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. "As the power of the sovereign extended over the
west," says Mr. E.W. Robertson, "it was his policy, not to eradicate the
old ruling families, but to retain them in their native provinces,
rendering them more or less responsible for all that portion of their
respective districts which was not placed under the immediate authority
of the royal sheriffs or baillies." As this policy was carried out even
in Galloway, Argyll, and Ross, where there were occasional rebellions,
and was successful in its results, we have no reason for believing that
it was abandoned in dealing with the rest of the Lowlands. As, from time
to time, instances occurred in which this plan was unsuccessful, and as
other causes for forfeiture arose, the lands were granted to strangers,
and by the end of the thirteenth century the Scottish nobility was
largely Anglo-Norman. The vestiges of the clan system which remained may
be part of the explanation of the place of the great Houses in Scottish
History. The unique importance of such families as the Douglasses or the
Gordons may thus be a portion of the Celtic heritage of the Lowlands.

If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but through the subtle
influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish
Lowlands came to be English in speech and in civilization, if the
farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of
Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to English influences,
we should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediaeval Scotland.
Such racial antagonism as existed would, in this case, be owing to the
large admixture of Scandinavian blood in Caithness and in the Isles,
rather than to any difference between the true Scots and "the English
of the Lowlands". Do we, then, find any racial antagonism between the
Highlands and the Lowlands? If Mr. Freeman is right in laying down the
general rule tha