[Footnote 29:  This rencounter took place at Humbie, in East Lothian.  Bothwell was attended by a servant, called Gibson, and Cessford by one of the Rutherfords, who was hurt in the cheek.  The combatant parted from pure fatigue.]

[Footnote 30:  Sir Walter Raleigh, in writing of Essex, then in prison, says, “Let the queen hold Bothwell while she hath him.”—­Murdin, Vol.  II. p. 812.  It appears, from Crichton’s Memoirs, that Bothwell’s grandson, though so nearly related to the royal family, actually rode a private in the Scottish horse guards, in the reign of Charles II.—­Edinburgh, 1731, p. 43.]

While these scenes were passing in the metropolis the borders were furiously agitated by civil discord.  The families of Cessford and Fairnihirst disputed their right to the wardenry of the middle marches, and to the provostry of Jedburgh; and William Kerr of Ancram, a follower of the latter, was murdered by the young chief of Cessford, at the instigation of his mother.—­Spottiswoode, p. 383.  But this was trifling, compared to the civil war, waged on the western frontier, between the Johnstones and Maxwells, of which there is a minute account in the introduction to the ballad, entitled, “Maxwell’s Goodnight.”  Prefixed to that termed “Kinmont Willie” the reader will find an account of the last warden raids performed upon the border.

My sketch of border history now draws to a close.  The accession of James to the English crown converted the extremity into the centre of his kingdom.

The east marches of Scotland were, at this momentous period, in a state of comparative civilization.  The rich soil of Berwickshire soon invited the inhabitants to the arts of agriculture.—­Even in the days of Lesley, the nobles and barons of the Merse differed in manners from the other borderers, administered justice with regularity, and abstained from plunder and depredation.—­De moribus Scotorum, p. 7.  But, on the middle and western marches, the inhabitants were unrestrained moss-troopers and cattle drivers, knowing no measure of law, says Camden, but the length of their swords.  The sterility of the mountainous country, which they inhabited, offered little encouragement to industry; and, for the long series of centuries, which we have hastily reviewed, the hands of rapine were never there folded in inactivity, nor the sword of violence returned to the scabbard.  Various proclamations were in vain issued for interdicting the use of horses and arms upon the west border of England and Scotland[31].

[Footnote 31:  “Proclamation shall be made, that all inhabiting within Tynedale and Riddesdale, in Northumberland, Bewcastledale, Willgavey, the north part of Gilsland, Esk, and Leven, in Cumberland; east and west Tividale, Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewsdale, and Annesdale, in Scotland (saving noblemen Footnote:  and gentlemen unsuspected of felony and theft, and not being of broken clans, and their household servants,