The See of Durham in that age, and for long afterwards, had a wide sphere of influence, extending over much of the south-eastern part of the Scottish Borders. Many deeds relating to this region of Scotland must be sought in the archives that belong to the English Cathedral. To be born in the territory of Durham then, as Leland says Scot had been, was not necessarily to be a native of England, and the anonymous Florentine commentator on Dante uses a remarkable expression which seems to confirm this solution as far as Scot is concerned. ‘This Michael,’ he says, ‘was of the Province of Scotland’;[9] and his words seem to point to that part of the Scottish lowlands adjacent to the See of Durham and in a sense its _province_, as subject to its influence, just as Provence, the analogous part of France, had its name from the similar relation it bore to Rome. The most likely opinion therefore that can now be formed on the subject leads us to believe that Scot was born somewhere in the valley of the Tweed; if we understand that geographical expression in the wide sense which makes it equivalent to the whole of the south-eastern borders of Scotland. Nor is this so contrary as might at first appear to the tradition which makes Scot a descendant of the family of Balwearie in Fife. Hector Boëce, Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, who first gave currency to the story,[10] could hardly have meant to imply that Michael was actually born at Balwearie. It is to be presumed that he understood _Scotus_ to have been a family name; and the Scotts, who became of Balwearie by marriage with the heiress of that estate, did not enter into possession of it till long after the close of the twelfth century.[11] To call Michael a son of Balwearie in the genealogical sense, however, is in perfect agreement with the conclusion regarding his origin which we have just reached; for the original home of the Scotts who afterwards held that famous property as their _chef lieu_, lay by the upper streams of Tweed in the very district which every probability has already indicated to us as that of Michael’s birthplace. In 1265 we find an entry of money paid by the Crown ‘to Michael Scot and Richard Rufus who have occupied the waste lands at Stuth,’ near Peebles.[12] Identification is here out of the question, as Michael the scholar, of whom we write, was by this time long in his grave, but the entry we have quoted shows that a family of this surname, who still used the Christian name of Michael, was flourishing in this part of Scotland during the second half of the thirteenth century.