62 Burghs of Annandale. 



mint would be a powerful fact. Elsewhere that unwearied 

 author (in his account of the town)'^ acknowledges the un- 

 certainty of the early date by saying- that " Annan was 

 certainly a royal burgh in 1306." Again, however, the 

 authority he cites^ is palpably insufficient, although the con- 

 clusion is not impossibly correct. The question is intricate. 

 To recapitulate a previous examination^ it may be recalled 

 that in early charters the town is usually referred to as a 

 vill; once there is mention of a constable; in chronicle Brus's 

 house is styled a hall (aula), while the little town is dis- 

 tinguished as the capital of its district — Anandia capitanea 

 illius patriae villula; legend recorded by the same chroniclei*^ 

 tells of Saint Malachi's curse — a malediction pronounced 

 perhaps in the year 11 48 — in consequence of which, according 

 to a pious admirer of the saint, Annan fell from grace and 

 lost the honour of a burgh — burgi amisit honorem. This 

 strange narrative incidentally at different points applies to 

 Annan the four designations of little vill, vill, burgh, and 

 city — villula, villa, hurgus, civitas. 



In supplement of the earlier disquisition referred to, it 

 now falls to be pointed out that the mention of the constable 

 is conceivably significant of the importance of the castle. 

 The epithet civitas was no such gross misapplication as at 

 first sight appeared. Professor Maitland^i has demonstrated 

 the true early sense of that word to have been practically a 

 county town. Though Annandale never was a county it was 

 a lordship and stewartry ; and, in the words of the Lanercost 

 Chronicle, Annan was the capital town of that district. 

 When it is mentioned that in 1296 Annan figures as burgus 

 in legal document^^ relative to the disposal of the rents of 

 the place drawn by the Brus family, the last considerable 



7 Caledonia, v., 140. 



8 Old Stat. Ace, xix., 452. 



9 Transactions, D. and G. Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Society 

 " Old Annan," 2-7, 22. 



10 Lanercost Chron., 160-1. 



11 Township and Borough, 42. 



12 Bain's Cal., ii., 826. 



