52 Transactions. 



grown. Afterwai'ds agriculture retrograded, and commerce, which 

 had also made extensive strides, experienced a disastrous check. 

 In the fourteenth century and onward a greatly improved state of 

 affairs became visible. Land increased in productive power, and 

 was all the better able to bear the burdens cast upon it ; the royal 

 burghs, to which special privileges had been given by William the 

 Lion, grew in size and yielded a goodly qiiid j^to qtio to the royal 

 treasury, in the form of taxes paid for special purposes, and a 

 perpetual impost termed the Great Custom, which was levied by 

 means of the king's own customarii on all staple commodities of 

 foreign trade. At a period when landowners followed the chase 

 move than practical farming — during the precarious intervals of 

 peace — the monastic fraternities rendered patriotic service in the 

 subjugation of the soil. Mr M'Dowall then gave a series of illus- 

 trations shewing the value of land in the Stewartry two hundred 

 years ago, and its principal owners, as drawn from a rare old 

 volume (belonging to Mr R. K. Walker, town clerk. Maxwell- 

 town) to which he had access recently — the Valuation Book of the 

 Stewartry of Kirkcudbright for 1682. He explained that in that 

 year the county was still in the throes of a fierce religious perse- 

 cution, and that therefore the valuation put upon the diffei-ent 

 estates in the Stewartry might be less than usual on that account, 

 as, when the people were resisting to the death the attempts made 

 to force Prelacy upon them, they had no inducement to till the 

 soil. When, therefore, we read in the roll of ten-acre farms 

 yielding no more than sixty shillings Scots a year, it would be 

 safe, perhaps, to add a fifteenth at least to represent fairly their 

 nominal value. As the figures stand they show a grand total of 

 £10,250 representing the annual rental of the land of Kirkcud- 

 brightshire ; and if we add say £1750 for house rents, only some 

 of which are included in the returns, the amount is brought up to 

 £12,000, which is only about a thirty- third of the yearly value of 

 the Stewartry at the present day, exclusive of its railways and 

 royal burghs. The lecturer had drawn up notices of some of the 

 parishes, only a few of which, however, he read, as the time allotted 

 to him hud been already nearly all occupied. We give the form 

 of the reference to Terregles as a specimen of the style of this 

 part of the paper : Since the period, early in the twelfth century, 

 when Sir John de Maccuswellacquired the liaronyof Carlaverock, 

 the family which lie founded paid immense sums to the Crown in 



