petent number, as I thought, for such a service.

The day and place was appointed for our meeting in the Wastes, and,
by the help of the foot of Liddisdale[112] and Risdale, wee had soone
built a pretty fort, and within it wee had all cabines made to lye in,
and every one brought beds or matresses to lye on. There wee stayed,
from the middest of June, till almost the end of August. We were
betweene fifty and sixty gentlemen, besides their servants and my
horsemen; so that wee were not so few as two hundred horse. Wee wanted
no provisions for ourselves nor our horses, for the countrey people
were well payed for any thing they brought us; so that wee had a good
market every day, before our fort, to buy what we lacked. The chiefe
outlawes, at our coming, fled their houses where they dwelt, and
betooke themselves to a large and great forest (with all their
goodes), which was called the Tarras. It was of that strength, and
so surrounded with bogges and marish grounds, and thicke bushes
and shrubbes, as they feared not the force nor power of England nor
Scotland, so long as they were there. They sent me word, that I was
like the first puffe of a haggasse,[113] hottest at the first, and
bade me stay there as long as the weather would give me leave. They
would stay in the Tarras Wood till I was weary of lying in the Waste;
and when I had had my time, and they no whit the worse, they would
play their parts, which should keep mee waking the next winter. Those
gentlemen of the countrey that came not with mee, were of the same
minde; for they knew (or thought at least), that my force was not
sufficient to withstand the furey of the outlawes. The time I stayed
at the fort I was not idle, but cast, by all meanes I could, how to
take them in the great strength they were in. I found a meanes to send
a hundred and fifty horsemen into Scotland (conveighed by a muffled
man,[114] not known to any of the company), thirty miles within
Scotland, and the businesse was carried so, that none in the countrey
tooke any alarm at this passage. They were quietly brought to
the back-side of the Tarras, to Scotland-ward. There they divided
themselves into three parts, and tooke up three passages which the
outlawes made themselves secure of, if from England side they should
at any time be put at.

[Footnote 112: The foot of Liddisdale were the garrison of King James,
in the castle of Hermitage, who assisted Carey on this occasion, as
the Armstrongs we