The policy followed by King William, with regard to these earldoms, was checked for a time by the unfortunate result of his attempt in 1174 to recover possession of the northern provinces of England, when he was taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty by surrendering the independence of his kingdom; but soon after his liberation, when he returned to Scotland, he appears to have created two new earldoms, which he bestowed upon his brother David. The first was the earldom of Garvyach or Garrioch in Aberdeenshire, formed from the districts surrounding the ancient fortification of Dunideer, and extending between the river Don and its tributary the Ury. The second was the earldom of Levenach or Lennox, and consisted of the northern part of the old Cumbrian kingdom, which appears to have received a Gaelic population, and is nearly represented by the county of Dumbarton.^[82] These districts were probably at the time in the hands of the Crown. The earldom of Garvyach passed on David’s death to his son John the Scot, after whose death it again reverted to the Crown, and was eventually granted as a lordship to the earls of Mar. The earldom of Levenach does not appear to have remained long in Earl David’s possession, as we find it emerging in the possession of a line of Celtic earls, the first of whom, Aluin, must have received it as early as the year 1193. Earl David was invested with the English earldom of Huntingdon on the death of its then possessor, Simon de Senlis, in 1184; and it is probable that on that occasion he resigned the earldom of Lennox in favour of the head of its Gaelic population.^[83]

In 1179 William the Lion brought the people of Ross under more complete subjection to the Crown, and built two royal castles within its bounds, but he appears to have retained the earldom in his own hands, as the Count of Holland complains that he had been deprived of it, although he had never been forfeited. His grievance was probably not a very substantial one, as it is very unlikely that he either had obtained or could obtain practical possession of it. Seven years after the king formed a second earldom out of the territory of the old Cumbrian kingdom, at its southwestern extremity, where it bordered upon the Gaelic district of Galloway, and appears to have received a Gaelic population from thence. This was the district of Carrick, which he bestowed as an earldom upon Duncan, son of Gilbert, and grandson of Fergus, the Celtic Lord of Galloway.

Ten years after this he took advantage of the slaughter of the bishop of Caithness by the Norwegian earl of Orkney and Caithness, to extend his power over that district likewise, and to reduce its earl to submission. Harald, the earl at this time, was not a very distant relation of the king by paternal descent, being the son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a brother of Malcolm the Third, but he inherited the earldom of Orkney to which Caithness at this time was attached, through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of a previous earl, of Norwegian descent, and he had married a daughter of Malcolm MacHeth, the so-called earl of Moray, and was thus associated with that family in their opposition to the Crown. The result of two separate invasions of Caithness by the royal army was, that Caithness, north of the great range called the Ord of Caithness, was eventually restored to Earl Harald, to be held by him on payment to the Crown of a large sum of money; while the district south of that range, which has the Norwegian name of Sudrland or Sutherland, was retained by the king, and bestowed upon Hugo, a scion of the house of De Moravia, as a lordship, and eventually made an earldom in the person of his son William. Before the death of William one of the old Celtic earldoms had passed by succession into the hands of a foreign baron, for William Cumyn, the head of the Norman house of that name, became possessed of the earldom of Buchan by his marriage with Marjory, daughter of Fergus, the last of the Celtic earls.

Alexander the Second, the successor of William, followed out the same policy, but during his reign, notwithstanding the increase in the number of the earldoms, and the feudalisation of some of the older ones, we find the seven earls of Scotland frequently making their appearance, apparently as a constitutional body whose privileges were recognised. They first appear as taking an important part in the coronation of Alexander as king of Scotland, and then consisted of the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteath, Buchan, and Lothian.^[84] With the exception of Menteath, which was a more recent earldom, these are the same earldoms whose earls gave their consent to the foundation charter of Scone; but Menteath comes now in place of Mar, perhaps owing to the controversy as to the rightful possessor of the latter earldom, and Buchan was, as we have seen, now held by a Norman baron.

