Brantome in the sixteenth century, like Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth, remarked the uncouthness of the northern kingdom.
Most backward of all was Scotland's political development.

No king arose strong enough to be at once {351} the tyrant and the saviour of his country; under the weak rule of a series of minors, regents and wanton women a feudal baronage with a lush growth of intestine war and crime, flourished mightily to curse the poor people.

When Sir David Lyndsay asked, [Sidenote: 1528] Why are the Scots so poor?
he gave the correct answer: Wanting of justice, policy and peace, Are cause of their unhappiness, alas! Something may also be attributed to the poverty of the soil and the lack of important commerce or industries.
[Sidenote: Relations with England] The policy of any small nation situated in dangerous proximity to a larger one is almost necessarily determined by this fact.

In order to assert her independence Scotland was forced to make common cause with England's enemies.

Guerrilla warfare was endemic on the borders, breaking out, in each generation, into some fiercer crisis.