RECORDS OF THE BuRGH OF LOCHMABEN. 117 
offence was rebellion against the Constitution, and if it was a 
vulgar error that the crime was of a trivial nature, the punishment 
ought to be the greater, that that mistaken notion might be 
corrected. The sentence of the Court was that Lockerbie, 
Forrest, and Thorburn be whipt through the streets of Edinburgh 
on Wednesday, 23rd January, to be then set at liberty, and to be 
allowed three weeks to settle their affairs, thereafter to banish 
themselves furth of Scotland for seven years ; Lindsay (the writer 
and messenger-at-arms) to be fined £50 sterling, to be delivered 
to the Clerk of Court, to be imprisoned three months in the 
tolbooth of Canongate, and thereafter till payment of the above 
sum, after his liberation to be allowed three months to settle 
his affairs, and then to banish himself furth of Scotland for seven 
years. 
A great grand-daughter of Mr Lindsay, who resides in 
Lochmaben, informs me that the sentence in his case was not 
carried out, powerful influence having been brought to bear upon 
the Government of the day to have the penalty remitted. He 
married a sister of Miss Jeffray, the lady who is immortalised as 
“the Blue-eyed Lassie ’’ in Burns’s song of that name, and who 
was a daughter of the minister of Lochmaben. 
At a meeting of Council, held on 14th August, 1797, the 
Magistrates represented to the meeting that a number of com- 
plaints had of late been made to them by different people who 
had suffered great loss by swine being allowed to go at liberty 
in the crofts and streets of the burgh, the meeting taking it into 
their consideration, do hereby resolve and enact that if any person 
within the burgh shall allow their swine to go at liberty betwixt 
the Ist day of March and the Ist day of November in all time 
coming, for the first offence they shall pay a fine of five shillings, 
and the next offence doubled, the one-half of the fine to be given 
to the poor of the parish and other half to be disposed of as 
the Magistrates shall think proper. 
On 10th March, 1799, the Magistrates and Council being 
met and taking into their consideration that there are only two 
burgh officers who have the usual salary of six shillings and eight- 
pence sterling each per annum, and they being of opinion that it 
would be necessary to appoint two more, we do hereby nominate 
and appoint William Carruthers and Richard Beattie, both in 
Lochmaben, burgh officers, without any salary annexed to it, 
