Gert than to the awtare bryng Hys cumly sted off Araby Sadelyd and brydelyd costlykly Coveryd with a fayre mantlete Off precyous and fyne welvet Wyth his armwris off Turky That pryncys than oysid generaly And chesyd mast for thare delyte Wyth scheld and spere off sylvyr qwhyt. It was a special occasion, for Bishop Robert's appointment, which had led to the grant, was a Scottish victory over the pretensions of the See of York. There is an appeal to the imagination so strong in the scene, that, in spite of the interval of 300 years betwixt the event and this oldest record of it, one is slow to offer any criticism on the charger; more especially as the entire verity of the silver spear is corroborated by Walter Bower's enshrining in his Scotichronicon the fact that in the fifteenth century it was doing duty as the shaft of the cross in the Cathedral. Yet the unexampled symbol, coupled with the analogy from York in 1175, compels the suggestion, that perhaps during these 300 years an original _capellus_ have been mis-read as _caballus_, or mistaken for Scottish _capul_, and thus by the magic of mistranslation, a king's cap _may_ have been transmuted into an Arab steed. Whilst of course a crown was the standard symbol of investiture for a kingdom, inferior rights of principality were often typified by other things, such as a sword, a spear, or a banner. And as feudal forms were observed in the bestowal, so were they sometimes in the taking away. England dispensed with several of her monarchs, but apparently in no case was a deposition attended by the feudal solemnities. In Scotland when, in 1296, King John Balliol was pulled out of the throne by the same hands as had placed him in it, Edward I. spared his vassal little of the indignity of the situation. Balliol, deprived of his royal ornaments, with the ermine stripped from his tabard, resigned his realm by the symbol of a white wand. Than this Jhon tuk a quhyt wand And gave wp in till Edwardis hand Off this Kynryk all the rycht. No Scottish historian has noticed the absolute legal propriety of this, and it is worth noticing. By contemporary law (_Britton_, ii., 22), _une blaunche verge_ was the recognised symbol of disseisin by consent. The thirteenth century was very particular, even in small things, about its law. _Disseisin_, provided for by statute of 1429, in disputed successions to real property, and known to Scotland as the breaking of seisin, was symbolically affected--_frangendo discum_--by the curiously expressive act of breaking a dish or dishes, with fire underneath. Law under the Feudal System. BY CUMING WALTERS.