Another of these ancient earldoms, however, soon after terminated in the male line, and this raised a question which throws some light upon their character and relation to the law of feudal tenures. When Fergus, the last of the old Celtic earls of Buchan, died in the end of King William’s reign, there seems to have been no doubt that the earldom devolved upon his daughter Marjory, which she carried to her husband, William Cumyn; but when Henry, the last of the old Earls of Atholl, died, soon after the accession of Alexander the Second, his heirs were two sisters, Isabella and Forflissa, and the question at once arose whether the earldom was partible between them, as was the case with any feudal barony, or whether it devolved in its entirety upon the elder sister, Isabella, who had married Thomas of Galloway, brother of Alan, Lord of Galloway. This question, and the decision of the Curia regis or royal court, consisting of the tenants in chief of the Crown, are incidentally mentioned when the same discussion took place before Edward the First between three of the competitors for the crown on the death of the Maid of Norway. These were John Baliol, who claimed as grandson of Margaret, the eldest daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon; Robert de Bruce, who claimed as son of his second daughter Isabella; and John de Hastings, as grandson of Ada, the youngest daughter. The competition for the crown came eventually to be between Baliol, who claimed as representing Earl David through his eldest daughter, and Bruce, who asserted that being his grandson he was one step nearer, and should be preferred to his great-grandson, notwithstanding that he was thus connected through the second daughter. John de Hastings, who, like Baliol, stood only in the relation of great-grandson, admitted the right of the latter to the throne, if the kingdom was maintained in its entirety, but asserted that being held under the English Crown, it was partible like any other feudal holding, and that he ought to be preferred to one-third of the territory of the kingdom; and Robert Bruce put in a further claim, that in the event of his right to the whole being rejected, he was likewise entitled to one-third. His argument was this—‘The land of Scotland, albeit it is called a kingdom, ought to be partible, by reason that the event which has now happened to Scotland, seeing that it is held in fee of our lord the king of England by homage, is no other than similar to what it would have been as to an earldom or a barony of the realm of England which had descended in such case. And if an earldom or barony had descended to three daughters, with the issue of them, each would have her purpart, seeing that the three daughters represent but one heir of all the heritage of their father; so that no advantage ought to accrue unto the eldest, or unto the issue of her, except solely the name of the dignity, and especially of the chief messuage.’^[85] The king of England referred this question to the eighty Scotch arbiters, who had been elected by the parties, who were asked to decide—‘first, whether the kingdom of Scotland is partible; second, although it be that the kingdom is not partible, whether the lands acquired and the escheats are partible or not. The third, whether the earldoms and the baronies of the kingdom are partible of right; and the fourth, seeing that the kingdom is not partible, in case the right to the kingdom falls to daughters, whether any consideration ought to be paid to the younger ones, by reason of the equality of right which descended to all, as though in acknowledgment of their right,’ This discussion only bears upon our subject in so far as it affects the position in this respect of the old earldoms, and it is unnecessary to refer to the answers of the arbiters, except to the third and fourth questions. ‘To the third they say that an earldom in the kingdom of Scotland is not partible; and this was found by judgment in the Court of the king of Scotland as to the earldom of Astheles, or Atholl; but as to baronies, they say that they are partible. To the fourth they say that as to a kingdom they never saw the like; but if an earldom falls to daughters in Scotland, the eldest takes it wholly. But if either of the other sisters has not been provided for, in the life of the father, it is proper that the eldest, who takes the inheritance, makes her a payment and assignment. And this is of grace, not of right.’^[86]

They thus adopt the argument of Robert the Bruce as to baronies but not as to earldoms. It is, however, unlikely that the eighty arbiters, forty of whom were named by Baliol and forty by Bruce, should have been unanimous in rejecting the claim of the latter; and the qualification contained in the fourth answer has much the appearance of a compromise between two conflicting views, and like most compromises is inconsistent with the grounds upon which either must be based. In point of fact both views had a substance of truth in them. So far as the old Celtic earldoms of the kingdom were concerned, the arbiters pronounced a correct judgment, for such earldoms were rather official and personal than territorial dignities, and the territory of the earldom, which afterwards formed its demesne, was more of the nature of mensal land appropriated to the support of the dignity. The decision, founded on as having been given by the court of the king, that the earldom of Atholl was not partible, must have reference to that time when the last Celtic earl was represented by two co-heirs, and it appears to have been viewed as being governed by Celtic and not by feudal law. Hence the eldest sister, Isabella, was held to have right to the whole earldom.^[87] Isabella married Thomas de Galloway, brother of Alan, Lord of Galloway, by whom she had a son, Patrick; and after her first husband’s death, in 1232, Alan de Lundin, the Hostiarius or Doorward, and one of the most powerful barons of the time, appears as earl of Atholl, from which we may infer that he had married the widow, and held the title during her life. Patrick, the young earl, was, on his accession, miserably burnt to death at Haddington in the year 1242, and then we are told the earldom passed to his aunt Forflissa, who had married David de Hastings, a Norman baron.^[88]

