 The ancient kingdoms of Strathclyde and Northumbria were eventually subsumed into what we now know as Scotland and England, but for most of the later mediaeval period the Borders suffered instability and lawlessness due to their mutual antipathy and the indeterminate nature of the border.There have been many valiant attempts to romanticise the assumed incessant violence, starting with Sir Walter Scott, who visited Gilsland and got engaged at the Popping Stone.As soon as the area was definitively pacified, with the Union of the Crowns and the suppression of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, economic activity rapidly increased.