But the most potent factor in the pacification and moral regeneration of the Borders was the influence and teaching of the Church. The religious condition of the people in this part of the country, both before and after the Reformation, can only be described as utterly deplorable. The fierce fighting Border clans had practically broken with institutional religion in all its forms. It is frequently said of them, and not without good reason, that they feared neither God nor man. They delighted in robbing and burning churches, and held both priest and presbyter in high disdain. Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie is credited with having destroyed, during the course of his career, no fewer than fifty-two parish churches. The picture of the religious condition of the Borders, as reflected in the State Papers, is well fitted to awaken painful reflections. Eure, for example, in a letter addressed to Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1596, says:--"Another most grievous decay is the 'want of knowledge of God,' whereby the better sort forget oath and duty, let malefactors go without evidence, and favour a partie belonging to them or their friends. The churches mostly ruined to the ground, ministers and preachers 'comfortless to come and remain where such heathenish people are,' so there are neither teachers nor taught."[134] In a still more doleful strain the Bishop of Durham describes the irreligious condition of the Borders. "Diverse persons," he says, "under pretext of danger to their persons, and some through a careless regard of their conscience toward their flocks, besides also other out of a continual corruption of their patrons, turn residence into absence, whereby the people are almost totally negligent and ignorant of the truth professed by us, and so the more subject to every subtile seducer."[135] So completely, indeed, had religious teaching fallen into abeyance that one writer even goes the length of affirming that "many die, and cannot say the Lord's Prayer."[136] The Commission appointed to inquire into the state of affairs on the Borders, after the breaking of Carlisle castle by Buccleuch, and to discover, if possible, some remedy for the clamant evils which prevailed, suggested in the first paragraph of their report "that ministers be planted at every Border Church to inform the lawless people of their duty, and watch over their manners--the principals of each parish giving their prime surety for due reverence to the pastor in his office; the said churches to be timely repaired."[137]