History Hunters home Border reivers home Johnie Armstrang team Hobbie Noble team Walter Scott team Borders history [reiver names] Hermitage Castle Sir Walter Scott Abbotsford football match maps evidence and finds timeline glossary Borders resources	reiver family names John Alan Armstrong of Nether Thorniewhats, Laird of Nether Thorniewats. A laird is entitled to wear two feathers in his cap. The Border reiver is a figure unique in British (perhaps in world) history, a professional cattle-thief who left to posterity a legacy of great poetry ... a merciless racketeer and plunderer who was also his country's vanguard in time of war, a murderous pursuer of feud who held little sacred except his pledged word, and who vanished four centuries ago, leaving behind him the word 'blackmail' and a bloodline that has included, among others, Presidents Nixon and Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, the Charlton brothers, Rutherford the physicist, Billy Graham, Robert Burns, Deborah Kerr, Thomas Carlyle, T S Eliot and the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong. George Macdonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets Archbold Armstrong Beattie Bell Burns Carleton Carlisle Carnaby Carrs Carruthers Chamberlain Charlton Collingwood Crisp Crozier Cuthbert Dacre Davison Dixon Dodd Douglas Dunne Elliot Fenwick Forster Graham Gray Hall Hedley Henderson Heron Hetherington Hume Irvine Irving Johnstone Kerr Laidlaw Little Lowther Maxwell Milburn Musgrove Nixon Noble Ogle Oliver Potts Pringle Radcliffe Reade Ridley Robson Routledge Rutherford Salkeld Scott Selby Shaftoe Simpson Storey Tait Taylor Trotter Turnbull Wake Watson Wilson Woodrington Young Alan Armstrong's cap badge. The crest has azure pallets on silver in the plain silver circlet of a laird. The motto, salute braccia forte means salute arm strong. The hare in full course is Alan's own addition.