1500's to the 1600's. However, this book can give you a very good understanding of what goes on in a modern day "failed state".
The politics, the economics, and the violence and lawlessness are very much the same as many other parts of the world in this century.
This could arguably apply to places like the border between Israel/Palestine or Pakistan/Afghanistan etc.

barbarous,murderous,anarchic, happenings on the Anglo-Scottish borderlands from the 13th through 16th centuries. It was Afghanistan with kilts.

With all the focus on Scotland being tied to all things tartan, the peoples of the Borderlands often overlooked. George MacDonald Fraser paints a spectacular portal into the tumultuous life of the Border Rievers and all they came in contact with. The objective writing style favors neither Scotland nor England. He does not attempt to justify one side or the others action- it just is what it is. This approach fits in perfectly with the frequency in which loyalties and rivals switched sides and waged a blood feud that is still felt in parts today. Anyone who is remotely interested in anything associated with Scotland, England, organized crime or just a good history will bask in the wonder of this spectacular book.