A Short History of Scotland

otland English law and English institutions, as modified by the Norman rulers, was fulfilled. David, before Alexander's death, was Earl of the

n with charters of lands in Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great Anglo-Breton House of FitzAlan, who obtained the hereditary office of Seneschal or Steward of Scotland. His patronymic, FitzAlan, merged in Stewart (later Stuart), and the family cognizan

he Conqueror's Earl in Northumberland; and to gain, through that connection, Northumberla

ll in fight near the North Esk in Forfarshire. His brother, Malcolm, by aid of David's Anglo-Norman friends, was taken and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle. The result of this rising was that David declared the great and ancient Celtic Earldom of Moray-the home of his dynastic Celtic rivals-forfeit to the Crown. He planted the region w

f Carlisle, and a vague promise of consideration of his claim to Northumberland. In 1138, after a disturbed interval, David led the whole force of his realm, from Orkney to Galloway, into Yorkshire. His Anglo-Norman friends, the Balliols a

ismounted infantry, their horses being held apart in reserve, is notable as preluding to t

cavalry scattered the force opposed to him, and stampeded the horses of the English that were held in reserve. This should have been fatal to the English, but Henry, like Rupert at Marston Moor, pursued too far, and the discipline of the Scots was

Henry, by peaceful arrangement, received the Earldom of Northum

t with the death of David's son, Prince Henry, in 1152. Of the prince's three sons, the eldest, Malcolm, was but ten years old; next came his brothers William ("the Lion") and little David, Earl of Huntingdon. Fro

olm; his success meant that standing curse of Scotland, "Woe to the kingdom w

BECOMES

her than on written laws and charters signed and sealed. Among the Celts the local tribe had been, theoretically, the sole source of property in land. In proportion as they were near of kin to the recognised tribal chief, families held lands by a tenure of three generations; but if they managed t

insmen of each lord of land, poor as they might be, were valued for their swords

while he received protection. From grade to grade of rank and wealth each inferior did homage to and received protection from his superior, who was also his judge. In this process, what had been the Celtic tribe became the new "thanage"; the Celtic king (righ) of

w system penetrated slowly and with difficulty through a mountainous and a

tarily, and by charter, constituted the communitas of the realm (we are to hear of the communitas later), and were free, noble, or gentle,-men of coat armour. The "ignoble," "not noble,"

at,-the lords are really of Celtic blood with Celtic names; disguised under territorial titles; and finally disused. But in Galloway and Ayrshire the ruling Celtic name, Kennedy, remains Celtic, while the true Highlands of the west and northwest retaine

CH L

eir priories and abbeys; for example, Holyrood, Melrose, Jedburgh, Kelso, and Dryburgh-centres of learning and art and of skilled agriculture. Probably the best service of t

teenth century the Lowlands had water-mills which to the west Highlands were scarcely known in 1745, when the Highland husbandmen were still using the primitive hand-quern of two circular stones. Near

s hereditary. Below even the free cottars were the unfree serfs or nativi, who were handed over, with the lands they tilled, to the abbeys by ben

I., and the relatively peaceful condition, then, of that region which later became the cockpit of the English

BU

burghers obtained the right to elect their own magistrates, and held their own burgh-courts; all was done after the English model. As the State had its "good men" (probi homines), who formed its recognised "community," so had the borough. Not by any means all dwellers in a burgh were free burghers; these free burghers had to do service in guarding the royal castle-later this was commuted for a payment in money. Though with power to elect their own chief magistrate, the burghers commonly took as Provost the head of some friendly l

ST

f no avail unless it had been issued with the full knowledge of the kin of the slaughtered man, who otherwise retained their legal right of vengeance on the homicide." They might accept pecuniary compensation, the blood-fine, or they might not, as in Homer's time. {27} At all events, under David, offences became offences against the King, not merely against this or that kindred. David introduced the "Judgment of the Country" or Visnet del Pais for the settlement of pleas. Every free man, in his d

CO

alloway, had their Grand Justiciaries, who held the Four Pleas. The other pleas were heard in "Courts of Royalty" and by earls, bishops, abbots, down to the baron, with his "right of pit and gallows." At such courts, by a law of 1180, the S

nd trial by combat. But hereditary jurisdictions of nobles and gentry were not wholly abolished till after the battle of Culloden! Where Abbots held courts, their procedure, in civil cases, was based on laws sancti

kept it a much less disturbed country than it was to remain during the long war of Independence, wh