174 Dumfries : Its Burghal Origin. 



to shew that the same bond associated also the baronies with 

 the burg-h, that the baronies both maintained the castle and 

 helped materially in making the burgh, that baron as well 

 as burgess had a share in early burghal administration, and 

 that thus the castle, the town, and the shire are in their 

 initiatory developments inseparably interlocked. 



Of this close relation no more illuminating phenomenon 

 exists than the legal connection which so curiously emerges 

 in the famous inquest held in the castle of Dumfries over the 

 death of Adam, the miller. One Sunday Adam picked a 

 quarrel with a man narned Richard, and in the cemetery of 

 St. Michael's called him " a Galuvet, that is, a thief." The 

 following Thursday they came to blows in the street. Adam, 

 who had been standing in a doorway, drew his knife. 

 Richard drew his sword, and in the encounter that followed 

 Adam was wounded so that he died. The date of this occur- 

 rence is supposed to have been not long before 1259, probably 

 in 1256. Mr M'Dowall, in his History of Dumfries, set it 

 down as having happened during the reig-n of Malcolm IV., 

 which extended from 11 53 until 11 65, but (apart from the 

 fact that it mentions the " burgesses," and must therefore 

 be subsequent to the burghal creation which Mr M'Dowall 

 assigned to "probably about 1190 ") there is no authority 

 for the suggestion of a date so unprecedentedly early. 

 Thomas Thomson and Cosmo Innes, the great legal anti- 

 quaries, placed the deed after 1232 and before 1259. Joseph 

 Bain, the weightiest living authority, follows them, and all 

 the evidence supports the united view.^^ 



Historically the value of the document turns not a little 

 on the important constitutional fact that, although the man 

 was killed in the town, the enquiry was conducted in the castle 

 by the king's bailies ; the oaths of upwards of thirteen citizens 

 were taken ; and sworn along with them and expressly con- 

 curring were a number of barons. The sworn barones, we 

 are told, agreed in all respects with the sworn burg-esses. 

 And all the burgesses and barons (the latter styled this time 

 not harones but alii baronie) declared that the said Richard 



21 Acts Pari., i.. 98, 



