Lost Lives, New Voices: Unlocking the Stories of the Scottish Soldiers at the Battle of Dunbar 1650

By Chris Gerrard, Pam Graves, Andrew Millard and 2 more

In November 2013 two mass burials were discovered unexpectedly on a construction site in the city of Durham in north-east England. Over the next 2 years, a complex jigsaw of evidence was pieced together by a team of archaeologists to establish the identity of the human remains. Today we know them to be some of the Scottish prisoners who died in the autumn of 1650 in Durham cathedral and castle following the battle of Dunbar on the south-east coast of Scotland. Fought between the English and the Scots, this was one of the key engagements of the War of the Three Kingdoms.

Using the latest techniques of skeleton science, this book gives back to the men a voice through an understanding of their childhood and later lives, tracing the story not only of the men who died through the course of research but also of those who survived. Archaeological and historical evidence allows us to reconstruct with vivid accuracy how and why these men vanished off the historical radar.

Of the prisoners who survived, about 150 were transported to the colonies. Following the trail of their biographies takes us across the Atlantic to the frontiers of New England. An extensive genealogical appendix traces what is known of the later lives of the Dunbar men, through extensive 17th century records including wills, inventories and employment records, examined by their modern-day descendants in collaboration with project historians. The names of just about all the transported men have been established with varying degrees of accuracy and for each there is an entry composed of surname and forenames, residences listed by state, date of first known appearance in New England records, years of birth and death, based on evidence contemporary with the man, together with notes on his later life, employment, family history and decadency, sometimes down to the present day.

Iron- and sawmill workers, farmers and fishermen adapted to a new life in the vast forested landscapes. Some flourished, others did not but none returned to the country of their birth. Lost Lives, New Voices continues a forgotten narrative, interrupted for over 350 years, from a distant Scottish battlefield to the New England of modern America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Feb 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785708480

Chris Gerrard

Chris Gerrard is Professor of Archaology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham. He holds a PhD from the University of Bristol and specializes in the archaeology of the medieval period in Britain with particualr emphasis on artifacts, ceramic imports, disasters and responses, rural settlement, and the western Atlantic seaboard.

Book preview

Lost Lives, New Voices

Unlocking the stories of the Scottish soldiers from the Battle of Dunbar 1650

Christopher Gerrard, Pam Graves, Andrew Millard, Richard Annis and Anwen Caffell

with contributions from

Julia Beaumont, Janet Beveridge, William Budde, Morag Cross, Alejandra Gutiérrez, Isabel Hengelhaupt, Arran Johnston, Hannah Koon, Lisa Mackenzie, Janet Montgomery, Anita Radini, Charlotte Roberts, Mark Roughley, Camilla Speller and Caroline Wilkinson

We dedicate this book to all the living descendants of the Scotsmen captured at Dunbar on 3rd September 1650

Early in a Morning

In an Evil Tyming,

Went they from Dunbarr

Extract from ‘Day fatality or, some observations of days lucky and unlucky’ from John Aubrey’s Miscellanies upon various subjects (1784 edition, p. 4)

Published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by

OXBOW BOOKS

The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JE

and in the United States by

OXBOW BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083

© Oxbow Books and the individual authors 2018

Print Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-847-3

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-848-0

Kindle Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-849-7

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate group

Front cover: Images by Jeff Veitch and Sheridan Design (Newcastle)

