Roxburghshire

Roxburghshire was at the centre of the Scottish border with England, lying between Dumfriesshire to the south west and Berwickshire to the north east. The shire was relatively prosperous, being assessed at £307 in the general assessment of 1657, and its agricultural wealth encouraged the cross-border raiding, theft and lawlessness which characterised its history before the union of the crowns in 1603. A. and O. A further cause of unrest was the bitter feuding between the most prominent families in the shire: the Kers, led by the lairds of Cessford and Ferniehurst, and the Scotts, headed by Buccleuch and Harden. M.M. Meikle, A British Frontier? Lairds and Gentlemen in the Eastern Borders, 1540-1603 (Edinburgh, 2004), 230-2. In the early decades of the seventeenth century ill-feeling subsided, there were a number of marriages between the two clans, and in the same period the Kers, headed by the earls of Roxburgh, Lothian and Ancram, became the leading figures of Roxburghshire society. This can be seen in the shire representation in the Scottish Parliaments, which in the same period was monopolised by the Kers of Greenhead, and a small group of families related to them, including the Douglases of Cavers, Elliotts of Stobs and Riddells of that ilk. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 799.

During the 1640s and 1650s Roxburghshire politics were influenced by two overriding considerations. The first was its association with the radical covenanters of the south west, who formed the western association in opposition to James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and the Engagers in the later 1640s, and whose later manifestation, the Protesters (or Remonstrants) became enemies of the Stuarts after the battle of Dunbar in 1650, and, influenced by such powerful figures as Sir Andrew Ker* of Greenhead, greeted the Cromwellian regime with a cautious welcome. This apparent willingness to cooperate with the invaders linked with the second consideration: the vulnerability of the shire to a breakdown of law and order in times of political upheaval. Thus the Roxburghshire response to the tender of union proposed by the English government in the spring of 1652 called for the restoration of justice, the discharge of customs dues across the border, and, specifically, for measures ‘for suppressing the insufferable robberies and [thefts] daily committed on both sides of the border’. It was this local concern that probably influenced the shire’s support for ‘perfecting the said union’ to ensure ‘a firm foundation of a happy peace within this island’. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 60-1.

The Cromwellian regime could not help but recognise the importance of maintaining order in Roxburghshire. There were constant reminders of the threat posed by the endemic instability of the region during the royalist rebellion led by the earl of Glencairn, and in December 1654 there was a dramatic robbery, when £700 of assessment money was stolen at Jedburgh. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 5 Dec. 1654. In 1655 the commander in Scotland, General George Monck*, ordered that regular watches were to be mounted against troublemakers in the shire; and in June 1657 the second protectorate Parliament belatedly passed an act to suppress theft on the border. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 143; A. and O. ii. 1263. In the absence of suitable garrison towns, the government put the local administration into the hands of the traditional lairds at an early stage. From the summer of 1653 the regulation of assessments was entrusted to the gentry; in 1654 the local commanders were ordered to proportion quarters and other military charges in consultation with the inhabitants; and in 1654-5 the revaluation of the assessments were undertaken by the lairds, following complaints of inequity. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 12v, 21, 27; xlvi, unfol.: 4 Sept. and 11 Nov. 1654, 8 Jan. 1655. Disputes over assessments were invariably referred to the local collector or the sheriff, who were deemed best able to gauge local sensibilities. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 4 May, 10 July, 24 Aug. 1655. Such offices were in any case increasingly held by Roxburghshire lairds: by 1656 the sheriff was Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead, and the commissary was his kinsman, Andrew Ker of Chatto. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 81v-82. The assessment commissions appointed at the end of 1655 and again in 1657 and 1660, included the heads of leading families such as Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead, Sir Archibald Douglas of Cavers, Sir Gilbert Elliott of Stobs and Sir Walter Riddell of that ilk; and there is little doubt that the burden of the collection fell on men like these, rather than the earls of Roxburgh and Lothian, or the Scottish councillors George Monck and Charles Howard*, whose inclusion at the head of the commission lists was surely honorific. Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 841; A. and O.

The surviving records of the Roxburghshire commission of the peace, established at the beginning of 1656, confirm that the gentry were left to run the local administration. The original commission included Monck, Howard and the earl of Roxburgh, with 16 local gentlemen. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 315. Some refused to serve – as in the case of the radical Protester, Colonel Gilbert Ker, who told the sheriff in January 1656 ‘that employment is sinful and unlawful … as being … contrary to our Solemn League and Covenant’. TSP iv. 479-80. Other lairds may have agreed with Ker, as the commission’s minute book shows that in the early days the bulk of business was conducted by only four local men: Sir Thomas Ker of Cavers, Sir Walter Riddell of that ilk, Patrick Scott of Thirlestane and Gideon Wauchope of Penicle. NLS, MS 5439, passim. These were no bonnet lairds – three of the four had served as commissioners for the shire in the Scottish Parliaments of the 1640s – and by the summer of 1658 this quartet had been joined by other prominent figures, including Greenhead and Chatto. Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 389 ; ii. 588, 616 ; NRS, JC26/22, ‘Bundle 22’, no. 2 ; JC26/24, ‘Bundle 2’, no. 2.

Under the ordinance for the distribution of the Scottish parliamentary seats, passed in June 1654, Roxburghshire was allowed to return a single MP to Westminster. A. and O. ii. 930. The lack of a return for the shire in September 1654, unusual for a constituency in the south of Scotland, may have reflected the slowness of local lairds to accept the Cromwellian regime. The election for the second protectorate Parliament, held at Jedburgh on 20 August 1656, seems to have proceeded smoothly enough. The presiding sheriff was the laird of Greenhead; the 20 identifiable electors were all local gentlemen, including the conformist lairds of Riddell, Chatto, Stobs, Thirlestane and Pendicle, and they were joined by another moderate, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester; the elected MP was William Ker of Newtoun. C219/45, unfol. Yet local involvement in this election was only partial. Only eight of the 20 electors were assessment commissioners or justices of the peace, and some prominent names are missing: Sir Thomas Ker of Cavers, Sir Archibald Douglas of the same, Sir William Scott of Harden and Robert Pringle of Stichell are conspicuous by their absence. The reasons for this are unclear, although some may have objected to the candidate: the laird of Newtoun was of minor importance locally but was a supporter of the controversial Protester faction, and his return was probably stage-managed by his kinsman, the laird of Greenhead. The Protester influence continued in 1659, when Greenhead was himself elected, even though the presiding sheriff, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester, who had recently been denounced as an enemy of the Kirk, was clearly not a member of that faction. NRS, GD157/2065 ; GD157/2074/1.

Both Greenhead and Newtoun were fined as enemies of the Stuarts in 1662, and by this time the representation of Roxburghshire had passed to more moderate hands. Acts Parl. Scot. vii. 424. In the Scottish Parliament’s elections in 1661, the Cromwellian collaborator, Sir Gilbert Elliott of Stobs, was returned with Sir Archibald Douglas of Cavers, who had remained aloof from the previous regime. The Kers of Greenhead were not excluded from influence for long, however, and they, with other former Protesters, provided the focus for religious radicalism in Roxburghshire later in the century. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 799.