Series 3 > Ayr Burgh accounts, 1534-1624

INTRODUCTION
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keeping the hills or part of a chaplain’s fee.1 Twice he
allowed himself commissioner’s expenses,2 but only once
(1589-90) did he make any considerable share of the pay¬
ments usually made by the treasurer—magistrates’ fees,
commissioners’, messengers’ and legal expenses, and poor
relief (to two, honest lyk pure men suldartis come out of
France)—as well as common works. Since in that year the
master of work had received over £211 from various
quarters,3 it is clear that this allocation of burghal finance
was wholly abnormal.
(c) The Provost
The provost had normally no fiscal responsibilities ; it
is true that, during the first five years of the Ayr
Accounts, his compt was entered, but this was done in
respect of the rents he owed the town, not because of his
tenure of office. It was only for exceptional transactions
that the provost intromitted with burghal monies; three
such transactions are recorded during this time at Ayr.
In 1597-98 Provost David Fergushill, instead of the
treasurer, received the mill-ferme (£225), and this sum he
disbursed on repairs at the mill, the quay and elsewhere,
on legal affairs in Edinburgh, and for his own expenses as
commissioner to Parliament.4 The building of the Hospital
was begun in 1604,5 but mostly carried out under the
supervision of Provost Fergushill (1605-06),6 who required,
to buy timber, stones and lime, and to pay the wages of the
mason, wrights, slater, smith and others, the sum of £357 ;
he therefore received two sums of money due to the town,
amounting to £273, 6s. 8d., and £100 from the kirkis silvir,
i.e. the poor’s fund. The unspent balance of more than
£15 was handed over to the kirk-session. In 1617 Provost
1 P. 108 (bis).
4 Pp- 194-5-
2 Pp. 123, 155.
5 P. 220.
Pp. 164-6.
Pp. 229-30.