Tue CASTLE OF DUMFRIES. 49 
Galloway. The Castle of Dumfries differed from these inasmuch 
as no family name is associated with it ; it was the King’s Castle. 
As the situation has lately come to be in doubt, it is desirable 
to differentiate the spot where the castle stood ; events and locality 
frequently lend colour one to the other. The earliest known 
references to the castle are contained in charters of the time of 
William the Lion (1165-1214). | One of these gives it the appella- 
tion of “The Old Castle of Dumfries,’’ and the terms of another 
are important as showing the direction in which it lay. The 
document is a lease or feu-charter, by the Abbot and Convent of 
Kelso in favour of Henry Wytwell, a burgess of Dumfries. The 
following is the text as translated, taken from a “ Notice of some 
Old Documents Relating to Dumfries,’’ by the Rev. John Cairns, 
M.A.* :—- 
“On the first Tuesday after the feast of the Beheading of 
John the Baptist, this agreement was made between the religious 
men, the Lord Abbot of Kelso and the Convent of the same 
place, on the one side, and Henry Wytwele, burgess of Dumfries, 
on the other, viz., that the said Lord Abbot and the Convent of 
the same place conceded and demised to the said Henry and his 
assignes the whole of those lands which Malcolm the son of Utred 
of Terregles held from the decease of the formerly named inheri- 
tance of William, son of Bele ; with tofts and crofts in the territory 
and town of Dumfries, . . . as they lie, viz., Between the 
land of St. John, which lies beside the cemetery of the Mother 
Church of Dumfries, on the north side, and so by the road which 
leads from the town of Dumfries towards the castle as far as the 
road which leads towards the chapel of St. Lawrence of Keld- 
wood on the south side, and so towards the east beside the Crown 
lands as far as the Dumfries Burn which falls into the mill pond of 
Dumtfries.”’ 
The chapel of St. Lawrence no longer exists, but Kellwood 
remains, and the road described as leading towards the chapel is 
that now known as Craigs Road (it crosses the Dumfries burn, or 
mill-burn, as it is now called), and St. Michael Street, which 
leads from the town southwards past the cemetery and Craigs 
Road, corresponds with the road of the charter, which leads from 
*Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Antiquarian 
Society, 1892-93, 
