Faith in war: the religious experience of Scottish soldiery, c.1100–c.1500

This paper examines the comparatively patchy evidence for the pastoral provision and personal faith of late medieval Scottish combatants below the rank of knight. By examining such sources as papal supplications, royal financial accounts, parliamentary rolls, chronicles, poetry and the cartularies of Scottish monastic houses and burgh collegiate churches, it is possible to identify elite and parish provision of churchmen serving the needs of Scottish troops as they mustered, trained and prepared for battle. In addition, this evidence also highlights a number of cults and relics popular with the social ranks of the ordinary Scottish soldiery, including those of SS Ninian, Leonard, Thomas Becket, Columba, the Blessed Virgin Mary and — often cast as the nemesis of Scottish troops — Cuthbert. However, this survey also points to some tensions between the spiritual interests of Scottish servicemen and their ruling elites.     

Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

Tracing the Busy Gap Rogues

Busy Gap is one of the earliest attested place names located along the line of the central sector of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, yet in Newcastle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a term of abuse, applied collectively to those who came from upland Tynedale and was synonymous with the Border Reivers. Archaeological and historical sources indicate that throughout the Middle Ages the place was located in a zone of seasonal settlement, characterized by groups of shielings probably associated with townships located in the valley of the South Tyne. The question is how to understand the role of Busy Gap, a place identified with a triangular earthwork on the north side of the Roman Wall. This paper will consider the results of recent archaeological investigations carried out by the author on the site and will investigate the place and its setting within the archaeological and historical context of early-modern Northumberland.     

‘There and back again’: The Career of John Ramsay of Terrenzeane (C. 1464–C. 1513)

War and military activity has always engendered espionage. Christine de Pisan’s Fayttes of Armes advised its readers — kings and lesser rulers — to be ‘curiose & diligent’, and ‘to send … here & there … espies subtyli … to understande the purpose of [the] enemy’.¹1 C. Pisan, The Book of Fayttes of Armes, ed. A. T. P. Byles (2010), pp. 50–51. England’s fifteenth-century king, Edward IV, was a master of such practice, with his victories against the Scots and his capture of Berwick in 1482 owing much to a vast network of intelligence. His successor, Henry VII, also invested in the area and used a great many disaffected Scots, Picards and merchants for diplomatic and military gain. And, of this group, perhaps the most interesting and contemporaneously recorded is a Scottish nobleman, John Ramsay, Lord Bothwell and Lord Balmain, of Terrenzeane (c. 1464–c. 1513). He is an individual often neglected by researchers, but who appears very much to have played an important role in shaping the histories of both kingdoms. The following article aims to trace his noteworthy career in the later medieval and early modern periods.     

Faith in war: the religious experience of Scottish soldiery,c.1100–c.1500

This paper examines the comparatively patchy evidence for the pastoral provision and personal faith of late medieval Scottish combatants below the rank of knight. By examining such sources as papal supplications, royal financial accounts, parliamentary rolls, chronicles, poetry and the cartularies of Scottish monastic houses and burgh collegiate churches, it is possible to identify elite and parish provision of churchmen serving the needs of Scottish troops as they mustered, trained and prepared for battle. In addition, this evidence also highlights a number of cults and relics popular with the social ranks of the ordinary Scottish soldiery, including those of SS Ninian, Leonard, Thomas Becket, Columba, the Blessed Virgin Mary and — often cast as the nemesis of Scottish troops — Cuthbert. However, this survey also points to some tensions between the spiritual interests of Scottish servicemen and their ruling elites.