While the succession to the earldom of Atholl thus shows the light in which the ancient Celtic earldoms were regarded, and the position they occupied in the eye of the common law of the land, those which had been either feudalised or created by the districts being erected into earldoms by the Crown, were in no different position from an ordinary barony, and were regulated by the feudal law, which was correctly laid down by Bruce, the lands being partible between co-heirs, but the dignity and the chief messuage belonging to the eldest co-heir. Of the former we have an example in the earldom of Caithness, which had become feudalised after the war between William the Lion and Harald, who, though of Scottish descent, had inherited through a Norwegian mother. On the death of John, earl of Caithness, the last of this line, in 1231, the title of earl passed with only one half of the lands of the earldom to Magnus, a son of the earl of Angus, while we find the other half of the earldom in the possession of the family of De Moravia, and on the death of the last earl of the Angus line this half was again divided, and Malise, earl of Stratherne, became earl of Caithness, possessing, however, one-fourth only of the lands of the earldom.^[89] In the same manner, when the earldom of Buchan, which had passed by marriage into the hands of the Norman family of Cumyn, was forfeited to the Crown, and the last earl was represented by two co-heirs, one-half of the lands of the earldom was given by King Robert Bruce to Sir John de Ross, son of the earl of Ross, who had married the younger daughter; and the other half, with the title of earl, was afterwards conferred upon Sir Alexander Stuart, second son of King Robert II.

Of the additional earldoms which had been created by the Crown and added to the older earldom, the earliest, that of Menteath, affords an example. This earldom, like that of Buchan, had passed by marriage into the hands of a Cumyn, and Walter Cumyn is termed Earl of Menteath as early as the year 1255. On his death in 1257 his widow married John Russell, an unknown Englishman, and the nobles of Scotland, irritated at this, accused her of the murder of her former husband, and imprisoned both her and her second husband. Walter Stewart then claimed the earldom in right of his wife, and by the favour of the nobles obtained it. On the death of the first Countess her right passed to William Cumyn, who had married her daughter, and a controversy arose between him and Walter Stewart, which terminated in the title being confirmed to the latter, with one half of the earldom, while the other half was erected into a barony in favour of William Cumyn. The partition at a later period of the earldom of Lennox, another of these created earldoms, likewise affords an example.

Such being the distinction between the old Celtic earldoms represented by the seven earls and those subsequently constituted, we learn also from the discussions which took place in the competition for the crown somewhat of the rights which they claimed as their privilege; for among the documents still preserved connected with the competition is an appeal on behalf of the seven earls of the kingdom of Scotland to Edward I., in which it is stated that, ‘according to the ancient laws and usage of the kingdom of Scotland, and from the time whereof the memory of man was not to the contrary, it appertained to the rights and liberties of the seven earls of Scotland and the “communitas” of the same realm, whenever the royal throne should become vacant de facto et de jure, to constitute the king, and to place him in such royal seat, and to confer upon him all the honours belonging to the government of the kingdom of Scotland.’^[90] And this function we find them evidently performing at the coronation of Alexander the Second.

