William, who was dubbed 'the Lion' only after his death, succeeded at the age of twenty-two. His reign saw sheriffdoms rationalised and extended over much of the non-Highland part of the kingdom (save for the north-east) and a formidable network of royal castles established, most notably in Ayrshire, Berwickshire and Dumfriesshire, and, to the north of the Forth, in Perthshire, Moray and Ross.47 There was a phased but deliberate policy of the extension of royal control into the provinces by means of the promotion of a number of key families through sizeable grants of estates to the point where they equalled the native earls in all but rank.48 These, families like the Stewarts, Morvilles and Bruces, and not least the king's own brother David who was given the extensive lordship ofGarioch in Aberdeenshire, were the instruments of a new and aggressive plantation of agents of the royal will in areas such as Renfrewshire, Cunningham, Lauderdale and Annandale in the south- west and in Moray in the north. Yet the west remained virtual terra incognita and feudalisation was far from being applied wholesale elsewhere. The grant ofGarioch was made possible by some weakening of the position of the earls of Mar, while two other old earldoms, Atholl and Buchan, escaped this second phase of feudalisation almost untouched. Although there can be no doubt that William, by temperament, was the most Anglo-Norman of the macMalcolm kings, his kingdom was still a highly composite one.

As with David I, the obligation of fealty to an English king gave way to the lure of lost territory in Northumbria, which provoked a rash expedition into the north of England in 1174. Unlike David, William did not escape unscathed. Captured at Ainwick and humiliated by being led with his feet tied beneath his horse in ritual procession into Northampton, he was then thrown into the dungeon of the Castle of Falaise in Normandy. The Treaty of Falaise (1174), by which William vowed homage to Henry II 'for Scotland and for all his other lands', was the end of a road first embarked on at Abemethy in 1072 - the gradual but steady elaboration of what may have begun as a mere form of homage in the marches and by degrees developed into the binding obligation expected of a liegeman.50 Although the terms of the treaty were abrogated in 1189 by a formal quit-claim made by Richard I, "the Lionheart' (1189-99), the claim of suzerainty of English kings over Scotland would be renewed repeatedly over the next four centuries. Edward I in the 1290s, Edward III during the third phase of the Wars of Independence in the 1330s, Edward IV in the 1480s and Henry VIII in both 1512-13 and in the 'Rough Wooing' of the 1540s each revived the claim. It appeared even in the pamphlet warfare which preceded the Union of 1707. Although the quit-claim (which cost 10,000 merks) seemed a bargain at the time, it did not settle the dispute and Scotland ultimately paid a high price for the ambition of the most aggressive of its macMalcolm kings