They thus adopt the argument of Robert the Bruce as to baronies but not as to earldoms. It is, however, unlikely that the eighty arbiters, forty of whom were named by Baliol and forty by Bruce, should have been unanimous in rejecting the claim of the latter; and the qualification contained in the fourth answer has much the appearance of a compromise between two conflicting views, and like most compromises is inconsistent with the grounds upon which either must be based. In point of fact both views had a substance of truth in them. So far as the old Celtic earldoms of the kingdom were concerned, the arbiters pronounced a correct judgment, for such earldoms were rather official and personal than territorial dignities, and the territory of the earldom, which afterwards formed its demesne, was more of the nature of mensal land appropriated to the support of the dignity. The decision, founded on as having been given by the court of the king, that the earldom of Atholl was not partible, must have reference to that time when the last Celtic earl was represented by two co-heirs, and it appears to have been viewed as being governed by Celtic and not by feudal law. Hence the eldest sister, Isabella, was held to have right to the whole earldom.[87] Isabella married Thomas de Galloway, brother of Alan, Lord of Galloway, by whom she had a son, Patrick; and after her first husband’s death, in 1232, Alan de Lundin, the Hostiarius or Doorward, and one of the most powerful barons of the time, appears as earl of Atholl, from which we may infer that he had married the widow, and held the title during her life. Patrick, the young earl, was, on his accession, miserably burnt to death at Haddington in the year 1242, and then we are told the earldom passed to his aunt Forflissa, who had married David de Hastings, a Norman baron.[88]