70 Burghs of Annandale. 



of a subject lord it could not be royal without special erection, 

 and of special erection, or of manifestations of the result of 

 special erection, no traces have ever been discovered. When 

 what is called tradition is invoked the vague answer comes 

 that the town was made a royal burgh soon after the acces- 

 sion of Bruce to the throne. ^^ George Chalmers in the 

 Caledonia^^ passes the comment : "If this be founded it 

 must have been before he granted the lordship of Annandale 

 with the castle to his nephew Thomas Randolph." The 

 Rev. William Graham in his Lochmaben Five Hundred Years 

 Ago'^^ was more definite. " Its original charter of erec- 

 tion," he wrote, " is said to have been granted by Robert 

 the Bruce, but it was destroyed when the town was burned 

 in the fifteenth century." Elsewhere in the same volume''^ 

 he had written : " In 1463 the town of Lochmaben was burnt 

 in a raid made by the Earl of Warwick. On this occasion it 

 is said that the original charter of the burgh, granted by 

 Robert the Bruce, was destroyed." As usual tradition Is apt 

 to grow more definite in its progress. In 161 2 the authori- 

 ties had not heard that the burning took place in 1463 : they 

 had only heard that " the said burgh had been often burnt 

 and plundered with all its ancient infeftments."'*^ Nor had 

 they heard that the original charter of erection had been 

 granted by Robert the Bruce. Slender stress, therefore, must 

 be laid on the allegations of tradition about charters of 

 •erection. 



Administrative Centre. 

 The present is the proper stage to remark that the region, 

 -of which through the military position Lochmaben was the 

 governmental centre, came to be known in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, and for some purposes down even into 

 our own period — as the Stewartry of Annandale. Under the 



58 Old statistical Account, vii., 234; Neio Statistical Account, 

 Dumfriesshire, 391. 



39 New edition, v., 142. 



40 Page 137. 



41 Page 109. 



42 Beg. Mag. Sig., 1609-1620, No. 698. 



