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Why did medieval England and Scotland hate each other so much?
As the 13th century drew to a close, tensions along the English-Scottish frontier erupted into conflict when Edward I’s invasion sparked a cycle of brutal raids. Helen Carr explores attacks that “surpassed in cruelty all the fury of the heathen”
- Helen Carr
Published: November 10, 2026 at 3:08 PM
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As Edward I arrayed his English army around Berwick on Friday 30 March 1296, its residents must have grown very fearful, very quickly. Some 30,000 enemy soldiers mustered outside, with around 5,000 horses – an intimidating force indeed. And they clearly hadn’t come in peace.
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Berwick was among the most important and prosperous towns in Scotland, a royal burgh with a mint and wealthy religious houses. Its location on the river Tweed not only provided access to sea traffic, it also made the town a strategically vital location on the slightly nebulous border separating England from Scotland. But though it was the country’s main trading port, and perhaps Britain’s second-largest economic centre, it was vulnerable to Edward’s mighty army. When English trumpets sounded the advance, the Scots took one look at the horde amassed outside their town, outnumbering their own troops perhaps three to one – and surrendered almost immediately.
Edward I, portrayed in an early 14th-century manuscript. His aggressive forays north won him the nickname ‘Hammer of the Scots’ | Credit: Topfoto
‘Baby killers’ v ‘tailed dogs’
What followed was nothing short of a bloodbath. The commander of Berwick’s garrison was spared, on condition that he would agree to fight for Edward. It was the townsfolk who bore the brunt of the English king’s ire: according to some accounts, women and children were spared (though others report that women, too, were targeted), but every man in the town was slaughtered, their bodies falling “like autumn leaves”. One chronicler described the assault as being like “that of a wild boar pursued by dogs”. Thousands of corpses – some say up to 17,000 – were thrown down wells or cast into the sea. Edward’s brutal invasion of Scotland had begun.
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The capture of Berwick and its subsequent refashioning as an English garrison did not go unavenged by the Scots. They swiftly retaliated by raiding Northumberland, where they allegedly rounded up 200 schoolboys and burned them to death inside a church in Corbridge.
Such incidents were certainly exaggerated by chroniclers but, following a number of aggressive sorties across the border, Scots became known to the English as ‘baby killers’. In turn, the Scots called the English ‘tailed dogs’, reflecting a contemporary myth about the men south of the border. Scots troops reportedly shouted that, as well as killing English soldiers, they would amputate their enemies’ tails.
A 19th-century engraving of English king Edward I attacking Berwick Castle, at that time a Scottish stronghold, in 1296 – sparking war with his northern neighbour | Credit: Getty Images
The region stretching across Britain where England met Scotland had always been a contentious space marked by confusion and conflict – but it was also one that belonged to both countries. Shaped by shared local culture and aristocracy who held land on either side, the border had been porous, and relations across it generally amicable, unfettered by nationhood.
Indeed, one report of an early episode from the conflict tells how Scottish soldiers agreed a secret password to enable them to distinguish compatriot from enemy, so similar were the dialects across the region. So what changed to create the tensions that sparked Edward’s invasion of 1296, and the descent into chaos and violence that followed?
England–Scotland border c1296
Peace for now
The border was a creation of the Middle Ages, forged from a process of conquest and diplomacy. On 25 September 1237, King Henry III of England and Alexander II of Scotland, then at peace, met to ratify the Treaty of York. This established sovereignty over the counties in the frontier region, and determined the border more or less as we know it today, with Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland (those last two combined in the 20th century to form Cumbria) confirmed as English.
The border now, as then, is largely defined by rivers. From its western terminus on the Solway Firth, it follows the river Sark, cuts across to the river Esk and its tributary Liddel Water, following the even smaller Kershope Burn up to the watershed on the Northumberland border. It finds its way via more meandering burns and ridges to the Tweed between Kelso and Coldstream, tracing it past Norham Castle to Berwick-upon-Tweed at that river’s mouth.
A Bible illustration created a few years after the 1314 battle of Bannockburn portrays a clash echoing that pivotal English defeat by the Scots | Credit: Getty Images
The agreement between Henry and Alexander, signed “apud Eboracum” (at York), served as a binding legal document with which the Scottish monarch relinquished all claim to the border counties in exchange for land in Northumberland and Cumberland to the value of £200 annually.
