396 An Antiquary's Notes. 



carefully constructed stockade. Wages accounts are extant for 

 all these operations, the most significant being that of the car- 

 penters making in the forest of Inglewood the Peel to be set up 

 round about the Castle of Dumfries. A military term like this 

 indicates rapid transformation. In war everything moves fast, 

 and the engineering fastest of all. Down to the i6th century the 

 distinction between a Peel and a castle of stone continued, 

 although by degrees the original significance of the term was in 

 course of being forgotten until at last the term came to mean 

 everywhere an ordinary small Border tower. 



Many }ears ago, when writing an essay on the early Peels of 

 Scotland, I was discussing with Dr Thomas Dickson, then keeper 

 of the Historical Department of the Register House, the Peel of 

 Linlithgow. He then told me he remembered, a long time pre- 

 viously, that John Stewart, secretary of the Society of Antiquarie? 

 of Scotland, came one day into his room in great triumph, waving 

 a sheet of parchment, and told him that it was no other than the 

 account for the making of the Peel of Linlithgow, in which, as 

 is well known, Edward L passed the winter of 1301. But Dr 

 Dickson added that he never knew what became of it and he saw 

 it no more. Well, it happened that just a year ago my friend, Mr 

 J. H. Stevenson, advocate, mentioned to me that he had laid 

 aside in an envelope addressed to me a Linlithgow document. 

 Before he went further, I interrupted him, and repeated Dr 

 Dickson's conversation. "Well," said Mr Stevenson, "the 

 document I have is the missing account." And so it proved, and 

 now you have before you Edward L's wages account for opera- 

 tions by workmen of various kinds upon the works of Linlithgow 

 Castle and Linlithgow Peel in the month of September, 1302. 

 Masons, carters of stones, carpenters, blockers, carriers of 

 timber, smiths, ditchers — among them women at i^d a day — 

 watchmen, wood-cutters, sawyers are here — the same as at the 

 making of the Peel of Dumfries — and there is also a porte martel- 

 — a man who carried the mell. It shows incidentally that there 

 Avere not a few Scotsmen in the employment of the English — 

 Inglis, of Bothwell; Adams, of Rutherglen; Henry, of Berwick; 

 Eriar Thomas, of Edinburgh. This fine record of the days of 

 usurpation will satisfy anybody who looks at it how methodical 

 was the accounting and book-keeping of Edward I. Here is a 

 part of the account relating to ditchers : — 



