415
of Durham (e). This is the second castle of Haddingtonshire which opposed
the fatal entrance of that ambitious king into Scotland, and he now marched
forward through the three Lothians to Falkirk, where he again triumphed
over a divided people on the 22nd of July 1298, upon a well-fought field (/).
Yet many a brave man still remained unsubdued, and Edward was induced,
during the year 1303, to penetrate to the utmost verge of Moray before he
could consider himself as superior of Scotland. In 1305, he endeavoured by his
well-known ordinance to settle the government of a distracted country, when
the domestic rule of this constabulary was placed in the hands of Ive de Adeburgh,
as sheriff of the shires of Edinburgh, Linlithgow, and Haddington.
The accession of Robert Bruce in 1306, to the Scottish throne, made a great
change in the affairs of Haddingtonshire and of Scotland. Robert I. gave to
his town and people of Haddington, a grant of their liberties, political and
commercial (g). Robert II. appears to have granted the burgh of Haddington
" to the burgesses and community thereof/' for payment of £15 sterling
yearly into his exchequer (h). We may here see the ancient manner of
England, by which a town in the royal demesne was converted into a freer
form of a town, in firm. There were no representatives of towns admitted into
the Scottish parliament during the Scoto-Saxon period. The epoch of their
(e) Lord Hailes' An., i., 256, who says that from the ruins this castle seems to have been a mighty
fabric.
(/) Ib., 261.
(g) Roberts. Index, 10. In 1371, Robert II. confirmed a grant of the baillies and community of the
town of Haddington, to Hugh de Selkyrk. Ib., 93. This intimation shows what was the regimen in
older times of this ancient burgh.
(h) Ib., 132. Before that epoch in the affairs of Haddington, its revenues had been saddled
with several pensioners, who were, no doubt, troublesome riders. Robert I. granted to the abbot
of Melrose an annuity out of the customs of Haddington. Ib., 3. David II. granted a yearly pension
of £20 to Alexander Cockburn, out of the great customs of the same burgh. Ib., 43-69. David II.
gave an annuity to Angus Dunbar out of the customs of Aberdeen and Haddington. Ib., 53. In
1381, Robert II. granted to James de Douglas, knight, the son of William, the first Earl Douglas,
a pension of 200 marks sterling, "pro servitio et retinentia suis," to the king and to John, his eldest
son. Ib.? 121 ; and this curious document was printed in Hay's Vindication of Elizabeth More,
54. This pension was to be paid out of the king's great customs and other rents, within the king's
burgh of Haddington, by the hands of the king's customer and his baillies of the same burgh.
The pensioner to whom those payments were to be made at two terms yearly, as retainer to
the Stewarts, was James Douglas, who succeeded his father William, the first Earl Douglas, who died
in 1384 ; he married the Lady Isabel, one of the daughters of Robert II., the grantor, and he died
the 31st of July 1388, fighting Hotspur at Otterburn, without any issue of his marriage. Crawf.
Peer., 97.