Ibidem.—­“October 13, 1663.—­The Parliament, October 21, past an act, declaring, any person that shall discover any felon, or felons (commonly called, or known, by the name of moss-troopers), residing upon the borders of England and Scotland, shall have a reward of ten pound upon their conviction.”]

In these hasty sketches of border history, I have endeavoured to select, such incidents, as may introduce to the reader the character of the marchmen, more briefly and better than a formal essay upon their manners.  If I have been successful in the attempt, he is already acquainted with the mixture of courage and rapacity by which they were distinguished; and has reviewed some of the scenes in which they acted a principal part.  It is, therefore only necessary to notice, more minutely, some of their peculiar customs and modes of life.

Their morality was of a singular kind.  The ranpine, by which they subsisted, they accounted lawful and honourable.  Ever liable to lose their whole substance, by an incursion of the English, on a sudden breach of truce, they cared little to waste their time in cultivating crops, to be reaped by their foes.  Their cattle was, therefore, their chief property; and these were nightly exposed to the southern borderers, as rapacious and active as themselves.  Hence, robbery assumed the appearance of fair reprisal.  The fatal privilege of pursuing the marauders into their own country, for recovery of stolen goods, led to continual skirmishes The warden also, himself frequently the chieftain of a border horde, when redress was not instantly granted by the opposite officer, for depredations sustained by his district, was entitled to retaliate upon England by a warden raid.  In such cases, the moss-troopers, who crowded to his standard, found themselves pursuing their craft under legal authority, and became the favourites and followers of the military magistrate, whose duty it was to have checked and suppressed them.  See the curious history of Geordie Bourne, App.  No.  II.  Equally unable and unwilling to make nice distinctions, they were not to be convinced, that what was to-day fair booty, was to-morrow a subject of theft.  National animosity usually gave an additional stimulus to their rapacity; although it must be owned, that their depredations extended also to the more cultivated parts of their own country[33].

[Footnote 33:  The armorial bearings, adopted by many of the border tribes, shew how little they were ashamed of their trade of rapine.  Like Falstaff, they were “Gentlemen of the night, minions of the moon,” under whose countenance they committed their depredations.—­Hence, the emblematic moons and stars, so frequently charged in the arms of border families.  Their mottoes, also, bear allusion to their profession.—­“Reparabit cornua Phaebe,” i.e.  “We’ll have moon-light again,” is that of the family of Harden.  “Ye shall want, ere I want,” that of Cranstoun, &c.]