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

1Lost Lives

2The Archaeology

3Skeleton Science

4Archaeological Science

5‘Curst Dunbar’ and Durham

6The Survivors’ Tale

7New England

8New Voices

9Enduring Legacies

Appendix A: Names of Dunbar prisoners in New England

Appendix B: The New England wills and inventories

Notes

Bibliography

List of Illustrations

1.1 The city of Durham in north-east England

1.2 Map of Durham

1.3 Map of north-east England and Scotland

1.4 Durham Castle

1.5 Durham Cathedral cloister

1.6 The Immigrant by Alfred Woollacott III (2014)

1.7 Press coverage for the project

1.8 The research team

1.9 Durham Cathedral and its approach from the north

2.1 The new Palace Green Library café, site of the 2013 excavation in Durham

2.2 Palace Green, Durham, from the air

2.3 The buildings of Palace Green Library

2.4 Lifting materials into the site

2.5 Plan of the excavation areas

2.6 The deep excavation at the time when the first bones were found

2.7 Cross-section through the buildings and the burial site

2.8 Looking south-west across the excavation area

2.9 The uppermost skeleton in the north-eastern grave

2.10 The crowded remains in the north-eastern grave-pit

2.11 Parts of at least six individuals exposed together

2.12 The remains of at least three individuals in a very small area

2.13 The bones in the deepest part of the north-east grave

2.14 The grave at the south end of the site

2.15 The stone foundation of the wall on top of human bones

2.16 A fairly complete skeleton near the top of the grave under the wall

2.17 Burial positions and orientation of the articulated skeletons

2.18 Graph showing the burial orientation of the articulated skeletons

2.19 Graph showing the burial position of the articulated skeletons

2.20 Location of archaeological features and finds around the excavation site

2.21 View from the bottom of Windy Gap

2.22 Extract from Thomas Forster’s 1754 map of Durham

2.23 Detail from Francis Grose’s view of Durham Castle

2.24 West face of the former Fives Court, photographed in 1965

2.25 West face of the former Fives Court building today

2.26 The line of the Castle wall near the Pace Building

2.27 Detail from Christophe Schweitzer’s 1595 plan of Durham

2.28 Curved structure exposed during building work for the Pace Building in 1965

3.1 Skeleton with labels for main bones mentioned in the text

3.2 Summary of the osteological and palaeopathological results 46–47

3.3 Age distribution of the articulated skeletons

3.4 Developmental anomalies affecting the spine

3.5 Skeleton 21, fifth cervical vertebra

3.6 Examples of supernumerary teeth

3.7 Skeleton 19, enamel hypoplasia

3.8 Skeleton 23, enamel hypoplasia

3.9 Skeleton 27A, inflammation of the maxillary sinuses

3.10 Frequency of maxillary sinusitis in the articulated skeletons

3.11 Skeleton 1, woven bone deposit on the proximal left ulna

3.12 Frequency of periosteal reactions in different bones

3.13 Examples of periosteal reactions in lower jaws

3.14 Skeleton 22, healed blade injury above the left orbit

3.15 Skeleton 21, linear damage to the cranium

3.16 Skeleton 22, deposits of calculus or mineralised dental plaque

3.17 Skeleton 6, fusion of the seventh and eighth thoracic vertebrae

3.18 Potential non-ossifying fibroma, possibly from Skeleton 26–27C

3.19 Skeleton 6, potential cysts

3.20 Enlargement of a disarticulated right talus

3.21 Teeth and sockets present among the articulated skeletons

3.22 Number and proportions of teeth from articulated skeletons with dental calculus

3.23 Number and proportions of teeth from articulated skeletons with dental caries

3.24 Skeleton 19, dental abscess associated with a cavity

3.25 Skeleton 21, crescents of wear attributed to pipe-smoking

3.26 Skeleton 25, concave wear on tips of left canines

3.27 Skeleton 28, V-shaped notch in the upper right central incisor

3.28 Skeleton 28, heavy wear seen on lingual sides of the upper teeth

3.29 Fine linear marks consistent with rodent-gnawing

4.1 Radiocarbon measurements and simple calibrations

4.2 Smoking in the Seventeenth Century , 1875

4.3 Mathematical models of the date of death

4.4 Probability distribution for the date of death

4.5 Plot of strontium and oxygen isotope data

4.6 Lead concentrations versus ²⁰⁷ Pb/ ²⁰⁶ Pb ratios

4.7 Multiple views of isotope measurements

4.8 Strontium isotope measurements

5.1 The Dunbar Medal with an image of Oliver Cromwell

5.2 Silver medal struck for Charles I in 1633

5.3 Contemporary satirical woodcut

5.4 Satirical image from a 1651 broadsheet

5.5 General David Leslie

5.6 Aerial photograph of Dunbar today

5.7 Dunbar tolbooth

5.8 Locations in which Scottish regiments at Dunbar were raised

5.9 The Battle of Dunbar, troop dispositions

5.10 Cromwell at Dunbar by Andrew Carrick Gow (1886)

5.11 The Battle of Dunbar by Fitz-Payne Fisher, engraved 1654

5.12 Civil War musketeer’s bandolier

5.13 Sir Arthur Haselrigge

5.14 Map of Morpeth in 1604

5.15 Interior of Durham Cathedral

5.16 Durham Cathedral in 1655

5.17 Plan of Durham Cathedral showing alleged damage

5.18 Osteobiography for Sk 1

5.19 Osteobiography for Sk 6

5.20 Osteobiography for Sk 12

5.21 Osteobiography for Sk 21

5.22 Osteobiography for Sk 23

5.23 Osteobiography for Sk 25

5.24 Osteobiography for Sk 27A

5.25 Osteobiography for Sk 28

5.26 Scottish soldiers in Sweden

5.27 Bird’s eye view of Edinburgh (1647)

6.1 The Scottish Dunbar diaspora. Places mentioned in the text

6.2 A Woman Spinning , engraving by Geertruydt Roghman ( c . 1640–1657)

6.3 Surveyor Jonas Moore’s map of the Fens ( c . 1658)

6.4 The Old and New Bedford Rivers

6.5 Cross-section through the Old and New Bedford Rivers

6.6 The Bulwark, a well-preserved Civil War fortification

6.7 A Topographical Description and Measurement of the Island of Barbados by Richard Ligon (1657)

6.8 Frontispiece of John Smith’s History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles (1624)

6.9 Blackwall Yard from the Thames , by Francis Homan (1784)

6.10 Woodcut of a map of New England printed in Boston (1677)

7.1 Map showing places mentioned in the text

7.2 Portrait of John Winthrop the Younger (1606–1676)

7.3 Reconstruction of the Hammersmith Iron Works in New England c .1650

7.4A Official Map of Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site in its modern setting

7.4B Panoramic view of the Iron Works today

7.5 Portrait of Major Thomas Savage of Boston (1608–1682) attributed to Thomas Smith

7.6 The names of Scots prisoners in the 1653 Hammersmith Iron Works inventory

7.7 In der Shmiede, ‘In the Forge’, mid-17th century

7.8A The Boardman House near the Hammersmith Iron Works, Saugus, Massachusetts

7.8B Appleton-Taylor-Mansfield House, a 1680s farmhouse now used as a museum for the Saugus Iron Works

7.9 Balch House in Beverly, Massachusetts

7.10 Reconstructed iron ore ‘harvesting’ boat at the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site

7.11 Nahant, at the mouth of the Saugus River

7.12 Art du charbonnier: ou manière de faire le charbon de bois , by Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Paris (1761)

