When once the monks had settled down from missionary conditions into the position of great landlords, they inevitably took something of the colour of a squirearchy. They had dovecotes and mills and all other monopolies of a privileged landed aristocracy. The greater abbeys even had regalities; that is, all royal rights except those which were of definite political importance. Among these were the right of hanging or drowning criminals and taking their forfeited property; Kelso had this, with Arbroath, Melrose, Balmerino, Scone and Paisley. At Paisley, the name Gallowhill still survives; and there was an island in the Tay where, as a twelfth-century record tells us, “judicial duels were fought concerning Scone”: that is, the monks had the right of defending their claims by the body of a professional champion. We have an interesting case of this kind from the diocese of York in 1239. It was reported to the pope that the monks of Mont-St-Michel in Normandy had possessed