Transactions. 51 



Badenoch and some others in the church of the Friars Minors 

 at Dumfries. 



This is the aspect of the case which the letter presents ; 

 and many a sad day followed. But Bruce at length pre- 

 vailed. 



" For Freedom's battle, once begun, 

 Though baffled oft, is ever won." 



Religious, national, and party feeling now all concurred 

 to desert the desecrated church of the Friars Minors for St. 

 Michael's in the neighbourhood— to which William de Car- 

 lyle, lord of Torthorwald, a near relative of Bruce's, appears 

 to have presented the fine bell which now rings in the Mid 

 Steeple. 



But the monastery still continued ; and when King 

 James IV. came to Dumfries to attend the great justice ayre 

 or circuit court held here in 1504, he gave the friars of 

 Dumfries a gi-atuity of 14s., and in September of the next 

 year he gave a like sum to the cruicket vicar of Dumfries 

 that sang to the King at Lochmaben.* This cruicket vicar 

 was perhaps the worthy who officiated in the church of the 

 monastery. 



The Reformation was now approaching. And after that 

 event, on the 23d April 1569, the magistrates and community 

 of Dumfries received from the Crown a grant of all the 

 houses, gardens, possessions, and revenues which had be- 

 longed to the Grey Friars of Dumfries, under the old con- 

 dition of upholding the bridge.f 



This grant to Dumfries was after a similar grant to the 

 town council of Edinburgh of the conventual properties in 

 that city, — and there, in the garden of the Dominican Con- 

 vent a school was erected, and in the Grey Friars' grounds 

 a church. We were not so fortunate here. Shops and 

 houses were erected, and these perhaps not on any regular 

 plan but as occasion served, the material of the old buildings 

 affording also a convenient supply for the new. 



* Treasurer's Accounts ap. Pitcairn. 

 t Chalmers' Caledonia, vol. 3, p. 136. 



