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

INTRODUCTION
Ixxxi
about the market cross of Kilpatrick, the head burgh of its
regality, in 1678, about the magistrates and tolbooth of
New Dalgarno, or Thornhill, in 1678 and again in 1684, and
about the late provost of Preston, in Kirkcudbright, in
1684.1 And, a generation later, that assiduous and in¬
formed geographer, Walter Macfarlane, noted and left on
record precise, physical details of no fewer than thirteen
small but functioning burghs of barony in Aberdeenshire
alone.2
Yet, when every allowance is made, the rate of both new
creations and casualties among the burghs of barony and
regality is equally impressive : it represents one aspect of
a strong drive by ‘ the barons ’—mostly lairds but including
a few nobles—to play a decisive part in the political
economy of their age and their country. Another facet of
the same movement is to be seen in the establishment
(generally, but not always, with statutory authority) of a
very large number of non-burghal weekly markets and
annual fairs—as many as 140 of the former and 150 of the
latter authorised or observed before 1707.3
A third branch of the barons’ post-Restoration economic
initiative turned on their determination to abridge the
claims of the royal burghs to monopolise commerce and to
advance the trading rights of their clients, the burghs of
barony. The resulting conflict between the two groups is
a well-known tale,4 which calls for only summary treat¬
ment here. The royal burghs suffered a severe defeat in
1672, when the others were allowed to export corn, cattle,
coal, salt, wool, skins, hides and other native commodities,
to import timber, iron, tar and other requirements for
1 R.P.C., 3rd ser., iii, 599 ; iv, 26-7 ; v, 573, 436 ; viii, 662 ; ix, 391.
2 Macfarlane's Geographical Collections (S.H.S., 1905), i, 4-105 ; cf.
Procs. of Royal Philos. Soc. of Glasgow, Ixxiii (1948-49), 46-7.
2 The former figure is based on an unpublished St. Andrews Univ.
B.Phil. dissertation by Mr. A. M. Carstairs on ‘ The Distribution of the
Population of Scotland, 1450-1750 ’ : he was using (and adjusting) Sir
James Marwick’s List of Markets and Fairs (1891).
4 See especially Rait, Parliaments, 260, 262 ; Mackenzie. Scottish
Burghs, 143-53 ; Pagan, Convention of Royal Burghs, 139 et seq.