The Maxwell-Johnstone feud — the longest and bloodiest private war on the Scottish West March — reached one of its most violent episodes at Lochmaben in 1593. The two great Dumfriesshire families had been raiding and killing each other's people for decades. At Lochmaben a Maxwell force ambushed a Johnstone party during what was supposed to be a peace negotiation, killing several Johnstone men. The government's inability to suppress the feud even during James VI's Border pacification campaigns showed how deeply rooted Border family conflict was. The feud would not end until Maxwell himself was executed in 1613.
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