Below are excerpts from Joanna Bath's article, 'Countykeeping, Corruption, and the Courts in the Early Eighteenth-Century Borders: The Feud of William Charlton and William Lowes', Northern History, XL: 1, March 2003 [back issues can be ordered from here]

"The Border Counties have long been associated with high levels of cattle and sheep theft, dating back to the days of the Border reivers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  It had been hoped that the union of the two Crowns in 1603, and the creation of such institutions as the Border Commission, would put an end to the problem and bring law to the wilds of the Border regions, making them instead ‘the middle kingdom’.  A campaign of pacification was begun, with large numbers of clansmen executed or deported.  In practice, though, progress in curbing the Border highlands was slow, frustrated by the mechanics of multiple jurisdictions and communication over difficult territory.  As late as the Civil War and Restoration, cattle theft was still a problem significant enough to elicit specific legislation from central government.  The most important of these acts was the Act for the Preventing of Theft and Rapine upon the Northern Borders of England (1662), which included several measures against the ‘moss-troopers’ of the Borders, including the creation of the post of county, or country, keeper."

"In July 1701 John Weir, a notorious horse thief operating with a gang of men across the England/Scotland Border and particularly in the highlands of Northumberland, was a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle awaiting execution.  There, he wrote (or, rather, was involved in the production of) a confession of his criminal past.  The bulk of the confession is a catalogue of horse thefts, detailing where beasts were stolen from, and who bought them.  Whilst of interest in itself in detailing the modus operandi of a network of horse thieves on the Border nearly a hundred years after the union of the Crowns, the description of one particular night is especially eye-catching.  It opens a window on to another side of the world of the professional criminal of the Borders."

"Weir claimed that in May 1700 he was visiting a house in “Grandeeknows”, near Housesteads.  This was the home of Mary Armstrong, matriarch of the Northumberland Armstrongs - brothers Nicholas, William, John and Thomas, who were part of a network of horse thieves active since at least 1692.  Into this den of hardened criminals walked William Lowes, described by Weir as steward to Sir Edward Blackett, and certainly a man of means with an interest in the workings of local government and law.  Close comparison of Weir’s confession of the events that followed with testimonies later given to the Quarter Sessions on related matters allows up to piece together the events of that night, and their repercussions over the subsequent months and years.

In July 1700, yeoman William Turner of Crinneldykes deposed to the clerk of the peace, John Ord, that Thomas and William Armstrong of Grindlesknow had come to him on the common with pistols and staffs, and said they ‘would not take his life but [they] would mark him’ because he was ‘a great enemy to them and their comrades and they would have satisfaction…in remembrance of what this informant had done to Christopher Johnson and the apprehending of Francis Robinson’.  They then cut his tongue off with a pair of ‘jackolegs’, and maimed his ear and cheek.  The incident was also described by Weir although, with typical pamphlet melodrama, he (quite incorrectly) states that the testimony was written in Turner’s own blood.  Francis Robinson is unknown to us, but Christopher Johnson was another horse thief mentioned by Weir as being still alive and stealing in 1700.  If Turner had testified against Johnson, there is no surviving record of this, and it did not lead to his capture, but it does seem that Turner had become an enemy of the gang.  Weir states that the assault was committed by the Armstrong brothers and one William Barley, ‘for informing they were bad persons’."

"That version of events is the one which was taken up by subsequent antiquarians.  The feud is portrayed as being over the regional, or assistant, county keeper’s post for Redesdale, coveted by Lowes, already assistant county keeper for Tynedale, for his friend.  Some versions further complicate the story by interpreting Weir’s words to mean that William Charlton was assistant keeper of Leehall and was involved in the scheme against Hall of Monkridge, and was thus at this date working in this matter alongside Lowes, rather than, as was later to prove, as bitter rivals.  However, this reading of the text can be disputed in the light of the other testimonies available from the Quarter Sessions, which portray the entire scheme, identical in its method, in terms of an attempt by Lowes to usurp Charlton’s position as county keeper for all of Northumberland.  Weir was certainly present at the meeting - the Armtrong testimony mentions him, if only in passing - but his interpretation of events was rather different from that of the Armstrongs, and less credible.  The two informations given by the Armstrongs state that William Lowes proposed widespread horse theft in order to ‘break Mr Charlton of Leehall the county keeper all to pieces’.  This was not for the sake of a ‘friend’, but solely in self interest, motivated by ambition and the desire to revenge a snub.  As Thomas Armstrong put it, ‘Mr Charlton would not suffer [Lowes] to be concerned in the keeping with him, he would fit him for so refusing and make him repent it, and if [the gang] stole enough the said Mr Charlton would give up his place and got the county keeping himself and make them all rich soon’.  The quarter sessions order books also clearly distinguish ‘Country Keepers’, and the salary that went along with them, from assistant or deputy keepers, casting doubt upon Weir’s version (as Charlton was certainly paid the salary appropriate to the chief keeper of the county)."

