it.

"The nature of the site seems to favour this view, as the ground to
the west slopes rapidly away, and scarcely allows room for the west
end of the nave; while the conventual buildings, for want of
suitable space, have had to be carried with an archway over a public
street."[335]

Alexander I. seems to have contemplated its erection into an abbey, and
in the year of his succession David I. remodelled it as a Benedictine
Abbey, and placed in it an abbot and twelve brethren brought from
Canterbury. By the close of the thirteenth century it had become one of
the most magnificent institutions in Scotland.

David I., after introducing the Benedictine order, probably added the
Norman nave to the then existing church erected by his royal parents,
and it was evidently resolved at no distant time from this to rebuild
the early church and form a new choir and transept worthy of the new
settlement. This was done, and between 1216 and 1226 the choir, aisles,
transept, and presbytery were erected, and Abbot Patrick, formerly Dean
and Prior of Canterbury, presided at Dunfermline during the whole of the
above time. Appeals were made to the Popes Honorius III. and Gregory IX.
on account of the expenses incurred by church erection and the increase
of the number of canons from thirty to fifty.

In the dispute of 1249 regarding the consecration of the new choir, Pope
Honorious IV. decided that a new consecration was not necessary, as the
consecrated walls of the oldest part (the nave) continued in use. In
that year Queen Margaret was canonised, and in 1250 her body was
transferred from the old church to the new lady chapel in presence of
all the chief men of the kingdom. "The translation of the saintly
foundress," says Professor Innes, "was probably arranged to give
solemnity to the opening of the new church."[336] This is known in
history as the "Translation of S. Margaret," and the "grate companie" of
king, nobles, bishops, abbots, and dignitaries in procession kept time
"to the sound of the organ and the melodious notes of the choir singing
in parts." Soon after this, describing what it had become towards the
close of the thirteenth century, Matthew of Westminster wrote: "Its
boundaries were so ample, containing within its precincts three
carrucates of land, and having so many princely buildings, that three
potent sovereigns, with their retinues, might have been accommodated
with lodgings here at the same ti