=25. State of the Kingdom.=--The second period of the national history breaks off abruptly with the death of _Alexander_. It had begun with the dethronement of Donald Bane, the last Celtic King, nearly two hundred years before, and during that time the boundary of Scotland had been extended by the annexation of _Argyle_ and of the _Isles_, while her two dependencies of _Lothian_ and _Galloway_ had been drawn more closely to her, though they still remained separate and distinct. Throughout this period the influence of England, though peaceable, had been stronger than it was ever to be again. English laws and English customs had been brought in, and had, in many cases, taken the place of the old Celtic usages. The Celtic _maers_ had been removed to make way for the _sheriffs_ of the Crown. But, as Scotland was not divided like England into shires, the sheriffs were not, as in England, the reeves of the already existing shires, but officers who were placed by the King over certain districts. These districts or sheriffdoms became the counties of later times. _Feudalism_ after the _Norman_ model, with all its burthensome exactions and oppressions, had been brought in and had taken firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England. The native chiefs had been displaced by foreign nobles, so that a purely Norman baronage held the lands, whether peopled by a _Celtic_ or a _Saxon_ peasantry. In some cases the new owners founded families afterwards known under Celtic names; for, while the Celts gave their own names to the lands on which they settled, the Normans took the names of the lands conferred upon them and bore them as their own. The long peace with England, which had lasted unbroken for nearly a century, had been marked by great social progress. The large proportion of land that was now under the plough proves that during this untroubled time husbandry must have thriven, roads and bridges were many and in good repair, and the trading towns had made great advances in riches and power. Hitherto no one town had distinctly taken its place as the capital. _Saint John's Town_, or _Perth_, had, from its connexion with _Scone_, some claim to the first place, but the King held his court or his assize indifferently at any of the royal burghs. These burghs were of great importance in the state, and, as the burgesses of the royal burghs were all vassals holding direct from the Crown, they acted in some sort as a check on the growing power of the nobles. The burghers had the right of governing themselves by their own laws, and were divided into two groups. Those north of the _Scots water_ or Firth of Forth were bound together by a league like the great continental Hansa, and known by the same name; while those in Lothian, represented by the four principal among them--_Roxburgh_, _Stirling_, _Edinburgh_, and _Berwick_--held their "court of the four burghs," which is still represented by the "Convention of Royal Burghs" which meets once a year in Edinburgh.