Scotland under her early kings, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b a history of the kingdom to the close of the thirteenth centuryRobertson, Eben William
History
Scotland under her early kings, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b a history of the kingdom to the close of the thirteenth century
Robertson, Eben William
Scotland -- History -- To 1603
Amongst the innovations introduced by the Normans, it may be read in
the Saxon Chronicle how “they wrought castles throughout the land,”
novelties to the people of the country, who seem to have retained
much of that old Germanic aversion to castles which is traceable in
the Frison law against building stone walls above a certain height;
and accordingly from this time the Scots no longer swept the country
in their invasions to the gates of Durham, but were stopped at Werk,
Norham, and other feudal strongholds which they were obliged to invest,
or if they advanced further into the country, to blockade. The royal
castle was now attached to the royal burgh, and its garrison provided
by the knights who held their lands by the tenure of castle-guard; the
neighbouring gentry probably, differing little from the thegns who in
earlier times had been bound to keep the burgh in repair. The name of
Burgher henceforth undoubtedly belonged only to the actual possessors
of property within the walls, the bulk of whom had probably from the
earliest period of their location within burgh formed the commercial
part--the Twyhyndmen, as the Upland thegns were the Twelfhyndmen--of
the community. It was the Anglo-Norman Burgh, with its feudal castle,
and its civic population distinct and separate from the garrison,
which was the model of the burghs established, or confirmed, by David
beyond the Tweed. It may be doubted whether any free communities
engaged in commerce, and occupying walled towns, were in existence
much before this reign even in the Lothians, though the germs of such
societies may have existed at Scone, Edinburgh, Stirling, and other
places, which were of a certain importance at that early period. Had
there been burghs or walled towns in any part of Saxon Northumbria
before the close of the eleventh century, the invading Scots would
have surely been checked before they reached the gates of Durham;
the unopposed incursion of the Second Constantine as far as the Tees
marking apparently the non-existence, in that quarter, of any walled
town in the middle of the tenth century, capable of arresting the
progress of a hostile force. As the sees of Glasgow and St. Andrews
may be regarded as the models left by David for the regulation of the
other Scottish bishoprics, so the _Hanse_ or community of the
Four Burghs of Roxburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh, and Stirling, was the
leading commercial association of the same reign, all other burghs as
they grew into existence conforming to its rules and ordinances; and as
the _Hanse_ was composed of four burghs, so each Burgh seems to
have been originally divided into four Wards--in strict accordance with
the theory which divided in a similar way the great rural association
of the shire into four quarters. Over every Ward was placed a Bailie,
a type of the rural “Mair of the Quarter,” and sometimes known, like
the President of the Frison Quarter, as the _Ferthyngman_; the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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