The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

84 THE HIGHLANDERS [part i
Bane and Duncan, Malcolm Kenmore's eldest son, and
during the reigns of Edgar and of his brother and successor,
Alexander I., the laws, institutions, and forms of government
were purely Saxon, while it is only on the accession of David I.,
who had previously possessed extensive baronies in England,
that the Norman or feudal institutions were for the first time
introduced into the countr}-.
On the accession of Edgar those districts which had formed
part of Thorfinn's kingdom appear to have remained in the
possession of the native chiefs, who had regained them on the
but the rest of the country, consisting of
fall of that kingdom ;
the territories on the north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde,
which the Scots had wrested from the southern Picts, and which
had fallen to the ro}"al house founded by Duncan, in addition to
the whole of the country south of the Firths, became the
here wq find the Saxon
absolute property of the king ; and
population and Saxon institutions principally established. In
imitation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, this part of the country
was divided into earldoms, which were bestowed upon members
of the royal family ; Saxon thanes were introduced over the
whole country ; sheriffs and sheriffdoms everywhere established
; and thus, during the reigns of Edgar and Alexander I.,
the whole of Scotland, with the exception of what had formed
the kingdom of Thorfinn, exhibited the exact counterpart of
Saxon England, with its earls, thanes, and sheriffs, while the
rest of the country- remained in the possession of the Gaelic
Maormors, who yielded so far to Saxon influence as to assume
the Saxon title of earl.
Such was the termination of the Gaelic kingdom of Scotland;
from this period the Gael ceased to be the dominant people in
the country, and then commenced that long enduring struggle
between the opposing races, for independence on the one part,
and supremacy on the other, which continued more or less to
agitate the country, until finally
field of Culloden in 1746.
terminated on the disastrous
It appears, therefore, to have been during the reign of Edgar
that the population of Scotland assumed that appearance which
it has ever since exhibited. The Norwegian kingdom of Thorfinn
had, as we have seen, excluded the Gael from the eastern