The Secret Family History of George Augustus Eliott.                         

 

The story of Gibraltar’s most famous governor is well known and frequently told. His heroic defence of the Rock throughout the Great Siege and his famous Grand Sortie; spiking enemy guns and destroying their siege-works, are the stuff of legends. But what of Eliott, before he arrived in Gibraltar? What of his background? Why was he chosen to defend the fortress? Good questions and not all easy to answer, but let’s see what we can turn up.

One of our best authorities on military matters, Bill Jackson, describes him thus; 

“Eliott was a border Scot who had received a wide academic education at Edinburgh, Leyden University and both the French and British Schools of Military Engineering. He had seen active service in the Prussian and Austrian armies before joining the British, in which he served in the 23rd Foot (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) and the Horse Grenadier Dragoons (2nd Life Guards) of which he was field engineer for 15 years. He then raised his own regiment of Light Dragoons. He had a wealth of battle experience, being wounded both at Dettingen (1743) and Fontenoy (1745). In the most recent war with Spain he had been second in command of the force that took Havana in 1762."

He was reported to be a hard, frugal man who had trained himself to withstand the rigours of war. Not only was he a vegetarian but he did not drink alcohol and rarely slept more than four hours a night; a quality is shared by a few great commanders and the odd politician. (Maggie Thatcher hardly slept and consequently could spend her nights planning whilst her opponents dreamed). So thanks to General Jackson we have a good, though perhaps limited, picture of Eliott as he arrived to take charge in 1776; the year our American cousins chose to rebel.

Eliott’s education at Edinburgh and Leyden University, not to mention the military schools, suggests perhaps a privileged or at least wealthy background. Did he then come from a noble or wealthy family or from common stock? Perhaps surprisingly the answer is all three. His antecedents were border Scots; that is to say from the border region between England and Scotland, an area that had been almost totally unmanageable over hundreds of years; since the Emperor Hadrian had built his wall from the Solway Firth to Wallsend.

His family name was first recorded as Aliot - Sir William de Aliote arrived in England with William the Conqueror - and had a number of variants before George’s family settled on Eliott of Stobs. Their ancestral home was in Liddesdale (in the Scottish border marches) where they had moved from Angus in the 1240s. Robert the Bruce had granted them Liddesdale, possibly to put some distance between them and his crown. When the Eliotts were first written of, in the late fifteenth century, they were already a well established clan with a chief. Information from the earlier periods was perhaps among the ashes of the old Stobs Castle, three miles south of Hawick; the patriarchal home was burned down in 1712.

    

Significantly the Eliotts were known as a 'Riding Clan' a name that struck dread into all who heard it and knew what that meant. It was a euphemism for Reivers; The Border Reivers, a group of warrior clans who lived by cattle stealing, arson, murder, kidnapping for ransom, etc. They were probably the most ruthlessly efficient, professional terrorists that England and Scotland has ever known and whose fiercest leaders were the Eliott and Armstrong families. They plundered the farms and estates of the Scottish lowlands and England as far south as Lancaster, living off the communities by pillage and by threat. They made the Vikings look like choirboys and they fought authority - any authority - which attempted to regulate the border region. They frequently fought each other; both in territorial disputes and in bitter feuds that were carried down through generations.

They gave the English language the terms ‘bereaved’ (originally bereived) a word describing the situation of those visited by the reivers and ‘blackmail’ a tithe payable so as not to be visited by them. This tithe was actually a double rent; a first rent to the laird  and the same again to the reivers. Since it was often paid in oats, it was known as blackmeal, soon to be known as blackmail. Another phrase derived from the reivers is to be caught red handed, ie. to be caught with blood on your hands, either in the slaughter of an individual or in taking livestock.

 This gives some idea of their ferocity and the legacy they left to the poor folk of the borders. Perhaps it also provides an insight into George’s genetic lineage...... the unconscious heritage that helped make him what he was. By way of example, at a 1726 by-election, his father, Sir Gilbert Eliott, 3^rd Baronet of Stobs, fell into an after dinner argument with one Colonel John Stewart. The dispute escalated into a fight and Sir Gilbert killed the Colonel with his sword. He was declared an outlaw and fled to Holland. The old reiver spirit was clearly not far below the surface. 

