Transactions. 155 



generations until, iudeeil, the accession to the lordship of Robert 

 the Competitor, grandfather of King Robert the Bruce. The 

 Competitor appeased the indignation of tlie injured bishop, 

 atoned for the offences of liis ancestor, " for ever made his peace 

 witli the saint, and provided a perpetual rent, from which three 

 silver lamps with their lights are maintained on the saint's tomb." 

 So said the chronicler, and his veracity has been singularly con- 

 firmed by the discovery of the actual charter* granted in 1273 by 

 Robert de Brus to the monks of Clairvaux — ad sustinendum 

 luminare coram beato Malachia — for the lights of St. Malachi's 

 shrine. 



Tliis curious tale merits respectful consideration. The hagio- 

 logist cannot fail to see in it a narrative containing no improb- 

 ability either in the nature of the claim to a kind of sanctuary 

 privilege put forward by the saint, t or in the events which 

 followed the deception alleged to have been practised by the 

 Brus. And he will rightly insist on the Clairvaux charter as a 

 triumphant corroboration. For the student of Annan's municipal 

 history, however, a special interest must attach to the chronicler's 

 allusion to that town first as a city (civitas), and subsequently as 

 having forfeited the honour of a ])urgh — villula quae buriji amisit 

 liOHorein. Written about 13-46, what did that sentence mean? 

 Did it convey the fact that Annan was then not a burgh ? Did 

 it in the same breath register another fact that Annan had once 

 possessed the full burghal standing. The status of Annan of old, 

 and the date and circumstance of its constitution or erection as a 

 royal burgli, are problems of historic interest. Strangely enough 

 the curse of St. Malachi ranks as a not inconsiderable factor in 

 the issue. 



IV. Tlie Church — St. Mary of Anand. 



That Robert de Brus, who incurred the curse of St. Malachi, 

 had in 1111 succeeded his father, Robert de Brus, in the lands of 



*It is printed in " O'Hanlon'.s Life of St. Malachi " (1859), p. 194, also in 

 Scots Lore, p. 127. 



I tA similar right was grauleil to and exercised by more than one religious 



fbody in England. See Biwjham's Antiquities of the Ghrislian Ghwc/i, book 



""., chap. 8 ; Chrouicon Moiufitcrii de lidlo, 1846, j). 24 ; Adam de Muri- 



tvih (continuation), p. 199, ed. English Historical Society ; Gale's 



Scriptores XX., p. 320, Magna Vitu Hugonis (K.S.), 277-279, preface 



