It must not be forgotten that the new system
brought Anglo-Norman justice and order with it, and must soon have
commended itself by its practical results. The grants of land did not
mean dispossession. The small owners of land and the serfs acquiesced in
the new rule and began to take new names, and the Anglo-Norman strangers
were in actual possession, not of the land itself, but of the
_privilegia_ owed by the land. Even with regard to the great lords, the
statements have been slightly exaggerated; Alexander II was aided in
crushing the rebellion of 1214-15 by Celtic earls, and in 1235 he
subdued Galloway by the aid of a Celtic Earl of Ross.
* * * * *
We have attempted to explain the Anglicization of Scotland, south and
east of "the Highland line", by the combined forces of the Church, the
Court, Feudalism, and Commerce, and it is unnecessary to lay further
stress upon the importance of these elements in twelfth century life. It
may be interesting to compare with this the process by which the
Scottish Highlands have been Anglicized within the last century and a
half. It must, in the first place, be fully understood that the interval
between the twelfth century and the suppression of the last Jacobite
rising was not void of development even in the Highlands. "It is in the
reign of David the First", says Mr. Skene,[98] "that the sept or clan
first appears as a distinct and prominent feature in the social
organization of the Gaelic population", and it is not till the reign of
Robert III that he finds "the first appearance of a distinct clan".
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