the fact, which are both immoral and unprofitable, but the bright emanations from the pen of the author of Waverley must not be ranked among the number. His novels are of a different kind; and while purity of language, accurate delineation of human nature, or the productions of a comprehensive genius and cultivated understanding are prized in the land, so long will they rank among the brightest gems which this or any other age has bequeathed to posterity. J. C. STANZAS. "The heart is deceitful above all things."-JEREMIAH. Manchester. AMIDST the gay and vulgar crowd, Where hollow laughter rings aloud, The tenant of those joyous hearts, But looking on the smiling face To mark, beneath a seeming joy, And I have wander'd 'midst the crowd And seen some smile in pain,- Each struggle, but in vain, To wear an outward show of joy Veiling the heart within ; It is a melancholy sight, The bitter fruit of sin. N. GARDINER. A SHORT HISTORIC NOTICE OF THE CLAN OF THE ARMSTRONGS. WE need hardly observe that, whilst the predatory and marauding system of warfare prevailed, the Armstrongs had for a considerable number of years the greatest sway and influence over all the other clans in the western districts of the Borders, and particularly in the south-east quarter of the county of Dumfries. A short history therefore, of them, we presume, cannot fail to interest the feelings of those under whose view it may chance to come, and who are no strangers to the name of Armstrong, nor to the country wherein, even at this day, it so greatly abounds; nor, possibly, may prove altogether barren of information to others. Hence hath our attempt its appearance, with the approbation of the Editor, in the Border Magazine. THE name of Fortinbras, signifying in English Strong in Arm, but more neatly by our Saxon ancestors translated Armstrong, is—if not indeed of a much earlier date-coeval with Charlemagne in France. We say of an earlier date, for we have seen an old French history, edited in the fifteenth century, of the Duke of Normandy's ancestors, which mentions a gentleman of that name of high consideration. In the year 787 he had fled with his family, and with what property he could carry with him, into Denmark-the people of which country were then called Normans-for refuge from prosecution, on account of some treasonable practices against his sovereign and the laws of his country; and he was, of course, outlawed. The same history records, that a descendant of this gentleman, in the tenth century, being in the reign of Charles the Simple of France, joined the Norman Rolf, or Rolla, the leader of an invading army that proved successful against Neustrae, now Normandy, and there settled himself with his Danish comrades. It also tells us that a descendant of the latter person, in the eleventh century, followed the fortune of William the Bastard of Normandy in his conquest of England; and, shortly after, joined the English and Saxon nobles, and Norman men of power, become disaffected to William's government, the former, in consequence of their being arbitrarily dispossessed by William of their lands and manors,-the latter, probably, for their not being rewarded by him to the extent they might think themselves entitled for their services-who fled for safety from the vengeance of his arm to the fastnesses of the border districts of England and Scotland. It is doubtless from these refugees, and their immediate descendants, that the several clanships of the Borderers first sprang up. Other clanships followed, but of a considerable later date, as the Maxwells, the Jardins, the Kers, the Scots and the Grahams, which became, in truth, more formidable than the earlier ones to both kingdoms. Their power of annoyance was established on a depredatory system of warfare against their neighbours on each side of them, and occasionally, as their jealousy might operate, against each other; and this system they maintained with the most determined spirit, it is known, for many centuries, even as low down as the accession of James VI. of Scotland to the English throne. Fortinbras, who had now taken up the Saxon translation of his name-Armstrong, sought for a domicile, and soon settled at Mangerton on the Roxburgh side of the river Liddel, in which vicinity also one of his Roman comrades, Elliot, had fixed himself; and here we will take occasion to remark, that we know of no ancestors of the clans of the Borderers, except those of the Armstrongs and Elliots, coming over to England with the Conqueror. The Jardins, no doubt, are of French extraction, but at what period they became a Border clan, we know not. VOL. I. 2 Q Mangerton-for by this name he was now and ever after knownhaving settled himself to his liking, was fortunate enough very shortly, by his maraudings, to acquire no inconsiderable possession of lands in Dumfries-shire; and thus became the first chief of the clan of the Armstrongs. From thence branched off, in after times, Gilnochy the second chief, and Kinmount the third, each having subordinate chiefs, generally