THE WALL

Crossing to Stanwix, we are at last on the Border, for here ran the Roman wall, on its way from Wallsend, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, to Bowness, dividing the civilisation of that time from the unknown savagery further north. Built about A.D. 121, at the instance of the Emperor Hadrian, it kept the painted, skin-clad “Picts” in their own wild country for over three hundred years, and employed a considerable garrison to patrol it and exercise a continual vigilance along those bitter, wind-swept miles. Many a gallant centurion, condemned to mounting guard in these ancient marches, has doubtless in the long ago leant over the ramparts of the Wall, and gazing into the shaggy forest and brushwood beyond, called down curses upon the “forward policy” in Rome, that pushed the limits of Empire into the frozen north, before the southernmost provinces were fully settled. Here was no society, and no glory in fighting with savages to be compared with that to be gained in campaigns against the armies of Carthage or of Greece.

Here, at this wall-fortress of Convagata, there was, at any rate, the neighbourhood of Luguvallum, apparently well-settled, but the solitary life of these wardens of old Rome in the lonely mile-castles of the wall must have been so exceedingly dull that the dangers of an occasional Pict raid would be welcomed.

Even in times so comparatively modern as the beginning of the seventeenth century the Border was little known. Camden spoke of the northern reaches of this road, before he visited Cumberland in 1607, as a part of the country “lying beyond the mountains toward the Western Ocean,” and was greatly exercised with the hazards of even nearing these remote fastnesses. He approached the Lancashire people with “a kind of dread”; but, trusting to the protection of God, determined at last to “run the hazard of the attempt.” He did indeed come to the Border, but found, in exploring the Roman Wall dividing England and Scotland, that the Wall was not only a division between two countries, but marked the confines of civilisation. He accordingly returned, shivering with apprehension, leaving his projected work incomplete.

Stanwix, site of Convagata, obtains its name from the “stone way” the Saxons found here. Truth to tell, modern Stanwix is a sorry spot on which to meditate upon the departed colonial fortunes of Imperial Rome, for the Wall is gone and Stanwix church and churchyard stand upon the site of the fort. A precious ugly church, too, it is that has been built here: Early English only by intention; with a dismally crowded churchyard around it. A pathetic story is told by one of the epitaphs: “Here lie the mortal bodies of five little sisters, the much-loved children of A. C. Tait, Dean of Carlisle, and of Catherine, his wife, who were all cut off within five weeks.” They died during an epidemic of scarlet-fever, in 1856. A memorial window to them is in the north transept of the Cathedral. “A. C. Tait” was, of course, Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.

But if Stanwix be so ugly and commonplace, the scenery in which it is placed is extremely beautiful. The greater, then, the crime of those who have made it what it is. There is a lovely steep grassy descent, plenteously wooded with noble trees, that falls away from the ridge of Stanwix down to the Eden, and thus skirts the river for a mile or more. “Rickerby Holmes” is the name of this beautiful feature. From this point you gain the finest view of Carlisle.

It is a flat, featureless country that stretches north from Stanwix across the nine miles to the Border-line. Miserable villages that are merely collections of gaunt cottages little better than hovels, often built of “dubbin,” i.e. clay and straw, occur at intervals. Nearly all of comparatively modern date, they point unmistakably to the fact that it is not so very long since to live in the Debatable Land was hazardous, and not to be thought of by the law-abiding. Very well indeed for moss-trooping vagabonds and cow-stealers, but not for the responsible, or those who wished for a quiet life.

Passing Goslin Syke, where a marshy stream crosses the road, we come to Kingstown, where the road branches right and left. On this, the last stage to the Border, this parting of the ways meant much to eloping couples, bound for Scotland and marriage immediately on reaching Scottish soil.

The geography of Gretna and the Border is, so far as roads are concerned, somewhat involved, and requires careful explanation. Up to 1830, when the wide-spreading sands of the Esk were bridged, the way for coaches and all road-traffic lay circuitously through Longtown to the right of where the fork of the roads now occurs; but in that year the New Road, or the “English Road,” as it was commonly called, was opened, causing much interference with what the inhabitants of Springfield had almost come to regard as their “vested rights.” For, as the accompanying plan will show, Springfield lay directly on the route into Scotland; and Gretna Green merely to one side of it. But here again it behoves the historian to be careful and not rashly to assume that the early marriages were made at Springfield, and should therefore have been named after it. As a curious matter of fact, this village did not come into existence until 1791, when it was built by the then landowner, Sir William Maxwell, who named it from a farm standing there. It was then, and for long after, the home of people professing to be weavers, but really, almost without exception, a set of drunken Border blackguards who, when not helplessly intoxicated, were smugglers and poachers and wastrels generally, and, living in the marches of the two countries, respected the laws of neither.

