Reiver
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Border Reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border. They included both Scottish and English people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their victims' nationality. They operated in a culture of legalised raiding and feuding. Their heyday was in the last hundred years of their existence, during the time of the House of Stuart in the Kingdom of Scotland and the House of Tudor in the Kingdom of England.
The lawlessness of the Anglo-Scottish Borderlands in the 16th century is captured in a 1526 description of Tynedale and Redesdale:
"[Inhabitants there]...nothinge regard[ed] eyther the lawes of God or of the kinges majesties for any love or other lawful consideracion, but onely for the drede and feare of instante coreccion."
The term "Border Reiver" is an exonym and anachronistic term used to describe the raiders and bandits who operated along the Anglo-Scottish Border during the late Middle Ages and early modern period. The reivers, as we understand today, emerged in textual and archaeological evidence sometime between 1350 and 1450, with their activities reaching their height in the 16th century during the Tudor period in England and the late Stewart period in Scotland. They were infamous for raiding, eliciting protection money or taking hostages('blackmail'), cattle rustling, and lawlessness, where justice was frequently negotiated through arbitration at Truce Days rather than enforced through the peremptory and inescapable punishments mandated by state law. Many crimes, such as theft and feuding, were treated with less severity due to the ancient customs and culture of the Borderlands, which had evolved over centuries to tolerate and even codify such practices.
Although less well-known than Highlanders in Scotland—whom they met and defeated in battle on occasion— the Border Reivers played a significant role in shaping Anglo-Scottish relations. Their activities were a major factor in ongoing tensions between the two kingdoms, and their raids often had international repercussions. There is an emerging historical debate over how great their threat and the extent to which their raids were state-directed rather than purely opportunistic.
The culture of the Border Reivers—characterised by honour, close family bonds, and self-defence—has been said to influence the culture of the Upland South in the United States. Many Borderers migrated as families to America, where their values are thought to have contributed significantly to the region's social structure and political ideologies, with echoes of their influence persisting even today.
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