nascent Feudalism; like the kings of England, he would have none of the “lordless man, of whom no law can be got”, and commendation was added to the forces which produced the disintegration of the tribal system.  Not less important was the introduction of written charters.  Alexander had given a written charter to the monastery of Scone; David gave private charters to individual land-owners, and made the possession of a charter the test of a freeholder.  Finally, it is from David’s reign that Scottish burghs take their origin.  He encouraged the rise of towns as part of the feudal system.  The burgesses were tenants-in-chief of the king, held of him by charter, and stood in the same relation to him as other tenants-in-chief.  So firmly grounded was this idea that, up to 1832, the only Scottish burgesses who attended Parliament were representatives of the ancient Royal Burghs, and their right depended, historically, not on any gift of the franchise, but on their position as tenants-in-chief.  That there were strangers among the new burgesses cannot be doubted; Saxons and Normans mingled with Danes and Flemish merchants in the humble streets of the villages that were protected by the royal castle and that grew into Scottish towns; but their numbers were too few to give us any ground for believing that they were, in any sense, foreign colonies, or that they seriously modified the ethnic character of the land.  Men from the country would, for reasons of protection, or from the impulse of commerce, find their way into the towns; it is certain that the population of the towns did not migrate into the country.  The real importance of the towns lies in the part they played in the spread of the English tongue.  To the influence of Court and King, of land tenure, of law and police, of parish priest and monk, and Abbot and Bishop, was added the persuasive force of commercial interest.

The death of David I, in 1153, was immediately followed by Celtic revolts against Anglo-Norman order.  The province of Moray made a final effort on behalf of Donald Mac Malcolm MacHeth, the son of the Malcolm MacHeth of the previous reign, and of a sister of Somerled of Argyll, the ancestor of the Lord of the Isles.  The new king, Malcolm IV, the grandson of David, easily subdued this rising, and it is in connection with its suppression that Fordun makes the statement, quoted in the Introduction, about the displacement of the population of Moray.  There is no earlier authority for it than the fourteenth century, and the inherent probability in its favour is so very slight that but little weight can reasonably be assigned to it.  David had already granted Moray to Anglo-Normans who were now in possession of the Lowland portion and who ruled the Celtic population.  We should expect to hear something definite of any further change in the Lowlands, and a repopulation of the Highlands of Moray was beyond the limits of possibility.  The king, too, had little time to carry out such a