On 16 June, Dewar set out the legislative programme for the Executive which included: an Education bill to improve standards in Scottish schools ; land reform to give right of access to the countryside, a bill to abolish the feudal system of land tenure ; and a bill to establish National Parks in Scotland.

* Scottish feudal barony

Members of the Anglo-Norman nobility took up places in the Scottish aristocracy and he introduced a system of feudal land tenure, which produced knight service, castles and an available body of heavily armed cavalry.

To prevent civil war the Scottish magnates asked Edward I of England to arbitrate, for which he extracted legal recognition that the realm of Scotland was held as a feudal dependency to the throne of England before choosing John Balliol, the man with the strongest claim, who became king in 1292.

In 1400, Lord Grey informed Glyndŵr too late of a royal command to levy feudal troops for Scottish border service, thus being able to call the Welshman a traitor in London court circles.

* Manrent ( feudal Scottish Clan treaty )

* Scottish feudal barons bear the style The Much Honoured.

The title of Laird may carry certain local or feudal rights, although unlike a Scottish Lordship of Parliament, a Lairdship has not always carried voting rights, either in the historic Parliament of Scotland or, after unification with the Kingdom of England, in the British House of Lords.

Edward I of England was appointed to adjudicate the competing claims for the Scottish crown, but attempted to use the opportunity to establish himself as the feudal overlord of Scotland.

Scottish feudal barons style their surnames similarly to Clan Chiefs, with the name of their barony following their name, as in John Smith of Edinburgh or John Smith, Baron of Edinburgh.

Because the chapeau was a relatively recent innovation, a number of ancient Arms of Scottish feudal barons do not display the chapeau.

Now Scottish feudal barons are principally recognised by the baron's helm, which in Scotland is a steel helmet with grille of three grilles, garnished in gold.

The Scottish king encouraged Norman and French nobles to settle in Scotland, introducing a feudal mode of landholding and the use of castles as a way of controlling the contested lowlands.

) — Scottish Lairds and feudal Barons

Scottish feudal barons and lairds are " The Much Honoured ".

Scottish regiments were generally called into service by the lairds and clan chieftains obliging their tenants with feudal duty or coercion to send their kin into battle.

Henry I of England, the Anglo-Norman king who promised at his coronation to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor and who married a Scottish princess with West Saxon royal forbears, called up the fyrd to supplement his feudal levies, as an army of all England, as Orderic Vitalis reports, to counter the abortive invasions of his brother Robert Curthose, both in the summer of 1101 and in autumn 1102.

This was combined with the complementary concept of oighreachd where the chieftain's authority came from charters granted by the feudal Scottish crown, where individual heritage was warranted.

Henry I of England, the Anglo-Norman king who promised at his coronation to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor and who married a Scottish princess with West Saxon royal forbears, called up the fyrd to supplement his feudal levies, as an army of all England, as Orderic Vitalis reports, to counter the abortive invasions of his brother Robert Curthose, both in the summer of 1101 and in autumn 1102.

According to the Scottish Barony Register and Burke's Peerage, the feudal baronial title of Baron of Jedbugh Forest is held by The Much Hon Richard Bruce Bernadotte Miller, a South African whose ancestors originated form Roxburghshire.

Scottish feudal lordship Scottish feudal barons sat in Parliament by virtue ( and only by virtue ) of holding their lands ' per baroniam ', that is as barons.

The Scottish forces reached the south coast of England at the port of Dover where in September 1216, Alexander paid homage to the pretender Prince Louis of France for his lands in England, chosen by the barons to replace King John.

* Barons ' Letter, 1301, refutation by English barons of Pope's claim to Scottish suzeraignty.

Orally, Scottish barons may be addressed with the name of their barony, as in Edinburgh or else as Baron without anything else following, which if present would suggest a peerage barony.

Stephen's early reign was marked by fierce fighting with English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders and Scottish invaders.

She is married to a Scottish Laird, Gabriel MacBain, to escape England, but is harassed by both King John's barons and the English faction hoping to take down King John, each party unsure of how much she knows.

With Stephen fighting rebel barons in the south, the Scottish armies had already taken Cumberland and Northumberland, the city of Carlisle and the royal castle at Bamburgh.

