For these Batables had their own code of right and wrong, and were, in their peculiar way, men of honour. There was Hobbie Noble, an English outlaw, who was betrayed by a comrade for English gold, and who, hanged at Carlisle, expressed on the gallows his execration of such conduct. "I wad hae betray'd nae lad alive, For a' the gowd o' Christentie." The seizure of Kinmont Willie was hotly resented, even though his clan, the Armstrongs, who had built themselves strong towers on the Debatable Land, "robbed, spoiled, burned and murdered," as the Warden of the West Marches complained, all along upper Cumberland. The Armstrongs could, at one time, muster out over three thousand horsemen, and Dacres and Howards strove in vain to bring them under control. Yet there was "Border law," too, one of its provisions being that on the appointed days of truce, when the "Lord Wardens of England and Scotland, and Scotland and England" met, each attended by a numerous retinue, at a midway cairn, to hear complaints from either side and administer a rude sort of justice in accordance with "the laws of the Marches," no man present, not even the most notorious freebooter, could be arrested. But William Armstrong of Kinmont was too great a temptation; he had harried Cumberland too long; and a troop of some two hundred English stole after him, as he rode off carelessly along the Liddel bank, when the assemblage broke up, overpowered him, and brought him in bonds to Carlisle. "O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde? O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope? How they hae ta'en bauld Kinmont Willie, On Haribee to hang him up? * * * * * "They led him through the Liddel rack And also through the Carlisle sands; They brought him to Carlisle castle, To be at my Lord Scroope's commands." But this was more than the Scottish warden, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, could bear. "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Against the truce of the Border tide, And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch Is Keeper on the Scottish side? "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Withouten either dread or fear, And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch Can back a steed or shake a spear? "O! were there war between the lands, As well I wot that there is nane, I would slight Carlisle castle high Though it were builded of marble stane. "I would set that castle in a low[1] And sloken it with English blood; There's never a man in Cumberland Should ken where Carlisle Castle stood. "But since nae war's between the lands, And there is peace, and peace should be, I'll neither harm English lad or lass, And yet the Kinmont freed shall be."