• Dumfries : Its Burghal Origin. 173 



of date believed to be about 1221, whereby the king (Alex- 

 ander II.) commuted the service of y^uardintj for ao 

 days the castle of Roxburgh into a payment of 20s a 

 year, under careful reservation, however, that if war 

 broke out and danger of invasion loomed ahead the 

 vassal-knight was still to be liable to watch and ward 

 and even to march with the host to battlers jh^. importance 

 attaching to this charter, which was first printed in the 

 article just referred to, lies chiefly in its ready and, indeed, 

 almost necessary adaptation not only to the particular Rox- 

 burgh holding, to which it specially belonged, but also to 

 the many other cases of baronies in other counties, such 

 as Berwick, Edinburgh, Stirling, Lanark, and Dumfries, 

 where the tenure was by castleguard, per ivardam castri. 

 It enables us to say that where in the fourteenth century 

 there was prevalent a payment of, say, 20s a year levied 

 on certain baronies in name of castleward, the inference 

 is scarcely defeasible that in the late twelfth or early thir- 

 teenth century there must have been a personal feudal duty 

 of doing service by self or knightly deputy in maintaining 

 for forty days annually the garrison of the county castle. 

 Thus in Dumfriesshire, under Robert the Bruce, castleward 

 was paid to the sheriff. The baronies from which it partly 

 came are named in 1336: — Staplegorton, 20s; Mallaynok, 

 20s; Kirkmichael, los ; Tinwald, los. But this only accounts 

 for ;£'3, while in 1328-9, the last year of Robert the 

 Bruce, the amount collected was ^.7 5s, 20 shewing that 

 we have not the full list of castleward-paying baronies. 

 At a more remote time there were in all likelihood a good 

 many other baronies of the same tenure. The four we have, 

 nevertheless, are enough to illustrate the principle that the 

 responsibility of furnishing a garrison to the county castle 

 of Dumfries had at one time rested on the rural baronies or 

 certain of them. Thus it becomes evident that both town 

 and county, considered as institutions under feudalism, had 

 vital connection with the king's castle. Nor will it be hard 



19 Juridical Review, April, 1899, p. 174. 



20 Pain, iii., 315-19. 



