The Royal Society of Edinburgh
From Banditry to Books: Enlightening the Scottish Borders
Professor Ted Cowan FRSE
Thursday 26 March 2015, Kelso High School, Kelso
Report by Kate Kennedy
This lecture explored and assessed Enlightenment influence upon the inhabitants of the Borders.
There is a substantial and ever-increasing literature about the subject for Scotland as a whole but,
until recently, there has been almost nothing about this in the history of the Borders region. That
has changed during the last few years with the appearance of several studies. The Scottish
Enlightenment remains a controversial, if highly stimulating, subject. At its core was an enquiry and
debate about human nature and everything which impacts upon humankind from the cradle to the
grave. Another mission was the pursuit of useful knowledge, particularly in such fields as the
sciences, medicine, geography, natural history, geology, the classification of new species of flora
and fauna, and antiquities. Indeed, just about anything could be deemed ‘useful knowledge’. The
philosophers of the day also speculated about the possibility of perfecting the human race, while
pondering such topics as improvement and progress. Did the Borders even experience
Enlightenment? Were men such as David Hume and Walter Scott somehow aberrations?
Robert Heron, in his largely forgotten 1799 History of Scotland, paid homage to the phenomenon
of the Scottish Enlightenment, writing, “In every science, the writings of Scottish authors furnish the
best means of instruction. In proportion, as industry has been increased and knowledge improved,
the enjoyments of life in Scotland have been exalted and refined”. Professor Cowan commented
that Heron, who came from a similar background to Robert Burns, was “a product of the Scottish
Enlightenment…born into a poor background but achieving great deeds and notoriety”. Indeed,
Heron was the first Burns biographer, publishing a ‘warts and all’ memoir in 1796. The Scottish
Enlightenment was an 18th-Century outpouring of literature and intellectual speculation, producing
some of the greatest minds that Scotland ever nurtured. At its core, was an enquiry and debate
about human nature and everything which impacts on humankind.
Heron would have disagreed with those historians who consider the Enlightenment to have started
with the Union of 1707. In line with current opinion, he detected the origins of the early
Enlightenment in the second half of the 17th Century, commenting that “at that time the Scots were
animated with a spirit for the internal improvement of the country, as well as for the extension of its
trade which, if it had not been checked by the fatal influence of the Union with England, would
have rapidly raised Scotland into a very flourishing state”. Heron had a good knowledge of the
luminaries of the Enlightenment, for example, Adam Smith, Joseph Black and William Robertson,
but he suggested that the works of the philosopher René Descartes marked the beginning of the
Scottish Enlightenment, brought about by an intellectual shift dating from the later part of the 17th
Century. In Scotland, the use of ‘Enlightenment' as an historical label appears to end with the
death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, thus lasting for the course of the long 18th Century.
Professor Cowan asked, “What influence did the Enlightenment have on the inhabitants of the
Scottish Borders”? Was it possible that people with such family names as Hume and Scott,
notorious for violence and feuding, could, within a couple of generations, transform into some of
the foremost recipients and exponents of Enlightenment thinking? Do the Borderers deserve the
reputation for chaos and bloodshed and if so, how did they move from banditry to books, from
reiving to screeving, in a relatively short space of time? The Debatable Lands on the west march of
the Border region were a narrow stretch of land claimed by both England and Scotland, but ruled
by neither. “People there were a law unto themselves… the area undoubtedly attracted people of
criminal disposition who sought refuge there, but that was not the whole story”. A description of
Borderers at the time was that of a “lawless people who will be Scottish when they will and English
at their leisure”. In earlier decades, they had been encouraged to act as a human buffer between
England and Scotland, but by the 16th Century the Borderers were increasingly taking legislation
into their own hands. Some of the worst Border atrocities took place in this area but, at the same
time, the Borderers on both sides had a shared culture; they shared grazing rights, traded
together, played sport together, attended feasts and married each other, despite this being a
capital offence. Borderers on both sides sometimes banded together against both kingdoms and
warned one another of incursions by the wardens of the Marches.
The people of the region created their own identity and culture and though their society was
undeniably bloody and violent, it was subject to a complex system of checks and balances.
However, in the eyes of the authorities, the situation had become so desperate that in 1551, the
wardens of both countries issued a joint proclamation that stated “all Englishmen and Scotsmen
are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy all and every such person or
persons, the bodies, buildings, goods and cattle as do remain upon any part of the said debatable
land without any redress to be made for the same”. This was a clear policy of outrageous genocide
against the people of a region who acted as a human frontier rather than a physical or
geographical one; a system that arguably would have operated perfectly well but for sustained
interference of Scotland and England.
