Borch held the central prince-archiepiscopal Vörde Castle and the pertaining bailiwick. He abused the castle as starting point for his brigandages, earning him the epithet "Isern Hinnerk" (Iron Henry). In the same time he built his own castle "Dannensee" near Beckdorf and close to the Prince-Archbishopric's border with the Principality of Brunswick and Lüneburg-Celle. Local esquires, the city of Bremen, and many knights of the ministerialis, among them the bailiffs of Stade and of the Saxe-Lauenburgian exclave of the Land of Hadeln, formed a federation, sealed in April 1310, combining their interests to subject the brigandage with the separatist ambition of Stade's bailiff, the Count of Brobergen or Stade, being a vassal of the Prince-Archbishop, to constitute the County of Stade as a territory of imperial immediacy directly under the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 200 armed men of the federation beleaguered the castle in Vörde and demanded "Isern Hinnerk" to leave.