7.13 Excavated base of the blast furnace stack at Hammersmith

7.14 The excavated furnace water-wheel, wheel pit and water race

7.15 Cast iron cauldron cast at Hammersmith

7.16 Interpreters on the casting floor at the base of the reconstructed blast furnace

7.17 The excavated anvil base block

7.18 Partially worked bar of wrought iron

7.19 Water-wheel at the reconstructed slitting mill

7.20 Trade in the Atlantic

7.21 Pascatway River in New England , 17th century map by John Scott

7.22 Three Chimneys Inn/Frost Sawyer Tavern in Durham, New Hampshire

7.23 The Great Works sawmill

7.24 A broken saw blade found during the excavations at Hammersmith

8.1 Location map showing places mentioned in the text

8.2A View across the Salmon Falls River

8.2B Aerial view of the Salmon Falls River and South Berwick

8.3 The Warren burial ground

8.4 Commemorative plaque for first settlers at Block Island

8.5 William Paul’s gravestone (1704)

8.6 Documented bonds between Dunbar Scots in New England

8.7 Map of the Salmon Falls River showing the plots occupied by Dunbar Scots

8.8 The will of John Burbean

8.9 The Great Swamp Fight of 19th December 1675

8.10 The Junkins Garrison, York County, Maine

8.11 The McIntire Garrison House, York County, Maine

8.12 The McIntire Garrison House today

8.13 Robert Mackclafflin’s house, Wenham, Massachusetts

8.14 Probate inventory of Robert Mackclafflin

8.15 A 17th-century spoon thought to have belonged to Thomas Holmes

9.1 Commemorative plaque installed at Durham in 2017

9.2 The altar dedicated to St Margaret, Queen of Scotland, in the Chapel of the Nine Altars in Durham Cathedral

9.3A Meeting with descendants

9.3B Lecture at Saugus Public Library

Boxes

2.1A Janet Beveridge at work at Palace Green

2.1B The lifting of human remains

2.2 Intercutting graves at the Carmelite Friary at Northallerton, North Yorkshire

3.1 The fog produced by burning coal, as envisaged in 1880 by the magazine Punch

3.2 The process of facial reconstruction of Sk 22

4.1A Development of permanent lower dentition against age

4.1B Sk 6: Dentine collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio profiles against approximate age

4.1C Sk 12: Dentine collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio profiles against approximate age

4.1D Sk 23: Dentine collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio profiles against approximate age

4.2A Deposits of grey-brown dental calculus visible on the teeth of Sk 22

4.2B Analysing microscopic particles in dental calculus

4.3A Method for extracting and sequencing collagen fragments

4.3B The number of collagen peptides that contain the under-hydroxylated variant

5.1 Contemporary woodcut of Parliamentarian soldiers in the 1640s

6.1 Salt-making as illustrated by William Brownrigg (1748)

6.2 The Nonsuch , a replica 17th-century ketch

7.1 Roland Robbins

7.2 Sugar-making according to Johann Theodor de Bry (1595)

8.1 Dues paid by the founding members of the Scots Charitable Society of Boston

8.2 John Burbean’s gravestone (1713)

9.1 The Earl of Loudoun’s Regiment re-enactment society

Acknowledgements

This book draws together much of what we have learnt about the human remains which were first discovered at Palace Green, Durham, in 2013. Our aim throughout has been to place our results into their wider context and develop the multidisciplinary nature of the project, so this has been a joint effort of research and writing. Our particular thanks go to one person whose name really should be on the cover of this book – Sophie Daniels. As project manager, Sophie has kept an eye on all our endeavours as well as undertaking the primary edit of this text; without her we simply could not have achieved all that we have. She deserves first credit and all our deepest appreciation.

We owe a great debt to the staff of Palace Green Library and Chapter Library, and for their help with the contents of Chapter 2 we would especially like to thank Helen Drinkall, Martin Roberts, Janine Watson and David Webster. For arranging access to site archives and the Fellows’ Garden, our special thanks to Gemma Lewis and for their help on site, Durham University Estates and Building department, especially Harvey Dowdy. Adrian Green graciously answered questions about the early use of bricks in Durham and Alex Croom checked the Windy Gap site archive at Tyne and Wear Museums. Janet Beveridge kindly penned a box for Chapter 2 describing the discovery and Janine Watson drew the graphics.

MSc Palaeopathology students (2013–2014) assisted in washing the Palace Green skeletons. For their help with human remains described in Chapter 3, our thanks to David Errickson and Tim Thompson (Teesside University) for microscopic examination of the linear marks visible on two of the bones and providing an opinion on their likely cause; Becky Gowland (Durham University) for opinions on pathological lesions and arranging the microscopic examination of the linear marks; Malin Holst (York Osteoarchaeology Ltd) for opinions on pathological lesions and support with the report structure; Janet Beveridge (Archaeological Services, Durham University) for discussion concerning the excavation of the human remains; Vicky Garlick (Durham University) for consolidating the cranium of Sk 22. Charlotte Roberts (Durham University) provided a box of text for us, as did Mark Roughley, Isabel Hengelhaupt and Caroline Wilkinson at FaceLab (Liverpool John Moores University) and they add richer detail for specific themes.

