from Forfar and Aberdeen, and from the Moray burghs of Nairn, Forres, Elgin, and Inverness. The latter burgh was a thorough garrison, and in return for certain privileges which its inhabitants enjoyed over other burgesses, they were bound to keep in good repair the ditch and rampart, which the king had thrown up around the town. Most of the great families which are still to be found in this quarter--Chisholms, Roses, Bissetts now represented by the Frasers, and others--are of Scoto-Norman origin, descendants of the auxiliaries planted in, by the Scottish kings, “in the times of eld,” to defend the lands they had won from the supporters of Mac Heth, or Mac William; their names, though they have long been enrolled most worthily in the ranks of “Scottish Highlanders,” yet recalling the time in which the ancient house of Moray was finally crushed by the power of the rival house of Atholl; and when the hereditary earldom of Macbeth was the real _march_ of royal Scotland towards the north, held by the disciplined valour of the Normans. Inverness was the key of the lowlands of Moray, and in many respects an outpost of civilization, from which, in the next reign, the royal power extended still further over the north and west. The views of David were turned southwards, and he never ceased to hope that the ancient territories of the Northumbrian Ealdormen might yet be numbered amongst the appanages of the Scottish crown. But William, in his later years, if the Scottish version of his secret treaty with John is correct, was ready to waive his claims upon Northumberland; and as the unsubstantial vision of the fair English earldom faded from his sight, he may have directed his attention more exclusively to his own kingdom, and have inaugurated that wiser line of policy which, in the course of his son’s reign, united the whole of the Scottish mainland in loyal obedience to the king. END OF VOL. I. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: