348 



Notes on Berwick Castle and the Modern Owners thereof. 

 By William Maddan, Berwick-upon-Tweed. 



Mr Scott, in his " History of Berwick," says that the 

 Castle is first mentioned in the time of Malcolm the Maiden, 

 circa a.d. 1167, and that the next reference is when it, with 

 the Castles of Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh, and Stirling, 

 ■was delivered to Henry II., under the humiliating treaty 

 of Falaise. The first Castle must have been erected long 

 before a.d. 1167, and was no doubt co-eval with the origin of 

 Berwick as a Royal Burgh, as all the early burghs had a 

 royal Castle erected within their bounds. They were under 

 the King's special and kindly protection, and he exacted his 

 customs^ ferm-rent, and other dues. They formed the earliest 

 source of fiscal revenue. Berwick appears to have been one 

 of the earliest (if not the earliest) Burghs in Scotland, and it 

 rose to be the Commercial Capital — though the idea of Capital 

 in our modern sense had not yet emerged. It was certainly 

 the model municipality in the time of David I., and he sent 

 Maynard the Fleming, who had been Provost of Berwick, 

 to inaugurate civic rule in St. Andrews, as Provost of the 

 newly-erected burgh in a.d. 1140. David I. (1124-53), before 

 1124, while he was only Earl and ruler of Lothian and 

 Cumbria, granted, circa 1113,* Charter to the Abbey of 

 Selkirk (afterwards transplanted to Kelso), in which he gave 

 the Monks "in Berwyc unam carrucatam, et unam maysuram 



* This date,- 1113, is carefally arrived at by Cosmo Innes. — "EarJy 

 Scot. Hist.," p. 177. 



