Border reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border. They included both English and Scottish people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their victims' nationality.Neville, C. J. "The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages." Law and History Review 9, no. 1 (1991): p7-8.Hay, D. "England, Scotland and Europe: The Problem of the Frontier." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 25, 1975, pp. 81. JSTOR, They operated in a culture of legalised raiding and feuding.Leeson, Peter T. "The Laws of Lawlessness." The Journal of Legal Studies 38, no. 2 (2009): 473.Neville, Cynthia. "Scottish Influences on the Medieval Laws of the Anglo-Scottish Marches." The Scottish Historical Review 81, no. 212 (2002): p171. Their heyday was in the last hundred years of their existence, during the time of the House of Stuart in the Kingdom of Scotland and the House of Tudor in the Kingdom of England.Fraser, George MacDonald. The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. HarperCollins, 1995, p29
The historian G. M. Trevelyan summed up Border society by writing:
Like the Homeric Greeks, the Borderers were cruel and barbarous men, slaying each other like beasts of the forest, but high in pride and honour and rough faithfulness.
Amidst centuries of lawlessness, poverty and low-intensity conflict, compounded by significant invasions along the Anglo-Scottish frontier, familial groups gradually coalesced into organised units of common defence and offence based on kinship, giving rise to what would later be formalised as the 'Surnames.'Durham, K., & McBride, A. (1995). The Border Reivers (Men-at-Arms 279). Osprey Publishing, p11 The reivers emerged between 1350 and 1450,Steingraber, Aubrey Maria. Landscape and the Making of the Medieval Anglo-Scottish Border: Power, Place, and Perspective c.1200–c.1500. PhD Thesis, University of York, Department of Archaeology, March 2022. p83 with their activities reaching their height in the 16th century during the Tudor period in England and the late Stewart period in Scotland.Fraser, George MacDonald. The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. HarperCollins, London, 1995. p29. Reiving was a matter of subsistence for the borderer.Gray, John. "Lawlessness on the frontier: The Anglo‐Scottish borderlands in the fourteenth to sixteenth century." History & Anthropology, vol. 12, no. 4 (2001), pp. 387–388. They were infamous for raiding, blood feuds,The word "feud" appears to have originated in the Borders during the Middle Ages. See: Niles, John D. “The Myth of the Feud in Anglo-Saxon England.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 114, no. 2, 2015, p.171 eliciting protection money or taking hostages (blackmail), where justice was frequently negotiated through arbitration at Truce Days rather than enforced and mandated by state law.Ellis, Steven G. Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State. Oxford University Press, 1995, p.59. Often the dividing line between officially sanctioned raiding and independent raiding was not clear.MacDonald, Alastair J. *Border Bloodshed: Scotland, England and France at War, 1369–1403* (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), pp. 11. Many crimes, such as theft and feuding, were treated with less severity due to the ancient customs and culture of the Borderlands, which had evolved over centuries to tolerate and codify such practices in the March law.Neville, C. J. "The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages." Law and History Review 9, no. 1 (1991): p14.
Although less well-known than Highlanders in Scotland, whom they met and defeated in battle on occasion,Sadler, John. Flodden 1513: Scotland's Greatest Defeat. Campaign Series no. 168, illustrated by Stephen Walsh, Osprey Publishing (Bloomsbury), 2006. p68-69 the border reivers played a significant role in shaping Anglo-Scottish relations.Boscher, Paul Gerard. Politics, Administration and Diplomacy: The Anglo-Scottish Border 1550–1560. PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 1988 Their activities were a major factor in ongoing tensions between the two kingdoms, and their raids often had international repercussions.Moffat, Alistair. The Reivers: The Story of the Border Reivers. Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh, 2007. There is debate over how great their threat and the extent to which their raids were state-directed rather than purely opportunistic.Robb, Graham. The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England. Picador, London, 2018.Fraser, George MacDonald. The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. HarperCollins, London, 1995, p.7Newman, Caron. "The Anglo-Scottish Western March: A Landscape in Transition." In Settlement Change Across Medieval Europe: Old Paradigms and New Vistas, edited by Niall Brady and Claudia Theune, 257–265. Ruralia XII. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2019, PassimGroundwater, Anna. The Scottish Middle March, 1573‑1625: Power, Kinship, Allegiance. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series 73. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010, p151-152MacDonald, Alastair J. *Border Bloodshed: Scotland, England and France at War, 1369–1403* (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), pp. 41.
The culture of the border reivers, characterised by honour, close family bonds and self-defence, has been said to influence the culture of the Upland South in the United States. Many Borderers migrated as families to America, where their values are thought to have contributed significantly to the region's social structure and political ideologies, with echoes of their influence persisting even today.
Etymology Reive, a noun meaning raid, comes from the Middle English (Scots) reifen. The verb reave meaning "plunder, rob", a closely related word, comes from the Middle English reven. There also exists a Northumbrian and Scots verb reifen.Middle English Dictionary, s.v. "MED37340," University of Michigan, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED37340 (accessed 22 March 2026). All three derive from Old English rēafian which means "to rob, plunder, pillage".Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 'reive' verb merriam-webster.com Variants of these words were used in the Borders in the later Middle Ages.
