The March of the Dunbar Scots

British historians have likened the 1650 Dunbar March—the march of the Dunbar prisoners south into England—to the Bataan Death March in WWII, with the caveat that the Dunbar march was worse.

September is autumn on the east coast of Scotland, which, thanks to the proximity of the North Sea, is cool and wet even in summer.  Early in the march southward, the prisoners were bedded down each night in the grass between the coast road and the ocean, to deny them any avenue of escape.  They were not fed anything for three days after the battle, since Cromwell’s army had itself been starving and was neither used to nor provisioned for handling large numbers of prisoners.  On September 7^th, the prisoners received their first meal from the hands of their captors—they were handed bags of horse fodder, literally field hay.  Since many of the prisoners had not eaten for two days prior to the battle, this was their first food after a forced fast of five days.

As the march proceeded south, prisoners who were slow to obey their English captors, objected to their treatment, tried to escape, straggled behind, or fell from wounds, exhaustion, or sickness were often shot on the spot.  Once the march turned away from the coast, some prisoners escaped during the dark nights.  Most who tried and were caught were executed.  After another three days had passed, the Scots were given their second meal—2-3 hard biscuits.  Being fed every 3-4 days became the pattern for their feeding.  Once, they were given a handful of dried peas instead of hard biscuits.  Men began to fall and die of injury and disease complicated by starvation.  One group of thirty (30) prisoners was executed—shot for refusing to go on without any food.

The march paused at Belford, Alnwick, and Morpeth.  At Morpeth, some of the prisoners were bedded down in the yard of a castle where there was a garden of green (unripe) cabbage.   It was the first green food the Scots had seen since their capture—they stripped and ate the garden in minutes.  After the extended period with no vegetables, and given the unripe nature of the cabbage, many prisoners quickly became intensely ill.  Some died of intestinal distress.

As the days passed, the prisoners were marched inland, first to Newcastle on the Tyne River, where several hundred officers and very ill regular soldiers were left behind, and then the men were marched through smaller villages in northern England.  In some villages, the Scots prisoners had to walk through gauntlets of vengeful English villagers, who, to be fair, had frequently been the victims of raiding parties of Border Scots, and thus were settling old scores.   The prisoners were pelted with stones, debris, and human waste, increasing their injuries and exposure to disease.

Bargaining for Labor

As the Dunbar prisoners were being marched south to Durham, the Council of State in

London (Parliament having been dissolved by Cromwell) had been struggling with the problem of what to do with all of these troublesome Scots prisoners.  In the past, any prisoners kept after battle had been transported to Ireland to serve as mercenaries and laborers.  But unfinished conflict and recent troubles there argued against that destination.  Dunbar prisoners in Ireland might only stir up more unrest close to home.  A more distant and permanent solution was needed.

In 1650, many of the Puritan English allied with Cromwell and Parliament had invested in business ventures in the English colonies in the Caribbean (Barbados and Bermuda), Virginia, and New England.  They desperately needed cheap labor.  Enslaving indigenous Native Americans didn’t work—they had a tendency to die quickly of exposure to European diseases, or to escape.  Kidnapped and enslaved Africans were still a relative rarity, and expensive.  At the time, cheap indentured European labor was the most affordable option.  So groups of Puritan businessmen approached the Council of State for access to the labor of the surviving Scottish prisoners in Durham Cathedral, especially the tougher, more durable Highlanders.  On September 16, not quite two weeks after the battle and while the prisoners were still being marched south, the Council directed its secretary, Gualter Frost, to negotiate with these petitioners for terms.

Among the petitioners were businessmen with specific projects underway in the New England colonies—John Becx and Joshua Foote.  Becx and Foote were partners in The Company of Undertakers of the Iron Works in New England, a business begun by John Winthrop, son of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Governor Edward Winthrop.  Becx and Foote needed men for their fledgling iron works operation at Lynn just north and west of Boston.  One of the other partners in this company was (surprise, surprise) Council Secretary Gualter Frost.

Durham Cathedral

At the end of three weeks, after a forced march of 120 miles, the prisoners reached Durham, England.  Of the approximately 3,900 that had begun the march, about 900-1,000 had escaped, or had died from execution or from complications of starvation and disease. 