In Chapter 4, Janet Montgomery first suggested the idea of wiggle-matching on teeth for more precise dating while Charlotte O’Brien managed the submission of radiocarbon samples, which were dated at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. The initial strontium, lead and oxygen isotope analyses were undertaken by Laura Dodd for her MSc dissertation, with the assistance of Joanne Peterkin and Geoff Nowell for strontium and lead. Christophe Lecuyer (Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) kindly conducted the oxygen isotope measurements. Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of animal bones formed part of the coursework of MSc students Jessica Blesch, Maggie Scollan, Jordan Rex, and Kaity Ulewicz, with measurements performed by Darren Gröcke. We thank Janet Montgomery for discussions of the isotopic results. Boxes on scientific techniques in archaeology were added by Julia Beaumont (University of Bradford) and Janet Montgomery (Durham University), Lisa Mackenzie, Anita Radini and Camilla Speller (all York University), and Hannah Koon (University of Bradford). Their results also contributed to the individual biographies in Figures 5.18 to 5.25. Collaboration was important to us throughout the project and we thank colleagues at Bradford and York for all their perceptive suggestions. Eva Fernández-Domínguez (Durham University) advised on ancient DNA and conducted the analysis of Sk 28.

In Chapter 5 we are extremely grateful to Laurie Pettitt who advised us on Cromwellian matters, the Scottish muster and re-feeding syndrome; and to Ed Furgol (Montgomery College) on officers and muster rolls. Christopher Hunwick, archivist with Northumberland Estates located information on Alnwick. Morag Cross undertook much of the original primary Scottish archival research on the soldiers and 17th-century Scottish estates included here. Thanks also to Chris Langley for offers of help with regard to the Scottish archives and the North-East of England. Richard Gameson identified folios in Durham Cathedral Library that may have fallen foul of the Scots prisoners, and Margaret Harvey and Lynda Rollason kindly found the earliest mentions of the Scots prisoners in manuscripts of the Rites of Durham. John Malden, who has also been researching the march from Dunbar, has offered valuable information on the southward route.

For their advice and help on different aspects of the texts of Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 we are especially grateful to David Dobson and Steve Murdoch (both University of St Andrews), Norman Emery (Durham Cathedral Archaeologist), Paul Cowan, Carol Gardner, Quentin Lewis and Ronan O’Donnell. Arran Johnston kindly provided text for the box in this chapter. Alejandra Gutiérrez transcribed the New England inventories for us (Appendix B). In particular, we very much appreciate the generous commitment shown to this subject by both Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker at Salem State University and Diane Rapaport who probably should have written this book together instead of encouraging us to do it. Emily Murphy and all the staff at Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site were inspiring and generous hosts with the most impressive selection of donuts we have ever seen!

We would also like to thank Nina Maurer at Old Berwick Historical Society, Maine, and the Massachusetts Historical Society and everyone who made our US visit in the autumn of 2016 such an eye-opening experience. The fieldtrip through the woods led by Tad was a highlight for us all. Mary Beaudry (Boston University), Peter Van Dommelen (Brown University), Rowan Flad (Harvard University) and Sarah Mathena (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) were generous hosts at their respective institutions. Among the members of the Scottish Prisoners of War Society, Alan Junkins kindly welcomed us to his home and many others have corresponded with us since and shared their thoughts, especially John Cleary (Herriott-Watt University), David Dunbar, Pat and Catherine Gemmiti, Dan Hamilton, Teresa Rust, Heidi Thibodeau and Gail Watts. Michelle Start and Susan Tichy inspired us to look more closely at Dunbar men in Barbados while Richard Lockhart and Bill Budde introduced us to the extraordinary Scots Charitable Society.

Staff and clergy at Durham Cathedral were unstintingly helpful through the course of our work. Durham Cathedral Archaeologist Norman Emery kindly shared his unpublished research into the Dunbar soldiers and has a deep knowledge of the Cathedral and its precinct from which we have benefitted. Canon Rosalind Brown shared the media platform with us on several occasions and advised on questions of liturgy and process, past and present. Hers was always a calming voice and it was appropriate that Rosalind should lead the special evensong at the Cathedral when the plaque to the Dunbar prisoners was re-dedicated in May 2017. Ruth Robson provided essential liaison and advice. Simon Mays at Historic England gave us advice in ethical matters connected with reburial. Stuart Allan (National Museums of Scotland), Richard Buckley (Leicester University), Geoffrey Carter (Battlefields Trust), Charles Esdaile (University of Liverpool), Stephanie Leith and Andy Robertson from East Lothian Council, Iain Gray (MSP), Roy Pugh, George Wilson, Kate Wilson (Historic England), John Malden, William Miller and Alfred Woollacott III all enriched our understanding of the project. David Mason (Principal Archaeologist Durham County County) recognised the implications of the project early on and always encouraged our research.

There would have been no Scottish Soldiers Archaeology Project had it not been for the support of Durham University. Tim Clark, Keith Bartlett, Sarah Price, Colin Bain and especially David Cowling dissolved many obstacles and never failed to champion our cause. Claire Whitelaw, Steve Davison, Dionne Hamil, Leighton Kitson and Nicky Sawicki in Marketing and Communication provided all the assistance we could ever have asked for in media matters; Angela Gemmill in particular soothed our nerves and always gave clear direction. Julie Biddlecombe-Brown (Exhibitions Officer) read the manuscript with wonderful enthusiasm. Our thanks to the exhibition team: Aaron Rossi, Katie Braithwaite and Katie Rogers. Among the members of the Archaeology Department we are grateful to Kamal Badreshany, Mary Brooks, Peter Brown, Peter Carne, Becky Gowland, Duncan Hale, Charlotte Roberts and Robin Skeates; Beth Upex somehow always made things happen and we thank her for helping to push the project forward. Tina Jakob saved the day by stepping in at the last minute to help. The Department of Archaeology provided funding for some of the copyrights and original figures here. Matthew Collins at York University was kind enough to review our initial findings for us. For scrutinising the final manuscript and offering comments and advice, we would like to thank Sally Forwood and Alejandra Gutiérrez.

