Our contention
is, that we have no evidence for the assertion that this Saxon admixture
amounted to a racial change, and that, ethnically, the men of Fife and
of Forfar were still Scots, not English. Such an infusion of English
blood as our argument allows will not explain the adoption of the
English tongue, or of English habits of life; we must look elsewhere for
the full explanation. The English victory was, as we shall try to show,
a victory not of blood but of civilization, and three main causes helped
to bring it about. The marriage of Malcolm Canmore introduced two new
influences into Scotland--an English Court and an English Church, and
contemporaneously with the changes consequent upon these new
institutions came the spread of English commerce, carrying with it the
English tongue along the coast, and bringing an infusion of English
blood into the towns.[9] In the reign of David I, the son of Malcolm
Canmore and St. Margaret, these purely Saxon influences were succeeded
by the Anglo-Norman tendencies of the king's favourites. Grants of
land[10] to English and Norman courtiers account for the occurrence of
English and Norman family and place-names. The men who lived in
immediate dependence upon a lord, giving him their services and
receiving his protection, owing him their homage and living under his
sole jurisdiction, took the name of the lord whose men they were.
A more important question arises with regard to the system of land
tenure, and the change from clan ownership to feudal possession.
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