The only one of the seven provinces which was required to be brought into more direct connection with the Crown was the great district of Arregaithel or Argyll, and early in his reign Alexander annexed the northern part to the earldom of Ross, and placed that earldom in possession of a devoted adherent of his person. The district forming what was then called North Argyll consisted in a great measure of the territory of the old and powerful Celtic monastery of Apercrossan, and had passed into the hands of a family of hereditary lay abbots, who termed themselves Sagarts or priests of Applecross; and Ferquard Macintaggart, or the son of the Sagart or priest who had aided the young king in suppressing an insurrection of the Gaelic people of Moray and Ross in support of the pretensions of the MacWilliam and MacHeth families in the early part of his reign, was now created Earl of Ross, which thus became a feudal earldom held of the Crown, by a family who were among its most loyal supporters.^[91] The insurrection which took place a few years after in favour of Gillespic mac Eochagan, also of the family of MacWilliam, led to the rest of this great district being subdued and brought into the same relation with the Crown. The king, we are told by Fordun, led an army into Argyll. The men of Argyll were frightened. Some gave hostages and a great deal of money, and were taken back in peace, while others, who had more offended against the king’s will, forsook their estates and possessions and fled. But our lord the king bestowed both the land and the goods of these men upon his own followers ‘at will’; or, as Wyntoun expresses it—

Those who fled appear to have taken refuge in Galloway, as we find Gilescop Macihacain witnessing a charter in Galloway with a cluster of Gaelic names along with him;^[92] and as one of these names can be connected with the district of Lochaber, while the family of that Roderic who joined with him in his rebellion appear to have had their main possessions in the district of Garmoran, extending from Ardnamurchan to Glenelg, the main seat of the rebellion appears to have been that central portion of the great region of Argyll which was said to pertain to Moravia or Moray, of which these districts formed a part. The native lords of this district were apparently those whom the king dispossessed, and whose possessions he gave to his own followers, and accordingly we find Lochaber soon after in the possession of the Cumyns. In South Argyll, on the other hand, the native lords appear to have submitted to the king, as the family of Dubhgal, the eldest son of Somerled, the great Celtic Lord of Argyll, seem to have remained in possession of the extensive district of Lorn; and it is at this time that we may fairly place a grant which appears to have been made of the lands in the interior which afterwards formed the lordship of Lochow to Duncan Mac Duine, the ancestor of the Campbells, a clan the head of which appears in the following reign as a close adherent of the Crown.^[93]

The seven earls of Scotland appear again as a body taking part in important transactions on two different occasions in this reign. In the first, which was the agreement between the kings of England and Scotland, by which a settlement of the claims of the latter was concluded in 1237, the seven earls among others became bound by oath to maintain the agreement. These were the earls of Dunbar, of Stratherne, of Lennox, of Angus, of Mar, of Atholl, and of Ross; and here we find the earls of Lennox, of Mar, and of Ross, coming in place of those of Fife, Menteath, and Buchan; but when the agreement was renewed seven years afterwards, in 1244, the seven earls who became bound that King Alexander would observe good faith were, Patrick Earl of Dunbar, Malcolm Earl of Fife, Malise Earl of Stratherne, Walter Cumyn Earl of Menteath, William Earl of Mar, Alexander (younger) Earl of Buchan, and David de Hastings Earl of Atholl;^[94] the Earls of Fife, Menteath, and Buchan again appearing among them, and those of Lennox, Angus, and Ross being omitted. We thus see that though the number of seven was always retained, the constituent members were not always the same, the latter being probably regulated by the respective positions of the earldom at the time, for in 1237 the earldom of Angus had passed by marriage into possession of one of the powerful family of Cumyn, but he had died in 1242, and the Countess of Angus had in 1243 replaced him with a Norman Baron, Gilbert de Umphraville, whom she took as her second husband.