Religion did not prove a deterrent to fighting families. Even the priests carried weapons. historian Bishop Leslie wrote in 1572 that 'the Borderers devotion to their rosaries was never greater than before setting out on a raid and on the Scottish border it was the custom of christening to leave unblest the child's master hand in order that unhallowed blows could be struck upon the enemy.'

 The names of the riding clans included Scott, Armstrong, Kerr, Bell, Davison, Irvine, Douglas, Charlton, Burns, Radcliffe, Crisp, Dunne, Foster, Hetherington, Reade, Simpson, Taylor, Graham, Eliott and others... and, I am sure you will have noticed, these are names well represented in Gibraltar. For around four hundred years these clan armies terrorised the country either side of the Solway Firth and across to Berwick and Bamburgh. They were called riding clans because of their tactic of riding by moonlight to attack their chosen community by surprise to kill, pillage, steal cattle and sometimes burn whatever was left. They were virtually unstoppable, riding small unshod but sure footed ponies called hobblers, known as Galloways in Scotland and called bog-trotters in Northumberland. They made their way through “unfrequented byways and intricate paths” as one observer put it, laying-up during the day before attacking at night. “As soon as they have seized upon the booty, they in like manner, return home in the night through blind ways, fetching many a compass. The more skilful any captain is to pass through those wild deserts, crooked turnings and deep precipices, in the thickest mists and darkness, his reputation is greater and he is looked upon as a man of excellent head.” These field-craft skills were their principal asset and the foundation of successful reiving.

 In a time when armies marched in columns and formed lines to do battle the reiver was often employed for his guerrilla tactics. Not only could he work stealthily behind enemy lines, attacking enemy wagon trains, destroying their food and supplies, but he could set fire to property as a diversion and perform numerous reconnaissance roles.

 A typical Reiver warrior wore jak of plaite, this was a two or three layered sleeveless quilted gilet worn over a shirt, with little overlapping iron plates stitched between the layers. Some wore lightweight armour, usually back or breast plates they had managed to loot. A scarf around the neck offered some protection against having a throat cut and thigh high leather riding boots, worn with spurs, protected the legs. Their ponies, meanwhile, had chain wrapped four or five times around the thighs to help deflect spear thrusts. From the 16th century on, they wore light open helmets called burgonets; the steill bonnets. These provided protection without a loss of vision. They were peaked on top with protective cheek plates and a flared rim to protect the neck and were padded inside with leather. These helmets were not dissimilar to the Morion helmets of the conquistadors.

                      

Scots reivers sometimes employed a small crossbow, known as a latch, and the Jeddart staff, a four foot blade of steel, giving a long cutting edge, with a spike at the heel for piercing. A favourite was the Lochaber axe, easily made by a blacksmith, used to arm men who lacked a broadsword or firearm. So, with lightweight protection, sure footed aggressive reivers would be agile, being frequently armed with swords and spears and occasionally pistols. Although the damp of the night fogs and their working environment made pistols unreliable and in any case not particularly accurate except at close range.

                                                   

                                                    The Lochaber Axe with anti-cavalry hook

One of the legends of the borders is that when the woman of a household felt supplies were running low, she would take a covered plate to the table to place before her men-folk. When the cover was removed the plate was seen to be bare except for a pair of spurs. The message was clear; go reiving or go hungry.

A typical raid was recorded by Hecky Noble, a widow of only a few days, when Dickie Dryhope (an Armstrong) again raided her town, driving off 200 head of cattle, destroying nine houses and burning alive Hecky's son John and daughter-in-law who was pregnant. A few days earlier he had murdered a miller, burned the mill and twelve houses and reived 100 cattle. Two months earlier he had stolen a woman's few cattle (18 in number) and rifled her house. This was not uncommon riding. This type of reiving, the raiding of small towns and homes, happened along the Marches almost every day.