The weak nature of the Scottish Crown had permitted the lesser feudal barons to continue attending the Scottish Estates, or Parliament, until the fifteenth century.

Flamank argued that it was the business of the barons of the north, and of no other of the king's subjects, to defend the Scottish border, and that the tax was illegal.

The tensions between John and barons finally began to spill over into war in 1215, and Prince Louis of France led an invasion to England and claimed English throne, as his consort Blanche was a maternal granddaughter of Henry II, whilst the Pope argued Eleanor had a better claim than his. When the Magna Carta was issued that year, it was demanded that all hostages held by John including Scottish princesses and Welsh be released, however, it had nothing to do with Eleanor, a proof that the rights of the females was somehow overlooked.

Hereditary supporters are normally limited to hereditary peers, certain members of the Royal Family, chiefs of Scottish Clans, Scottish feudal barons whose baronies predate 1587.

* Baron Keith, line of Scottish barons in the late 18th century

* Graham, Sir ( John ) Reginald Noble, Burke's peerage, baronetage & knightage, clan chiefs, Scottish feudal barons 107th edition, volume 2, ed.

The political history of Nottinghamshire centres round the town and castle of Nottingham, which was seized by Robert of Gloucester on behalf of Maud in 1140 ; captured by John in 1191 ; surrendered to Henry III by the rebellious barons in 1264 ; formed an important station of Edward III in the Scottish wars ; and in 1397 was the scene of a council where three of the lords appellant were appealed of treason.

Thus the only member churches of the present Anglican Communion existing by the mid-18th century were the Church of England, its closely linked sister church, the Church of Ireland ( which also separated from Roman Catholicism under Henry VIII ) and the Scottish Episcopal Church which for parts of the 17th and 18th centuries was partially underground ( it was suspected of Jacobite sympathies ).

In 1284, Alexander invested the title of Lord of the Isles in the head of the Macdonald family, Angus Macdonald, and over the next two centuries the Macdonald lords operated as if they were kings in their own right, frequently opposing the Scottish monarch.

There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking areas of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands and Wales.

In 1944, his remains were moved to the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite.

Notably, he published a book called Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871, of which there were several subsequent editions.

* 1951 – The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, is found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey.

In the Scottish borders country, a system of beacon fires were at one time established to warn of incursions by the English.

Instead, from 1 January 1923, almost all the remaining companies were grouped into the " big four ", the Great Western Railway, the London and North Eastern Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the Southern Railway companies ( there were also a number of other joint railways such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway and the Cheshire Lines Committee as well as special joint railways such as the Forth Bridge Railway, Ryde Pier Railway and at one time the East London Railway ).

In the Middle Ages, boroughs were settlements in England that were granted some self-government ; burghs were the Scottish equivalent.

Between then and 1764, when a more formal revised version was published, a number of things happened which were to separate the Scottish Episcopal liturgy more firmly from either the English books of 1549 or 1559.

These changes were incorporated into the 1764 book which was to be the liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church ( until 1911 when it was revised ) but it was to influence the liturgy of the Episcopal Church in the United States.

The baronies of Knockinny and Maghenaboy were allotted to Scottish undertakers, those of Clankelly, Magherastephana and Lurg to English undertakers and those of Clanawley, Coole, and Tyrkennedy, to servitors and natives.

Relics of Columba were carried before Scottish armies in the reliquary made at Iona in the mid-8th century, called the Brecbennoch.

Barks once stated that his paternal ancestors were Dutch and his maternal ancestors were Scottish.

Charles's last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English and Scottish parliaments, which challenged his attempts to overrule and negate parliamentary authority, whilst simultaneously using his position as head of the English Church to pursue religious policies which generated the antipathy of reformed groups such as the Puritans.

Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time.

The others were a letter from the King of Scots, Robert I, and a letter from four Scottish bishops which all presumably made similar points.

When elections were held to the newly created Scottish Parliament in 1999, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party and through a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Dewar became the inaugural holder of the First Minister of Scotland post.

By-elections were also held to the Westminster and Scottish Parliament constituency of Glasgow Anniesland.

The first elections to the Scottish Parliament were held on 6 May 1999, with Dewar leading the Scottish Labour Party against their main opponents, the SNP under Alex Salmond.