Dumfries : Irs Burghal Origin. in8 



Norman civilisation as were the slopes of Snowdon in 

 Wales, where a kindred landscape and a kindred race and 

 a kindred fierceness of courage and tribal sentiment long 

 made conquest a de\'out hope of which realisation was far 

 remote. \'et Malcolm IV. made good headway after three 

 expeditions against these, his sturdy but intractable subjects. 

 Forts were put up amongst them, most probably, as has 

 been elsewhere^ shewn, those Motes which are so curiously 

 important in the archaeological remains of the south-west. 

 The plantation of these forts was accompanied by the settle- 

 ment of Anglo-Norman families, at once garrisons and 

 colonists. It may well be that the original castle of Dum- 

 fries was one of Malcolm's forts, and that the Mote of 

 Troqueer, at the other side of a ford of the river, was the 

 first little strength of the series by which the Norman grip 

 of the province was sought to be maintained. 



It is, however, in the highest degree significant that on 

 the outbreak of war in ii 73 with Henry II. William should 

 be so carefully, and with such minute circumstance, 

 described as holding by himself and his vassals the castles 

 of Stirling, Edinburgh, Jedburgh, Berwick, Roxburgh, 

 Lauder, Annan, and Lochmaben, while there is no mention 

 of either Lanark or Dumfries. The inference is that these 

 places were either unfortified or of no note as strengths, 

 and were not yet established (on any permanent footing at 

 anyrate) as royal castles. The Norman hold on Galloway 

 was eminently precarious. After William the Lion's capture 

 by the English in 11 74 the men of Galloway who had fol- 

 lowed his banner in the expedition returned home in a mood 

 of determined hostility to the intrusive Englishmen and 

 Normans who had set themselves down in the province. 

 " Uchtred, the son of Fergus, and Gilbert, his brother," 

 we are told by an ancient historian, " when they heard that 

 their lord the King of Scots was taken, at once returned 

 with their Galwegians into their own parts, and immediately 

 expelled from Galloway all the bailies and guards whom the 

 King of Scotland had set over them ; all the Englishmen and 



1 Scottish mview. October, 1898, pp. 209-238. 



