Re: Moss Troopers

["Neil St. Clair" <neilcalyx@ns.sympatico.ca>]

jeffnpat wrote:

> Dear Sinclair and Laurel:
>
> Of the notorious Border Reivers it was said: "If Jesus Christ were emongest
> them, they would deceave him," but George MacDonald Fraser, in "The Steel
> Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers," mentions "Moss
> Troopers" only once, and that in the following footnote:
>
> "In the middle of the seventeenth century a new kind of Border malefactor
> arose, called the "moss trooper".  This term, so commonly misapplied to the
> reivers of the sixteenth century, simply signifies a brigand.  The earliest
> mention I can find of it is 1646, in the Scottish Privy Council records, when
> official action against the "mosse trouppers" is discussed, and they were

[ Excess quotations omitted. ]


Neil & Laurel both say 'thanks' to jeffnpat & to Sinclair for the Moss Troopers
info - they were referenced in Neil's "Our Western Border 100 Years Ago".  Neither
one of us had ever heard of 'Moss Troopers' - evidently someone back in the 1700's
had.

            Neil


[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@quarterman.org
[ To get off or on the list, see http://sinclair.quarterman.org/list.html