In the previous chapter, we saw how the English attacked Scotland in 1522–24 for reasons of defence rather than conquest. Although these attacks were important for securing the frontier, they formed only one element of the wider English defence strategy. This chapter explores the wider operation of northern defences during a period of open conflict, when the kingdom was threatened with invasion. The first part of the chapter examines the chain of fortifications which ran along the 110 miles of England's northern frontier between the garrison towns of Carlisle and Berwick, many of which were in a poor condition in the 1520s. In addition to crumbling masonry and outdated designs, key northern fortifications, including Berwick, Carlisle and Wark, lacked guns and munitions to defend against the Scots. Yet despite the poor state of these fortifications, the government in London was reluctant to spend the sums needed to make them strong.

Beyond the state of the fortifications, there were problems with the garrisons who manned them. In comparison with the garrisons based on other Tudor frontiers – especially France – there are few studies of the northern garrison. This chapter examines methods the English crown used to mobilise the men required to defend the frontier with Scotland in the sixteenth century. Around the small core of permanent or semi-permanent garrisons in the north, large numbers of men were mobilised from the local population to defend the frontier on a short-term basis, especially during moments of increased threat, as in 1522–24. Northern tenants were typically obliged as part of their leases to provide military service for a set number of days under the warden or royal lieutenant in defence of the kingdom, which by the sixteenth century could include participation in raids into Scotland. Yet local populations increasingly took exception to the requirement to participate in military actions. This decay of border service, which has been examined for later periods in the sixteenth century, was already apparent by the 1520s. This longstanding system of border service was starting to break down in the early sixteenth century as a result of changes to land tenure, which led tenants to demand wages for military service that they had customarily provided without charge.