Tue CASTLE OF DUMFRIES. ae 
viously made on which the carts might travel. The berfrey is a 
wooden tower, moving on wheels, which when run up to or near 
the wall of the invested town or castle, enables the assailants to 
overlook and command the interior of the place assailed. The 
design is as old as the time of Augustus Cesar, when Vitruvius, 
who had charge of the engines of war, formulated rules for its 
construction, up to a height of eleven storeys and 200 feet. 
That such equipment of the Castle of Dumfries was not over- 
looked is made evident from the following and other accounts :— 
“To lord Henry de Sandwich, chaplain of lord John de 
Drokensford, for money disbursed by him for 41 engines, 800 
quarrels, 3 bandries, 2 pounds of varnish, 4 pounds of feathers 
with verdigris, 200 pounds of string, 6 pounds of glue, hemp for 
making cords and baskets, and ropes for packing the same, 
bought by the said lord John, and sent to Dumfries and Loch- 
maben for the fortifications of the Castles of those places, in the 
month of October, together with the pay of 3 carts carrying the 
same to Dumfries, in the same month, and for the wages of 
Robert de Ra, artilleryman, going with the same things for 8 days, 
as is evident by the account of the said lord Henry, £6 6s 3d.”’ 
FRENCH AMBASSADORS AT ANNAN. 
The accounts contain numerous miscellaneous charges con- 
nected with the Castle of Dumfries, such as, for restoring horses 
of the officers and men-at-arms, for messengers carrying messages, 
verbal and written, from and to the King at Dumfries ; for travel- 
ling to obtain money and bring it to the King at Dunfries. 
Ambassadors from the King of France followed Edward into Scot- 
land, and negotiated a truce between the King and the Scots, and 
in the end of October Randolph de Manton, the cofferer of the 
King’s Wardrobe, was sent by the King from Dumfries to Carlisle 
to make a present to the Ambassadors of the King of France on 
the part of the King himself. The cofferer’s expenses for 5 days, 
together with the expenses of the Ambassadors at Annan, 
amounted to £2 10s. 
The lord treasurer of England, the bishop of Coventry, and 
Lichfield, attended personally at Dumfries, Lochmaben, and 
Caerlaverock, in the month of November for the purpose of 
settling accounts for the fortifications of these castles, 
