The banishment of Bysset was connected with important historical results. Instead of going to Palestine, per agreement, to pray for the soul of the slaughtered Earl of Athole, he went, according to Matthew Paris, to a nearer and more agreeable place, the court of England. There he fostered in Henry III., those notions of the feudal vassalage of the Scottish kings to England, which produced the invasion of his successor, Edward I. Bysset had a considerable personal interest in this question; for, if the king of England had a paramount superiority over Scotland, his banishment and forfeiture might be reversed. Such conduct shocks all historical notions of patriotism; but what better claim had Scottish nationality on the Norman adventurer, than the respectability of Juggernaut has on a member of the supreme council of Calcutta? The ancestors of the house probably came over with William, a century and a half earlier; the banished lord was perhaps brought over from England with his father or grandfather, to accept the chiefship of a portion of the Highland wastes, over which the King of Scots professed to hold sovereignty. Aggrandisement was the sole object among the barbarians of the north; and when they ceased to derive a territorial revenue within Scotland, their connexion with the country where they lived was as completely closed, as that of the governor of a colony when he is recalled. The subsequent history of this race was as strange and eventful as their first appearance in the Scottish annals. They became great lords in Ulster; and early in the fifteenth century they were again represented by a Scotsman, Donald Balloch, the hero of the battle of Inverlochy, whose mother was the heiress of the Byssets. For some time after this, we might trace their descent, like the track of a wild beast, by the marks of rapine and disorder; and at a later period we finally lose sight of the pedigree of the Byssets, in Montrose's celebrated ally, Kilkittoch. Few of the incidental notices connected with those minor offences which mark the general character of the people, can be found anterior to the commencement of the criminal records. Hector Boece and our friend the poet occasionally tell wondrous incidents; but they are not to be depended on, and few of them have enough of dramatic spirit to be interesting as fables. We are inclined, however, to mention, in passing, the judicial feats of stout old Regent Randolph, whom the poet maintains to have been the greatest of law reformers; in testimony whereof, he adduces a case in point, far beyond the nicety of modern juridical philosophy. The regent hanged a man for stealing his own property. There was a law, that the community should make good every theft, the perpetrator of which could not be discovered. Founding on this law, a husbandman secreted his plough-irons, and received compensation.