selected from their own relations, under them, somewhat similar to the knights under the great Barons of England, conformably to the Norman feudal system of government as introduced, and finally constituted, by the Conqueror William himself. Whilst the two nations of England and Scotland were each under the rule of its respective sovereign, it ever continued the policy of their governments but seldom to disturb the Borderers in their usurp ed dominion over the country in which they had fixed themselves. The reason was that these marauders or free-booters, for they could be considered no other than a bandit of such,―generally became auxiliaries, as suited either their humour or emergency at the time, to one or other of those nations in their wars with each other; or sometimes, uniting their strength, lent themselves to either, to disturb the peace of its neighbour whilst waging war abroad. But when the crowns of the two kingdoms were united by the accession of James VI. of Scotland to the English throne, the administration of the two kingdoms, agreeing together, resolved on the complete subjugation of the Borderers; which measure they soon in a great degree effected. Those on the south side the Esk gave them no trouble; hence they quickly drew over, by promises and bribes, all the leading chiefs on the Scotch side, excepting only Gilnochy and Kinmount with their subordinates. Harielaw, the subordinate of Mangerton, had attached himself, some years before, to the Grahams of the southern border, and was on that account held in utter contempt by the rest of the clan of his name; nor less, too, on account of his treachery in betraying and giving up the Duke of Northumberland to the English government, when he had taken refuge in Scotland from the vengeance of the laws of his country, which he had offended by his treasons in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. What had become of Mangerton at this period, we can give no account; his name was never mentioned; and it is possible he was not in existence, for we recollect once seeing in our perambulations a very elegant cross near his castle, which we were told had been erected over the spot where one of his name had been assassinated, perhaps he was the last of the chiefs of his name, and his lands had fallen to the lot of Harielaw who was descended from him. Christie, the son of John of Gilnochy, so famed in Border history and its ballads, and in Buchanan's history, was at this time the most powerful, the most enterprising, proud, and resolute of all the chiefs of the Borderers; determined on resistance, desperate as it could not fail to have been considered, to which he was excited probably by the recollection of the fate of his father recently and treacherously put to death by the mandate of James V *.; and holding in abhorrence the mean and dastardly yielding, as he might naturally be supposed, from his high • It was an Earl of Morton, by name a Maxwell (originally Maccus), at this time warder of the Scotch Marches,-jealous, in his FIRST character, of the great and undaunted spirit, to estimate it, of the other Border chiefs, who could so calmly surrender an independency that had been for such a length of time maintained in the Borders, and that, too, by a perseverance and bravery that had no example in history. Christie had made several successful raids into England, long after the other chiefs had submitted; and being greatly inspirited thereby, at length, with an infatuation little, if at all, short of insanity, carried his depredations as far as Doncaster in Yorkshire, not less than two hundred and sixty miles distant from his domicile in the Borders, where he was met by the King's troops, surrounded, and after some vain efforts at resistance, was taken with all the other chiefs of his clan that had followed his fortune, and with them instantly hanged. Their castellated towers and houses, being first ransacked, were now all dismantled, and their lands forfeited and suffered to be taken possession of, to their own private benefit, principally by the chiefs of the Scots, the Grahams, and the Elliots, excepting such portion of them as was bestowed for his services on the Lord Clifford, at that time Lord Warden of the English Marches. The chief of Harielaw was permitted to keep his lands, having joined himself, as we have already noticed, to the southern Borderers; but these lands, of whatever extent they were, had become reduced by the extravagance of his successors in the middle of the last century to so few as sixty acres, and these acres, we have heard it insinuated, were wrested in no honourable way from their rightful owner, by Henry, late Duke of Buccleuch, grandfather of the present Duke-an insinuation this we can, from the knowledge we had of that nobleman acquired by frequent intercourse with him, repel with indignation. The Acres, however, have fallen into the great mass of the Buccleuch property in the Border districts, so that there is not, we believe, an individual of the name of