As always Jeff Veitch took some marvellous photographs in Durham and has been a part of this project from the very beginning. Jane Bowers kindly corresponded and provided photographs of Wenham Museum, Wenham, MA. Thanks also to Heather Wilkinson Rojo for permission to reproduce photos taken at the Saugus Library, Massachusetts. Ralph Morang kindly allowed us to use his photographs including that taken at the Berwick Academy where Chris was greeted by piper Bob Willis of Dover (New Hampshire) at a talk sponsored by the Old Berwick (Maine) Historical Society. Figures 3.1 and 5.18–5.25 are based on a skeleton drawing by Mariana Ruiz Villareal (public domain). In addition, we would like to thank all those institutions and others who kindly provided their images free of charge for inclusion in this book.

Finally, Clare Litt has shown all her customary efficiency while this book was in production and we would like to thank everyone at Oxbow for their enthusiasm for the project.

A note on dates

In the 17th century the English calendar dictated that the new year began on 25th March, though it began on 1st January in Scotland and many European states. This has created enormous confusion in numerous publications because an event which would be recorded today as 20th February 1651 would be dated by English contemporaries as 20th February 1650 (i.e. as a month in the previous year as we would now define it). On the other hand, an event on 25th August 1651 would be given the same year today. Some authors use both years to get around this confusion e.g. 20th February 1650/51, known as ‘double-dating’, and that is the convention we use here. Where a single year is cited in the text this signifies the 1st January year.

A note on geography

Some of the US place-names referenced in this book have altered more than once since the 17th century. State boundaries too have changed. Readers are advised to use the maps provided alongside the text to help locate sites.

CHAPTER 1

Lost Lives

On a wet Thursday afternoon late in November 2013,¹ archaeologists observing building work near Durham Cathedral in north-east England (Figure 1.1) made an unexpected and unusual discovery when disordered tumbles of articulated skeletons were uncovered in two mass graves. Fortunately, the historical importance of the location, at the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, had required the presence of a professional archaeologist while the groundworks were underway for the construction of a new café at Palace Green Library (Figure 1.2). Construction was immediately halted while the bones were carefully cleaned and lifted.

Over the next two years, a complex jigsaw of evidence was pieced together by a team of researchers in order to establish the identity of the human remains. Today we know them to be some of the Scottish prisoners who died in terrible circumstances in Durham Cathedral and Castle following the Battle of Dunbar on the south-east coast of Scotland on 3rd September 1650. Using the latest techniques of archaeological science, it has been possible to reconstruct how and why these men vanished off the historical radar. It is a privileged insight. We may not know their names, but through an understanding of their stories we have an opportunity to give them back a voice.

Figure 1.1 The city of Durham in north-east England. The River Wear and the wide arches of the 15th-century Framwellgate Bridge are in the foreground. The medieval Castle and the Cathedral tower above. Durham was inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1986. Photograph by Jeff Veitch.

Figure 1.2 Centre of Durham, showing the location of the site and main places mentioned in the text. Drawn by Alejandra Gutiérrez, base map © Crown Copyright and Database Right (2017). Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence).

Figure 1.3 Main places mentioned in the text in Scotland and the north of England including the route of the march of Scottish prisoners from Dunbar to Durham. Pre-1974 historic counties are used. Drawn by Alejandra Gutiérrez, base map © Crown Copyright and Database Right (2017). Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence).

But that is not the end of our journey. In this book we follow the trail of those who survived their ordeal in Durham and uncover fresh evidence about their lives as indentured servants, their involvement in local industries in the north-east of England and in one of the great landscape ‘improvement’ projects of the day, the draining of the Fens in the east of England. We also travel to France and across the Atlantic to destinations far from home to which the Dunbar men were transported after their imprisonment. In New England the Scots continued to support one another throughout their new lives on the frontier of the European world: the remarkable Scots Charitable Society which they founded is today the oldest charitable foundation of its kind in the western hemisphere. As we shall see, these Dunbar Scots were independent characters. They got into trouble with the Puritan authorities and, in the north of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they farmed, fished, trapped and traded with Native Americans. Here, amid vast forested terrains entirely unfamiliar to them, they created new lives for themselves and baptised their landscapes with names like ‘Unity’, after the vessel in which they had sailed across the Atlantic, and ‘Scotland’, after the country of their birth. As far as is known, none of the Dunbar men ever returned home and the last known survivor, Purdie MacFarland, passed away in 1721. He had 12 children in his long life. As a descendant of another prisoner put it to us, it is a remarkable biography to be born in Scotland and to die in a different Scotland of your own naming. That is surely a story worth telling.

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms

The events described in this book take place in the mid-17th century,² a period made accessible and popular in the 19th century by novels of historical fiction such as The Scarlet Letter: A Romance and Twenty Years After, the sequel to The Three Musketeers. More recently, TV series such as Jamestown and The Devil’s Whore underscore how far this curiosity still persists. Winstanley, The Draughtsman’s Contract and A Field in England are all motion pictures which present compelling depictions from different perspectives. The ‘age of revolution’, as it is sometimes referred to, is rich in the drama of warfare, intrigue and witch-hunts as Britain and her colonies were thrown into persistent constitutional and social crisis. Yet while the ‘great debates’ raged about the role of landowners, the monarchy and the rights of ordinary people, there are also diaries and letters, among them those penned by Samuel Pepys, which present detailed personal insights into daily life and the ferment of ideas about the way that life should be lived, about religion and science.³ Such was the turmoil of conscience and opportunity that thousands chose to leave European shores and the English became the pioneers of mass migration.

