Recolonisation And The Emergence Of Reiver Society

Much reduced rental valuations are recorded for the Redesdale manors in the 14th-century inquisitions, reflecting population fall and settlement contraction caused by the warfare, climatic decline and disease of that period. By the end of the century, however, there are hints that settlement was beginning to creep further up the valley.

The 1398 inquisition includes amongst its list of 'divers places, scalings and wastes' a series of placenames not hitherto encountered, including 'Kirkestilland' (Birkhill?) and 'Mekilhyresfeld' (Horsley ??). Their position in the list and tentative identification imply that these 'places' - which probably represent farmsteads or assarted parcels of valley-bottom arable or meadowland - lay above the previous limit of cultivation and settlement, Elishaw-Shittleheugh-Blakehope.

Indeed it is possible that the turbulent conditions of the later medieval era may, paradoxically, have ultimately favoured an expansion of peasant colonisation and seasonal transhumance, and an improvement in the status of the border tenants.

Formerly the exploitation of the uplands, whether by means of permanent stock farms or seasonal shieling pastures and lodges, appears to have been tightly controlled by the Umfraville feudal overlords or their principal vassals such as the Battaille lineage in the Usway valley noted above. A weakening of feudal lordship over the Northumbrian dales during the 14th -15th centuries and the attendant growth of the kinship 'surnames' may conceivably have afforded the tenant peasantry more opportunity for assarting coupled with less strictly regulated shielding on upland pastures. Thus far greater acreages of pasture are listed in 1495 (IPM Hen VII, 414 no. 971) in the upland hopes by comparison with those recorded in the 14th century.

Whereas in 1325 there were 100 acres of wood and 200 of waste in Cottenshope 1000 acres were rented at the end of the 15th century, likewise 20 acres of wood and 200 of moor in Spithope in 1325 as opposed to 1000 in 1495. Moreover new grazing areas figure in the 1495 document, including 'Thillez' (clearly the Sills Burn valley from its position in the list) and 'Byrdhop' (by the mid 16th century the site of a settlement on the west bank of the Rede a little way above Rochester). All this is presumably indicative of some measure of agricultural recovery, but may also signify that any earlier restriction on the extent of grazing in the upper valley, to safeguard the lord's hunting rights, had effectively been abandoned.

A statute enacted in 1421 demonstrates that the patterns of lawlessness and petty violence associated with what is now termed Reiver society were already endemic in Redesdale by the early 15th century. It was intended to curb the depredations of the 'thieves and felons, called intakers and outparters, dwelling within the franchise of Redesdale where the king's writs runneth not' ("appellez Intakers & Outputters" - Statutes, 9 Hen V, 7; cf. Hodgson 1827, 60).

The development of this distinct frontier society is a complex issue, doubtless arising from the interplay of several factors. These have been most recently analysed by Tuck (1971: 27-28, 1985: 51-52), and include a decline in feudal lordship and attendant growth of kinship groups as alternative providers of security, along with the government economies in military spending in the 15th century and consequent need to rely on the manpower resources of the Border dales to fill the gap.

The characteristic surnames associated with the reiver clans first appear in documentary sources in the later 14th century. The transformation of upland-valley inhabitants into a kinship-structured frontier militia embedded patterns of low-medium level reciprocal violence within Border society for more than two centuries, but also brought about a rise in status and greater freedom for the Redesdale tenantry. This process is again highlighted by the inquisition of 1495 (IPM Hen VII, 415 no.971):

There are in the said manor (of Otterburn) divers free tenants, holding their tenements there of the lord of the said manor within the march . . ., who are want to pay . . . ., but in time of war between England and the Scots they shall pay no rent or anything else, but give their help together with their lord there to keep the vale, or valley, of Reddesdale and those who dwell there from plunderers, enemies and robbers.