180 BARONY AND THAN AGE April reckoned by nights and paid in cows, and rendering * forinsec ' that is, personal service in the army for the defence of the land and in the king's council.* The tenant by barony, the baron proper, held his land by knight-service, doing castle-ward at one of the royal castles or going in the army out of Scotland as need required for forty days at his own cost,^ paying ' cain ', and rendering relief.^ Nevertheless, the two tenures were so much alike that the substitution of knight -service for the payment of a farm suf- ficed to convert a thanage into a barony.^ In either case the tenant's relation to his holding was just that of an hereditary steward who collected the royal dues from it, paying some to the king, and either farming the rest or keeping them in payment for special military service.^ The thane of Kintore had an official position as well defined as that of the earl of Moray, and the conversion of his tenure into free barony affected it not a whit ; he still collected the king's 'cain ' and at the king's bidding sum- moned the men of Kintore to go in the army of Scotland.® Aye, and he administered the king's justice in his barony as he had done in his thanage ; for it can be established beyond all doubt that in Scotland the baron, whether he held by knight-service or by fee-farm, had as such justice of ordeal and justice of life and limb. When Malcolm IV confirmed to Walter FitzAlan, high steward of Scotland, the lands he had held of David I, he gave them to him ' to hold with sac and sec, toll and team, and infangthef, quietly and freely as any of my barons most quietly and freely holds of me ' ; ' and when he confirmed to the monks of Scone the right to a court granted to them by Alexander I, he did so ' in duello, in ferro, in fossa, et in omnibus aliis libertatibus ad curiam pertinentibus '.^ The implication of these two charters > Fordun, iL 414 ff. ; cf. Skene, Cdtic Scotland, ii. 238.
- Neilson, ' Tenure by Knight-service in Scotland ' in the Juridical Review, xi-
73 S. Compare a charter of Alexander II, c. 1221, granting to Bernard of Howden ■a knight's fee from which ward was due to Roxburgh Castle, the equivalent being to go at the king's precept across the water of Forth to the north or the march towards the south, in either case for forty days at his own cost {ibid. p. 174).
- Fordun, i. 186. Sir John Skene, commenting on a law ascribed to Malcolm II
(L e. IV) in the ' Regiam Maiestatem ', says : ' Illic Baro hoc loco accipitur pro vassallo qui tenet wardam et relevium dicimus, cum furca et fossa, infangthef et utfangthef.' Neilson, op. cit.. shows that the ' ward ' here spoken of was almost certainly not ward- ship but castle-ward. ' Skene, Celtic Scotland, iii. 238.
- Innes thus describes the thanes in his Scottish Legal Antiquities, 'Barony', p. 88.
- Robert II, granting the thanage of Kintore to the earl of Moray to be held in
free barony, reserved the services of the free tenants and the ' cain ' due to him from the thanage (Fordun, ii. 418). It is common knowledge that in the middle ages 'thane' was an official title in Scotland. ' Innes; Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 206.
- Early Scottish Charters, no. xlix.
