The turning-point in the history of the Scotch church is the reign of the devout Saxon queen
St. Margaret, one of the best queens of Scotland (1070–1093). She exerted unbounded influence
over her illiterate husband, Malcolm III., and her sons. She was very benevolent, self-denying, well
versed in the Scriptures, zealous in reforming abuses, and given to excessive fasting, which
undermined her constitution and hastened her death. "ln St. Margaret we have an embodiment of
the spirit of her age. What ostentatious humility, what almsgiving, what prayers! What piety, had
it only been freed from the taint of superstition! The Culdees were listless and lazy, while she was
unwearied in doing good. The Culdees met her in disputation, but, being ignorant, they were foiled.
Death could not contend with life. The Indian disappears before the advance of the white man. The
Keltic Culdee disappeared before the footsteps of the Saxon priest."^95
The change was effected by the same policy as that of the Norman kings towards Ireland.
The church was placed upon a territorial in the place of a tribal basis, and a parochial system and
a diocesan episcopacy was substituted for the old tribal churches with their monastic jurisdiction
and functional episcopacy. Moreover the great religious orders of the Roman Church were introduced
and founded great monasteries as centres of counter-influence. And lastly, the Culdees were
converted from secular into regular Canons and thus absorbed into the Roman system. When Turgot
was appointed bishop of St. Andrews, a.d. 1107 "the whole rights of the Keledei over the whole
kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews."
From the time of Queen Margaret a stream of Saxons and Normans poured into Scotland,
not as conquerors but as settlers, and acquired rapidly, sometimes by royal grant, sometimes by
marriage, the most fertile districts from the Tweed to the Pentland Firth. From these settlers almost
every noble family of Scotland traces its descent. They brought with them English civilization and
religion.
The sons and successors of Margaret enriched the church by magnificent endowments.
Alexander I. founded the bishoprics of Moray and Dunkeld. His younger brother, David I., the
sixth son of Malcolm III., who married Maud, a grand-niece of William the Conqueror (1110) and
ruled Scotland from 1124 to 1153, founded the bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, Caithness, and
Brechin, and several monasteries and religious houses. The nobility followed his example of
liberality to the church and the hierarchy so that in the course of a few centuries one half of the
national wealth passed into the hands of the clergy, who were at the same time in possession of all
the learning.
In the latter part of David’s reign an active crusade commenced against the Culdee
establishments from St. Andrews to Iona, until the very name gradually disappeared; the last mention
being of the year 1332, when the usual formula of their exclusion in the election of a bishop was
repeated.
Thus the old Keltic Church came to an end, leaving no vestiges behind it, save here and
there the roofless walls of what had been a church, and the numerous old burying-grounds to the
use of which the people still cling with tenacity, and where occasionally an ancient Keltic cross
tells of its former state. All else has disappeared; and the only records we have of their history are
the names of the saints by whom they were founded preserved in old calendars, the fountains near
the old churches bearing their name, the village fairs of immemorial antiquity held on their day,
(^95) Cunningham, Church Hist. of Scotland, p. 100.