John Maxwell, ninth Lord Maxwell, was the most powerful Border lord in Dumfriesshire and Annandale, his family having been locked in a murderous feud with the Johnstones for generations. After killing the Warden of the West March, Sir John Johnstone, in a feud ambush in 1608, Maxwell fled abroad to avoid justice. He returned secretly to Scotland in 1612 but was betrayed and arrested. Tried for murder, he was beheaded on the High Street of Edinburgh in 1613. His execution was the final act of royal enforcement against the old Border power structures and demonstrated that even the greatest Borders magnate was not above the law under the new British monarchy.
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