and referee in Courts of Honour and of Chivalry. The Justiciary and the Chancellor completed the six greater dignitaries of the Scottish Feudal Court, Constantine, Earl of Fife, being Justiciary at the opening of David’s reign, the only Gaelic Earl who appears at that time amongst the leading courtiers holding office. Service about the royal person was scarcely yet regarded as befitting the great Gaelic Mormaors, and as the Court henceforth was in reality the Supreme Council of the kingdom, the preponderance of the Feudal element in the direction of affairs was quickly developed. Such were the leading features of David’s civil policy; the state of the Scottish Church, and the changes introduced during the course of this reign, will be the subject of the ensuing chapter. The influence of David upon his native country has been compared to that of Alfred upon England, and of Charlemagne upon a wider sphere, but in some respects it was of a different character. Alfred was the saviour of the Anglo-Saxon race from complete subjection to the Danes, and though he can scarcely be called a king of England, he was the real founder of the monarchy. Within the limits of his ancestral dominions, and of the rescued principality of English Mercia, he was the reviver of letters; the creator of a navy; the reformer of the army, upon which he expended a third of his revenue; and, as the builder of walled towns, he may in a certain sense be regarded as the originator of a burgherhood; but, like Charlemagne, he was a collector and not a maker of laws, the constitutional institutions which have been attributed to him belonging, unquestionably, to other periods. His was a policy of defence not of aggrandisement--not even of amalgamation beyond the limits of the Anglo-Saxon race--of defence by sea and on land; of renovation rather than of innovation, for it was not an era for the development of great constitutional changes. But David was a mighty innovator, scarcely reviving anything except bishoprics; and even in his ecclesiastical policy, in all other respects, he was equally an innovator. He instituted a feudal court, a feudal nobility, and feudal tenures, governing the country upon feudal principles; for the great dignitaries of the court, in his time, were not merely the holders of honorary offices, but the actual ministers of the crown. He introduced the charter into general use, confirming proprietary right throughout the kingdom, the earls and freeholders by ancient Scottish tenure, henceforth standing, side by side, with the new noblesse and their vavassors, until all difference insensibly disappeared. He created a burgherhood, and laid down a novel Code of Law, by which the earlier system was gradually superseded by the principle still acknowledged--“the verdict of the neighbourhood.” Augustus found Rome brick and left her marble; but David found Scotland built of wattles and left her framed in granite, castles and monasteries studding