Traiisactions. Ill 



are recorded, with qiiaint circumstantiality, the crimes and 

 punishments of men and women whose graves in our quiet 

 churchyard have been wet with the showers of a hundred and 

 fifty springs. Assaults were very common, for the fierce old 

 Border spirit was easily roused, and furious blows avenged the 

 slightest wrong with startling swiftness. Even the excellent 

 man who occupied the office of town-clerk had been fined for 

 " blooding and stryking." At times people were attacked in 

 their own houses by aggrieved neighl)ours. In minutes dated 

 6th January, 1702, we read : — 



" The which clay Herbert Wilkin, maltniaker, in the said burgh, being 

 accused of going under cloud of night unto the house of Robert Johnstone, 

 tailor in said burgh, and of grievously beating and striking of Jean Gass, 

 his wife, and the same being proven by witnesses and the said Herbert's 

 own confession, was decerned in ten pounds Scots for an battery com- 

 mitted upon the said .Jean Gass, conform to the Act of Parliament, and in 

 forty pounds money foresaid to the party damnified and fiscal of court for 

 the violence done, and ordains him to be imprisoned till he pay the same." 



OflFences against property were much less connnon tlian assaults. 

 " Bairns, herds, and servants, were sometimes guilty of destroy- 

 ing and away taking of peas, beans, and potatoes, and stealing 

 and cutting of neighbours' grass," but serious cases of theft rarely 

 occurred. A case of unusual gravity is recorded in the following 

 extract : — 



" 24th July, 1701. — The which day James Linton, carpenter in Annan, 

 being accused of taking ane salmont fish from Christopher Irving, stepson 

 to Matthew Ferguson in Annan, alleging the said fish was taken out of his 

 nets, and it being proven 1 y witnesses that the said fish was taken in the 

 said Matthew Ferguson's nets, and that the sai<l Jp-incs Linton did away 

 take the same from the said Christopher Irving. Therefore decerned and 

 ordained to give back the said fish, and fined for the said crime in ten 

 pounds Scots money, and ordained to be imprisonetl till he pay them. " 



The punishments ordered by tlie Court were not exceptionally 

 severe. The town boasted of stocks, but these were very seldom 

 used. I know of only one case in which "putting in the stocks" 

 was included in the sentence pronounced. Whipping was rarely 

 inflicted, though, curiously enough, fishermen guilty of contraven- 

 ing the "mercat regulations" of the burgh were liable to personal 

 chastisement, as well as to a pecuniary penalty. Fining was the 

 common mode of punishment, and no doubt the " groates ' and 

 "pounds Scots" wrung from offending burghers constitixted a 

 large portion of the revenue of the town. 



