On 26 March 1603 Robert Carey staggered into James vi's bedchamber at Holyrood to announce his succession to the English throne. For James, it was the defining moment in his life, the glittering prize that for so long he had striven. For Carey, exhausted after his three-day ride from London, it was his opportunity to secure a heady future at the English court. No longer would he be confined to the turbulent wastelands of his wardenry in the Middle March of the English Borderlands. For his Scottish counterpart too, the recently ennobled Robert Ker, Lord Roxburgh, it marked the beginning of a new life: the rough comfort of Cessford castle's thick walls was replaced by the court at Whitehall and the dark rooms of the privy council in Edinburgh. The significance of the Anglo-Scottish border, as a barrier between two, often hostile, kingdoms lapsed, as did Roxburgh's and Carey's offices as warden.

Whilst James's succession undoubtedly transformed these men's lives, they were also affected by a variety of longer-term processes in which the Scottish crown had begun to harness judicial authority, and the use of violence, to settle disputes throughout Scotland. The increasing intrusion of crown authority into the localities that resulted might have been expected to alienate prominent local officials, such as Roxburgh. What was notable, however, was the way in which the landed elite had co-operated with James, rewarded by new office and confirmation of their landholdings. By carefully including Roxburgh within an evolving framework of government, James retained the authority that this borderer exerted in the Scottish Middle March, as its warden, and through his leadership of the great Ker kindred. Whilst Roxburgh's experience was determined largely by border-specific circumstances, he was also the creature of James's policies affecting much of Scotland. So, similarly, was the experience of the Middle March that he had governed.