and Armstrongs, connived at, and encouraged, by Maxwell, [Sidenote:  1528] Buccleuch, and Fairnihirst.  At a convention of border commissioners, it was agreed, that the king of England, in case the excesses of the Liddesdale freebooters were not duly redressed, should be at liberty to issue letters of reprisal to his injured subjects, granting “power to invade the said inhabitants of Liddesdale, to their slaughters, burning, heirships, robbing, reifing, despoiling and destruction, and so to continue the same at his grace’s pleasure,” till the attempts of the inhabitants were fully atoned for.  This impolitic expedient, by which the Scottish prince, unable to execute justice on his turbulent subjects, committed to a rival sovereign the power of unlimited chastisement, was a principal cause of the savage state of the borders.  For the inhabitants, finding that the sword of revenge was substituted for that of justice, were loosened from their attachment to Scotland, and boldly threatened to carry on their depredations, in spite of the efforts of both kingdoms.

James V., however, was not backward in using more honourable expedients to quell the banditti [Sidenote:  1529] on the borders.  The imprisonment of their chiefs, and a noted expedition, in which many of the principal thieves were executed (see introduction to the ballad, called Johnie Armstrong), produced such good effects, that, according to an ancient picturesque history, “thereafter there was great peace and rest a long time, where through the king had great profit; for he had ten thousand sheep going in the Ettrick forest, in keeping by Andrew Bell, who made the king so good count of them, as they had gone in the hounds of Fife.” Pitscottie, p. 153.

A breach with England interrupted the tranquillity [Sidenote:  1532] of the borders.  The Earl of Northumberland, a formidable name to Scotland, ravaged the middle marches, and burned Branxholm, the abode of Buccleuch, the hereditary enemy of the English name.  Buccleuch, with the barons of Cessford and Fairnihirst, retaliated by a raid into England, [Sidenote:  1533] where they acquired much spoil.  On the east march, Fowberry was destroyed by the Scots, and Dunglass castle by D’Arcey, and the banished Angus.

A short peace was quickly followed by another war, which proved fatal to Scotland, and to her king.  In the battle of Haddenrig, the English, and the exiled Douglasses, were defeated by the Lords Huntly and Home; but this was a transient gleam of success.  Kelso was burned, and the borders [Sidenote:  1542] ravaged, by the Duke of Norfolk; and finally, the rout of Solway moss, in which ten thousand men, the flower of the Scottish army, were dispersed and defeated by a band of five hundred English cavalry, or rather by their own dissentions, broke the proud heart of James; a death, more painful a hundred fold than was met by his father in the field of Flodden.