Note 40 — Chapter II
Reading edition
As Alexander III was the last king of Scotland who ruled before the War of Independence, it is interesting to note that he was crowned at Scone with the ancient ceremonies, and as the representative of the Celtic kings of Scotland. Fordun tells us that the coronation took place on the sacred stone at Scone, on which all Scottish kings had sat, and that a Highlander appeared and read Alexander's Celtic genealogy (Annals XLVIII. Cf. App. A). There is no indication that Alexander's subjects, from the Forth to the Moray Firth, were "stout Northumbrian Englishmen", who had, for no good reason, drifted away from their English countrymen, to unite them with whom Edward I waged his Scottish wars.