pes and general councils. But, alas! the Abbot might
give just judgment; to execute it, we know from a curious instance, was
not within his power, if the offender laughed at a sentence of
excommunication.

David and his successors, till the end of the thirteenth century, made
Scotland a more civilised and kept it a much less disturbed country than
it was to remain during the long war of Independence, while the beautiful
abbeys with their churches and schools attested a high stage of art and
education.

CHAPTER VI. MALCOLM THE MAIDEN.

The prominent facts in the brief reign of David's son Malcolm the Maiden,
crowned (1153) at the age of eleven, were, first, a Celtic rising by
Donald, a son of Malcolm MacHeth (now a prisoner in Roxburgh Castle), and
a nephew of the famous Somerled Macgillebride of Argyll. Somerled won
from the Norse the Isle of Man and the Southern Hebrides; from his sons
descend the great Macdonald Lords of the Isles, always the leaders of the
long Celtic resistance to the central authority in Scotland. Again,
Malcolm resigned to Henry II. of England the northern counties held by
David I.; and died after subduing Galloway, and (on the death of
Somerled, said to have been assassinated) the tribes of the isles in
1165.

WILLIAM THE LION.

Ambition to recover the northern English counties revealed itself in the
overtures of William the Lion,--Malcolm's brother and successor,--for an
alliance between Scotland and France. "The auld Alliance" now dawned,
with rich promise of good and evil. In hopes of French aid, William
invaded Northumberland, later laid siege to Carlisle, and on July 13,
1174, was surprised in a morning mist and captured at Alnwick. Scotland
was now kingless; Galloway rebelled, and William, taken a captive to
Falaise in Normandy, surrendered absolutely the independence of his
country, which, for fifteen years, really was a fief of England. When
William was allowed to go home, it was to fight the Celts of Galloway,
and subdue the pretensions, in Moray, of the MacWilliams, descendants of
William, son of Duncan, son of Malcolm Canmore.

During William's reign (1188) Pope Clement III. decided that the Scottish
Church was subject, not to York or Canterbury, but to Rome. Seven years
earlier, defending his own candidate for the see of St Andrews against
the chosen of the Pope, William had been excommunicated, and his country
and he had unconcernedly taken the issue of