proved effectual, and acknowledge that the man whose conduct of the bitter struggle it characterized cannot be contemptuously dismissed as "a nervous, drivelling idiot". One of the special points with regard to which James has a claim to recognition is the zeal with which he undertook and consistently performed the task of checking the lawlessness and rebellion that had been rampant in Scotland during his minority. The Royal Declaration in which he announced his intention of bestowing his "haill travellis, moyane, and diligens" on the work of reform was not allowed to remain a dead letter. Page after page of the records testify to the resoluteness with which he enforced the laws which had for their object the restoration of order throughout the kingdom, and which were directed more particularly against two classes of offenders--the "horners" and the members of families at hereditary feud. Horners, as they were called in Scotland, were all persons who stood out in denounced disobedience to the decrees of any law court, for any kind of offence from simple debt to murder and treason. At one time the country was full of such. Mere proclamations against them having proved of little avail, James at length had recourse to a measure which proved more effectual. He established a flying police, consisting of a body of forty well-equipped horsemen, "to be in reddiness at all occasiounis to hunt, follow and perseu all and quhatsumevir rebellis within this countrie, without respect of persones, quhither thair rebellioun be for civill or criminall caussis, and to tak thair houssis and uplift thair eschaitis as thai salbe directit and commandit".[248] The beneficial result of these stringent disciplinary measures was soonest and most distinctly apparent in the Borders, or, as James desired them to be called after his accession to the English throne, "the Midland Shires of Britain", which, within the space of four or five years, were so thoroughly subdued that they ceased to be a sanctuary for rough-riding reivers, and entered upon that more peaceful era of their existence which has now lasted for three hundred years.