The Civil Wars, or more properly the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, convulsed the greater part of the British Isles in a series of conflicts between 1639 and 1651.⁴ In the north-east of England, where many of the events described here take place, the Scots first occupied the whole of Northumberland and County Durham during what is referred to as the second Bishops’ War in 1640 (Figure 1.3).⁵ Once the church authorities had fled, Durham Castle and Cathedral were abandoned and many buildings and monuments are said to have been damaged by the Scots before they departed again in August 1641. According to the 18th-century antiquarian and topographer William Hutchinson ‘the Scotch troops vented their spleen on the cathedral church; and defaced all the monuments in the nave’.⁶

Civil War broke out in England a year later, in August 1642, after a power struggle between King Charles I and Parliament over religious freedom and the rights of the monarch that had already lasted a decade. In the conflict that followed, proportionately more British lives were lost than in the First World War.⁷ In the prelude to the heavy Royalist defeat at the Battle of Marston Moor in July 1644, the Scots, still in support of the Parliamentarians, occupied Durham once again and this time stayed longer, until February 1647.⁸ From 1647 Sir Arthur Haselrigge, an important figure in what was to follow later, was appointed Governor of Newcastle and established control in the north-east.⁹ As we shall see in Chapter 5, there is little detail in the local archives to enable us to follow events during this period very closely but it is clear that the city’s sympathies, like those of the Scots, lay largely with Parliament.

Events moved so rapidly for King Charles I and the Stuart dynasty that few foresaw the outcome. Having been tried by Parliament for treason against his own people, and found guilty, the King was beheaded in front of a large crowd at the Banqueting House, in the Palace of Whitehall in London, on a cold January morning in 1649. Then, in April of the same year, all Deans and Chapters in England were dissolved¹⁰ and Church assets began to be sold off and leased. Durham Castle, one of the principal residences of the Bishops of Durham since the late 11th century, was one of the properties which changed hands (Figure 1.4). Like others in a position of power during the Commonwealth, Haselrigge was later to be accused of extortion and trading for his own personal gain;¹¹ the Bishop’s Palace at Auckland in County Durham was just one of the estates he acquired. A decade later, after the Restoration of the monarchy, his new house there was torn down, while in Durham city the considerable cost of building demolition and repairs as well as the purchase of replacement fittings were carefully detailed in the accounts of Anglican Bishop John Cosin (1660–1672).¹²

With Charles I gone, and his son in exile, a new form of government had to be invented. Out of the turmoil Oliver Cromwell emerged as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. An accomplished but merciless soldier, it was Cromwell’s military genius which had brought about the defeat of the Royalist army.¹³ In the summer of 1650 Cromwell crossed the border into Scotland in order to pre-empt any threatened invasion of England by armies once loyal to his own Parliamentarian cause.¹⁴ These events would eventually lead to the Battle at Dunbar on 3rd September 1650 at which so many Scottish prisoners were taken and marched south to Durham. The empty Cathedral in which they were then incarcerated had ceased to be a place of active worship under the Commonwealth. Many of the Scottish soldiers died in Durham and it was their remains which were unexpectedly unearthed in 2013.

Figure 1.4 Durham Castle. A view from inner the bailey looking up towards the motte. The Norman castle was first constructed in the 11th century by William the Conqueror. The ruined octagonal keep was adapted for students of the University in 1839–1840. To the left in this photograph are the windows of the chapel built by Bishop Tunstall (1530–1539). Photograph by Jeff Veitch.

Hidden histories

Our concerns as archaeologists are less with the politics of this complex period and more with the individual experiences of the Scottish soldiers before and after Dunbar. Primarily we are concerned with the lives of human beings. To unravel more intimate details of this kind, there are various sources at our disposal. For the British side of the story, contemporary letters are scattered through various archives; the most important of which were written or dictated by Oliver Cromwell, the victor on the Dunbar battlefield, or by Haselrigge. There is a list of the Scottish officers captured at the battle and illustrations of their colours¹⁵ alongside numerous other State records which offer an ‘official’ version of events, invariably highly abbreviated.¹⁶ To these accounts should be added the proceedings of various official committees,¹⁷ contemporary popular accounts such as those written for the Parliamentarian news book Severall proceedings of State Affaires and local records on both sides of the border.

When they recall the Battle of Dunbar, most local people from Durham repeat the allegation that the prisoners damaged the tombs, fixtures and fittings inside the Cathedral (Figure 1.5). These claims, which are assessed in Chapter 5, centre around the destruction done to the Neville tombs, organ cases and woodwork. As we shall see, for more than 300 years it has been part of the Cathedral story that the Scots were responsible for damage there¹⁸ and there has long been an oral tradition that the bodies of the many Scots who perished in Durham must lie somewhere close by. The Durham antiquarian James Raine was the first to note in print that the Scots prisoners were ‘thrown into holes’,¹⁹ but not until the 1960s did anyone speculate where they might lie.²⁰ Curiously, as we will find in Chapter 2, the evidence now suggests that their graves had in fact been seen on previous occasions during construction work. Every city has its secrets and Durham, it seems, is no exception.