At Durham, the majority of the Scots prisoners—the regular soldiers—were incarcerated in an abandoned cathedral.  Officers were incarcerated at Tynemouth Castle in slightly greater comfort, some of them being eligible for ransom.  It was late fall, and winter was coming on.  For warmth beyond the little heat the braziers provided, stories in Durham assert that the prisoners stripped the interior of the church of all the wood they could reach—pews, choir stalls, wall panels, anything—burning it to stave off the deepening cold.  Only a wooden clock set high on one wall escaped their efforts.  The clock was hard to reach and it had a thistle on its face.  That clock is still there, and still working.

While the English officers in charge of the prisoners sent glowing reports of ample food and good treatment to the Council of State in London, the reality was different.  Much of the food commissioned for the prisoners was in fact being stolen by the townspeople of Durham and the Roundhead guards.  The Dunbar prisoners continued to die of starvation, disease (“the flux”—i.e., dysentery, caused by the unhygienic conditions under which the men were being kept) and, increasingly, predation among their own ranks.  In addition to robbing crypts in the cathedral for trinkets to trade with guards and townspeople for food, some of the more desperate Scots attacked and robbed or even murdered one another for small goods or clothing to trade for food.  Doubtless the three MacIntyre brothers and possibly other veterans from Lawers regiment protected one another, as they had during battle and on the march—only a very desperate group would attack three Highlanders together.

As disease in the cathedral worsened, it is said (and here begins an unlikely story) that the English found a brutally efficient way to reduce the over-crowding.  The story goes that the English organized executions by lot—the prisoners were lined up and every tenth man was taken away and shot.  Family legend has it that as the count proceeded down the line, Malcolm realized that either he or one of his brothers was going to be a ‘tenth man.’  It is said that Micum burst his bonds, started a fight with a bewildered fellow prisoner in the line as a distraction, then knocked down a couple of the guards, and broke away in a wild attempt to escape.  Though he was quickly ridden down, slightly wounded, and recaptured by a mounted English officer, his display of courage impressed his English captors, and he was spared.

There is in fact no evidence that the English did this with either the Dunbar or the Worcester prisoners a year later.  So the inspiring family story is likely a Colonial Revival invention designed to add dramatic bravery to Micum’s legend.  The real story of the challenges Micum and his brothers faced needs no added drama.

The tale of the dying Scottish prisoners endured in Durham.  Excavations in the 1970s in the Durham Cathedral cemetery uncovered a trench over 100 feet long filled with the bones of what locals assumed were Dunbar prisoners (but were more likely the bones of displaced older burials).  However, in November 2013, excavations accompanying the construction of a new cathedral café uncovered two mass graves.  A major archeological effort ensued, and the fate of the prisoners at Durham and in the colonies is receiving increased scholarship and attention in England and New England.  See the book “Lost Lives, New Voices” in the attached Bibliography.

Sold Away

On September 19, 1650, the Council of State sent a message to Sir Arthur Haselrigge, a confidant of Cromwell’s and the officer in charge of the Dunbar prisoners at Durham.  The Council’s letter instructed Haselrigge on how to disperse the prisoners.  The Council proposed that nine hundred (900) prisoners would go to the Virginia colony.  It is very doubtful that this ever happened—Virginia was still a Royalist English colony and at the time was refusing to trade with the Puritan English government.

We know what happened with some of the other Dunbar prisoners over time.  Forty (40) prisoners had their indentures sold in northern England (North and South Shields) to work as laborers on the salt pans.  Twelve (12) were indentured as weavers.  Forty (40) served as laborers, possibly in nearby Northumberland coal mines.  Five hundred (500) were sent to France to serve as mercenaries under Marshall Turenne.

Another five hundred (500) of the men were sent further south to labor on drainage projects in Kings Lynn in the Fens District north and east of London, and were later released when their terms of indenture ended.  Most of those men later returned to Scotland, but some stayed and settled, having met local women and started families during their labor.  Some men may even have been sent to Crete.  In July 1652, almost two years after their initial capture, Sir Arthur Haselrigge released all remaining (surviving) regular Dunbar soldiers, who were issued passes to return home to Scotland.  Some officers and soldiers who were still under indenture in England at that time may have been sent to Barbados later on, around 1655.

