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to his granddaughter Margaret, the daughter of the king of Norway: 
Edward proposed to marry his eldest son to the young Queen, and 
so unite the kingdoms. But unfortunately his plans were frustrated 
by the death of Margaret, and three wild and stormy centuries 
were to intervene ere the Rose and the Thistle could be intertwined. 
Foiled thus in his attempts at a peaceable solution of the question, 
you know how Edward afterwards endeavoured to effect his object 
by war ; how the independence of the country was asserted among 
others by William Wallace (himself a Borderer), with all the 
courage, and, I am afraid also, with all the wildness and vindictive- 
ness of the Borderer’s character; and how, at last, the English king 
died on Burgh Marsh on the eve of another expedition ; how, on 
his tomb in the Abbey Church of Westminster you find the 
inscription, “ Malleus Scottorum”—the hammer of the Scotch. 
Perhaps, looking back to-day, it would have been well for both 
countries if his object had been achieved. Scotland would have 
escaped the disasters which followed in after days at Pinkie, and 
Solway Moss, and Flodden; and many an Englishman would not 
have bled on the field of Bannockburn. 
The continued struggles between the successors of Edward 
and the Scots, embittered yet more, as we might expect, the 
relations between the countries ; and this embitterment was 
naturally most strongly felt upon the Borders. Hate and resistance 
to the Southron—this was their rallying cry; and it was this, and 
often this only, that formed their bond of union with their Scottish 
monarch, of whom, in other respects, they claimed and exercised 
a considerable measure of independence. They were most 
useful, no doubt, when there was war between North and South; 
but at other times they were neither agreeable nor profitable as 
subjects. They claimed to be, and to a considerable extent they 
were, their own masters, and almost as troublesome to their own 
kings as they were to anybody else. They had won their 
possessions by the sword, and by the sword they kept them— 
Like as I won them, sae will I keep them, 
Contrair a’ kings in Christentie, 
says the outlaw Murray in the ballad, and he only echoed the 
