[328] Leg. Burg, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 15, 17, 98, 101, 106, 107, 110, 112. Such seems to have been the real meaning of this provision—it eliminated the servile element from amongst the burgherhood. A native-man might run away from his district, but how could he take with him the property to purchase a burgage-tenement? Stock was his property, and it is difficult to conceive how he could carry the stock with him, or sell it, unknown to his lord, with all the machinery of witnesses and warrenter required for sales and purchases. But it is easy to imagine how the settlement of native-men in the towns may have been encouraged by their lords as a source of private profit. The whole trading class was once probably on such a footing, and the greater the wealth acquired by the trader, the more would he have paid for permission to remain away from his district—for he was not necessarily a slave in the modern acceptation of the word, but “inborn” to a certain district, from which he could not separate himself without his lord’s permission. He who settled in a town, and prospered in his unfree condition, if he aspired to become a free burgher, must, in all ordinary cases, have bought his freedom from his lord—as in the case of Renald prepositus of Berwick in 1247—and after enjoying his tenement for a year and a day no further claim could be raised against him. Vide Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 142. It was admission to the Guild in a Free burgh that conferred the same privileges in England. Vide Glanville, l. 5. c. 5.
[329] Leg. Burg., 3, 8, 9, 20, 47, 54, 59, 60, 67, 75, 81, 86, 94, 103. Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 159–162. The full forfeiture in Burgh amounted to 8 shillings, or one-quarter of the ordinary fine of 8 cows—the half leod-gild—levied in the country districts. Washing the feet, in the olden time, implied an intention of stopping and accepting hospitality; and the Dustyfoot got his name from passing onwards. The follower of the Celtic lord was sometimes known as the Gillie-wetfoot, from wearing no shoes or stockings, a practice to which the Scottish peasantry long clung—an incidental testimony of the prevalence of the native element amongst that class.
[330] Leg. Burg. 58. Assize Dav. 3.
[331] Leg. Burg. 3, 33, 46, 55, 102. Mag. Chart. ii. 29. Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 87, 88.
[332] Leg. Burg. 99. This is clearly shown by Mr. Innes in his “Scotland in the Middle Ages,” p. 154.
[333] Leg. Burg. 13. Appendix F.
[334] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 24. He is quite borne out by the Chartularies. Malmesbury gives a description of Ireland in the reign of Henry the First, which, with a due allowance for the prejudices of the historian, was probably not inapplicable at one time to Scotland. “Ita pro penuria imo pro inscientia cultorum, jejunum omnium bonorum solum, agrestem et squalidam multitudinem Hibernensium extra urbes producit; Angli vero et Franci, cultiore genere vitæ, urbes nundinarum commercio inhabitant.”—Gest. Reg., l. 5, sec. 409.
[335] Counts and judges (Scabini) were to name the law they would live by, and judge accordingly—“Comites et judices confiteantur qua lege vivere debent, et secundum ipsam judicent,” Pertz. Leg., vol. 1, Capit. p. 101, sec. 48. So the Romans were to choose the law they would live by—Do. Hlot. Const. Rom., ad an 824, p. 239–40. Hundred Court and Tithing Court, Scabinus and Sagibaro, all the machinery of the free Salic law, gradually disappeared, until the government of the people, whose very name was once synonymous with freedom, was expressed in the words “l’etat c’est moi.” It must always be recollected that our Third Estate differs in a most important particular from the Tiers Etat, or Bourgeoisie, of the Continent. It includes the Minores Barones, the representatives of the Meliores pagenses or Probi homines; to whose keeping the free institutions of our ancestors were committed long before the existence of a Burgherhood.
[336] Fordun, l. 4, c. 43. Appendix E. Welsh Gwerth.
[337] Leg. Ini, 23. The Wealh-gerefa occurs in the Saxon Chronicle, and had no reference to Wales. The meaning of Seneschal and Mareschal has been generally sought in the Teutonic dialects; but perhaps they are to be numbered amongst those composite words so often met with. March is certainly more Celtic than Teutonic; and Sen is very like the Celtic word for Senior. Steel-bow, that mysterious appellation for ferreum perus, is another instance in which the first part is Teutonic, the last the Celtic Bo, or cattle.