buMKRiEs : Its Birghal Ukigin. 15i) 



have been " erectit in ane brugh royall" by that energetic 

 emissary of feudalism, King William the Lion. 



There are extremely interesting differences between the 

 far side of the Forth and the near side. The old Scotland, 

 the Scotland of the earliest incipient feudalism of Malcolm 

 Canmore and the devout Queen Margaret, lay on the north ; 

 the old earldoms, bishoprics, thanedoms, and even burghs, 

 were there too. The feudal settlement of the west half of 

 southern Scotland came late. Let us see what we can make 

 of it so far as three shires and three shire towns — Lanark, 

 Ayr, and I^umfries — are concerned. If we find repeated 

 traces in them all of elements of origin demonstrable as 

 having lain close about the roots of other county-burghs, 

 we may awake to a new sense of the constitutional import- 

 ance of the history of Dumfries. One of the greatest legal 

 and institutional historians of our day observed some years 

 ago, that in order to understand the bearings of national 

 movements in early times it is necessary to have a minute 

 acquaintance with the detailed local story of at least one 

 particular district. Those who concern themselves with the 

 chronicle of Dumfries, therefore, may hope to find in it some 

 reflection, however restricted, of the whole great picture of 

 the Scottish past in which it has an appreciable share. 



At the time of David I.'s accession to the Scottish 

 throne what shall we say was the condition of the territories 

 from the Clyde and the Annan to the sea? Strathclyde. 

 Strathgryfe, Cunningham, Kyle, Carrick, the Rhins, the 

 Farinnes, the Desnes, Strath Nith, Strath Annan, the inde- 

 finitely overlapping region of Galloway — the accent of the 

 Celt is on their very names, Cunningham (Cunigam) perhaps, 

 and only perhaps, excepted. It was in David's time (hat a 

 Norman settlement effectually began. Rutherglen is the 

 first royal burgh we hear of existing in the south-west in 

 that reign. Of its associations feudally fixe facts are to be 

 marked. It had a royal castle; it was crown property; it 

 had a wide subject area embracing in substance what is now 

 known as the Lower Ward of Lanarkshire. That subject 

 area explains how in 1221 the casiellar'ia or castellany of 

 Rutherglen, no doubt with a rental of its own, was part of 



