The royal burgh was under the rule of its chosen magistrates, but the royal castle was under the charge of the Constable appointed by the king, this office often becoming hereditary in the family on which it was originally conferred. Forty days were fixed as the period of service on castle-guard, which, like everything else towards the decline of the Feudal system, was gradually compounded for by a money payment to the Constable; who, in other words, performed the service with his own retainers, and exacted the usual fine, or its equivalent, for the non-attendance of the party bound by the tenure of his land to undertake such service. This custom, however, had scarcely grown into general use in the reign of David, for it was one of the provisions of Magna Charta that no Constable should summon a knight to perform castle-guard whilst he was serving in the king’s army, nor exact the fine for non-attendance when he was ready to perform the service in person, or by proper substitute. Freedom from arrest was one of the privileges attached to castle-guard, as well as to service in the king’s “host,” lasting, like the similar privilege of Parliament, which still exists, for the whole period of service; the same exemption being extended to all who were in attendance on their duties in the county, or who were sent to the burgh to buy provisions for their lord. The Bailie of the castle was empowered to borrow of a burgher goods to the amount of forty pence, and for a period not exceeding forty days; but it was at the option of the lender to increase the amount of the loan beyond that sum, or to defer the time of payment beyond the forty days. At Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, a “castellan” was entitled to demand from a burgher pigs, geese, or chickens, “for the king’s need;” but if the burgher could close his door no entry might be forced--his house was his castle, according to the well-known English saying--but the castellan might catch and kill any of the burgher’s stock that he found beyond bounds, paying the price at which the neighbourhood assessed the articles. The probable object of both these regulations was to ensure the garrison a fair supply of necessaries without entailing too heavy a burden upon the townsmen. In all disputes, if a castellan complained of wrong, he was to claim his right in the Court of the Burgh; and if the burgher considered himself aggrieved he was to carry his plaint to the Castle gate. On these occasions there appears to have been a mixed jury, as in the trial of an alien at the present day, “the peers” of each party furnishing a portion; such at least seems to have been the case in the following trial in the castle of Dumfries for the homicide of a burgher, the party charged with the offence being an Upland-man, probably on castle-guard, as he was tried in the place appointed for appeals against a castellan. Adam, the miller of Dumfries, meeting Richard, son of Robert Elias’s son, in the churchyard of St.