"Lowes’ attempts to discredit Charlton continued, and appear to have become more elaborate.  In late 1704, it emerged in court that over the summer he had attempted a scheme to have Charlton convicted as a clipper and coiner.  This was not a common offence in the area, but did raise its head every few years; the involvement of such a gentleman as Charlton would have been notorious, but might not perhaps have stretched credibility too far.  To this end, Lowes allegedly bribed Thomas Dodd, a man indebted to him for buying him out of the army, to swear that Charlton was a coiner, and he tried to bribe a whitesmith, Joseph Hedley, to make coining irons and hide them in Charlton’s house.  It is in this context that we again meet Robert Garlick, as Lowes’ agent in approaching potential conspirators.  The plan backfired, however, and the whole scheme was exposed before the Quarter Sessions, with the justices of Durham also involved.

Besides these outrageous claims, a more subtle set of testimonies was also coming to light questioning Charlton’s competence.  In the atmosphere of the time, it is hard not to believe that at least some of these were motivated by Lowes; complaints about the conduct of a county keeper had never been made so insistently to the Quarter Session before.  A series of men was lined up to report that Charlton had acted improperly, both by hindering prosecutions and mishandling potential suspects.  Jasper Dodd of Shawbush alleged that Charlton had bribed him not to continue with the prosecution of those that stole his stirks, in an interesting parallel to the kind of connivance Lowes himself was involved in between keeper and thieves.  John Robeson of Sanda alleged being wrongfully detained on suspicion of horse theft, a charge to which Charlton’s reply, stressing the propriety of his actions, also survives.  Frances Elliot, a Scot, accused Charlton of imprisoning his brother (keeping him chained to his kitchen grate for several days) and then carrying him to Jedburgh Castle without due process, a sequence of events which ended with David Elliot being impressed as a soldier.  Impressment was a valid end for a genuine thief, if Charlton had caught him, but he almost certainly did not have the right to convict summarily to this fate.  Press masters in this era appear to have been particularly happy to take all and sundry on board, and the first years of the eighteenth century saw a rash of complaints."

There is no simple end to this narrative.  For the next few years, the two Williams battled it out for the county keepership, although never again by such twisted means.  In Midsummer 1706, Charlton managed to win his post back, but by Michaelmas he was in dire financial straits.  He was unable to produce adequate sureties for a bond placed upon the post, and in open court two aides of Lowes, presumably primed for the eventuality, ‘offered on the behalf of Mr Lowes that he was willing to undertake the country keeping’.  His victory was short lived, however, as his misdeeds - and his continuing involvement with the Armstrong gang - continued to dog him.  In Midsummer 1707, a presentment was made calling him ‘a person that protects rogues and thieves, and that it is a common practice of those very persons employed under him to take away the inhabitants horses…and ride them for a space of a year or more and so turn them so abuses that the said horses is good for nothing’.  Most interestingly, this presentment was signed firstly by one William Charlton.  This is almost certainly the same man, as the second name, Nicholas Greenwell, also appeared in an earlier record as an ally of Charlton, marking the presentment as a deliberate tactic on Charlton’s part and, as such, one of his most pro-active moves.

The following year Lowes was also specifically accused of involvement in protecting horse thieving members of the gang, and particularly for taking a bribe not to prosecute the imprisoned Francis Morraley at the Assizes.  The county keepership had been so damaged by this obvious collusion that the grand jury even asked for it to ‘be laid aside or else an honest person appointed’.  The request for the end of the burdensome and potentially corrupt system had not been officially made before, but was to be heard several times over the following decades.  In Midsummer 1708, the county keeper’s post was given over to another man, Gabriel Read; nothing is known of his allegiances.

Nonetheless, and in spite of continued popular support for guaranteed compensation, the events of 1704 can be seen as marking the beginning of the end of the county keeping system.  In 1719 further attempts were made to abolish it, but these were dropped when petitions argued ‘we apprehend that the stealing of cattle will thereby be increased and that great damage will fall upon the poorer sort of tenants who neither have money nor will be able to spare their time to go in pursuit of the thief’.  In 1726, the system was reformed, with a higher salary but fewer districts, with a deputy in charge of each one.  The need to counter the action of animal thieves remained.  In 1728 Thomas Sisson reported that ‘there is seldom a week but wither some horses or other cattle as stolen…the watch is set foe both in Newcastle and Gateshead’.

The corruption, and in particular links between county keepers and thieves, did not end there.  Morgan and Rushton note that two assistant county keepers, Thomas Meggee and Edward Laidley, who were often accused of fraud and blackmail at the Quarter Sessions, almost certainly were transported for horse theft in 1733.  Things must have been even worse in less populous areas.  The prestige which men had fought so hard for during the previous decade was gone.  By 1731, candidates appear to have been sponsored by local justices, and rivalry stemming from this did occur, but they were not in themselves figures of any standing.  Finally, in 1746, Northumberland was brought into line with other counties and the county keeping scheme was ended.

Stories of witchcraft, wizardry and the supernatural are much in the news today, but in the North-East of England, 400 years ago, the supposed threat of witchcraft was very real indeed. Witch-fever in the North-East reached its height at the trial and hanging of 18 alleged witches on Newcastle's Town Moor in 1650.

In Dancing with the Devil historian Jo Bath explores eyewitness accounts and historical sources to traces cases of bewitched children, mysterious illnesses and terrifying apparitions. Although many of the women accused of these crimes were poor, old and vulnerable, their neighbours beleived they had incredible supernatural powers.

There are tales too of more knowing purveyors of magic such as the astrologer who made a comfortable living giving racing tips and finding stolen property ... plus spells, charms, and hocus pocus from the dark days of history.

Forget Harry Potter - this is the real thing!