A Short History of Scotland | Page 8

notably the west Highlands and isles, where the
new system penetrated slowly and with difficulty through a
mountainous and almost townless land. The law, and written leases,
"came slowly up that way."
Under David, where his rule extended, society was divided broadly into
three classes--Nobles, Free, Unfree. All holders of "a Knight's fee," or
part of one, holding by free service, hereditarily, 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," men with no charter from the Crown, or
Earl, Thane, or Church, were, if lease-holders, though not "noble," still
"free." Beneath them were the "unfree" nativi, sold or given with the
soil.
The old Celtic landholders were not expropriated, as a rule, except
where Celtic risings, in Galloway and Moray, were put down, and the
lands were left in the King's hands. Often, when we find territorial
surnames of families, "_de_" "of" this place or that,--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 retained their native magnates. Thus the Anglicisation,
except in very rebellious regions, was gradual. There was much less
expropriation of the Celt than disguising of the Celt under new family
names and regulation of the Celt under written charters and leases.

CHURCH LANDS.
David I. was, according to James VI., nearly five centuries later, "a sair
saint for the Crown." He gave Crown-lands in the southern lowlands to
the religious orders with their 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 the
regular clergy to the State was its orderliness and attention to
agriculture, for the monasteries did not, as in England, produce many
careful chroniclers and historians.
Each abbey had its lands divided into baronies, captained by a lay
"Church baron" to lead its levies in war. The civil centre of the barony
was the great farm or grange, with its mill, for in the thirteenth 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 the mill
was a hamlet of some forty cottages; each head of a family had a
holding of eight or nine acres and pasturage for two cows, and paid a
small money rent and many arduous services to the Abbey.
The tenure of these cottars was, and under lay landlords long remained,
extremely precarious; but the tenure of the "bonnet laird" (_hosbernus_)
was 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 benefactors: the Church was forward in emancipating these serfs;
nor were lay landlords backward, for the freed man was useful as a
spear-man in war.
We have only to look at the many now ruined abbeys of the Border to
see the extent of civilisation under David I., and the relatively peaceful
condition, then, of that region which later became the cockpit of the
English wars, and the home of the raiding clans, Scotts, Elliots, and
Armstrongs, Bells, Nixons, Robsons, and Croziers.

THE BURGHS.
David and his son and successor, William the Lion, introduced a stable
middle and urban class by fostering, confirming, and regulating the
rights, privileges, and duties of the already existing free towns. These
became burghs, royal, seignorial, or ecclesiastical. In origin the towns
may have been settlements that grew up under the shelter of a military
castle. Their fairs, markets, rights of trading, internal organisation, and
primitive police, were now, mainly under William the Lion, David's
successor, regulated by charters; the 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 local noble family, in which the
office was apt to become practically hereditary. The noble was the
leader and protector of the town. As to police, the burghers, each in his
turn, provided men to keep watch and ward from curfew bell to
cock-crow. Each ward in the town had its own elected Bailie. Each
burgh had exclusive