The Earl of Argyle is bound to ride
From the border of Edgebucklin brae[[13]];
And all his habergeons him beside,
Each man upon a sonk of strae.
They made their vow that they would slay—
Godscroft, v. 2. p. 104. Ed. 1743.
The pertinacious opposition of Angus to his doom irritated to the extreme the fiery temper of James, and he swore, in his wrath, that a Douglas should never serve him; an oath which he kept in circumstances under which the spirit of chivalry, which he worshipped[[14]], should have taught him other feelings.
While these transactions, by which the fate of Scotland was influenced, were passing upon the eastern border, the Lord Maxwell seems to have[xxii] exercised a most uncontrouled domination in Dumfries-shire. Even the power of the Earl of Angus was exerted in vain, against the banditti of Liddesdale, protected and bucklered by this mighty chief. Repeated complaints are made by the English residents, of the devastation occasioned by the depredations of the Elliots, Scotts, and Armstrongs, connived at, and encouraged, by Maxwell, [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[xxiii] 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 [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 [xxiv] they had gone in the hounds of Fife." Pitscottie, p. 153.