from amongst the joint-proprietary, and receiving, apparently, a final allotment; which seems to have been separated permanently from the remainder of the joint-property by certain ceremonies usual on such occasions.”  To such holders of individual property the charter offered by David I gave additional security of tenure.  We know from the documents entitled “Quoniam attachiamenta”, printed in the first volume of the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, that the tribal system included large numbers of bondmen, to whom the change to feudalism meant little or nothing.  But even when all due allowance has been made for this, the difficulty is not completely solved.  There must have been some owners of clan property whom the changes affected in an adverse way, and we should expect to hear of them.  We do hear of them, for the reigns of the successors of Malcolm Canmore are largely occupied with revolts in Galloway and in Morayshire.  The most notable of these was the rebellion of MacHeth, Mormaor of Moray, about 1134.  On its suppression, David I confiscated the earldom of Moray, and granted it, by charters, to his own favourites, and especially to the Anglo-Normans, from Yorkshire and Northumberland, whom he had invited to aid him in dealing with the reactionary forces of Moray; but such grants of land in no way dispossessed the lesser tenants, who simply held of new lords and by new titles.  Fordun, who wrote two centuries later, ascribes to David’s successor, Malcolm IV, an invasion of Moray, and says that the king scattered the inhabitants throughout the rest of Scotland, and replaced them by “his own peaceful people".[12] There is no further evidence in support of this statement, and almost the whole of Malcolm’s short reign was occupied with the settlement of Galloway.  We know that he followed his grandfather’s policy of making grants of land in Moray, and this is probably the germ of truth in Fordun’s statement.  Moray, however, occupied rather an exceptional position.  “As the power of the sovereign extended over the west,” says Mr. E.W.  Robertson, “it was his policy, not to eradicate the old ruling families, but to retain them in their native provinces, rendering them more or less responsible for all that portion of their respective districts which was not placed under the immediate authority of the royal sheriffs or baillies.”  As this policy was carried out even in Galloway, Argyll, and Ross, where there were occasional rebellions, and was successful in its results, we have no reason for believing that it was abandoned in dealing with the rest of the Lowlands.  As, from time to time, instances occurred in which this plan was unsuccessful, and as other causes for forfeiture arose, the lands were granted to strangers, and by the end of the thirteenth century the Scottish nobility was largely Anglo-Norman.  The vestiges of the clan system which remained may be part of the explanation of the place of the great Houses in Scottish History.  The unique importance of such families as the Douglasses or the Gordons may thus be a portion of the Celtic heritage of the Lowlands.