The involvement of the Augustinian canons with society took a different form. Not an enclosed order like Cluniacs, Tironensians or the thirteenth-century arrivals, the Valliscaulian monks, the primary mission of the Augustinians was to go out into the world of the laity, usually serving the parish churches which were appropriated to their house. They also had a strong eremitical character, which suited their take-over and reform of a number of old Ceii De communities. These were often situated in remote sites, like Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth, St Serfs Inch on Loch Leven or Inchmahome on the Lake of Menteith - a name invented only in the nineteenth century. If the Tironensians were the proprietary order of David I, it was the Augustinians who had succeeded to this mantle before the end of the twelfth century, based in or near royal centres such as Holyrood near Edinburgh, Cambuskenneth across the Forth from Stirling and at St Andrews itself. No order was as close to the royal house between 1200 and 1450.

The introduction, again as a result of royal patronage, of two mendicant orders -the Dominicans (Black Friars) and Franciscans (Grey Friars) - in the reign of Alexander II was a further sign of the vitality of the Scottish medieval Church. Each was brought to Scotland within two decades of its foundation as an order. By the end of the century there were already a dozen Dominican houses and six Franciscan, mostly sited on the edge of burghs, where they might practise their work of preaching, teaching and charity. Other friars - notably the Carmelites (White Friars) and the Trinitarians (Red Friars) - followed. These orders conformed to the pattern already becoming apparent in other branches of the thirteenth-century Church; they were consciously international in outlook but staffed for the most part by local men. The 1250s saw the beginning of a campaign for the establishment of a separate Franciscan province, which had a chequered history until its final establishment in 1483. The Dominicans, although nominally part of the English province until 1481, showed from an early date strong devolutionist tendencies. In 1289 a papal indulgence acknowledged the growing sense of nationalism amongst the religious by forbidding the appointment of foreigners as heads of any religious houses in Scotland.