When lands were strictly retained in the crown, the Royal Thane or Maor was answerable directly to the king, but there was a still greater official amongst the Scots, untraceable apparently in his peculiar Scottish characteristics amongst the kindred Welsh and Irish, known under the title of the _Mormaor_ or Lord High Steward. One example of the peculiar tenure of the Mormaor was still existing in the thirteenth century in the Earl of Fife; for when the second Alexander and his “Parliament” levied fines upon all who had failed in their attendance on the occasion of his expedition against “Donald MacNiel of the Isles,” the earls and their “serjeants” were strictly prohibited from entering the lands of any “tenant _in capite_”--holding directly of the king--to exact the penalty imposed, excepting only the Earl of Fife, who exercised this privilege throughout his district, not as the Earl, but as the Royal _Maor_ of the county of Fife, “to claim his rights,” or, in other words, to secure his allotted portion of the mulct.[131] The ancient Scottish Mormaor, then, was evidently a Maor placed over a province instead of a thanage--an earldom or country instead of a barony--a type of Harfager’s royal Jarl, who often exercised as a royal deputy that authority which he had originally claimed as the independent lord of the district over which he presided. This change was rendered very popular amongst the aristocracy of the north, from the great increase of wealth they derived through retaining a third of the tribute exacted in the king’s name from the classes hitherto untaxed; and similar considerations may have exercised an influence in facilitating the conversion of the semi-independent Gaelic _Oirrigh_ into a dependent, but probably far wealthier, _Mormaor_.