"EVERY MANS PREY"
Welcome to the home of the 'Broken Clan' know as the;
ROUTLEDGES
This
website is currently undergoing a major update
and will be re-launched some time in June
so please bookmark us and watch out for the update site coming soon
First appearing in the the mid 1400's the name has spread to the corners off the globe far and wide. Starting life as a Border Reiver family in the middle of some of the most ferocious families in the area, life could not have been the easiest in its early days. But never the less we survived and here we are today.
Our Reiving days were spent in the area know as the West March on the English side of the border, which we shared with the likes of the Armstrong's, Eliot's, and Nixon's. The family tended to keep themselves to themselves and not inter marry with the other families. Although there is evidence of double weddings with Routledges and Armstrong's. The problem with not inter marrying meant that we did not get the benefit of the intelligence from our allies. And as we had non this is why the Routledges tended to be know as 'Every Mans Foe', 'Every Man's Prey' or 'All Man's Prey'. (And you thought you got picked on at school)
The parish of Bewcastle is where we flourished in the the early days. As early as 1473 there is a Cuthbert and John Routledge, along with a Robert Elliot and Gerard Nixon, deputies to the constable of Bewcastle, who was no other than Richard the Duke of Gloucester. The four remain deputies till in 1478 Richard arranged for the lands to be let to them. Richard, as we know, later became Richard III in 1483 and the lands continued to be let to the four. This remained so till 1485 when Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth and the the lands and the castle were then handed over to the Musgrave family (another Border Reiver name).
So if your a Routledge and often wondered if you ever owned a castle during the Reiver years you can go to Bewcastle, Cumberland and tell yourself, children, grand children.....etc, that,
"Over 500 years ago we owned half off that heap of stones, courtesy of the King of England"
From there onwards though the historical records of the Routledges tend to come from border papers, of which I have included a few in Routledges, Raids and Reivers. There is only a few here but notice that some of the later ones are from a place called Todhills. Todhills is still a working farm today and as far back as 1510 there was a James Routledge owning it. The farm continued being owned by Routledges with only a few acceptations till 1847. Nothing survives today of the original farm except for a scar on the wall where the thatch once was.
Although, our days as reivers were not always spent grovelling to future kings and being everyone else's whipping boys. Far from it. In fact in 1528 we were either big enough or threatening enough for a force of 500 Englishmen to come after us and end us once and for all. See the March of the 500 below.
We even enraged the bishop of Glasgow (well us and a few other families) to rant on for four pages cursing us. So if your a Routledge and have bad luck feel free to sue the Church of Scotland.
So once cursed and chased from our home land, some Routledges found sanctuary in Ireland and and America. I've tried to give a good account of these early days for the Routledges in both nations, but while researching I also found out something quite surprising regarding the name Rutledge. If your American and a Rutledge or Ruttledge and claim your ancestry with the Border Reiver Routledges then I highly recommend you read the section American and Irish Routledges. Not all is as it seems.
As for the final two sections to this website, Leftover Routledges and The Routledges, I've tried to come to a conclusion the best I can about the Routledge. The leftover Routledges are a collection of Routledges that have appeared at historical events, such as Trafalgar and the Alamo and can not be tied directly into our history and are more of our legacy rather than roots. Also on this section there are a few oddities I came across while researching this site, such as a farm called Rowledge in the early 1300's, and also Routledges in London in 1560. I think I've managed to ask more questions rather than answer them.
I started originally doing my family tree with the aim to get back to Bewcastle or a connection to the border reivers, or even Todhills which I knew was a place heavily mentioned during the 16th century in the thick of the reivers, which was always linked to the Routledges in a number of raids. But the more I researched I hit a brick wall. The records only go as far back as 1665 in the area I ended up in and before I knew it I had started researching the history of the name and not just my family.
This web page really came about as I was sick of searching through books and web pages looking for Routledges mentioned in connection with the border reivers. And I started to get a bit fed up when I'd buy a large book about the reivers only to look in the index and see we appeared once in a 400 page book. And this tended to be in the bit where all the families are listed. So I've created this site in hope it will help any other Routledges out their who are interested in their past, origins or even genealogy, by pulling together all the mentions of Routledges no matter how small or insignificant into one place.
As I created this site and I put together all of the information, I've discovered it has been a far greater task than what I thought it was going to be. I would find a fact or a mention of the Routledges in blasé fashion so I'd find myself digging a bit deeper and deeper till days had passed and I'd only wrote about two lines, as a result of all of the research required to prove or dismiss what I'd found. The prime example of this is regarding Simon and Mathew burning the manor at Buccleuch which seemed to be a up hill struggle from day one and involved god only knows how many phone calls to various sources just to find out if this was a true story or not. Its certainly the most researched page on this site, and as a result I've set it out slightly differently to the other pages, as its more off a story about the research with a small paragraph at the beginning and the end off the page. It should be noted that for every fact you see I normally have file after file to back it up, or I've travelled hundreds of miles just to take a photo.
Below are various links in the best order that makes sense and suggest you follow the link on the bottom of each page as you go through to help make sense as they refer to each other a lot.
I hope you find this site of interest whether your a Routledge or not and enjoy sifting through the history that I've put together for everyone to read. If you have an further information or tales that I've missed out please don't hesitate to contact me at tom@everymansprey.com
Created, designed and researched by Thomas Routledge