In observing my #1 at thread starter it occurred to me that I have not yet uncovered the answer to the main question...Here is the problem outlined at #1
THE BORDER REIVERS.
For my main reference I will lean heavily on a good solid base of information at Wikipedia and begin with a quote and a few questions since Sir Walter Scott is said to have quoted Elizabeth 1st as having said that "With ten thousand such men, James VI could shake any throne in Europe."
Thus my question is;
If this was the case then why didnt the English recruit these superb horsemen into their order of battle and who were they and what became of them?
The main reason for that is because there is not simply one answer but a host of reasons for their decline some outlined at #13 on thread (viz; In about 1603 when the Union of the Crowns occurred and by then the Borders were extinct... not even the word Borders was allowed and new laws were in place essentially trebling the fines against thieves ...and being caught with a horse could mean jail and or the chopping block. Even the famous Galloway horse was doomed thus the famous Border Reivers were closed down, rounded up, and either transported or killed...) It is apparent that they were also hammered on all sides by not only legal factors but also pressure, threats and persecution often amounting to death penalties, execution without trial, torture and imprisonment from every angle from all levels of society, military tribunal, court orders Royal Decree and national and regional laws over a pressurised period from about 1530 through to probably 1644... The latter date suggested by me since that was the battle of Marsdon Moor which largely threw a huge spanner into the works when the Marquis of Newcastle fielded about 3,000 whitecoats (better known as Northumberland Horse "possibly" decended from Border Rievers...) both as Cavalry and Infantry and according to Prince Rupert arrived on the position late and drunk... and who were wiped out almost to a man as only about 30 survived) This over simplified version is something of a smoke screen and cannot have been the date on which the actual Border Rievers became extinct. I much prefer the huge dislocation and erosion of the disastrous period in Northumberland between 1542 and 1560.
Please See
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2743/
This will take you to a page of
ABSTRACT (printed below) and above that see the sign
PDF. Click on that and it opens.
The over riding document is a much more detailed, broadly based description of what the true answer is.
The final phase of the Anglo-Scots Wars (1542-1560) significantly affected Northumberland. The Tudor government attempted to use the militarised society of Northumberland a s a means of subduing Scotland. However, the ensuing conflict took a heavy toll on the Marches. Instability plagued the region, while leading military families feuded with each other. The efforts of the Tudors were not concerted enough to overcome the Marches' allegiance to kith and kin. March society proved to be remarkably inhospitable for Tudor state building, and in the end, the military community of Northumberland remained just as vulnerable to both internal and external threats as it had been before the wars. This work questions the success of Tudor state building տ the mid-sixteenth century. The analysis employs both State Papers and local documents to illuminate the political dialogue between central government and the peripheral frontier administration. Official correspondences of March officers also highlight the depths to which Tudor policy had taken root in Northumberland. An analysis of muster rolls suggests that Northumbrian society’s involvement in the wars greatly fluctuated over nearly a twenty-year period, only to see the military capacities of Northumbrians significantly wane by 1560. The personal testimonies of officers imply that the Tudors had some initial success in bringing significant military power to their side. However, the same documents also suggest that incoherent policies resulted from the rapid succession of three separate monarchs after the death of Henry V111. In the end, the Tudor state was unable to instil order in Northumberland, and the military necessities of frontier security remained problematic for the rest of the sixteenth century.