The story has also taken its part in regional and national narratives. Cromwell’s success on the battlefield at Dunbar has typically been viewed as a triumph against the odds. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, visiting Dunbar in 1724–1727 on a tour of south-east Scotland, saw for himself ‘the fatal field … where the desperate few … defeated and totally overthrew the great army of the other side … to the surprize [sic] of the world’. The Newcastle antiquarian John Brand, who documented the history of his town and county in 1789, reported both on the battle and the march of prisoners southwards, drawing on Haselrigge’s letter of 31st October 1650 to describe the treatment of the sick in captivity.²¹ First-hand accounts are hard to come by, but the memoirs of John Hodgson, an English Parliamentarian captain, were edited and published by Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Hodgson vividly describes the plight of his ‘poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged army,’ and the pressures of the day of battle; ‘the Major-General a-wanting… The General was impatient; the Scots a-preparing to make the attempt on us, sounding a trumpet’. Scott also re-published two lists of the captured Scottish officers as well as Cromwell’s letter on the particulars of the battle and Haselrigge’s letter.²² While the battle continued to appear in history textbooks into the 1930s and has not been ignored by more recent historians,²³ there was probably greater general awareness of the Battle of Dunbar and its consequences among 19th-century schoolchildren than there is today in either England or Scotland.

Figure 1.5 Durham Cathedral cloister, looking NE towards the crossing tower and the south transept. The stair tower at the corner of the transept or another from the slype may have been the point of access for the Scots prisoners into the Cathedral library, later the registry, which was illuminated by the large first-floor window on the right-hand side of the photograph. Photograph by Jeff Veitch.

In North America the memory of Dunbar prisoners has been treated very differently. Here the focus is on the traces left behind by the transported survivors once they stepped ashore in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in late 1650 (Chapter 7). This has been a specific topic of research for genealogists and historians since the 1920s, when Everett Stackpole completed a manuscript entitled Scotch Exiles in New England, drawing together as much evidence as he could from deeds, probate records and court records.²⁴ Stackpole’s aim was ‘to show who the early Scotchmen were in New England and to give many persons a start in their family histories’. ‘It will’, he said, ‘be a surprise to some when they come to realise how much New England owes to its Scotch ancestry’.²⁵

Although not everyone would now agree with all his claims and assumptions, Stackpole understood well the challenges of the 17th-century New England records. Among these were the tortuous phonetical spellings of Scottish names and the dropping of the prefix ‘Mac’ which made pronunciation easier for non-Scots (Appendix A). Another particular difficulty encountered by Stackpole, and all those since with an interest in the fate of the Dunbar men, was how to differentiate them from the Scots taken prisoner exactly a year later at the Battle of Worcester.²⁶ To do this, Stackpole was able to draw on the contemporary colonial records of the Saugus Iron Works in Massachusetts which gave names to some of the Dunbar men sent to work there.²⁷ Taken together, these and other 17th-century records proved rich in detail²⁸ and they continue to be actively investigated even today.²⁹ In particular, and very fortunately for the modern researcher, during the seven-year period during which the Scots served their indentures at Saugus, there were significant financial issues and management disputes which led to court cases (Chapter 7). This has created an unusual volume of evidence about working conditions and, in some cases, helps to fill out the individual biographies of the Dunbar men.³⁰

Throughout the course of the 20th century no-one seems to have been aware of these two parallel streams of research on either side of the Atlantic. Important genealogical research has continued on the American side,³¹ filling out the details which were unavailable to Stackpole. Most recently, a website/blog has been created for descendants.³² The aim of this online platform³³ is to contribute to knowledge about Scottish prisoner of war ancestors and the historical events surrounding their lives, including the descendants of men transported after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 on the John and Sara. It also enables Dunbar prisoners’ families to keep in touch with one another and to share information about clan events and newsletters as well as to contribute original research of their own. Currently, there is a programme of genealogical DNA research underway,³⁴ largely aimed at the many people who believe themselves to be descendants of men captured and transported after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester. This project will be used to explore family links between descendants and, in time, it is hoped to say something about where in Scotland the soldiers came from and perhaps even to identify the shared Scottish ancestors of the transported men and their modern Scottish relatives.

Aspects of the Dunbar story have also been the subject of investigation and educational outreach, particularly the places they knew and, in some cases, created. The focus in Britain has been on accounts of the battlefield,³⁵ Dunbar³⁶ and its associated history³⁷ though there have been popular accounts which recount the life of those prisoners who went to work in the Fens, for example,³⁸ as well academic research³⁹ and associated learning resources.⁴⁰ Of singular importance in the United States has been the excavation of the site of the Saugus Iron Works in New England, one of the main destinations for the transported Dunbar men. It was under the pioneering direction of historical archaeologist Roland W. Robbins⁴¹ that many of the major components of the 17th-century site were first revealed between 1948 and 1952. Robbins, who is perhaps best known in the US for the discovery and excavation of American essayist Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts, never fully wrote up his findings.⁴² The final report on the Saugus excavation,⁴³ only recently published, is a remarkable exercise in synthesis which incorporates documentary sources and Robbins’s own field records including his logs, field note cards, correspondence, filmstrips and photographs (Chapter 7). Here we come face-to-face with objects the Dunbar survivors created and used. The Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site is itself now a unit of the National Park Service and partially reconstructed to educate visitors about colonial industry.

Figure 1.6 The story of the Dunbar soldiers has inspired several works of fiction including The Immigrant by Alfred Woollacott III, published in 2014. The cover of this book, drawn by Robert Kauffman, evokes the interconnecting stories of the Dunbar soldiers. The Covenanter standard is top left, 17th-century New England characters below, and the passing of time is suggested by the tree rings. Courtesy of Alfred Woollacott III.

