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, [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