We know that the September 1650 letter received by Haselrigge also directed that one hundred fifty (150) men were to be sent to New England in the charge of Becx and Foote.   Specifically, the Council ordered Haselrigge to “deliver 150 Scotch prisoners to Augustine Walker, master of the Unity to be transported to New England.”  Augustine Walker was a skilled New England sailor and Boston area merchantman who traded in many European ports—it was probably just chance that he was in London at the time.

Haselrigge acted immediately on the part of the Council’s order he could actually undertake.  On behalf of the iron works, Becx had required that the prisoners selected for New England labor be “well and sound and free from wounds.”   Haselrigge’s men picked out 150 of the strongest and healthiest remaining prisoners, including Malcolm, Robert, and Philip MacIntyre.  Fearing that all of the Scots at Durham might be carrying disease, the authorities did not march the men south overland through the most populous areas of England.  Instead, the 150 prisoners were quick-marched back north to the port at Newcastle on the River Tyne, where they were trundled on board ship (possibly a transport ship, or Walker’s ship the Unity of Boston itself) and sailed down to London, where they anchored on the Thames to await the conclusion of negotiations with the New England businessmen. 

In a later report (October 31, 1650), Sir Arthur Haselrigge submitted a report on the treatment and condition of the prisoners in Durham cathedral, noting that the prisoners left alive as of that date included “about 600 in Health in the Cathedral, most of which are, in all probability, Highlanders, they being hardier than the rest.”  He reported that about 1,600 of the men originally incarcerated in the cathedral had died.  It had been 58 days since the battle, and an average of 30-40 prisoners had died every day.  That level of mortality tells us much about the conditions these men suffered, given that that they had originally been kept as prisoners after the battle because they were sound, capable of further mischief (resistance), and able to travel.  Until the discovery of two of the mass graves in 2013, it was not known where the disease victims from the cathedral had been buried.

By about October 23, 1650, the 150 Scots destined for New England were sitting—probably in chains—in the hold of the New England-built ketch Unity of Boston, at anchor on the Thames River in London, crammed in with other cargo.   The Unity remained anchored there for nearly 3 weeks (19 days) while the Council tried to renegotiate its deal with Becx and Foote and reassure itself that these 150 Scots would not foment insurrection in the New England colonies—a perpetual (and justified) English fear.  Another 200 Dunbar men from the cathedral were also waiting in London in the same circumstances, possibly to be transported to Virginia, though that would have been practically impossible—as noted, Virginia was still a Royalist colony and refused to trade with the Puritan government for more than a year.  No one knows what happened to those 200 Dunbar prisoners—they disappear from the record.

During this time, the “ill-usage” of the 150 or so confined below decks on the Thames did not abate.  It was bad enough that even some Londoners complained (and Londoners hated and feared the Scots).  Dysentery had probably broken out again among the men being kept in close quarters of the Unity’s hold.  On November 7, 1650, an investigation of their treatment was ordered.  The Council ordered neighborhoods in the Blackwall Hall section of London to receive some Scots prisoners into their pest houses (buildings set aside for the care of potentially infected (pestilential) persons), to be cured at the cost of those who had caused them to be brought to London.  More of the “well and sound” 150 Scots may have died there, waiting on the Thames.

Perhaps to avoid the delay of the coming investigation, or because the Council was still waffling and the late fall weather was worsening, ship’s master Augustine Walker weighed anchor and departed the section of the Thames near Gravesend on November 11, 1650 on a favorable tide, soon after (he said) he received orders to depart.  Several sources indicate that the Council gave those orders, and Walker claimed to have been ordered to leave, but with an eye on the declining seasonal weather conditions and the looming investigation, he may have decided matters himself, or have been glad of the order when it came.  Proceeding down the Thames, Augustine Walker set sail with about 150 Scottish prisoners from Dunbar in the hold of the Unity of Boston, and headed across the North Atlantic as winter came on.  Micum, Robert, and Philip were heading to an unknown New World.