This work is not intended as a study of Border administration, reiving and military activities. It is a thematic, comparative micro-history of landed society along part of a political frontier, encompassing important decades leading up to the Union of the Crowns in 1603. The focus is on the social structures of landed communities on both sides of the border, their politics, wealth, education and culture, the effects of the Reformations in both countries, their disorder and cross-border relations. This approach will, it is hoped, revise previously held opinion about this frontier.