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

INTRODUCTION
Ixxxiii
publication thereof at the revived burgh’s market cross.1
In other cases the decline had gone too far to be arrested
by the interposition of royal goodwill. On 27 February
1707 the town of Glenluce, in Wigtownshire, already erected
as a burgh of barony, was appointed to be the head burgh
of its regality, in place of the older burgh of Barnhill or
Ballinclach, now become ruinous and deserted.2 Such
checks as I have been able to apply to what is often a
confused and obscure situation suggest that some 60 once
viable burghs had allowed their rights to fall into desuetude,
leaving a total of about 160 active dependent burghs
(including 34 burghs of regality) at the time of the Union.
DECLINE AND EXTINCTION
The protracted decay, and the almost (but not quite)
total extinction, of the burgh of barony, constitute a story
which has already been told, at least in outline, elsewhere,3
so that it will here be sufficient to indicate the main causes,
stages and results of the process. In the period of 140
years following the Union, only 25 de novo erections have
been noted.4 Among these were many that can only be
termed ‘ parchment burghs ’, but some important new
municipalities did appear, such as Port Glasgow (1774),
Maxwelltown (1810), Pollokshaws (1813), Calton (Glasgow)
and Stromness (both in 1817), Lerwick (1818), Oban (1820),
Airdrie (1821), Anderston (1824) and Ardrossan (1846).
It would, however, be quite erroneous to add the viable new
burghs to the survivors at the time of the Union, and to
suppose that the total would be valid for, say, the opening
of the nineteenth century. For various reasons, the
casualties among the burghs of barony were heavier in the
eighteenth century than in any previous age.
1 R.P.C., 3rd ser., i, 258.
2 A.P.S., xi, 472, and App., 134 ; cf. Bute, Baronial Burghs, 234, and
Trans. Dumfries, and Galloway Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Soc. 3rd ser xxix
(1952), 121-2.
3 See the writer’s ‘ Scottish Burgh of Barony in Decline 1707-1908 ’
in Procs. of Royal Philos. Soc. of Glasgow, Ixxiii (1948-49), part iv nn 43-64’
Mostly in Bute, Baronial Burghs. ’