FERRIES 
79 
quartering, were of such common and ordinary occurrence that 
heads, hearts, and limbs adorned the entrance to almost every 
town, whilst almost every roadside hill had its gallows, from which 
dangled the skeletons of the victims of these drastic laws. Hence 
the commonness of places called Gallows hil/ at this day. 
The year of grace 1528 may be taken as a specimen of an 
ordinary year’s work, not on all three marches, but ove only—the 
middle march. Word Dacre of Naworth overran and burned Can- 
nobie and the debatable land four times. By way of retaliation, 
Douglas made six raids on Cumberland, in one of which Netherby 
was burnt to the ground. The Armstrongs in one raid burnt 
sixty-nine houses, slew eight persons, and carried off immense 
numbers of cattle, sheep, and horses. Douglas, in his first raid, 
captured many men, and carried off 600 oxen, 30,000 sheep, 500 
goats, and many horses. In his third raid he killed seventeen men, 
hanged twelve, and carried many to Edinburgh to be executed. 
During the year the Croziers penetrated to Gilsland, captured 
thirty of Dacre’s servants, and killed eleven in cold blood—and in 
retaliation, Sim, of Whitehaugh, boasted that he had wasted forty 
miles of Scottish ground, and burned thirty parish churches. 
During the time Belted Will was in office he gives the names of 
sixty-eight persons who were convicted, and nearly all hanged. 
This record is at Naworth Castle, in Lord William’s own hand- 
writing. 
West Cumberland, suffered as little at the hands of the free- 
booters as any part of the north—for this reason, that the Solway 
Frith and the citadel of Carlisle stood in the way, for they-had to 
‘consider, not only how they could get here, but how they could 
get back with their booty. The district that offered the greatest 
facilities to the mosstroopers was that between the Eden and the 
Tyne, especially east of the Irthing. By that route there were no 
rivers to cross, and the inaccessible bogs, morasses, and rock-clad 
hills around Bewcastle and the debatable land, formed a safe 
retreat for them when pursued. Besides which they had a Roman 
road between Scotland and Birdoswald. Yet, taking Cumberland 
as a whole, including Westmorland and south-west Northumber- 