Professor Cowan stated, “the people of the Borders used their intelligence in order to survive in the
16th Century”. Aggressive attempts to govern the Marches can be dated to the reign of James V,
but when James VI came to power he was embarrassed by the ‘middle-shires’, commenting that
“such godless inhabitants do not belong in a modern state” and he decided to rid the area of the
perceived troublemakers. James VI is often praised by historians as the ‘Rex Pacificus’ who
wished to end the European carnage in the name of religion and be remembered as a king who
brought civilization to Scotland. Professor Cowan suggests, however, that he should be viewed as
a would-be despot who launched campaigns of cultural eradication and genocide upon the
traditional societies of Scotland. “Those distinguished as troublemakers were either killed or
banished to places such as Ireland and America. In a very short time, James VI was satisfied that
a policy of pacification on the Borders had been successful. A concomitant ploy was to win over
the Border chiefs, heads of the families for whom the people had fought and died for centuries”.
Between 1603 and 1620, as part of the King’s pacification policy, many notorious family members
were given elevated positions of authority and titles, despite their previous crimes and
misdemeanours. James VI was cynically manipulating the Border chiefs in the taming and
extermination of their own people. However, the ennoblement of one branch of the family did not
necessarily impress kin who were left to their old tyrannical ways.
The history books often speak as though the Borders were fully pacified in the early 1600s, yet
later historians and accounts of the 17th Century continue to mention reivers and their violent acts.
Duels and murders were still commonplace in the 18th Century; indeed, the term ‘duel’ appears to
be the word used to describe every type of mayhem, homicide and murder that took place. Within
the Borders, there remains a continued desire to ‘hark back to’ the ancestors and become proud of
their heinous deeds. This is a particularly interesting aspect of local politics; even today there are
many people who combine demonstrable respect for their local dignitaries with their own
independent ideas and actions.
The renowned Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote his 1738 Treatise of Human Nature at a
time when his contemporaries were still behaving much as they did in the 16th Century. Professor
Cowan suggested that “the intelligence necessary for survival in the Borders in the face of Crown
policies or the culture of the feud seems to have been fairly effortlessly transferred to more
cerebral or aesthetic activities”. Remarking on the Covenanters, who were also active at the time in
the Borders and southwest Scotland, Professor Cowan pointed out that “many had to leave the
area as they were considered too radical, often heading for exile in the Netherlands. Other than
their religious beliefs, the Covenanters were largely concerned with the right of the citizen to put up
a resistance to monarchical tyranny”. There had been a long tradition in Covenanting thought of
borrowing ideas from the Netherlands, particularly since the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain,
a religious war of Protestants against Catholics. In 1639, leading Covenanter, Alexander
Henderson, quoting a Dutch philosopher, stated, “the people make the magistrate [i.e., the King]
but the magistrate maketh not the people”. The most well-known philosopher in the Netherlands in
the second half of the 17th Century was René Descartes. In the eyes of the devout, Descartes had
opened the way for atheism and deism; he argued that the custodianship of truth was shifted from
God to humanity and considered that humans, not God, made the decisions that affected
humankind. It is possible that, in the Netherlands, the Covenanters, a widely read group of people,
had contact with the Cartesians. “The Covenanters realised that in order to destroy your enemy
you must know everything about them; thus it is not a step too far to think they would have been
discussing philosophy with Cartesians in the Netherlands”.
Professor Cowan continued: “two spectacular examples of individuals with Borders and
covenanting roots may lend some credence to my tentative thesis. They belonged to a group
which was centred mainly on New York and was known as the ‘Country Party’, named after that
which figured so prominently in the 1707 Union debates. It was so dubbed by the splendidlynamed Cadwallader Colden (1687–1776), son of the minister of Duns. An alumnus of Edinburgh
University, medical doctor, scientist, botanist, tireless and talented politician, correspondent of
Carl Linnaeus and the first American to use his system, Colden was a true polymath of the old
school, interested in everything under, and beyond, the Sun. He arrived in America in 1710. His
father ministered for some years in Ulster, where Cadwallader was born, suggesting that Colden
senior was of too radical a persuasion to be admitted to a ministry in Scotland until the revolution
of 1689 opened the way to Duns, where Colden junior was raised. Later in America his son,
perhaps moved by traditions about the Covenanting era, fulminated against the cruelty and
injustice of quartering soldiers on the local population. He originally emigrated to Philadelphia, but
was persuaded to move to New York where he became Surveyor-General, and eventually,
Lieutenant-Governor. Colden made a return trip to Scotland in 1715, when he married the sister of
a college friend, Alice Chrystie, here in Kelso. During his visit he was asked to raise a troop to
defend the burgh against the Jacobites, though in the event it was not required. Colden is now
regarded as a figure of the American Enlightenment. Outside New York, he established his
wilderness hideaway, study and laboratory that he named Coldengham, which suggests he had
not forgotten the Borders.
