Malcolm IV becomes King of Scots

1153

A boy of twelve, grandson of David I, inherited the Scottish crown. The court's kinship with the Anglo-Norman world and Malcolm's frailty - he was called Malcolm the Maiden - ensured that Scotland would follow the Plantagenet cultural current for much of the next generation. His reign saw the consolidation of feudal institutions that his grandfather had imported from England, including the establishment of sheriffdoms and royal burghs across the Lowlands.