The surnames, and their associated obligations of kinship and alliance, provided a framework for the exercise of power within the Middle March, as elsewhere. The socio-political structure of the march was also subject to external influences: the effects of the Reformation, socio-economic change and, of course, Anglo-Scottish relations. Predominant, however, amongst these was the impact of the government of James vi, which, from 1586 onwards, was determined to strengthen its presence throughout Scotland. The ‘fitted carpet’ of crown authority was unfurling to include not just the ‘lawlands’ of the centre, but also Scotland's periphery, the ‘outcuntrey’. The mechanisms that James was to use were similar to, or an extension of, those that had been in existence before and so were the people involved. This was not surprising: the crown was dependent upon prominent figures in each region with sufficient authority, known contemporarily as a ‘strang hand’, to effect government policy. They were operating, however, in a changed environment by the end of the period. Increasing numbers of people were participating in local government: Julian Goodare estimates that the number of local office-holders in Scotland quadrupled between 1560 and 1625. And, throughout Scotland, the crown was showing a newly consistent intolerance of violent crime, increasingly drawing the resolution of dispute into its remit. In the Middle March the effects of this were intensified by a sea-change in Anglo-Scottish relations during the 1590s. Perhaps it is surprising that very few office-holders in the Middle March fell by the wayside.

Office-holding in the region was largely undertaken by the lairds, usually the leaders of their surnames and of its branches; Maureen Meikle calls the lairds of the Eastern Borders ‘the backbone of local administration’. In 1573 the only resident noble was Lord Yester, near Peebles. In addition there was the non-resident, but occasionally present, Lord Home, as the secular commendator of the regality of Jedburgh abbey, and the earls of Angus and Bothwell. On a day-to-day basis, effective authority lay within the hands of those ‘greater’ lairds whose lands and followings gave them a status that verged upon that of the nobility, and the ‘lesser’ lairds who deputised for them.