Transactions. 155 
generations until, indeed, the accession to the lordship of Robert 
the Competitor, grandfather of King Robert the Bruce. The 
Competitor appeased the indignation of the injured bishop, 
atoned for the offences of his ancestor, “for ever made his peace 
with the saint, and provided a perpetual rent, from which three 
silver lamps with their lights are maintained on the saint’s tomb.” 
So said the chronicler, and his veracity has been singularly con- 
firmed by the discovery of the actual charter* granted in 1273 by 
Robert de Brus to the monks of Clairvaux—oad sustinendum 
lumiumare coram beato Malachia-—for the lights of St. Malachi’s - 
shrine. 
This curious tale merits respectful consideration. The hagio- 
logist cannot fail to see in it a narrative containing no improb- 
ability either in the nature of the claim to a kind of sanctuary 
privilege put forward by the saint,7 or in the events which 
followed the deception alleged to have been practised by the 
Brus. And he will rightly insist on the Clairvaux charter as a 
triumphant corroboration. For the student of Annan’s municipal 
history, however, a special interest must attach to the chronicler’s 
allusion to that town first as a city (civitas), and subsequently as 
having forfeited the honour of a burgh—villula quae burgi amasit 
honorem. Written about 1346, what did that sentence mean ? 
» Did it convey the fact that Annan was then not a burgh? Did 
it in the same breath register another fact that Annan had once 
possessed the full burghal standing. The status of Annan of old, 
and the date and circumstance of its constitution or erection as a 
royal burgh, are problems of historic interest. Strangely enough 
the curse of St. Malachi ranks as a not inconsiderable factor in 
the issue. 
IV. The Church—St. Mary of Anand. 
That Robert de Brus, who incurred the curse of St. Malachi, 
had in 1141 succeeded his father, Robert de Brus, in the lands of 
*It is printed in “ O’Hanlon’s Life of St. Malachi ” (1859), p. 194, also in 
Scots Lore, p. 127. 
+A similar right was granted to and exercised by more than one religions 
body in England. See Bingham’s Aniiquities of the Christian Church, book 
ii., chap. 8; Chronicon Monasterit de Bello, 1846, p.24; Adam de Muri- 
muth (continuation), p. 199, ed. English Historical Society; Gule’s 
Scriptores XX., p. 320, Magna Vita Hugonis (K.S.), 277-279, preface 
lxxil. 
