Ill Week

The “ill Week” was a kind of late medieval version of “The Purge.” When queen Elizabeth I died, there was a popular belief that the laws of a kingdom were suspended between the death of a sovereign and the proclamation of the successor. This event was confined in the notoriously lawless Anglo-Scottish border region. Lowland Scots and North English horse riding clansmen and river pirates known as 'reivers' had little regard for the rules in normal times but with the excuse of the dead queen they took advantage of the popular myth and crossed borders en masse to settle rivalries, or simply in search for profit.