Has the border between Scotland and England ever been at a different place from its current location?
Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at
9:54 am
The Exotic Dr. Congo asked:
In other words, are there parts of England today that were once part of Scotland and vice versa?
In other words, are there parts of England today that were once part of Scotland and vice versa?
Tagged with: Border • Scotland • Vice Versa
Filed under: Scotland
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The present Border Line between England and Scotland runs north-east from the Solway Firth in the west via the rivers of Liddel and Esk through the Cheviot hills to the river Tweed and the north sea at Berwick. It was agreed between Henry 111 of England and Alezander 11 of Scotland at the Treaty of York in 1237.
Earlier in the centuries before the Norman Conquest of England the Line took a very different course.
Divided by the Pennine Hills to the west the kingdom of Strathclyde which included what is now English Cumbria (formerly Cumberland and Westmorland) ran from the head of Loch Lomond to Lancashire.
In the east the Kingdom of Northumbria ran from the river Humber (south Yorkshire) as far north as the river Forth (Edinburgh)
So parts of modern day England were once Scottish and vice versa.
It was all very complex but hope this helps,
Tom.
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depends how you define it. To the Romans, what we call Scotland was Calaedonia (the Scots hadn’t come over from Ireland yet), and the border was Hadrian’s Wall – from Carlisle to Newcastle, basically.
Just to explain my previous comments a little more the kingdom of Northumbria was Anglo-Saxon and therefore English.
It wasn’t until the year 1018 that the Scots ruled in the southern Lothians ( the land south of Edinburgh bordering on the river Tweed). In that year at the Battle of Carham the Scots defeated an Angle army and claimed the land north of the Tweed.
In the west in 1092 William Rufus (son of William the Conqueror, also known as the Bastard) drove the Scots out of Cumbria and ruled that the rivers of Esk and Liddel should be the Border Line.
Hope this makes it a little clearer,
Tom.
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there was an area where the exact lines were very vague, until james I pacified the Border earls, but in general the Hadrians wall awas always the emptional border… Although it had long been the de facto border, it was legally stablished in 1237, by the Treaty of York between England and Scotland,[1] with the exception of a small area around Berwick, which was taken by England in 1482. It is thus one of the oldest extant borders in the world, although Berwick was only fully annexed by England by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 (It was not included in Northumberland for parliamentary purposes until 1885.). Also, for many centuries the Scottish Marches on either side of the boundary was an area of mixed allegiances, where families or clans switched which country or side they supported as suited their family interests at that time, and lawlessness abounded. Border Reivers were notorious for raiding without favour to either country.And after the act of Union 1707 it seemed more or less pointless to talk about a border anyway…
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If the result of the Battle of Stamford Bridge had been different then the border would’ve roughly been drawn across from Morecambe Bay.
The most prosperous town in Scotland in medieval times was Berwick on Tweed. It was so highly regarded that the English King, Edward 1, butchered everyone within its walls as an example to Scottish rebels. It was ceded to England as part of a peace treaty, but Berwick Rangers (the local football team) still play in the Scottish league.
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Berwick Upon Tweed has change hands several times untill James 1 became king.
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The barbarians from the south were forever trying to invade Scotland and there was a time when the Scotland-England border changed as frequently as the seasons.
Love this debate.
In response to some other comments, can I say that Berwick was finally ceded to the English in the reign of Richard lll, 1483 to 1485, not James l, 1603 to 1625. It had changed hands between the English and Scots thirteen times if I remember my history lessons.
When the Romans had Hadrian’s wall as its northern boundary, the country of Scotland did not exist.
Sorry,but keep it going. Collectively, we’ll get there in the end