Transactions. 19 
than the date usually given. In the course of the ages prior to 
this artistic structure, the stone bridge of the 13th century, there 
evidently must have been some practical link of communication 
connecting the town and religious communities with their Troqueer 
lands on the opposite shore of the Nith, and the inhabitants of 
Galloway generally speaking. We think it probable that some 
rudely constructed bridge of wood may have preceded this stone 
structure. This supposition is rendered the more probable, seeing 
that in 1609 a petition to the Privy Council anent “the brig of 
Drumfries, which the saidis Lordis knawis is a verrie large brig 
of mony bowis,” the petitioners further allege and explain as to 
the then threatened hindrance “ of the ordinar passage over the 
wattir of Nith, sein na boat dar ga upon that wattar but in calme 
and fair wedder in respect it has so swift and violent a course.” 
From the earliest ages we find the Dumfriesians have cherished an 
amiable predilection in favour of this their “Auld Brig” of Dum- 
fries and of Nith, a predilection the depth of which, in the reign 
of King James the Sixth, manifests itself in the fervidly amiable 
language and prayer of their petition anent its threatened ruin, 
as we may by and bye see in detail. The ancient King’s town of 
Dumfries, as the great seat of the courts of law, of oldest time 
held within the Castle of Dumfries, with its monastery, mills, 
commerce, and shipping, must in a very real sense have been the 
natural central capital town of the shire, as well as of a much 
wider superficial area of a land in which towns were as few as 
far between in the undeveloped ages of the history of Dumfries 
and Galloway. As the shipping of the port of Dumfries on the 
Nith is in some sort allied with the history of the Bridge of Nith, 
we here add what may to some extent be considered as one of 
the foundation vouchers of its descriptive limits and history, as 
they were understood to have been in the first year of the reign 
of Henrie and Marie, King and Queen of Scots. We the more 
willingly do so seeing that the preparatory narrative of the cause 
itself contains some interesting summary of the constitutional 
history of the ancient Burghs Royal of Dumfries and Kirkcud- 
bright, which although otherwise not unknown here receives 
positive and official confirmation. We need hardly say that so 
far as the Burgh of Kirkcudbright is concerned no older surname 
can there well have been there than that of the Maclelland of 
Bombie, which is associated with the narrative of their Burghal 
Charter, dated Perth, 26th October, 1455, wherein the reigning 
