“The” Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century

Geoffrey Barrow

Edinburgh University Press, 2003 - History - 366 pages

This book explores the formative period when Scotland acquired the characteristics that enabled it to enter fully into the comity of medieval Christendom. These included a monarchy of a recognizably continental type, a feudal organisation of aristocratic landholding and military service, national boundaries, and a body of settled law and custom. By the end of the thirteenth century Scotland had a church based on territorial dioceses and parishes, centers of learning including monastic houses representing the main orders of western Europe, and thriving urban communities whose economic power counterbalanced the aristocracy's. How and to what effect these characteristics were acquired are the main subjects of the book.

After the introduction, fifteen chapters are divided into three parts devoted to government, church and society. The volume comprises some of the most important as well as the most consistently readable work ever published on medieval Scotland. First published in 1973, it is now reissued in an updated edition with two new chapters. It also appears in paperback for the first time.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• shires and thanes: 7
• The judex: 57
• The justiciar: 68
• The AngloScottish Border: 112
• The Scots and the north of England: 130
• The royal house and the religious orders: 151
• Benedictines Tironensians and Cistercians: 169
• The clergy at St Andrews: 187
• King David I and Glasgow: 203
• The clergy in the War of Independence: 214
• Rural settlement in central and eastern Scotland: 233
• The beginnings of military feudalism: 250
• Scotlands Norman families: 279
• Growth and structure of the Border: 296
• The earliest Stewarts and their lands: 312
• The highlands in the lifetime of Robert the Bruce 332: 330
• Index: 350

About the author

Geoffrey Barrow is Professor Emeritus of Scottish History, University of Glasgow.

Bibliographic information

• Title: “The” Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century
• Author: Geoffrey Barrow
• Edition: 2, illustrated
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0748618031, 9780748618033
• Length: 366 pages
• Subjects: History / Europe / Great Britain; History / Medieval; Social Science / Anthropology / General