barony. When a town was established on the royal demesne, and the townsmen held their houses, ground and privileges directly from the Crown, it was known as a king's burgh. References to such burghs are frequent in the charters of David I. in the first half of the twelfth century, and in the charters of subsequent monarchs. When a lord, lay or ecclesiastic, established a burgh within his lordship, and granted it a charter of privileges, that charter was usually confirmed by the Crown, and the nature and extent of the jurisdiction conferred determined whether the burgh was a burgh of regality or of barony. A grant of regality was the highest that could be given to a subject. It took as much out of the Crown as the Sovereign could give. It, in fact, invested the person who received it in the sovereignty of the territory. A grant of barony was of a lower order. In it the four pleas of the Crown -murder, fire-raising, rape, and robbery, were usually, though not invariably, reserved for trial by the king's officers. When a bishop or abbot founded a burgh under a royal license, as Canongate was founded under the express authority of King David in his still extant charter to Holyrood, and as Glasgow was founded in terms of the charter of William the Lion to the bishop, the burgh was known as a bishop's burgh, or as a church burgh. Many of these church burghs were originally burghs of barony or of regality, and afterwards became royal burghs. Thus, Glasgow was first a burgh of barony, and afterwards a burgh of regality, before it was emancipated from dependence on the Archbishop, and raised to the rank of a royal burgh. But of all burghs—whether royal burghs or burghs of regality or barony-the same story has to be told in its general features. In its first rude beginnings each burgh was an aggregation of persons engaged in various descriptions of trade and handicraft. The value of such a settlement to the superior, whether sovereign, or lord-lay or ecclesiasticcould not be overlooked. It gave at once strength and pecuniary resources, and was an object to be protected and fostered. It thus became his interest to attract skill and enterprise to to offer in the present paper a rapid sketch of early Scottish burghs in some of their more important aspects. When burghs were first established in Scotland it is impossible to say. But that they did exist as compact, well-organised bodies in the first half of the twelfth century, is proved by the Laws of the Four Burghs, compiled in the reign of David I., and sanctioned by him. We can scarcely conceive, in fact, of a country possessing a home and foreign trade without having also industrial and commercial settlements. The old chronicler Wyntoun tells us as regards Macbeth, whom the genius of Shakspeare has invested with such lurid light, that All hys tyme wes gret plenté We may therefore assume that such settlements existed in Scotland in the early part of the eleventh century, as they certainly did exist in England at a much earlier period. The selection of the sites of these infant settlements was doubtless largely determined by considerations of natural adaptation. The bay or the bend of the navigable river or estuary, which afforded ready access from the sea as well as shelter to the small craft that sufficed for the trade of these early times, probably led to the first settlement of such burghs as Berwick, Dundee, Arbroath, Aberdeen, and Inverness. The protection offered by the proximity of a royal castle doubtless favoured the formation and growth of Edinburgh, Stirling, Roxburgh, Forfar, and Ayr. The material advantages derivable from connection with a cathedral or monastery and all the fostering influences of the Church, facilitated the establishment of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Brechin, Dunkeld, Dunblane, Jedburgh, Paisley, Kelso, Selkirk, Dunfermline, and Canongate. The encouragement which the great temporal lords were wise enough to give to early traders and merchants to settle in their territories, by affording protection and privilege in return for the wealth and influence which flowed from such centres of peaceful industry, led to the formation of many subordinate towns. These early burghs consisted of three classes barony. When a town was established on the royal demesne, and the townsmen held their houses, ground and privileges directly from the Crown, it was known as a king's burgh. References to such burghs are frequent in the charters of David I. in the first half of the twelfth century, and in the charters of subsequent monarchs. When a lord, lay or ecclesiastic, established a burgh within his lordship, and granted it a charter of privileges, that charter was usually confirmed by the Crown, and the nature and extent of the jurisdiction conferred determined whether the burgh was a burgh of regality or of barony. A grant of regality was the highest that could be given to a subject. It took as much out of the Crown as the sovereign could give. It, in fact, invested the person who received it in the sovereignty of the territory. A grant of barony was of a lower order. In it the four pleas of the Crown —murder, fire-raising, rape, and robbery, were usually, though not invariably, reserved for trial by the king's officers. When a bishop or abbot founded a burgh under a royal license, as Canongate was founded under the express authority of King David in