The earliest use of the combined term "border reiver" appears to be by Sir Walter Scott in his anthology Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Edinburgh, 1849 ed.), volume 1, p. 401 George Ridpath (1716?–1772), the author of posthumously published The Border-History of England and Scotland, deduced from the earliest times to the union of the two crowns (London, 1776), referred not to 'border reivers' but only to banditti.Ridpath, The Border-History of England and Scotland (London, 1776), p. 696
Contemporary names In the High Middle Ages, an outlaw was euphemistically known on the Borders as a "wolf" or a "bearer of the wolf's head".Robson, Ralph. The English Highland Clans: Tudor Responses to a Mediaeval Problem. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1989, p10 Later, outlaws were referred to as 'broken men.'Pitcairn, Robert. Criminal Trials in Scotland, from A.D. M.CCCC.LXXXVIII to A.D. M.DC.XXIV, Embracing the Entire Reigns of James IV. and V., Mary Queen of Scots, and James VI. Compiled from the Original Records and MSS. With Historical Notes and Illustrations. Volume First, Part First. Edinburgh: William Tait, Prince's Street; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1833, p144.
A 1443 source notes that "a garyson of refars" (reivers) being housed in Coldingham Priory were responsible for the theft of two thousand sheep.Cardew, Anne, 'A study of society in the Anglo-Scottish borders, 1455-1502' (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of St Andrews, 1972), p54 Those living in Redesdale and Tynedale were referred to as Highlanders by contemporary sources;Fraser, George MacDonald. The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. HarperCollins, 1995, p44Ellis, Steven G. "Ruling the Marches: County Communities in Frontier Societies" Defending English Ground: War and Peace in Meath and Northumberland, 1460–1542, Oxford University Press, 1 June 2015, pp. 145. by others pejoratively known at the time as the "Busy Gap Rogues" after being famed for spreading out from an isolated hole in Hadrian's Wall near Housesteads.Crow, Jim. “Tracing the Busy Gap Rogues.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol. 11, no. 4, 2007, pp. 322–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20853138. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025, p322 The inhabitants of Teviotdale and the notorious Liddesdale were referred to as "Limmers".Durham, K., & McBride, A. (1995). The Border Reivers (Men-at-Arms 279). Osprey Publishing, p6 The Border reivers were also referred to as bandits (or bandis in Middle Scots) in some contemporary sources.Groundwater, Anna. The Scottish Middle March, 1573‑1625: Power, Kinship, Allegiance. Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series 73. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010, p150
Background
Governance, culture and territoriality of the Anglo-Scottish frontier
The Anglo-Scottish borders were shaped by centuries of territorial disputes, cultural integration, and overlapping systems of governance, resulting in one of the most administratively complex regions of medieval Britain.Robson, Ralph. The English Highland Clans: Tudor Responses to a Mediaeval Problem. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1989, p4-7
The traditional narrative places the Battle of Carham in 1018 as a pivotal moment when Scottish forces secured control over Lothian, marking a fundamental shift in the northern boundary of England.Moffat, Alistair. The Borders. Deerpark Press, 2002, p. 136-137. However, this interpretation is subject to debate. Some historians question whether the loss of Lothian to Scotland can be definitively dated to 1018, with a range of alternative timelines proposedDuncan, A. A. M. (1976). The Battle of Carham, 1018. The Scottish Historical Review, 55(159), Passim. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25529144 or whether the battle had any real significance.EDMONDS, F. (2014). The Emergence and Transformation of Medieval Cumbria. The Scottish Historical Review, 93(237), p209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43774035
Lothian Contemporary evidence suggests the gradual establishment of Scottish authority over Lothian and the Borders, marked by the consolidation of continuous royal control around the same time as the Norman Conquest, West Lothian and Midlothian likely dates between Máel Coluim III’s accession in 1058 and the death of his son Edgar in 1107.An older source says that Edgar recognised William II as Overlord in Lothian. (Mack, J. L. (1926). The border line: From the Solway to the North Sea, along the marches of Scotland and England (New and revised ed.). Oliver and Boyd, p7. The continued ambiguity in the possession of Lothian is shown in the Peterborough Chronicle in 1091: "Then the king, Malcolm, heard that he would he sought out with an army, he went with his army out of Scotland into Lothian in England and bided there."Original text: þa ða se cyng Melcolm gehyrde þæt hine man mid fyrde secean wolde. he for mid his fyrde ut of Scotlande into Loðene on Englaland þær abad. - Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Laud Chronicle (1091)The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS E (Peterborough Chronicle), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636. Into the late 11th century, Lothian was still regarded as one of England's unshired regions, alongside Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.McGuigan, Neil. "Lothian and the Scottish Kings." *History Scotland*, Winter 2024, p45