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

xliv KIRKINTILLOCH BURGH COURT BOOK
such rare phrases 1 that we get advance intimation of what
was essentially a post-Reformation classification.
The record evidence of the period 1450-1560 comprises,
for the most part, charters of erection, of which 76 2 have
been noted, while in addition eight baronial charters give
power or licence to create or build (creandi, erigendi,
edificandi) a burgh in barony, and nine privy seal precepts,
relating to burgh erections, have survived, in each case
without the corresponding great seal charter.3 To supple¬
ment these 93 acts of creation or intended creation, there
are (as has already been noted) casual charter references to
existing burghs in barony, whose actual erection is un¬
recorded—to Hamilton in 1475,4 to Dunfermline and
Arbroath in 1488, and to Alloa in 1497.5 Even these 97
authenticated cases do not exhaust the tale of the pre-
Reformation burghs in barony. It is quite clear that many
charters of erection or confirmation are lost, and it would
be pedantic to exclude places known to have been viable
burghs at this time, simply because the label burgus in
baronia (or regalitate) is not affixed to them in a con-
1 In citing the charter of 1475 (for which see infra, note 4) the
Municipal Corporation Commissioners (in Local Reports, ii, 73) styled
Hamilton a ‘ burgh of regality ’, but that charter says nothing of the sort,
while the charter of 1548/9 says, burgus in baronia perprius fuit; cf.
R.M.S., iv, 270.
2 These include 24 baronial grants incidentally creating burghs in
barony, as well as the six erections of liberi burgi mentioned supra, p. xlii,
note 1. They also include re-erections, in the new style, of six of the
ancient ecclesiastical and baronial burghs noted previously—Whithorn
(1459), Sanquhar (1484), Newburgh in Buchan (1509), Langton (1510),
Crawford (1511) and Kirkintilloch (1526). They exclude the numerous
confirmations of the period.
3 These are Auchterhouse (1497), Belliehill (1500), Auchinleck (1507),
Kildrummy (1509), Scrabster (1527), Saltcoats (1529), Newbigging, in
Auchtertool parish (1541), Tranent (1542) and Rosemarkie (1554)—some
of them with great seal charters long afterwards, some entirely without
such deeds.
4 On 23 October 1475 James, lord Hamilton, gave certain lands cmn-
munitati et balliuis burgi mei de Hammilton : original charter penes Burgh
Librarian (to whom the editor is indebted for a facsimile copy of this and
the 1548/9 charter). This was, of course, no charter of erection, as sug¬
gested in Hamilton Past and Present (Hamilton, 1932), 16-17. The erection
is ascribed to 1456 in O.S.A., ii, 182, in Chalmers, Caledonia, iii, 685, and
in N.S.A., Lanark, 283, but on what grounds does not appear. Cf. supra,
note 1.
6 For these three burghs, see supra, p. xliii.