The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-10-06
THE CLANS OF ENGLAND
SOUTHERN EXAMPLES OF fl
 SOCIAL SYSTEM

I oA AA&AS e-
 Favored the Formation of Clans
 Tbe Rapid Development of National
 Aniagontsm in the English Counties
 After the Establishment Of the Bord-
 CT Line.
 The words clan and clannishness are
 associated entirely in the minds of the average Englishman with Scotland and
 scotsmen-indeed, with the Highlands
 of Scotland alone; and yet, until the legislative union of the two countries with the accession of James I. the clan system of the two northernmost coun-
 ties of England was every whit as com plete as in Scotland, and even after the two countries became one in the reign of Anne the old spirit survived, and continued to survive in modified form almost 0 our own time. Even a cursory
 examination of the history of the bor- der will make it not at all surprising that English clans. complete with chieftains, distinguishing badges. and peculiar music of their own, should
 have existed. The people of Northum-
 berland and Cumberland, from the unique position of their shires, pos
 sessed characteristics which distin- guished them most markedly from their southern neighbors.
 Just as Kent has been caled the bull wark of England against the Contin- ent, so these two northern shires form
 ed the bulwark against foe separated | by no stretch of ocean, and ever ready for invasion and foray. These condf- tions of life on both sides of the bor- der were favorable to the clan system, and. although Northumberland only became finally English at the end of
 the twelfth century, and Tynedale was Scottish at the end of the thirteenth, nationality remained for long after subordinate to clanship; 8 man was a
 Fenwick or Robson first, and an Eng | lishman after. just as at the present day in Cornwall county takes pre- cedence of nation. But when the bor- der line was finally drawn, it is curious to note the intense and rapid develop ment of national antagonfsm-an an- | tagonism sedulously fostered by the l Government of England, which ordain- ed it felony for an Englishman to mar 1 ry a ScOtsWoman.
 In our northern bulwark counties when thee lans were not united against the Scots, they were at war with each other. and during the rare intervals when there were neither Scots nor rival clansmen to fight with, they would raid | their southern neighbors as it
 were, to keep their hands in. There were feuds handed down from genera | tion to generation between the English | Fenwicks and the Scottish Eiliots and Crosiers, between the Robsons of Tyne dale and the Armstrongs of Liddesdale, between the Charletons and the Buc-
 cleughs; but no less bitter and pitiless
 were the feuds between the Robsons of hams, between the Herons and the
 Carnabies, the Percys and the Neyilles, ! the Rldieys and the Featherston- baughs More than this, the great fa- | flies had generally more than one seat, each of which was the center of a clan nish community which regarded not l merely other families as strangers and
 rivals, but other sections bearing the same name and arms. Thus we find the Fenwicks of Stanton, the Ridleys of Hardriding the Ridleys of Will
 limoteswick, the Redcliffes of Dilsten and those of Darlington, not infre- each other, with all the venom of ab- solute strangers
 In fact, duting what were really the long weary years of Border strife, but
 which have come down to us in history and legend as stirring times of chival- ry and romance. every great family was as much a state in itself as was an Italian city of about the same period. History and legend are full of in- stances when single family, that is, 8 clan, turned the balance in military
 and political strife. At Flodden there were fourteen thouand Stanley tenants or clansmen in Surrey's army,
 and these half mutinous because they were led to the field by Howard and not by a Stanley. At Marston Moor, the famous White Coat Regiment"
 under Newcastle which was cut to pieces almost to q man by the Parlia- mentary cavalry. was composed of a thousand Ogle clansmen. Two at least
 of the most famous ballads in Border literature hinge upon family feuds. If the Halls of GirsOnside in Redesdale had not been at enmity with the Reeds
 of Troughend, they would never have deserted Parcy Reed so shamefully as they did when the Crosiers of Liddes- dale set upon him, as told in the ballad of the Death of Parcy Reed. If the five hundred Fenwicks in a flock" had not loosened their arrows on the
 Crosiers at the Tryst of the Reedsswyre the Raid" as told so graphically in the old ballad would never have hap pened. So it was all over this wild, beautiful country of many-tinted fell and brown stream, especially in the dales of Tyne and Reed. now so sparse ly inhabited and so lonely that it is hard to realize the complaint of Sir
 Robert Bowes, the Royal Surveyor in 1542, that they were over populated-a report that led to their gradual depop- ulation by the simple process of mak- ing the lives of the inhabitants intol-
 erable. And yet to this day there are still representatives of the old chief "granes' or clans of Tyndedale- Charltons, Dodds, Robsons and Mill burnes as there are Reeds, Potters and Halls in Redesdale, Selbys at Biddle- stone, 1ldertons at Ilderton, and Rod dams at Roddam. The old English