The existence of the royal Maor and Mormaor--officials in direct dependence on the king, and resembling the royal Jarls and Lendermen amongst the Northmen, or the king’s Ealdorman and Gerefa amongst the Anglo-Saxons--implies a greater consolidation and compactness in the Scottish monarchy than was ever attained amongst the kindred Celts of Ireland or Wales; and it is to the policy pursued during the reigns of Malcolm and his father Kenneth that this result is probably to be attributed. The Maor, indeed, was an official familiar to the Gaelic people long before the era of Kenneth and Malcolm, and he probably played an important part in the conquered provinces annexed by the elder Angus and his successors; but the Mormaor--the head of a province ruling as a royal deputy instead of an independent prince--points to a revolution in the tenure of land resembling the changes introduced by Harfager, when he cancelled “_Odal_ right” wherever he could extend his authority, and levied _land-tax_ by means of his Jarls and Lendermen; and it was a revolution of this description that may possibly have been carried out in the course of Malcolm’s reign and that of his father. Scotland, according to Fordun, was portioned out in ancient times into Thanages, or Fee-farms paying rent, held of course of the crown--for any other theory was incompatible with the ideas of the feudal era--until Malcolm, remitting the rents, gave away the whole kingdom, only reserving to himself the Moot Hill of Scone, when in return for the royal prodigality his people confirmed their sovereign’s right to wardship, relief, and other feudal privileges. Lurking under this singular statement there are probably some grains of truth, thoroughly misunderstood by the chronicler; and as in the partition of Scotland into Thanages a tradition may be recognized of its ancient division into _Triocha-ceds_ and _Bailes_, or Baronies and Townlands--institutions of a character inseparable from the very existence of a _settled_ community--so the reduction of the kingdom of Scotland as it then existed to a more direct dependence upon the royal authority, entailing land-tax, _merchet_, and other Celtic mulcts, in quarters hitherto exempt from such exactions, seems to be shadowed out under the _feudal_ grant of the whole kingdom and the _feudal_ return made by the gratitude of the Scottish people. Like Wales and Ireland, the whole kingdom was probably divided in theory into _Triocha-ceds_, _Cantreds_, or Thanages, the tribe lands held by chieftains as untaxed _Duchas_, the crown-lands by Maors or Thanes answerable for the rents and dues; and if Malcolm, by cancelling “_Duchas_ right” as far as it lay in his power, assimilated the tenure of the whole kingdom to that of the royal Maor, or, in other words, taxed the hitherto untaxed _Duchasach_, he only brought about the same change which Harfager had already effected in Norway, and which the ministers of the Frank kings