Armstrong at the present day in possession of a single rood of land in fee-simple that was possessed by any of their ancestors previous to the defeat we have just now recorded; how much were once possessed by them, is not easily, for a certainty, to be brought together-we dare only name the whole parish of Canobie, in which is now comprehended what were the parishes of Sark and Half Morton; the largest portion, if not the whole, of the parish of Langholm, and the same of what is now the parish of Kirk-Andrews, which at the period in question, constituted a portion, we think, of the parish of Nichol forest ;-the lands of Ellerbeck, now-if we are not wrong informedin the possession of Francis Jeffery, Esq. Lord Advocate of Scotland; wealth that Gilnoch had now acquired, and, in his NEXT, of the increasing power and consequence of that chief over those of the other clans,-who contemplated Gilnoch's ruin, which he effected, by inducing him, under a promise of forgiveness, to present himself with a train of his retainers before his sovereign and yield him homage. Gilnochy unfortunately listened to Maxwell, and approached James with forty, some historians say but thirty, of his followers all costly attired and well mounted, at Fiddleton at the entrance into Ewesdale; but ere he came within any moderate distance of him, he gave the signal for a body of Military lying in ambush, who instantly surrounded Gilnoch and his followers, and conducted them to Cairlenrigg, near the confluence of the Tiviot and Frosty-lee, and there hanged them on the trees, and interred their bodies beneath them, where their graves are visible at this day. -and some portion of the lands of Moffat, belonging to Lord Hopetoun. All the chiefs of the clan of the Armstrongs may be said, too, to have possessed very respectable residences,-Gilnochy the castellated towers of Langholm, Canobie, and Kirk-Andrews, all superior edifices, as their remains testify at this day, most particularly the one at Gilnochy; Kinmount had a residence in Canobie called Woodslee, now the property and the residence of one of the Elliots, besides his castellated mansion at Kinmount, the site of which is now covered by an extensive farmstead called Sark-Tower, in the possession of Mr. Church the tenant of the lands. But to return to some account of the individuals of the clan in general:—and what I am now going to observe of them is from an intercourse I have had with several of them. Lowered as numbers of them are in rank in the world now, as far as wealth and valour bestowed, and reduced as many of them must necessarily be almost to absolute poverty, yet have they, for such they absolutely betray, the consolation of reflecting that the honour of those of their ancestors who resisted, though unsuccessfully, to the last extremity, the annihilation of the Border compact of freedom and independency for so many centuries maintained with every possible effort that men are capable of, remains unsullied. In truth it is almost marvellous with what equanimity of mind and temper, it is observable, they frequently can advert to and contemplate their present state consequent from their ancestors' noble and undaunted spirit in risking as they did, and in the end losing, wealth, power and rank in the world. Before we proceed further with our narrative, let it be permitted us to ask, where, with perhaps the exception of the highland clan of the Campbells, will be found a name so numerously abounding in any other district at home, where their first ancestor settled himself, or so spread over the surface of the globe, or at least over those parts of it where the government, under the shadow of whose wings they have hitherto been protected, has any kind of sway, authority, or commercial intercourse, as is the name of Armstrong?-And here we will remark a circumstance which, we are persuaded, will not a little surprise many of our readers-that notwithstanding so great a number of the descendants of this once formidable Border clau is yet remaining amongst us; and notwithstanding also, as it is well known, many, many individuals of them have by their talents and industry raised themselves to wealth, nor less to respectability of character, yet but few, very few have found their way into court, or into any of the different employments under government, nor even in the various professions, that of the medical only excepted in the kingdom-for it is a fact, the truth of which we had, seven years ago, opportunity of ascertaining beyond all disputation, by careful examination into the lists published in the Royal Calendars,-the Almanacks,-and various other public registers that we might depend on of the year of that period 1825-That not one of the name of Armstrong was to be found in the Imperial parlia ment;-not one among the higher offices at Court;-not one among the Peers of the three kingdoms;-not one among the Governors of our Colonies, nor in the Diplomacy, nor among the Consuls; nor among the Baronets; nor in the knights of the different orders, or |