KIRKCUDBRIGHT IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 135 
nature of the customs levied by the superior burgh does not 
appear; but they could hardly have been of the nature of 
market dues, for Kirkcudbright joined with Wigtown in at least 
one of the complaints to the Convention of Burghs, which were 
of almost annual occurrence, against the infringement of the 
charter rights of royal burghs occasioned by the markets held 
at Minnigaff. 
THe Town CHURCHES AND THE TOLBOOTH. 
There were at this time two ecclesiastical buildings in the 
town itself—the church of the Greyfriars, attached to which had 
also been a convent, where the female school now stands; and 
St Andrew’s Church, or the New Kirk, where the little Roman 
Catholic chapel and school now stand, behind the Court-house ; 
and the church of St Cuthbert would be standing beside the 
burial ground still in use, the “ Hie Kirkyaird,’’ as it was then 
called. The churches have a curious and somewhat perplexing 
history in the years immediately following the Reformation. 
The magistrates had received from Queen Mary, in 1564, a 
grant of the Friars’ Kirk, to be used as the parish church, and 
it continued to be so used until the present parish church was 
built; but in the year 1596 Thomas M‘Clellan, of Bombie, the 
Provost, had received from King James a personal gift of the 
church and monastery, and proceeded to build the present Castle 
on a portion of the ground. He was also patron of the church 
of St Andrew’s, and seems to have exercised a proprietary right 
in the building. In March, 1570, he disposed of both churches 
to the town, the price being two hundred merks and a hundred 
bolls of lime (the latter, it is understood, to assist in building 
the castle). | Greyfriars’ continued, as before, to be used as the 
parish church; but St Andrew’s was turned to a baser purpose, 
being made to do duty in place of the recently demolished 
tolbooth. Ten years later we come upon an entry in the 
Council books which puts a different complexion on the trans- 
action. It bears that Provost M‘Clellan (who is here termed 
“the Richt Honn!"!.’’) had excambed the two churches with the 
town for a tenement called the Pesthous ; but the transaction had 
never been completed by recording and the giving of seasin. 
To remedy this the town, of new, dispones the said tenement to 
the Provost, subject to an annual burden of £12, the property 
