made
prisoner.--_Godscroft_ Vol. II. p. 411.

[Footnote 110: In illustration of this position, the reader is
referred to a long correspondence betwixt Lord Dacre and the Privy
Council of England, in 1550, concerning one Sandye Armstrang, a
partizan of England, and an inhabitant of the Debateable Land, who
had threatened to become a Scottishman, if he was not protected by
the English warden against the Lord Maxwell.--See _Introduction to
Nicholson and Burn's History of Cumberland and Westmoreland_.]

Upon another occasion the Armstrongs were less fortunate. They had,
in one of their incursions, plundered the town of Haltwhistle, on the
borders of Cumberland. Sir Robert Carey, warden of the west marches,
demanded satisfaction from the king of Scotland, and received for
answer, that the offenders were no subjects of his, and that he
might take his own revenge. The English warden, accordingly entered
Llddesdale, and ravaged the lands of the outlaws; on which occasion,
_Sim of the Cat-hill_ (an Armstrong) was killed by one of the Ridleys
of Haltwhistle. This incident procured Haltwhistle another visit from
the Armstrongs, in which they burnt great part of the town, but not
without losing one of their leaders, by a shot from a window.

"The death of this young man (says Sir Robert Carey) wrote (wrought)
so deep an impression upon them (the outlaws), as many vowes were
made, that, before the end of next winter, they would lay the whole
Border waste. This (the murder) was done about the end of May (1598).
The chiefe of all these outlaws was _old Sim of Whittram_.[111] He had
five or six sonnes, as able men as the Borders had. This old man and
his sonnes had not so few as two hundred at their commands, that were
ever ready to ride with them to all actions, at their beck.

[Footnote 111: Whittram is a place in Liddesdale. It is mistaken
by the noble editor for Whithern, in Galloway, as is Hartwesel
(Haltwhistle, on the borders of Cumberland) for Twisel, a village on
the English side of the Tweed, near Wark.]

The high parts of the marsh (march) towards Scotland were put in a
mighty fear, and the chiefe of them, for themselves and the rest,
petitioned to mee, and did assure mee, that, unless I did take some
course with them, by the end of that summer, there was none of the
inhabitants durst, or would, stay in their dwellings the next winter,
but they would fley the countrey, and leave their houses and lands to
the fury of t