The Dunbar soldiers have also inspired a number of creative works. In 1886 British artist Andrew Carrick Gow (1848–1920) painted a famous reconstruction of Oliver Cromwell before his men at Dunbar (reproduced at Figure 5.10). On the other side of the Atlantic, York Garrison: 1640 by Sarah Orne Jewett, a poem published in the same year as Gow painted his picture, evokes the anxieties of a Native American ‘raid’ on a New England garrison. Jewett, a contemporary of Mark Twain and a leading light of turn-of-the-century American literature, grew up in South Berwick, one of the destinations of the Dunbar prisoners. The setting for the poem, and for her short story The Orchard’s Grandmother, is the ‘Scotland Garrison’, a surviving historic building directly linked with the Dunbar men (Chapter 8). More recent novels of historical fiction include Alfred Woollacott’s The Immigrant: One from My Four Legged Stool (2014) which resonates with modern social and political concerns through the author’s narration of the life of John Law, a young Scotsman captured at Dunbar (Figure 1.6). An alternative supernatural twist on the Battle and its aftermath can be found in Dark Destiny by Jeanne Treat (2011). The Saga of Thomas Kelton by Jean Ardyce Kelton (2007) is another imagined biography which fictionalises events at Dunbar, the march south,⁴⁴ the Atlantic crossing, life at Saugus and afterwards to Rhode Island, and King Philip’s War, ending with Thomas Kelton’s death from pneumonia in 1699.⁴⁵

Two earlier novels by Mary Stetson Clarke, also an American author, are aimed at the younger reader. The Iron Peacock, first published in 1966, tells the story of Joanna Sprague, who becomes a bond servant in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1650. Her fellow passengers on the Atlantic crossing are the Scots prisoners from Dunbar and Joanna follows them to the ironworks to work there as a kitchen maid. In essence a chronicle of the men’s first year in Saugus, Clarke’s principal characters are drawn with historical accuracy. Piper to the Clan (1970), a prequel to The Iron Peacock, relates the life of Highlander Ross McCrae, a piper and soldier, captured at Dunbar and marched south to Durham Cathedral. Much of the detail in Haselrigge’s letters is brought to life here: the destruction of the Neville tombs (with a heavy stone bench), ‘the smoke of feeble fires, the fetid stench of sickness’ and the saving of Prior Castell’s clock because of its thistle decorative motif.⁴⁶ Clarke herself had travelled to Scotland in 1968 and retraced the Scots route. In her introductory author’s note she expresses the hope that:

The recent designation of the Saugus Ironworks Restoration as a national historic site may stimulate new interest in the history of those hardy clansmen who worked off their seven years’ indenture as part of its labour force and then, as free men, established homes and families throughout New England, contributing significantly to the growth and development of the United States.⁴⁷

As this brief introduction makes clear, the discovery of the human remains near Durham Cathedral in November 2013 did not uncover the story of the Dunbar prisoners for the first time. Far from it, the story was already being told in the 17th century and has continued to be embellished since on both sides of the Atlantic. Our 21st-century contribution has been to learn what we can from the human remains of the prisoners through scientific analysis and to develop their social context by drawing together the threads of historical information into a coherent whole. Through this interweaving of historical, archaeological and scientific evidence we have shifted the focus from a series of events around military conflict to a fuller understanding of the biographies of its soldiers. By doing so, we hope to draw a little nearer to the men themselves.

One journey, many stories

The discovery of the human remains and the announcement of their identification in September 2015 was a story which caught the public imagination (Figure 1.7). Coverage quickly expanded from BBC and ITV television news to national and local radio; a great many newspapers also carried the story.⁴⁸ Impressive website statistics demonstrated public interest in the project; over the space of only a few days there were 30,835 page views of our dedicated website from 119 countries, mainly from the UK and US but also from Australia, Canada, China and New Zealand.⁴⁹ There were also thousands of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ via Facebook and Twitter.⁵⁰ Over the next two years, our own day-to-day research was put on hold as we entered into discussions with UNESCO, Members of Parliament, Historic England and Historic Environment Scotland, local authorities and community councils. While investigation and analysis continued in the background, we held well attended consultation meetings in Dunbar and Durham and responded to the unceasing demand for public talks on the subject (Figure 1.8).⁵¹ The Scottish Soldiers Archaeology Project had become part of our lives.

Figure 1.7 A selection of the print media press coverage for the project. Compiled by Peter Brown.

Figure 1.8 The research team: Chris Gerrard, Pam Graves, Andrew Millard, Richard Annis and Anwen Caffell. Photographs by Jeff Veitch and Ralph Morang.

Figure 1.9 Durham Cathedral and its approach from the north. The Dunbar prisoners would have marched up Saddler Street, through the North Gate (demolished 1820), up Owengate and onto Palace Green. This would probably have been their first view of the Cathedral, though in 1650 the western towers still had wooden spires. Photograph by Jeff Veitch.

The story captured people’s attention for many reasons. Initially, there was surprise that such a discovery could have been made in such an iconic location. Everyone who comes to Durham, however they first arrive, makes their way to Palace Green. This is the heart of the historic city with a magnificent view of the Romanesque facade of Durham Cathedral in one direction and, with a turn of the head, the castle and medieval residence of the bishops of Durham behind (Figure 1.9). Such is the interest of the buildings here that it would be possible to run an archaeology and architecture course lasting several days without moving from this single spot; there are 569 ‘listed’ buildings in the