Pacification of The Borders The Pennington Archive
A site about the border reivers has an interesting selection of information about our cattle-stealing ancestors.
There are maps, blog posts on muster rolls, on armour, clothing, reiver names and families…
And there are also images of contemporary documents, in their glorious Elizabethan/Jacobean handwriting. Some have been summarised, but many have not.
The site says:
The Pacification Documents in this website record some troubles and the remedies in 1600s . The documents should be transcribed and made public. Could you be the first to transcribe these documents that have never been read in modern language?
Click on a thumbnail of the folio then right click to save the document to your computer to transcribe and then send please the transcription back to this site.
However, the site doesn’t seem to have been updated in a few years, and there are no comment boxes, or ‘contact’ options to return transcriptions.
My two penn’orth
Before I realised this, I thought I’d ‘have a go’. At least at a couple of the documents: it would take a month of Sundays (and a lot of ibruprofen!) to work through them all.
After all, I am interested in the reivers – and in practising my ‘skills’ deciphering Elizabethan and Jacobean handwriting.
Starting ‘in the middle’
The Pacification document I opened turned out not to be that exciting, to be honest.
The first section isn’t dated, and rather starts ‘in the middle’.
It’s addressed to someone – ‘you shall’. But there’s no clue who.
The second is procedural: setting out how the commissioners tasked with the pacification of the borders are to choose, by election, a ‘commander’, alternating every three months between an Englishman and a Scot
There are a few gaps and queries in my transcription – I’ve only been tackling Elizabethan/Jacobean handwriting for a couple of months.
But, for whatever it is worth – here’s a transcription of what the reivers website names Folio 06a.
Pacification document 06a
And for as much as nothing is more necessary for you in the execution of that his majesty’s commission than to be thoroughly informed of the names and dwellings of all such loose persons as have been accustomed to raping and spoil and to distinguish them from others, though inhabiting amongst or near them, yet have not used that course of life but by compulsion. You shall upon your first arrival there, use all the means you can to be fully informed of the numbers of those barbarous people, and of the names and surnames of them, and the places of their abode and retreat, and thereof keep with you a ?register? which will serve for a good die-on? for the apprehending of them when complaints shall be made to you of their offending.
And further whereas diverse malefactors do remain under assurance by bond taken by our very good lord the Earl of Cumberland, while he was his m- tid-e—ant their very bonds his lord shall cause to be delivered to you. We think it fit that p-tly upon coming down, you do call before you all persons with and under that kind of assurance and take of – caution for their good behaviour, such as in your ?discretion you shall think fit.
Ellesmere. Ca- T Dowcet Nottingham Suffolk
Northumberland Devonshire Northampton Cranborne.
E Loche? W Knolles Jo. -opham, J Herbert Eburne ?Sanhopp
Instructions given to our commissioners authorised by our commission for setting of peace quietment and good order in our sheriffdoms of Berwick and Roxborough, ?Solkrigg, Peebles and Dumfries, and the ?stewartries of R-kenburgh and Armadale, as also in the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland
J-p- see- we have made choice of the persons as most fit and able to execute the charge committed unto them, whose former behaviour and account assure us of their fidelity and earnest affection to the furtherance of the service and that nothing shall be omitted by them which may lend to the advancement thereof, we therefore recommend to their care and diligence the finding out and — all such good m-an- as with honour may – the setting of peace, quietness and our obedience in these isles.
That at their first meeting they elect among themselves one of the number be- of the English to be commander of the rest and to appoint places for their meetings as the service shall require and that charge to endure the (words squashed in) ..three months after his election at the end of which time, one of the Scottish to be made chief or to be commander in like manner for the like space and – thereafter by vicissitudes one of each country from three months to three months to be chosen.
That the places of the meetings shall be the city of Carlisle the b-t of Dumfries, Ted- and B-irk or any of their commodious places…