Series 3 > Ayr Burgh accounts, 1534-1624

INTRODUCTION
XXV
haill communite survived into the seventeenth century as
an emergency measure.1 Thus in most burghs a standing
council seems to have evolved during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries from variously named ad hoc com¬
mittees and from special officials like liners, ale-tasters and
flesh-prisers—all of whom would be, in effect, named by
the bailies, perhaps with the approval and acclaim of the
haill town.
It was, therefore, no very ancient institution that was
affected by the Act of 1469, nor was a pure democracy
superseded by an oligarchy. The Act ordained that, to
eschew tumults, the old council should choose the new, and
both together elect the magistrates and officers; one
member of each craft should have voice in the elections.2
Though the Act was not immediately effective in all
burghs,3 it became the basis of all the later burgh setts.
Parliament and Convention confirmed the trend to
uniformity by enacting that magistrates should be sub¬
stantial merchant-burgesses,4 that part of the old council
should be re-elected,5 and that the crafts should be
represented for elections by their deacons or visitors.6
Co-option became universal, and the principle that retir¬
ing members should give the incomers the benefit of their
experience was everywhere interpreted as sanctioning
the custom of allowing a few councillors to drop out each
year and naming a corresponding number of congenial
guild-brethren to take their places. Magisterial office
(except, often, that of provost7) rotated, but generally
1 Aberd. Rees., II, 62, 334.
* A.P.S., II, 95-
3 Burgh Rees. Socy. Misc., Ixii et seq.
4 A.P.S., II, 244. Rees. Conv. R. B., I, 511.
6 A.P.S., II, 107. Rees. Conv. R. B., I, 3.
• A.P.S., II, 298.
7 Thomas Menzies of Pitfodels, Provost of Aberdeen for 28 years
(Kennedy, Annals, II, 74-5; Watt, Hist, of Aberdeenshire, 132-3), may be