At the apex of the feudal pyramid were the great lords. In the later twelfth century three was none greater than the younger brother of William I (1165-1214), David, Earl of Huntingdon, who was granted the huge lordship of Garioch in Aberdeenshire about 1180. Garioch was typical in the sense that it was an area which had already been substantially improved in recent times, both before and after 1100. The name itself (literally 'place of roughness') suggests that the lordship originally had been restricted to the hilly country east of Oyne which bordered on the Grampian Highlands, but that there had been an eastward and downhill drift of settlement, probably starting well before 1100, along the line of the valley of the River Urie to the point where it eventually met the River Don at Inverurie. It was Inverurie which became the caput of Garioch once David had acquired it; a castle was established there by 1199 and it was already a royal burgh by 1195. The locale and a lower-lying grain-growing district, were both very typical; more unusual was its size (100 square miles in extent), its neat geographical rationality, and the clear-cut nature of its symbols of feudal lordship, the motte-and-bailey castle and cast burgh, both at Inverurie.