The burghs used to have very curious arrangements amongst themselves: thus, the statute Ell was kept in Edinburgh; Linlithgow had charge of the standard Firlot; Lanark of the Stoneweight; while the regulation _Pint-stoup_ was confided to Stirling. A special measure for coal, for service in the customs, was the _Chalder of Culross_. The burgh of Peebles had, from old time, the privilege of seizing ‘all light weights, short ellwands, and [Sidenote: 1691.] other insufficient goods, in all the fairs and mercats within the shire of Teviotdale.’ They complained, in 1696, of the Earl of Traquair having interfered with their rights, and a committee was appointed to deal with his lordship on the subject.[62] To these notices it may be added that the northern burgh of Dingwall, which is now a handsome thriving town, was reduced to so great poverty in 1704 as not to be able to send a commissioner to the Convention. ‘There was two shillings Scots of the ten pounds then divided amongst the burghs, added to the shilling we used formerly to be in the taxt roll [that is, in addition to the one shilling Scots we formerly used to pay on every hundred pounds Scots raised for general purposes, we had to pay two shillings Scots of the new taxation of ten pounds then assessed upon the burghs], the stenting whereof was so heavy upon the inhabitants, that a great many of them have deserted the town, which is almost turned desolate, as is weel known to all our neighbours; and there is hardly anything to be seen but the ruins of old houses, and the few inhabitants that are left, having now no manner of trade, live only by labouring the neighbouring lands, and our inhabitants are still daily deserting us.’ Such was the account the town gave of itself in a petition to the Convention of Burghs in 1724.[63] Though Dingwall is only twenty-one and a half miles to the northward of Inverness, so little travelling was there in those days, that scarcely anything was known by the one place regarding the other. It is at this day a subject of jocose allusion at Inverness, that they at one time sent a deputation to _see_ Dingwall, and inquire about it, as a person in comfortable circumstances might send to ask after a poor person in a neighbouring alley. Such a proceeding actually took place in 1733, and the report brought back was to the effect, that Dingwall had no trade, though ‘there were one or two inclined to carry on trade if they had a harbour;’ that the place had _no prison_; and for want of a bridge across an adjacent lake, the people were kept from both kirk and market.[64] [Sidenote: JULY 23.] Licence was granted by the Privy Council to Dr Andrew Brown to print, and have sole right of printing, a treatise he had written, entitled _A Vindicatorie Schedule about the New Cure of Fevers_.[65] [Sidenote: 1691.]