Alexander, son of the aforesaid King Alexander, a boy of eight years of age, came to Scone on the following Tuesday, the 13th of July, with a number of Earls, Barons, and knights. There were likewise present the venerable fathers, David of Bernham, Bishop of Saint Andrews, and Galfrid, Bishop of Dunkeld, a man in great favour with both clergy and people, zealous in temporal and spiritual things, who endeared himself to both great and poor, but was a terror to evildoers. The Abbot of the monastery of Scone itself was also there. But lo! as soon as they were gathered together, there arose a dispute among the nobles. For some of them would have made not a King, but a knight, on that day, saying that it was an Egyptian day.[16] Now this was said not because of the Egyptian day, but because the lord Alan Dorward, then Justiciary of the whole of Scotland, wished to gird Alexander with the sword of knighthood on that day. While they were arguing, the lord Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, a man of foresight and shrewdness in counsel, answered and said, that he had seen a King consecrated who was not yet a knight, and had many a time heard of Kings being consecrated who were not knights; and he went on to say that a country without a King was, beyond a doubt, like a ship amid the waves of the sea without rower or steersman. For he had always loved King Alexander, of pious memory, now deceased, and this boy also for his father's sake. So he moved that this boy be raised to the throne as quickly as possible, for it is always hurtful to put off what may be done at once; and by his advice, the said Bishops and Abbot, as well as the nobles, and the whole clergy and people, with one voice, gave their consent and assent to his being set up as King. And it came to pass that when this same Earl, Walter Comyn, and all the clergy heard this, they joined unto them some Earls,--namely, the lord Malcolm, Earl of Fife, and the lord Malise, Earl of Strathearn--and a great many other nobles, and led Alexander, soon to be their King, up to the cross which stands in the graveyard, at the east end of the church. There they set him on the royal throne, which was decked with silk cloths inwoven with gold; and the Bishop of Saint Andrews, assisted by the rest, consecrated him King, as was meet. So the King sat down upon the royal throne--that is, the stone--while the Earls and other nobles, on bended knee, strewed their garments under his feet before the stone. Now, this stone is reverently kept in that same monastery for the consecration of the Kings of Albania;[17] and no King was ever wont to reign in Scotland, unless he had first, on receiving the name of King, sat upon this stone at Scone, which, by the Kings of old, had been appointed the capital of Albania. [16] An unlucky day. Ill-luck was attributed to certain days of the year by Egyptian astrologers. [17] Scotland north of the Forth, nominally united under Kenneth MacAlpin about 844 A.D.