So how did reiving start? The answer lies with Edward 1st, hammer of the Scots, who in 1286 lead a series of brutal excursions into Scotland, plunging both countries into 300 years of warfare. His intention was to demoralize and subjugate the Scots and so he put entire communities to the sword. Crops were burned, castles and hovels alike were destroyed and whole populations slaughtered. Instead of subjugation this generated intense resentment and the borderer's reaction was to abandon civilised behaviour, treat all property as theirs for the taking... and take it.

    
                                                                            Clifton Hall - a superior Pele.

In an attempt to protect themselves, regular law-abiding people built homes designed to keep reivers out. A Border Tower House or Pele was built of stone and mortar and enclosed by a stone wall called a barmekin. The term Pele is still used when referring to border towers. The barmekin was used to keep the cattle and sheep and was about 15 feet high and 3 feet thick. There were other buildings built inside the stone wall, some of which were for housing retainers. Towers usually comprised a basement and two floors for living, with a steeply pitched roof tiled with stone... the whole thing enclosed by a parapet. This provided some protection while the defenders hurled anything they could, stones, hot oil, dung, etc, at the attackers. There were few windows in these structures; the emphasis of the building was on security not on adornment. The cattle and horses were locked in the basement. 

The first floor had a fireplace and a few low benches. The floor was strewn with moor grass, heather and herbs. The second floor was used for sleeping or storage and led to the roof. The upper floors were reached by a spiral staircase and it turned upwards in a clockwise, right handed direction which gave freedom of movement to a right handed defender's sword and could be used against an attacker trying to climb up. The stairs also had a trip-step built in which one step that was a little steeper than the rest. An attacker would be unaware of the difference in height, as he fought his way up the stair, making it likely that he might trip. The staircase at the top of each floor could be blocked by furniture or stones which were placed ready on each floor. If the tower had to be abandoned, it would be emptied of valuables and stuffed with peat which, when set on fire, caused a dense smouldering smoke. The shell would remain intact for when the owners were able to return, after the invaders had left.  

Another similarly defensive structure, more common in farms, was the Bastle House, a strong two storey building with walls over four feet thick. The roof was steeply pitched and covered with stone slabs. Again, the basement was a shelter for livestock and had a strong door, heavily bolted. A trapdoor in the ceiling was the means of reaching the upper level living space. This upper level usually had two or three rooms - but very few windows - and could also be reached from the outside by a ladder pulled up after the climber. The ladder ended up at a heavily bolted door. Nowadays, for the benefit of tourists, steps have been built in place of the ladders at most renovated Bastle Houses. Interestingly, the Martello Towers, copied from the Genoese Mortella Tower, Corsica, and built around the world in the 19C by the British Empire, employ exactly the same principles.

In 1603 the crowns of England and Scotland were united under James VI of Scotland and I of England who determined to bring an end to reiving. Many of the men in the reiving clans were rounded up and hanged. Mass hangings, without trial, became a familiar sight in the borders. Clan chiefs were hanged or drowned, their homes and crops burned and their wives and children left destitute. Thus began an era of ethnic cleansing. Many of the lesser reivers were transported to the new colony of Ireland or sent to the Cautionary Towns of Holland where English garrisons existed at Flushing, Ramekins and Walcheren. 

When our George Augustus was born, reiving had been suppressed for nearly 100 years but the reiver spirit still existed in these (in)famous families. As you might expect these outlaws went on to become rich - and then of course respectable - much as today, and the Eliotts were no exception. With all his training and experience in British and European armies, George was the equal of many other top soldiers of his day but what made him special was the innate cunning and essentially terrorist skills that he had inherited in his blood; he was descended from a long line of true warlords. 

So, if your family tree includes any of the names listed above... you too may have a little something extra in your genes.

                                                                

                                                                 The beautiful border reivers country.

George M Trevelyan, British historian and Northumbrian, superbly summed up the nature of the Border Reivers when he wrote;

“They were cruel, coarse savages, slaying each other like the beasts of the forest; and yet they were also poets who could express in the grand style the inexorable fate of the individual man and woman, the infinite pity for all cruel things which they none the less inflicted upon one another. It was not one ballad- maker alone but the whole cut throat population who felt this magnanimous sorrow, and the consoling charms of the highest poetry.”

 

First published in Gibraltar History Society Chronicle 2018.       Paul Hodkinson.