his still extant charter to Holyrood, and as Glasgow was founded in terms of the charter of William the Lion to the bishop, the burgh was known as a bishop's burgh, or as a church burgh. Many of these church burghs were originally burghs of barony or of regality, and afterwards became royal burghs. Thus, Glasgow was first a burgh of barony, and afterwards a burgh of regality, before it was emancipated from dependence on the Archbishop, and raised to the rank of a royal burgh. But of all burghs—whether royal burghs or burghs of regality or barony-the same story has to be told in its general features. In its first rude beginnings each burgh was an aggregation of persons engaged in various descriptions of trade and handicraft. The value of such a settlement to the superior, whether sovereign, or lord-lay or ecclesiasticcould not be overlooked. It gave at once strength and pecuniary resources, and was an object to be protected and fostered. It thus became his interest to attract skill and enterprise to privilege and securing protection. Both these objects could be attained by inducing the free population of the country, as well as strangers from other places, to settle in the town, and to acquire land within it, upon the condition of paying a fixed rent to the superior, and of contributing to the general defence. As an organization for defence, the settlement became a burgh, and as it grew and prospered it became more and more the interest of the superior to extend its privileges in return for the advantages which it yielded him. These privileges, immemorially enjoyed, acquired the force and validity of absolute rights, long before they came to be formulated in charters and written documents; and thus it is that the oldest extant burgh code, and the most ancient charters to particular burghs, are only collections and confirmations of pre-existing laws, customs, and privileges. The Laws of the Four Burghs give minute and interesting information as to the constitution of the royal burghs of Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling, which in their association formed the court of the Four Burghs-an institution that still survives, under strangely altered conditions, in the Convention of Royal Burghs. This code, though originally compiled for these four burghs, was soon extended to other royal burghs, and indeed came to be regarded as authoritative by all the burghs within the realm. It may be assumed, therefore, that the picture which it gives is substantially that of town life in Scotland in the middle of the twelfth century. Later fragments of legislation and charters supply additional materials for the construction of the following sketch of royal burghs. The main condition of membership of these early communities appears to have been the possession of real property within the burgh. No man could be a king's burgess, according to the Burgh Laws, unless he did service to the king for at least one rood of land. The land thus held by each burgess was known as his burrowage. He was bound to defend it, and to pay to the king five pence a year for every rood so held. On admission every burgess had to swear fealty to the king and was then inserted in the roll of burgesses, and that roll had to be produced at the court or eyre of the Great Chamberlain, who, as representing the sovereign, periodically visited all the royal burghs, supervised their conduct, and disposed of appeals from the decisions of burgh magistrates. In the earliest stages of burghal development, the annual payments by the burgesses to the Crown, all the fines and issues of the burgh court, and the petty customs exacted in respect of goods entering the burgh, were collected and paid over to Exchequer by a crown officer known as the bailie, who seems, moreover, to have exercised a certain civil and criminal jurisdiction within the burgh. After a time the Crown, adopting a practice which had been previously followed in England, farmed out at a fixed rent, sometimes to private individuals, sometimes to guilds or associations, and sometimes to the burgesses themselves or to the magistrates as acting for them, the right to levy all the rents, customs, and other dues exigible by the Crown within the burgh during a specified period. Most frequently the right to levy these sums appears to have been conferred in Scotland on the burgesses themselves, acting through their own officers. This arrangement usually took the form of a lease, for which sometimes a grassum, or capital sum, was paid, and was calculated so that the difference between the sums received on behalf of the burgh, and the sum paid to the Crown, sufficed to meet the necessary burghal expenses. At a still later date the arrangement was made permanent, and the Sovereign granted a charter of the burgh to the magistrates and community, in feu farm as it was termed, for payment annually to Exchequer of a fixed amount as in full of all claims. Thus in 1319 Aberdeen had its payments commuted into an annual charge of £213 6s. 8d. Scots, while in 1329 Edinburgh was placed on a similar footing, its annual payment being fixed at 52 merks. In 1359, Dundee received a charter *The Exchequer Rolls show that in 1327 and 1330 the rents of Berwick were farmed by Sir Alexander Seton and Reginald More; Thomas of Charteris was farmer of Roxburgh from 1329 to 1331, and Adam of Birthirgask was farmer of Cullen in 1343. |