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.
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