Grenzen und Grenzregionen

Haubrichs, Wolfgang

Bibliographic data

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Persistent identifier:: 1655724991

URN:: urn:nbn:de:bsz:291-sulbdigital-108918

Title:: Grenzen und Grenzregionen

Author:: Haubrichs, Wolfgang

Place of publication:: Saarbrücken

Publisher:: Saarbrücker Dr. und Verl. Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

Structure type:: Monograph

Collection:: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte

Volume number:: 22

Year of publication:: 1994

Number of pages:: 283 S.

Copyright:: Saarländische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

Language:: eng

Digitised pages:: 284

Description

Title:: The Anglo-Scottish Border: Growth and Structure in the Middle Ages

Author:: Barrow, Geoffrey W.

Structure type:: Chapter

Collection:: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte

Digitised pages:: 16

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claiming that the Glasgow bishopric was coterminous with the kingdom of
Strathclyde7.
Nevertheless, even while we emphasize the fact that in securing a well-defined
Border on the Solway-Esk-Cheviot-Tweed line the rulers of England and Scotland
were prepared to see ancient units of kingship (to which they laid claim) cut in
half, we need to make one important qualification. The English kings of the
twelfth and thirteenth century were heavily committed to territorial and dynastic
ambitions south of the English Channel, as dukes of Normandy, counts of Anjou,
dukes of Aquitaine or Gascony etc. It would have suited their interest to preserve
and consolidate the West Saxon character of their kingdom, even if this had not
already been deeply entrenched in the geography of English government, the
location of royal headquarters at Westminster, Windsor, Winchester, Clarendon
and Gloucester, the distribution of royal demesne and of the richest sources of
royal revenue. Although the kings from William Rufus (1087-1100) to Edward I
took very seriously their grip upon Cumbria and Northumbria, they could not
spend much time visiting these regions which were remote from the castles, hun¬
ting lodges, monasteries and rich trading towns of southern England, Normandy,
Maine, the lower Loire valley, Poitou and Gascony whence their power was
derived and where, one feels, their hearts really lay.
The much poorer Scottish kings, by contrast, were drawn to the northern sections
of Cumbria and Northumbria which the Solway-Tweed Border allowed them. Even
a casual glance at the maps which scholars have constructed of twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Scotland would show how important in this period were the
valleys of Tweed and Teviot, the (by Scottish standards) agriculturally well-
favoured province of Lothian, and, further west, Clydesdale and the Ayrshire
plain8. Here with few exceptions were the wealthiest Scottish trading towns
(burghs'), Berwick upon Tweed, Roxburgh, Haddington, Edinburgh, Stirling,
Rutherglen, Renfrew and Ayr9. Here also, again with relatively few exceptions,
were the religious houses on which the royal house and its most favoured followers
lavished their surplus wealth (chiefly in the form of land), the abbeys of Jedburgh,
Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose, Newbattle, Holyrood and Paisley, the priories of
Coldingham, Haddington, Manuel and Lesmahagow10. Of the numerous centres
of royal government in active use in the earlier medieval period only Aberdeen,
Perth and Forfar, north of the Forth, could compare in importance with Stirling,
Linlithgow, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Rutherglen, Ayr and Berwick south
of the Forth.
The consequence of this was that the Border was of much more immediate concern
to the rulers of Scotland than it was to the rulers of England. At least this was true
•j
Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. Stevenson, J. (Glasgow, Maitland Club, 1839), 65.
8 E.g., McNeill, P. and Nicholson, R., An Historical Atlas of Scotland, c.400-c,1600 (St. Andrews, 1975),
maps 22-3, 28-30, 36-8, 50-1.
9 Ibid., maps 28-29; Pryde, G., The Burghs of Scotland (Oxford, 1965).
1 ® Cowan, I.B. and Easson, D.E., Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland (1976).
200

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