The peace that largely endured for much of the 13th century was shattered near its end. Following the untimely death of Alexander III (son of Alexander II) in 1286, Henry’s son Edward I was later invited to Norham Castle to help decide who should take the Scottish crown. He backed John Balliol, in the belief that he would be the candidate most loyal to the English crown.
Edward was initially content with being considered an overlord of Scotland but, in 1295, Balliol agreed a treaty with Philip IV of France, forging what became known as the ‘Auld Alliance’ – and enraging the English king, who was at war with France.
Power and rage
On 26 March 1296, Scots warriors raided England and attempted to take Carlisle. Edward responded by launching the most aggressive attack on Scotland in many years, including his assault on Berwick-upon-Tweed. That invasion was, for the English king, a demonstration of power and personal rage. In a letter to Pope Boniface VIII in 1301, Edward asserted a claim to be sovereign of Scotland by invoking a mythical narrative, likely derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, written around 1136.
In this version, after founding the kingdom of Britain, Brutus – great-grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas – divided it among his three sons. Edward declared that he was descended from Brutus’s eldest son, Locrinus, and therefore overlord of the kingdoms of Locrinus’s brothers’ successors.
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He also cited past precedent. After the accession of Henry II of England in 1154, Malcolm IV of Scotland had sworn an oath that he would become the liegeman of the English king; that Scots king’s successor, William, had also been forced to swear fealty to Henry.
Whether or not Edward truly believed that the fanciful legend and that earlier oath legitimised his claim to overlordship of Scotland, the outcome was the same: war.
With the outbreak of conflict, the porous border became a violent space where loyalties were divided and people lived in permanent fear of attack – even more so after the rebellion spearheaded by Scottish leader William Wallace began in 1297. The Scots launched punitive raids across Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland, through Durham and Lancashire, and as far south as North Yorkshire and Ripon.
A medieval portrait of John Balliol who in 1295, contrary to Edward I’s expectations, agreed an alliance with England’s old enemy, France | Credit: Alamy
Cruelty and fury
A chronicler at Lanercost Priory, north-east of Carlisle, wrote a vivid first-hand account of a Scottish attack that “surpassed in cruelty all the fury of the heathen”. He also described an assault on Hexham by Scottish soldiers who “committed the consecrated buildings to the flames, plundering the church property stored therein, even violating the women in that very place and afterwards butchering them, sparing neither age, rank nor sex”. Homes were torched, crops trampled or burned, possessions stolen and people abducted.
Cross-border raiding – by then a fact of life in the region – became much worse after Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314
The borders of the Luttrell Psalter, an illuminated manuscript produced in the first half of the 14th century for Lincolnshire knight Geoffrey Luttrell, depict atrocities allegedly committed by Scottish raiding parties across Northumberland and Cumberland (shown on pages 28–29). An unarmed man is attacked from behind; an old woman is beaten, her breasts exposed; babies are massacred. Luttrell fought for Edward I after the invasion, and the psalter reflects his hatred for Scottish soldiers.
These images and stories of butchery were meant to strike fear into the hearts of English people, to whom William Wallace was portrayed as a monster sent from hell to murder children. An early 14th-century song about the Scottish wars describes the tunicatus populus (tunic-wearing people) as immanis – savage. This was, of course, propaganda created to justify Edward I’s actions, but violence certainly was unleashed along the border. (Wallace himself was captured and taken to London, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1305.)
English petitions cite theft and destruction as the leading complaints, with women being particularly vulnerable. In Cumberland, Isabel de Cleterne claimed to have suffered abduction and theft of property, and “begs the king and council for the love of God, the salvation of the king’s soul and the honour of women”. Meanwhile, a widow named Christina bemoaned “all her lands burnt and destroyed by the Scots... she now has nothing with which to sustain her and her three young children”. Elizabeth, the dowager countess of Angus, complained that her “lands in Northumberland are wasted and her tenants dead”.
A map of Scotland from John Hardyng’s 15th-century chronicle (west at top) colours border castles grey, reflecting the frontier’s murky status | Credit: Bridgeman
Religious houses suffered damage at the hands of Scottish raiding parties, too. The prioress at the convent of Holystone in Redesdale, Northumberland, claimed to have been “totally wasted by the enemy, the Scots”, requiring relief lest her community “must disband... for lack of sustenance”.
Edward II, who succeeded his father in 1307, could do little to defend the northern frontier.
At the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, Robert I, king of Scots – popularly known as Robert the Bruce – defeated the English, and retained control over Scotland until his death in 1329. (Edward’s own authority in England was already weakened by internal political instability that eventually led to his deposition and death in 1327.)
