Debatable Lands

The Debatable Lands extended from the Solway Firth near Carlisle to Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, the largest population centre being Canonbie.

[7] For over three hundred years the area was effectively controlled by local "riding surnames" or clans of border reivers, Scots for plunderers or raiders.

Other clans in the area were the Elwands, Ellwoods, or Eliotts who extended into Teviotdale; the Nixons who were more numerous in Cumberland; the Crossars in Upper Liddesdale;[8] and the Grahams, who owned five towers in the Debatable Land.

The prevailing anarchy in the area, however, spilled over into both countries as the reivers launched frequent raids on farms and settlements outside the Debatable Lands, and used the profits to become major landowners.

[9][10] Eventually, however, the Debatable Lands became the last part of Great Britain to be brought under the control of a state[9] beginning in 1530, when King James V of Scotland took action against the lawless clans of the Debatable Lands and imprisoned the lords Bothwell, Maxwell and Home, Walter Scott of Buccleuch, and other border lairds for their lack of action.

The 1552 division of the Debatable Lands, the Scots' Dike and the several changes to the status of Berwick-upon-Tweed between the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries until it finally became English in 1482, remains the only significant alterations to the border agreed in the 1237 Treaty of York.