In the elaborate and picturesque account which Fordun gives us of the coronation of Alexander the Third when a boy of eight years old, he does not give the seven earls, as a body, a part in the ceremonial, but simply says that the royal boy was accompanied by a number of earls, barons, and knights. The only earls he mentions by name are Walter Cumyn Earl of Menteath, Malcolm Earl of Fife, and Malise Earl of Stratherne; but it is probable that in a coronation in which the Celtic element loomed so largely, he did not intend to imply that this body did not play the same part which they did in the coronation of his father; and this we may reasonably infer, for he tells that in the second year of his reign a solemn ceremony took place at Dunfermline, when, in the presence of bishops and abbots, earls and barons, and other good men both clerics and laymen, the relics of Saint Margaret were enshrined at Dunfermline. The record of this transaction in the Chartulary of Dunfermline bears that it was done in presence of the seven bishops and seven earls of Scotland.^[95] It is obvious, however, that this body of the seven earls were gradually losing their separate corporate existence, and were no longer able to maintain in this reign the functions they exercised in previous reigns; for when the succession to the throne was settled upon the daughter of Alexander in 1284, we find them merged in the general ‘communitas,’ or feudal community of the kingdom, in which the entire body of the earls, now amounting to thirteen, appear. They take a part, but apparently not an influential one, in the discussions that took place after the death of the Maid of Norway between the competitors for the crown; and probably the last attempt they made to repossess themselves of the important position they formerly occupied in the affairs of the kingdom was when in 1297 they, in conjunction with John Comyn of Badenoch, invaded England at the head of a powerful army which met in Annandale and besieged Carlisle. The seven earls engaged in this expedition were the earls of Buchan, Menteath, Stratherne, Lennox, Ross, Atholl, and Mar;^[96] but the attempt resulted disastrously for them, for they were obliged to raise the siege and return to Scotland; and then again assembling at Roxburgh they made a second raid into the eastern part of England as far as the priory of Hexham, which they destroyed, and returned with a great booty to Scotland. They then besieged and took the castle of Dunbar, the earl of Dunbar having submitted to the king of England, but being besieged by the English in their turn the castle was taken, and three of the earls, viz., those of Menteath, Atholl, and Ross, were taken prisoners, with John Comyn and five other barons, with twenty-nine knights, two clerics, and eighty-three esquires, and confined in different castles in England.^[97]

After this we hear no more of the seven earls of Scotland. As a constitutional body possessing, or claiming to possess, separate privileges, they are merged in the general ‘Communitas regni,’ or Estates of the kingdom, the feudal ‘Curia regis’ consisting of all who held lands in chief of the Crown. As we have seen, when the succession to the Crown was settled towards the end of the reign of Alexander the Third, they take no part as a separate body, but are merged in the general assembly of the feudal baronage of the kingdom, consisting of thirteen earls and twenty-four barons, and six years afterwards there is a still fuller representation of the Estates of the kingdom, when a letter is addressed to Edward the First by the Communitas regni urging him to arrange a marriage of his son with the Maid of Norway. The body from whom this letter proceeds consists of the two bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, John Cumyn, and James, High Steward, the guardians of the kingdom; ten diocesan bishops; twelve of the thirteen earls, the earl of Fife being then a minor; twenty-three abbots of monasteries, eleven priors, and forty-eight barons holding of the Crown.^[98] Neither do they appear as a separate body in the great national protest addressed by the Communitas regni to the Pope in 1320, and signed on their behalf by eight of the earls and twenty-eight of the barons.^[99]

The state, then, of the land, as thus exhibited to us in the reign of Alexander the Third, appears to have been this.—A large portion of the territory of the kingdom was now held in chief of the Crown by barons, very few of whom were of Celtic descent, on the feudal tenure of military service. Another portion of the territory formed the domain of the Crown. A third portion formed the territory possessed by the old earls of Scotland, and presented, in miniature, the same characteristics as the Crown land, being partly held of the earls by the vassals of the earldom, and partly forming his domain; and a very large extent of territory, probably not less than a third of the whole land, belonged to the Church, and formed the possessions either of the bishoprics, or of the great monasteries which had been founded by the kings of this dynasty, while the lands which had formed the territory of the old Celtic monasteries and had become secularised, now appear either in the possession of the Crown or of the monasteries under the name of ‘abthaniæ’ or abthainries.

In that part of Scotland which still retained, in the main, a Celtic population, we may expect to find the Celtic tenures still prevailing to a large extent, and still exhibiting many of their peculiar characteristics; but where the population had become in a large measure Teutonic, and where so much of the land was now held on feudal tenures by the great barons of the Crown, and by the Roman monastic orders, and where so many of the earldoms had passed by marriage into Norman families, it is more difficult to discover the traces of a Celtic occupation, and the peculiarities of the Celtic tenures under the feudal forms which shrouded them from observation. These we can only expect to find on that portion of land which formed the proper demesne of the Crown and of the old earls, and had been retained in their own possessions without the interposition of any feudal vassals between them and the actual occupiers of the soil.

