Violence, Custom and Law

Centuries-long hostility between Scotland and England affected the pattern of criminal activity in the Anglo-Scottish Border lands. This is an account of how the area created and refined a new system of law to deal with the conflict in the 13th to 15th centuries. It shows how the political and military relationship between the two kingdoms, especially the English crown's reliance on Wardens of the March for frontier defence, played a vital role in the development of a bond between the two, and laid the foundations for the Tudor system of border law.