Clan Maxwell · 1593
Dryfe Sands
On the late afternoon of the sixth of December 1593, in the long flat saltmarsh between the village of Lockerbie and the river Annan in Dumfriesshire, John Maxwell, eighth Lord Maxwell, warden of the West March of Scotland, was overthrown and killed by the Johnstones of Annandale under Sir James Johnstone of Dunskellie, in the last great clan-versus-clan field battle on Scottish soil. Maxwell had brought up two thousand men of his own following and the West-march levies; Johnstone had raised about four hundred from his own people. Maxwell's superior numbers were nullified on the soft ground of Dryfe, where the cavalry could not deploy, and the Johnstone horse caught the Maxwell line in flank as it tried to ford the burn. Maxwell was unhorsed in the press, asked for quarter, and was killed on the wet sand by a sword-cut delivered downward across the face by William Johnstone the Galliard, a younger brother of Sir James. The cut, by the tradition of the West March, was the cut that gave the saltmarsh its second name, and was the cut that gave the modern Scots dialect of Dumfriesshire the verb *to lockerbie a man*: to deliver a sword-stroke downward across a man's face. The Maxwell power on the West March was broken in the next half-hour and never reassembled.
It is twenty past three on the afternoon of the sixth of December 1593, on the south side of the Dryfe Water near its confluence with the Annan, three miles north of Lockerbie, in the low winter light off the saltmarsh. He is forty years old. He is John Maxwell, eighth Lord Maxwell, warden of the West March of Scotland by King's commission since 1577. He is in plate armour over a buff coat. He has, in column behind him, two thousand men of the Maxwell name and the Maxwell allies of Galloway, the Crichtons of Sanquhar, the Douglases of Drumlanrig, with their tenants. He is, by the calculation of every man on the field, four to one in numbers against Sir James Johnstone of Dunskellie ahead of him. He has come into the country to settle a feud that has been running since his father was killed in 1552.
Johnstone, on the rising ground a half-mile to the east, has assembled four hundred horse and foot. The Johnstone position is on harder ground at the edge of the saltmarsh. Maxwell's column is committed onto the soft ground because the only ford in the next two miles is at the confluence.
He thinks: Johnstone has four hundred men. I have two thousand. The numbers are the numbers.
He thinks: the ground is wet. The cavalry on the wing will not deploy. The cavalry will have to go single-file at the ford. The cavalry will be in column when it crosses.
He thinks: Johnstone knows the country. Johnstone has set the position because Johnstone knows the ground.
He thinks: I will lose the cavalry advantage at the ford and pay for it with the foot in the line.
He gives the order to advance at half past three. The Maxwell column, including his own household horse at the head, goes down to the ford. The horse cross in column. The first hundred horse make it to the eastern bank in twenty minutes. The water is cold and the bank is muddy. The Johnstone horse, which has been waiting in the lee of a low rise on the eastern side, charges the Maxwell horse on the bank as the second hundred is still in the water. The Maxwell horse breaks at the bank because the second hundred cannot deploy. The shock comes back through the column. The Maxwell foot, two thousand strong, on the western bank, sees the horse on the bank break and the line begins to fold.
Maxwell himself is unhorsed in the press at the bank in the next ten minutes. He is on foot in the saltmarsh, in plate, in the wet, with the Johnstone horse around him. He calls, by the testimony of three of his men taken prisoner, for quarter, and offers his sword to a Johnstone gentleman whose name has not survived in any deposition. The Johnstone gentleman accepts the sword. As he is taking the sword, William Johnstone the Galliard, brother of the chief, comes up at the gallop, recognises Maxwell by the badge on the surcoat, and, by every contemporary account, delivers a single downward sword-stroke across Maxwell's unhelmeted face that opens him from the brow to the lower jaw. Maxwell goes down. He is dead within a minute on the wet sand.
The Maxwell line collapses through the next hour. Eight hundred Maxwell dead are left on the field, by the count of the parish registers of Lochmaben and Lockerbie made the next week. The Johnstones lose under a hundred. Sir James Johnstone takes the Maxwell standard and the Maxwell helmet from the field and rides home to Lochwood with both. The Maxwell power on the West March, which had stood since the thirteenth century, is broken in the afternoon.
By the dialect tradition of Dumfriesshire and the Annandale, to lockerbie a man, or to give a Lockerbie lick, has been the local term for a downward sword-cut across the face since the events of December 1593. The phrase is in the Scottish National Dictionary, attested in print since the late seventeenth century. The Galliard's stroke was the prototype. The Maxwell-Johnstone feud continued, in private, for another twenty years; the ninth Lord Maxwell took his revenge on Sir James Johnstone in cold blood at Achmanhill on the sixth of April 1608, was tried and beheaded at Edinburgh on the twenty-first of May 1613, and the feud was at last formally ended in council with King James VI by the interposition of the Crown. The saltmarsh at Dryfe Sands is now mostly drained farmland; the stone marker put up by the Maxwell Society of Caerlaverock in 1993, on the four hundredth anniversary, stands in the field on the western side of the burn. The Galliard is buried, by the family tradition, in the Annandale churchyard at Lochmaben, in an unmarked grave; the Lockerbie lick is, on a headstone two graves over, his only memorial.