Of the mode in which the demesne land of the Crown was actually possessed, we have fortunately a very distinct account given to us by the old chronicler, John of Fordun. He refers it back to the period of Malcolm the Second, to whom nine spurious laws have been attributed, and supposes it to have originated with him; but this may be regarded as a mere theory, framed on the basis of the spurious history of Scotland, to account for a state of matters which existed in his own day, and we have only to separate the mythic part of his statement from what is obviously the result of his own observation. He tells us that ‘histories relate the aforesaid Malcolm to have been so open-handed, or rather prodigal, that while, according to ancient custom, he held as his own property all the lands, districts, and provinces of the whole kingdom, he kept nothing thereof in his possession but the Moothill of the royal seat of Scone, where the kings, sitting in their royal robes on the throne, are wont to give out judgments, laws, and statutes to their subjects. Of old, indeed, the kings were accustomed to grant to their soldiers in feu-farm more or less of their own lands, a portion of any province, or a thanage; for at that time almost the whole kingdom was divided into thanages. Of these he granted to each one as much as he pleased, either on lease by the year as tillers of the ground, or for ten or twenty years, or in liferent, with remainder to one or two heirs, as free and kindly tenants, and to some likewise, though few, in perpetuity, as knights, thanes, and chiefs, not however so freely, but that each of them paid a certain annual feu-duty to their lord the king,’^[100]

The first or mythic part of this statement corresponds with the spurious laws of Malcolm the Second, which thus commence—‘1. King Malcolme gave and distributed all his lands of the realm of Scotland amongst his men; 2. and reserved nathing in propertie to himselfe but the Royale dignitie and the Mute hill in the town of Scone,’^[101] and may be disregarded as belonging to the spurious history of Scotland. Whether there ever was a time when it could be said that the king possessed nothing but the Moothill of Scone, and in what sense it could be said that the whole kingdom was divided into thanages, and that the whole lands of the kingdom once belonged to the Crown, is a question that must be determined in the course of this inquiry; but when the old chronicler tells us by what class of persons the Crown lands were actually possessed, and by what species of tenure they held them, he is dealing with matters which still existed in his own day, and the characteristics of which he had every means of ascertaining if they were not perfectly familiar to him, and he gives us a very distinct account of them. He discriminates between three classes of persons as possessing these lands. The lowest class were the agricolæ or husbandmen, the actual cultivators of the soil, who were regarded as yearly tenants, and are, no doubt, the same class with those who are termed bondi and nativi in feudal charters. They were, in the eastern districts, the remains of the old Celtic population. The class next above them consisted of the liberi and generosi, who held land either on lease for ten or twenty years, or in liferent renewable for one or two lives. The former were probably equivalent to the liberi firmarii or free farmers, and the latter to the Rentallers or kindly tenants of the feudal holdings. The third class, who held directly of the Crown, were either milites or knights, who held a knight’s fee for military service, or thani, who held a thanage, or principes or magnates. And he defines a thanage to be a portion of the land of a province held ad feodofirmam,^[102] or in feu-farm, the holder of which was subject in payment of an annual ‘census’ or feu-duty. By the principes, he probably refers either to the Mormaers or Earls of the old Celtic earldoms, or to the position of the great Celtic vassals in the western districts as chiefs of clans.^[103] Fordun was himself connected with the northern counties of Kincardine and Aberdeen, where the older holdings of the thanage still maintained their position in the greatest degree even to his own day. He was a chaplain in the diocese of Aberdeen, and the Chartulary of that bishopric has preserved to us a rental of the Crown lands in the reign of Alexander the Third, which shows their extent and the nature of the holdings. In this rental we find the lands of Aberdeen, Belhelvy, Kintore, Fermartyn, Obyne, Glendowachy, Boyn, Munbre, and Natherdale, which are termed thanages; Convalt, which is termed a ‘dominium’ or lordship; Lydgat, Uchterless, and Rothymay, called baronies; and other lands which have no particular designation, with the towns of Aberdeen, Cullen, and Banff.^[104] We also learn that the upper part of the vales of the rivers Dee and Don formed the domain of the earldom of Mar, which consisted of the districts of Braemar, Strathdee, Cromar, and Strathdon, while an extensive territory on the Dee, which had formerly belonged to the earldom, was held in the reign of Alexander the Third by one of his most powerful feudal vassals, Alan the Doorward, to whose father it had been given as a compensation for a claim he had to the earldom of Mar; but though we do not find any of the lands of this earldom bearing the name of thanages, this denomination was still retained in the demesne of two of the more westerly earldoms. In Atholl we have the thanages of Glentilt, Crannich, Achmore, Candknock, while the great abthanrie of Dull belonged to the Crown; and in Stratherne we find the thanages of Strum and Dunning held under the earls, and that of Forteviot with the abthanrie of Madderdyn or Madderty in the Crown.

