It was a March day in 1596, when a Wardens’ meeting took place at Dayholm, near Kershopefoot.  The snow was still lying in the hollows of the Cheviots, the trees were bare, the Liddel and the Esk swollen by thaws and winter rains; but weather was a thing that came but little into the reckoning of the men of the Marches unless some foray was afoot.  They got through the business more or less satisfactorily, and proceeded to ride home before the day of truce should be ended.  From sunrise on the one day until sunset on the next, so the Border law ordained, all Scots and Englishmen who were present at the Wardens’ meeting should be free of scathe.  Now the Warden of Liddesdale at that time was Sir Walter Scott of Branxholme, laird of Buccleuch.  He was one of the greatest men of his century; a “fyrebrande,” according to Queen Elizabeth, and a fierce enemy according to those who incurred his enmity; but, according to all others, a man of perfect courage, stainless loyalty and honour, charming wit, and great culture.  He never spared an enemy nor turned his back on a friend, and he was a born winner of hearts and leader of men.  Amongst his retainers was Kinmont Willie, and as Willie rode from the Wardens’ meeting, along the banks of the Liddel, in company with only three or four men, a body of two hundred English horsemen, commanded by Salkeld, Warden of the Eastern March, marked him from across the water.  Truce or no truce, the chance seemed to them one that was too good to lose.  Speedily some of them pushed on ahead, and an ambush was laid for Kinmont Willie.  He and his friends were naturally totally unprepared for such a dastardly attack, but it took them but little time to gather their wits, and Willie gave them a good run for their money.  For nearly four miles they chased him, but ran him down at length.  After some hard giving and taking, he had to acknowledge his defeat, and, pinioned like a common malefactor—­arms tied behind him, legs bound under his horse’s belly—­they rode with him into Carlisle town.

The news of the treacherous taking of his follower was not long in reaching Buccleuch, who at once raised an angry protest.  Scrope, the English Warden, received this with an evasive and obviously trumped-up counter-charge of Kinmont Will having first broken truce.  Moreover, he said, he was a notorious enemy to law and order, and must bear the penalty of his misdeeds.  This was more than the bold Buccleuch could stomach.

     “He has ta’en the table wi’ his hand,
     He garr’d the red wine spring on hie—­
     ‘Now Christ’s curse on my head,’ he said,
     ’But avenged of Lord Scrope I’ll be! 
     O, is my basnet a widow’s curch? 
     Or my lance a wand o’ the willow-tree? 
     Or my arm a ladye’s lilye hand,
     That an English lord should lightly me?’”