Burghs df Awaxdale. 75 



traditional tij^ure or a new or fresh assessment of ferme. 

 All doubt as to the full burg^hal status passes away when this 

 €ntrv is adduced. The steward of Annandale in his accounts 

 does not name the burgh as included in the demesne lands 

 of Lochmaben, the rents of which he draws and administers. 

 Still the burgh makes no separate appearance at Kxchequer 

 until the year 1500, when a note is set down that in future 

 the bailies are to make the return. ^^ 



Interest gathers chiefly round the memorandum of 1447. 

 It can scarcely be reckoned to indicate a new erection. .All 

 it says is that the burgh ferme is " chargit " at 40s, a pro- 

 position which natura.lly means only that the ferme had until 

 then been an indeterminate cjuantity. So regarded, the 

 memorandum sends us back to an anterior time for the 

 burghal foundation. Retracing our steps through the pre- 

 ceding century, we find no resting point so satisfactory as 

 the reign of Robert the Bruce. History revised by the aid 

 ■of the latest disclosures of charter juid manuscript seems 

 unable to better the tradition that the royal burghal honour 

 was given by the king whose Lochmaben statue asserts him 

 to have been Lochmaben-born. Would that the injudicious 

 vaunt of the statue about the hero's birthplace could stand 

 criticism as well as does the simple tradition of the burgh's 

 origin ! 



On 3rd July, 1605, it appears from the Records of tlie 

 Convention of Royal Bur<^hs^ that Lochmaben was enrolled 

 by the Convention as one of the constituent burghs. ^'^ 

 \\'illiam Maxwell, a bailie of the burgh, appeared, producing 

 ane chartour of erection of the said brugh in ane free 

 brugh," granted and made by King James \T. at Stirling 

 on 20th May, 1579. This writ is stated to ha\e passed the 

 great seal, but it has not been enrolled in the Great Seal 



65 Exrh. l{<,1]s. xi.. .341.* 



66 Vol. ii.. pp. 20.5-G. 



67 Annan had been enrolled the year befoic — on ."itli .Inly. 1(>04 

 — whon Jolin Corsonno, provost of Dumfries, as procurator for .John 

 .Johnstone of Newbie. provost, and George TieU and Robert Locke, 

 bailies of the burgh, presented a petition on its behalf to be put 

 upon the register. (Her. Conv. Roi/nl Ihiiyhx. ii., 178.) 