“The other was Robert Livingston (1654–1728) founding father of a prominent New York dynasty.
His father, John, was a major Covenanter who became Minister at Ancrum, but at the Restoration
was forced to flee to Rotterdam, taking his son with him. There Robert remained for nine years,
acquiring an apprenticeship in business and fluency in Dutch. He emigrated in 1673, eventually to
Albany NY, where he became Secretary to, and then Clerk of, the city as well as Recordkeeper for
the Board of Indian Commissioners. He enjoyed the inestimable boon of bilingualism in English
and Dutch. He was elected to the New York Assembly, of which he became Speaker. He married
Maria Sprat or Sproat (incidentally a Galloway name), whose father had also migrated from
Scotland to America via the Netherlands.”
Emigration is one of the great exports of the Scottish Enlightenment. Many people emigrated, as
they were fed up with the ‘feudal nonsense’ in Scotland; emigrants could experience true freedom
and become landowners in their own right overseas. Others who remained were inspired by their
country’s achievements and progress. The critic John Ruskin, proud of his Scottish ancestry, once
said of the south of Scotland “this space of low mountain ground with its eternal sublimity of its
rocky seashores, of its stormy seas and dangerous sands, its strange and mighty crags…and its
pathless moorlands, haunted by the driving cloud, had been of more import in the true world’s
history than all the lovely countries of the south, except only Palestine”.
A remarkable man of his time was Robert Wilson, a product of the Enlightenment and historian of
Hawick. Writing in 1827, he celebrated “the desire for information of every sort for which the
present age is so particularly distinguished”; praised “the encouragement of education and the
provision of libraries”; applauded Hawick’s social equality; and contrasted Burns and Scott, arguing
that Scott had squandered his unique combination of imagination and intellect in his writings by
ignoring the “momentous events that have passed and are continuing to pass before [him]” i.e., the
Enlightenment. Professor Cowan suggested that Sir Walter Scott sought refuge from the “modern
world of disruption and change in the fantasies of the feudal age and the death throes of the last
minstrel”. It is rare in his texts to discover any awareness that the Borders might have experienced
enlightenment.
There is, however, no shortage of people with Borders connections who can be described as great
figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. One of the most significant literary productions of the 18th
Century was James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry, purporting to have been
translated from the Gaelic compositions of the 3rd-Century bard, Ossian. Macpherson was urged to
publish his work by the philosopher Hugh Blair and the playwright John Home, at a meeting in
Moffat. Many questions have been raised regarding the authenticity of Macpherson’s work;
however, his achievement was not only a significant development in the Romantic Movement and
the initiation of a widespread craze for the recovery of folk literature and oral tradition, but it also
represented the discovery of a literature that stretched further back in time than previously known.
The geologist James Hutton, who farmed near Duns, developed geological theories of time based
on studies of erosion and stratification. In his Theory of the Earth, he argued that the Earth was
formed out of the detritus of a former world and communicated the idea that geological time is
virtually infinite, with “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”. The Scots philosopher,
David Hume, spent part of his formative years at Ninewells near Chirnside. He produced his
Treatise of Human Nature before he was 25. In his History of England, possibly the most popular
work of the Scottish Enlightenment, he argued that because of the shortness of human life, no
individual could grasp the experience of all previous ages without the assistance of history. “A man
acquainted with history may in some respect be said to have lived from the beginning of the world
and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century”. Professor
Cowan commented that, ‘’in one brief generation, through these three Borders men, time was
expanded to unimaginable boundaries”.
David Hume believed that through the Scottish Enlightenment, polite society was triumphing;
society was improving in terms of sociability and sensitivity. With his death in 1776, Professor
Cowan suggested, “Hume was spared the realisation that progress was something of a phantom
which experienced as many setbacks as advances, due to the human nature which he sought to
explain and understand. Some historians consider that the promise of the Enlightenment was
never fulfilled”. Furthermore, some commentators are harsh on the achievements and literature of
Sir Walter Scott, but they cannot ignore the fact that he promoted knowledge of his own country
throughout the world in an unprecedented way. He invented and perfected the historical novel and
he showed that all people, irrespective of rank or gender, have a role to play in the historical
process. The Enlightenment was an era of optimism in the Borders, as in many others regions of
Scotland, and at its core was a belief in the abilities of humankind. Sir Walter Scott considered,
however, that “we shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny unless we have
taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared to the education of the heart”.
According to Professor Cowan, “the education of the heart remains something for which it is well
worth striving”.
The Vote of Thanks was offered by Ms Barbara Cummins.
Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the RSE, nor of its Fellows
The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470