Series 3 > Court book of the Burgh of Kirkintilloch 1658-1694

INTRODUCTION
xix
been ‘ mediatised in the English phrase, to the progenitor
of the royal Stewarts. At some unknown time between the
twelfth and early fourteenth century, Dunfermline, another
of the earliest group of king’s burghs, had passed from the
king to the local abbot,1 though in this case the latest
commentator holds that the evidence indicates not so much
a transfer of superiority as a physical or geographical shift
of the burgh from an older settlement to what had been
the abbey’s ‘ suburb ’.2
Robert I’s reign witnessed a series of alienations of Crown
burghs. Jedburgh, probably yet another of David I’s
burghs, kept its tenure until 1320, when the king conveyed
to Sir James Douglas totam villam nostram mercatoriam de
Jedworth, with the castle and forest, in free barony, at a
reddendo of 100s. nomine annuefirme burgi and one knight’s
service.3 It was in the far north, where the royal power
was weakest, that the greatest changes occurred. William,
earl of Ross, seems to have been in possession of the lands
of Dingwall by 1308,4 and in 1321 he got a charter of the
lands, castle and burgh.5 His son and heir, Earl Hugh,
obtained a charter of the burgh of Cromarty in 1323,6 and
the grant may have been made at an earlier date.7 In 1324
the king gave the earldom of Moray in regality to his
nephew, Sir Thomas Randolph. The gift (reserving Inver¬
ness to the Crown) conveyed the three burghs of Nairn,
Forres and Elgin, which were, however, allowed easdem
libertates . . . quas tempore domini Alexandri regis . . . et
nostro habuerunt, hoc solum salvo quod de nobis tenebant sine
are thirteenth-century deeds showing the successive Stewards, Walter,
Alexander and James, as overlords of the burgh : (1204 x 1246) Reg. de
Passelet, 20 ; (1283 x 1309, confirming earlier grants) Liber S. Crucis, 67.
1 In Robert I’s reign it was one of four burghs holding from the abbot :
R.M.S., i, App. i, 24 ; cf. Reg. de Dunfermelyn, 232-3, 415.
2 A. A. M. Duncan, in Regality of Dunfermline Court Book (1953), 14-17.
The argument is ingenious and convincing.
3 Original charter and facsimile in Douglas Book, iii, 355, no. 288 ; cf.
R.M.S.., i, App. ii, 288.
1 A.P.S., i, 477.
6 R.M.S., i, App. ii, 370, 380.
* lb., App. ii, 55.
7 The Scots Peerage (vii, 235) dates the king’s gift 5 December 1316 and
cites E.R.S., i, Ixxxi (which gives no date for the grant).