Focuses on two English shires, Meath and Northumberland, in a period during which the ruling magnates of these shires who had hitherto supervised border rule and defense were mostly unavailable to the crown. Unwilling to foot the cost of large garrisons and extended fortifications, successive kings increasingly shifted the costs of defense onto the local population, prompting the border gentry and minor peers to organize themselves through county communities for the rule and defense of the region. This strategy was generally successful in Ireland where the military threat presented by "the wild Irish" was not so formidable, but in the English far-north Tudor reform, centralized control, and the burden of defense against the Scots soon led to "the decay of the borders."