Series 3 > Early records of the Burgh of Aberdeen

INTRODUCTION
XXXVll
or the new site to which new men are to be attracted,
becomes a ‘ burgh ’ only by a definite legal ‘ act ’ of the
king conferring that status upon it1—probably at first
given by the fourteenth-century Jean le Long, cited in Petit-Dutaillis,
Studies Supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional History, i, 77, note) likewise
led to the rise of a burgh beside a monastery or episcopal seat. The reli¬
gious foundation would encourage a cluster of merchants partly by peace
and stability, and partly by the traffic of worshippers, pilgrims and visitors
of high and low estate ; while the religious foundation, in turn, would be
interested in a market-centre for its lands. The development, both ways,
is to be seen at work in William’s grant to Kelso, whereby the men in the
adjoining settlement were granted leave to buy fuel, timber and corn from
visiting merchants on any day except that of the market at Roxburgh,
and to sell bread, ale and flesh at their windows (Kelso, i, No. 13 ; ii,
No. 387). So the burghs of the Canongate, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Arbroath,
Newburgh (Lindores) and others take their place, but a different place,
with Edinburgh, Stirling, Berwick, Roxburgh and others of the king’s
burghs. The former are ‘ abbatial ’ or ‘ episcopal ’ burghs ; their superior
is the monastery or the cathedral chapter, and not the king.
Soon, in a like way, the king may erect the villa of a lay lord into a
burgh ; and later we hear of the ‘ burgh of barony ’ and the ‘ burgh of
regality ’ (but see S.H.R., xxviii, 157-160). See also, infra, p. xlii, note 3.
But the ‘ burgh ’ is always clearly distinct from any already existing
villa. So ‘ Dunfermline citra aquam ’ is distinguished from the 4 burgus of
Dunfermline ’ (Dunfermline, No. 1). There had to be a clear distinction
between those who enjoyed the privileges of a burgh and those who did
not. Similarly, in Flanders, at Arras, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and St. Omer,
a distinction was made between the old civitas or castrum and the novus
burgus built adjacent thereto ; and at Ghent, even in the middle of the
thirteenth century, those living in the portus Gandensis were called
4 burgesses ’ while those living in other parts of Ghent were not (Des Marez,
Etude sur la propriety fonciire dans les villes du moyen Age et specialement
en Flandre, Gand, 1898, pp. 9 et seq., 87 et seq., 185-186).
So we may find burghs in juxtaposition—Aberdeen and Old Aberdeen
(though Old Aberdeen was the later episcopal burgh); Edinburgh and the
Canongate—just as Selkirk Regis was distinguished from Selkirk Abbatis
(Kelso, ii, pp. 460, 462), though then neither was a burgh. But there would
appear to be no Scottish parallel to Hereford, in England, where there was
a French borough and an English borough (English Hist. Rev., xv, 305,307),
or to Caen, in France, where there were three boroughs in the one centre,
each with its own separate administration and its own court (H. Legras,
Le Bourgage de Caen, Paris, 1911, pp. 28-31 and frontispiece map).
Finally, it is to be noted that in France, according to Beaumanoir, no
one could at first erect 4 vile de commune . . . sans 1’assentement du Roi ’
(Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Salmon, ii, 266, No. 1517), but in England,
on the other hand, a vill with a market could apparently be erected into
a borough, in the sense of receiving a charter of privileges from a lord,
without the king’s leave being necessarily sought and obtained (Ballard
and Tait. British Borough Charters, 1216-1307, Intro., Ixvi).
1 Thus Arbroath is given leave hdbendi burgum (Arbroath, Vetus, No. 100).
Similarly Glasgow (Glasgow, i. No. 40).
The contrast between the legal burgus and the physical settlement itself,
the villa, is possibly suggested in such phrases as burgus ville predicts
(Melrose, ii, No. 372). Again, in 1379, when the bailies of the burgus of
Inverkeithing rendered account at exchequer they were allowed a remission