While in the eastern districts we find the older holdings which survived from the Celtic period though disguised under a Saxon nomenclature, which owes its origin probably to the reigns of Edgar and Alexander the First, explained in language more appropriate to feudal holdings, when we pass over to the western districts which still possessed a Celtic population where the Saxon terminology has not penetrated, we come in contact at once with the realities of the Celtic tribal system which the adoption of feudal forms little affected, and whose customs are therefore less disguised by feudal forms, while the relation of the different classes to each other, though nominally feudal, are practically tribal. Although, when the great district of Argyll was annexed to the Crown and other insurrections among the Gaelic tribes were repressed, grants of land were, to some extent, given to Norman barons, with a view to the more effectual suppression of the unruly inhabitants, they conveyed little beyond a bare feudal superiority and introduced no foreign resident element, and thus hardly influenced the Celtic tribes who remained the actual holders of the soil; and when, by the cession of the Isles in the reign of Alexander the Third, the Norwegian dominion over them was transferred to Scotland, we find that the great Celtic lords of the Southern Isles, who had held them as kings under the Norwegian Crown, retained the same position under the Scottish king. At the great meeting of the Community of Scotland, which settled the succession of the Crown in 1283, we see the heads of three great families descended from Somerled—viz. Alexander de Ergadia, Angus, son of Dovenald, and Alan, son of Rotheric—appearing among them, the first being the powerful Lord of Lorn, and the second the Lord of the Isles, while the third owned large territories both on the mainland and in the Isles.

One of the first acts of John Baliol, when his claim to the throne was preferred, was to assimilate the district of Argyll and the kingdom of the Isles to the system which prevailed in the rest of the kingdom, which was divided into sheriffdoms, in which the king was represented by the vicecomes or sheriff, and the Act of Parliament by which this was done will show how the land in these western regions was then held within eight years of the death of Alexander the Third.^[105] By this Act, which was passed in 1292, the sheriffdom of Skye was to consist of the lands of the earls of Ross in North Argail, that is, the western part of the present county of Ross, the lands of Glenelg, the Crown lands of Skye and Lewis (here the principal lords were the Macleods of Harris and Lewis though they are not named), the lands of Garmoran, with the islands of Egg and Rume (this had been the chief seat of the Lords of the Isles descended from Roderic, son of Reginald), and the islands of Uist and Barra, where the MacNeills were the principal possessors. The sheriffship of Lorn was to consist of the lands of Ardnamurchan and Kinnelbathyn or Morvern; the lands of Alexander de Ergadia, Lord of Lorn; of John de Glenurchy, of Gilbert M‘Naughton, of Malcolm MacIvor, of Dugald of Craignish, of John, son of Gilchrist of Radulph of Dundee, who was a Scrymgeour, whose ancestor had received a grant of Glassrie from Alexander the Second; of Gillespie M‘Lachlan, of the earl of Menteath who had a right to Knapdale, of Anegus, son of Dovenald the Lord of the Isles, and of Colin Campbell, Lord of Lochow; and the sheriffdom of Kintyre was to consist, besides the possessors of the district of Kintyre, of the lands of the Lamonts, of Thomas Cambel, and of Dunkan Duff, in Cowall, and of the island of Bute.