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272 Geo. Neilson
marked with an asterisk. The pitiful survivals thus seen in
conjunction with the extinct enactments are truly creatures of
a vanished world, although, as Mr. Renwick says, they '
illustrate
the pleasing feature of continuity which pervades the worthier
institutions of our country.' Prefixed to the text is a very
short sketch of the legislative system as applied to burghs and
trade privilege and the beginnings of foreign trade.
One suggestive remark is made which touches the historical
famous as
origin of the collective jurisdiction of the Four Burghs,
a distinctive organisation of early Scotland.
Referring to this
Court, which in
early times was held at Haddington, and is
regarded as the kernel from which was developed the Convention
of Royal Burghs, Mr. Renwick states it as '
not improbable that
the original organisation was partly of a military type, just
as the early individual "burg" was a stronghold before it was
transformed into a market town.' Hence, by analogy from
the free hanse of burghs north of the Grampians, the
Hanseatic league of the Baltic cities, and the far older Anglo-
Danish confederation of the Five Boroughs in the Danelagh,
he hazards the conjecture * that ancient Northumbria when the
Forth was its northern boundary established its four chief
strongholds in the north on a somewhat similar basis.' It is
a
speculation, to a great extent prehistoric, but as a
conjecture
will deserve consideration among the other clues to the enigma of
the burghs. With this important suggestion, which is obviously
influenced by recent discussions of the *
garrison theory,' the
Scottish Burgh Records Society in one of its last volumes may be
said to return to the problem indicated as the motive of the first
volume forty-two years ago, viz. '
to shew the origin of our
Burghs and of the Burghal spirit.' And no one will dispute the
learning and industry, fidelity and success with which the latest
editor has interpreted the aims of the founders of the Society
as expressed by Cosmo Innes not only to show those
origins,
but to follow and depict the effect of the institutions of the
burghs ' on the morals and character, the taste, feeling and mode
of life, of their
people.'
The Peebles Extracts are in more senses than one a tribute to
the little border burgh. Not only does the volume show the
Society returning to it, as a typical community, for the purpose
of completing the earlier selection of extracts for 1165-1710,
published in 1872. In the introduction Sir William Chambers
said that that book *
'
owed its existence to Mr. Renwick.
mainly