The Kindly Tenants. 75 



has been repeatedly contested. The keepers of the Castle of 

 Lochmaben from at least the sixteenth century down to the Earl 

 of Mansfield in 1810 have made various attempts to dispossess 

 them of their lands or infringe upon their rights, but the 

 rentallers by appeal to the King or by the decision of the Court 

 of Session have ultimately succeeded in maintaining their position 

 and privileges as the King's kindlie tenants of the Four Towns of 

 Lochmaben. 



I should now give some account of these attempts and their 

 successful resistance. Perhaps the best way to do so is to read a 

 part of a paper submitted to the Court of Session in the early 

 part of last century, in which the Four Towns were defenders 

 against Viscount Stormont : — 



" The lands of Hitae, Smalholm, Heck, and Greenhill, 

 commonly called the Four Towns of Lochmaben, in county 

 Dumfries, being part of the property of the Crown, have been 

 time out of mind possessed by the respondents and their ances- 

 tors, as kindly, irremovable tenants ; and they have been 

 acknowledged as such by the Crown in ancient times, and in 

 different reigns by the Parliament itself, both in a legislative and 

 judicative capacity, and by the former constables or keepers of 

 his Majesty's Castle of Lochmaben, who under that title only, 

 and not as proprietors, levied the rents of the lands in question, 

 which were appropriated for the support of the Castle. The 

 keepers of this Castle did early impose hardships and endeavour 

 to levy exactions upon the tenants which gave rise to several 

 complaints to the Crown. By a petition and complaint to King 

 James the Sixth of Scotland, the tenants of said lands complained 

 that, notwithstanding of their being kindly tenants and occupiers 

 of his Majesty's farm lands, and tenandry assigned to his 

 Majesty's house of Lochmaben, they were wracked and spoiled 

 by thieves and extortioned by the constable of the Castle of 

 Lochmaben, ikc. Whereupon his Majesty by his sign manual 

 (12th June, 1592) ordered the keeper of the Castle of Lochmaben 

 to desist and cease from molesting, troubling, or using of any 

 violence against those his tenants, and to suffer and permit them 

 peaceably to occupy their possession, as they the keepers should 

 answer to his Majesty upon their disobedience. By another 

 sign manual, bearing that his Majesty, understanding that his 

 poor tenantry of his proper lands of Hitae, .fee, are and had been 

 greatly oppressed, and particularly by the constables and keepers 



