Tait, Jon Raiders along the Anglo-Scottish Border

A History of those "pacified" by King James

Like Gomorrah with horses that's probably the best way to describe the stories of the inhabitants of the heather-covered hills between England and Scotland, who were executed at the gallows during the turbulent era of border raiders and afterwards, when King James I/VI attempted to pacify the border. The condemned were cattle thieves, counterfeiters, burglars, protection racketeers, thieves and murderers who operated in family-based gangs, terrorising the countryside on both sides of the dividing line and essentially acting as the mafia of their time. They were executed in places such as Edinburgh, Dumfries, Jedburgh, Hawick, Peebles, Selkirk, Berwick, Morpeth, Alnwick, Newcastle, Hexham and Carlisle, at a time marked by conflict between the two great nations, whose land became a war zone. Those interested in the darker side of the history of the bloodstained border can trace the ancestry of these families, who were involved in criminal society from the Scottish Wars of Independence to the Acts of Union between the countries in 1707. The March Laws, under which the Border Reivers lived, were finally ended in 1603 when King James ascended the English throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the pacification of the criminal gangs began.