Ramping up the raids
Cross-border raiding – by then, a fact of life in the region – became much worse after Bannockburn. Bruce’s military and political strength enabled him to enforce a hard border, driving those loyal to the English from their land and property in Scotland. They became known as ‘the Disinherited’.
Scottish raiding lords became cult figures – for example, James Douglas, dubbed ‘Black Douglas’. Having fought at Bannockburn, he developed a fierce reputation for leading raids across the border; in Yorkshire in 1319, his forces brutally defeated an army including priests and other clergymen in an episode that became known as the Chapter of Myton.
The ruins of Norham Castle, the border bastion where Edward I backed John Balliol for the Scottish crown – and which in the next century became the most besieged castle in northern England | Credit: Dreamstime
By the later 14th century, Norham Castle on the Tweed was the most besieged castle in northern England. In Scalacronica, written around 1355–63, Thomas Gray recounts the story of Sir William Marmion, a knight who was given a gold-crested helm by his lady love and told to take it to the most dangerous place in England in order to win his honour. He chose Norham Castle, where he fought off an attack by Scots raiders almost single-handed – or so the story goes.
Such tales reflect the storytelling culture that became ingrained in the landscape.
The Awyntrs off Arthure (The Adventures of Arthur) is a late 14th-century political commentary set in Cumberland, narrating in prose poetry the political state of the region. Using Arthurian mythology, the author likely borrows from well-known narratives to reflect on the complexity and identity of the frontier region. Its principal theme is the promise of the collapse of a political empire and the turbulence that would result, imbued with a striking sense of borders and liminality.
Thousands of corpses – perhaps up to 17,000 – were thrown down wells or cast into the sea. Edward’s brutal invasion had begun
Around the time that work was written, John Hardyng was growing up in Northumberland in the household of Henry Percy, the renowned knight dubbed ‘Harry Hotspur’. In the mid-15th century Hardyng wrote a chronicle featuring a map of Scotland, its major castles painted in red or pink. The castles along the border – the impressive Carlisle, Wark, Norham, Roxburgh – are, however, grey. Intentionally or otherwise, this colour palette suggests that, by 1400, the border had become a space of its own, culturally and politically, controlled variously by raiding clans on either side. It was, after a century of warfare, a grey area.
The violence dragged on for many years more. In 1513, England defeated Scotland at Flodden in the largest battle ever fought between the two. Three decades later, Henry VIII’s martial effort to force a marriage between his son, Prince Edward, and Mary, Queen of Scots brought more conflict. It was only after the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603 that peace was finally restored along the border.
THE RISE OF THE BORDER REIVERS
Marauding clans unleashed bloodshed, blackmail and ballads
The climate of lawlessness following the events of 1296 nurtured bands of fierce marauders known as reivers. Nominally clans, they engaged in feuds and raids across the border in both directions, forging their own legal system and culture; by the middle of the 15th century, their leaders represented authority in the ‘Debatable Lands’ along the frontier. Both men and women reived, many women being charged with herding stolen cattle across the border. Reivers forced or tricked people out of their wealth; indeed, the word ‘blackmail’ evolved from the border term ‘black mal’ (evil rent or tribute) – the extortion of payments from farmers in return for immunity from raiding. The reivers are also remembered for their literary output, creating border ballads sung as part of a rich oral culture. One example is the ballad Tam Lin, a cautionary fairy tale about marital and bodily consent. Soldiers and scouts from these gangs became essential to both England and Scotland in their fight for authority in the region, but also fuelled the conflict with the disloyalty and distrust they seeded. The 16th century marked the peak of the reivers’ activities. Then in 1603, on the death of Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne as James I, uniting the crowns. Seeing an opportunity for mayhem, the reivers launched a wave of attacks known as the ‘Ill Week’, fighting more fiercely than they had done in years. In response, James issued a royal proclamation against “all rebels and disorderly persons”, declaring that the violent borderlands of the marches would be christened the Middle Shires, in an attempt to heal the divisions between his two kingdoms. The most notorious reivers were hunted down, and either hanged or deported. Within a couple of decades, the worst of the violence was stamped out.
Helen Carr is a historian, writer and broadcaster. Her latest book is Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century (Hutchinson Heinemann, 2025)
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This article was first published in the December 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Authors
Helen CarrHistorian and author
Helen Carr is an historian, writer, TV and podcast producer, specialising in medieval history and public history.
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