Springfield, immediately after its rise, took away most of the marrying business of Gretna, being nearer the magical dividing-line.

Blackford, on the Longtown road, is of the one unvarying pattern here, and is followed by the hamlet of West Linton, by the river Lyne, where a cottage or so, a farm, and the whitewashed “Graham’s Arms,” with its motto, “N’Oublie,” stand stodged in the mud. Fir-trees and a laurel-bordered road then lead to the by-way where Arthuret church, standing solitary, serves for churchless Longtown, half a mile distant.

In Arthuret churchyard there is shown a broken cross, said to mark the grave of Archie Armstrong, the famous Court fool of James the First and Charles the First. James brought him south, from the Border, where he had early distinguished himself as a sheepstealer in Eskdale; and his impudence and invincible effrontery brought him a long period of success at Court. But at last he overreached himself, in his enmity to Archbishop Laud. On one occasion, saying grace at Whitehall, he exclaimed, “Great praise to God and little laud to the Devil,” and all the Court sniggered; but when, in 1637, he met Laud at a time when the Scots were rising against the Archbishop’s attempts at dictation in religious matters, and asked, “Wha’s fool the noo?” the jester’s licence had grown beyond endurance, and he was dismissed. He lived many years longer, and earned the reputation of an extremely usurious lender of money, to whom no sharp practices came amiss. The cross shown as marking his resting-place is really a portion of an ancient Scandinavian monument.

Another character, very notorious in his day, lies in the churchyard: Sir James Graham of Netherby, who was Home Secretary in 1844, when the correspondence of Mazzini and other political refugees was opened at the General Post Office by his direction, and read. Graham received his orders from the Earl of Aberdeen, Minister for Foreign Affairs, but it was Graham himself upon whom the whole of the public obloquy fell, and he remarked, in the true spirit of prophecy, that all else he had done would be forgotten, and he would be remembered only by this wretched incident. It surely is a pitiful thing and a real tragedy of the public service that an honourable gentleman who in private life would have scorned to do anything mean should go down in history as the man who violated the sanctity of private correspondence.

There are no architectural graces in Longtown. Each house is like its fellow and every street resembles every other street. How then do the strayed revellers, returning home “fou,” find the way to their especial domiciles? An attempt to subdue the stark angularity of Longtown, though not to give its streets variety, is seen in the somewhat recent planting of the roads with trees.

Many people suppose the river Esk at Longtown to be the division between England and Scotland. The supposition is reasonable enough, for the actual divisor, the Sark, four miles further on, approaching Springfield, is a very insignificant stream in appearance. The political and the social significances of it were, however, of very serious import indeed.

Solway Moss is passed on the way. Turner has made it the subject of one of the finest plates in his Liber Studiorum, and has imported into the view some mountains that are not there, together with some weather which, fortunately for the present writer, was equally absent when he passed this way.

Solway Moss is marked on the maps with the conventional crossed swords that indicate a battle. It was not an epoch-making battle that was fought here, November 24th, 1542, but it was one of the most complete of English victories, and the story of it is compact of a peculiar terror. The Scots had crossed the Border in force, and were proceeding on their usual lines of fire and pillage, to the assault of Carlisle, when they were met at Arthuret by an army under Sir Thomas Wharton, the stout Warden of the West Marches. The English onset disorganised the invaders, who fled in the gathering darkness. Ten thousand fugitives lost their way, and found themselves with the flowing tide upon the fatal Solway Sands. Some flung away their arms and struggled through, thousands were drowned, and many surrendered to women. Meanwhile, the main body, pursued by the English, wandered in the other direction across the Esk and plunged into the bog of Solway Moss, and were swallowed up, slain, or taken prisoners. “Never,” says Froude, “in all the wars between England and Scotland, had there been a defeat more complete, more sudden, or more disgraceful.” James the Fifth of Scotland died on December 14th, heartbroken at the disaster. It was a complete English revenge for the defeat they had suffered at the Sark, hard by, in 1449, nearly a hundred years before.

Turner therefore does right in so romantically treating the subject, and I am merely a pictorial reporter, setting down only what I see. But at any rate, while Turner might dissuade the pilgrim, with his storm overhead and his fathomless bog beneath, whence apparently some wretches are just escaping with their lives, you see by the modern sketch that there is at least a hard high road running by.

Having come now to the Sark, and across it into the long street of Springfield, and by the same token into Scotland, it is necessary to tell at length the story of “Gretna Green” marriages. It could scarce be told in more forbidding surroundings, for Springfield is one long street of gaunt, unrelieved commonplace, and neither the once notorious “Queen’s Head” inn on the right, nor the “Maxwell Arms” on the left, helps to relieve it in the least degree. But the devil’s in it if love can’t throw a rosy tinge over even such a scene, and doubtless Springfield looked entrancing to some.