THE BORDER REIVERS.

[Peter Hudson]

Secrecy, subterfuge and spin doctoring were part of the Tudor program as well as being employed later ... People vanished and executions took place all over the shop... The big names in the lying game were those with a close connection to the rulers and Sir Walter Scott was certainly up there with the best of them..even though he didnt appear for a few hundred years after the event he is creditted with actually inventing the name of the wars... The Wars of the Roses... The biggest spin doctor in Tudor times was William Shakespeare who had carte blanche to write anything he liked (or rather, the Tudors liked) . This we now call "propaganda".

For utter and total lies and myths simply look at The Wars of The Roses which were largely inventions of the various muddle of lies where one side having run out of arrows took to throwing black puddings at the enemy whilst the others replied it is said by pelting them back with Yorkshire puddings. Much poisoned ink flowed through other exponents of this technique and Richard 111 falls into that category.

Here is a great video presentation on this very subject.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bs0hn The Title is revealing .. The Biggest Fibs in British History. And among that lot are the many lies and twists of the Border Riever story during which many people were hung or had their heads removed on the block or were simply drowned...often based on heresay or lies or complex stories passed by laws but often without trial...I believe this resulted in a complete erosion of trust in the Borders and locked the doors on the idea of these warriors ever becoming part of the ORBAT in The English Cavalry.