gates to the usurper, were not soon
forgotten, and engendered in the Border mind an undying hatred of England.
It is not to be wondered at that the inhabitants of the Scottish Border
should seldom either think or speak of the English except as their "auld
enemies." To despoil them became, if not a religious, at least a patriotic
duty. These circumstances to which reference has been made, and others of
a kindred nature, may account, in some degree at least, for the
extraordinary fact that the Border mosstrooper never seems to have been
ashamed of his calling. On the contrary he gloried in it. In his eyes it
was honourable and worthy. The undaunted bearing of the Bold Buccleuch,
for example, and his cavalier manner in dealing with the English wardens,
showed how thoroughly he enjoyed the work in which he was engaged. Eure
tells how, on one occasion, he sent his cousin, Henry Bowes, to confer
with this famous freebooter on some question in dispute, but Buccleuch
"scorned to speak with him, and gathered his forces; and if my said cousin
had not wisely foreseen and taken time to have come away he had been
stayed himself. Two several messages were sent from Buccleuch from out his
company that were in the field, part to have stayed with him and those
that were with him. Not long since some of his men having stolen in my
March, my men following their trade were stayed of his officer of
Hermitage, their horses taken and themselves escaped on foot."[3]

The English warden had evidently considerable difficulty in accounting
for Buccleuch's attitude, for we find in a letter written to Burghley a
few days after this happened that he is disposed to attribute his enmity
to England to his zeal for Romanism. "His secret friends," he says, "say
he is a papist; his surest friends in court are papists about the Queen,
and labour his grace with the King. He strengthened himself much of late,
and secretly says he will not stir till some certainty of the Spaniards
arrive. To England he is a secret enemy, mighty proud, publishing his
descent to be from Angus, and laboureth to be created Earl, and claimeth
his blood to be partly royal. His poverty is great, all which concurring
with his pride and Spanish religion, I leave to your honourable wisdom to
censure."

This picture is certainly painted in strong colours. The one point in it
which is really significant, however, is that Buccleuch was "a secret
enemy to England." This may be said of nine