The Auldest Tung

Boundaries I – Time and Town

Nevertheless claims are claims and in refuting them evidence has to be offered with as good a place as any, not least because of simplicity, David’s first contribution to the burgh as a new phenomenon. He dealt only in one burgh-type, royal, which he created in batches. The first in 1124 were Berwick-upon-Tweed, up-river Roxburgh, so as borders as it can get, and Aberdeen. Then in 1127 AD there were three more, Perth, essentially David’s capital, Cale-Anglic Edinburgh, and Stirling just north of the Carse, a decade later in 1138 AD and 1140 AD, Lowland Linlithgow and Lanark and finally between 1150 AD and his death in 1153 AD Kinghorn on the north bank at the entrance to the Forth, Peebles in The Borders once more, again Cale-Anglic Haddington, Montrose in Calefrisian Angus, Rutherglen on the Clyde and in the north, Inverness.

In fact the placements seem to have been as much strategic as commercial and to them all David might well have encouraged new inhabitants, said to have come from south of the border, no doubt some from his lands in Huntingdon and Northumbria, but also to have been French and from the Low Countries. It would have been an interesting linguistic mix but one in which English would have had no part for the simple reason that at that time it did not exist and would not in any recognisable form for another two hundred and fifty years. Rather those from England would in fact have spoken derivations of Anglic, Mercian in Huntingdon and Northumbrian, so producing little difficulty in linguistic assimilation in the Borders and the Lothians and only marginally more in immediately across the Forth, in Angus and Aberdeen. Indeed in Linlithgow, Lanark and Rutherglen, a century and half before British, and in Gaelic Inverness Anglic may well have been not weakened but strengthened. This was whilst the incoming French would have adopted whatever was the lingua franca and the Dutch and Belgians would have blended right in, indeed by speaking languages closer than even the Anglic of the era they may even have given both Cale-Anglic and now seven hundred year old Calefrisian fresh impetus.

David would be followed by by his twelve-year-old grandson, Malcolm IV, who was even less Scots than his grandfather and basically Anglo-Norman. But at twenty-four he was dead, succeeded by his equally Anglo-Norman brother, William, just a year younger, who as William I, William the Lion or William Garbh, the Wild, depending on your prospective would be on the Scottish throne for forty-nine years, dying aged seventy-two. He, at the age of forty-four, would marry Ermengarde de Beaumont, who was not even Norman-French but French-Norman, and the wedding did not come before time. She seemed to bring some sense into a political situation in Scotland, where frankly he had been making a right rickett. In 1174 AD he had lost the Battle of Alnwick to the English, had been exiled to Normandy until agreeing to sign the Treaty of Falaise, which remained in force for fifteen years, and Scotland was under Norman occupation for a year, for eastern Scotland effectively the first time for five hundred years. Then he had to deal with the threat of the Norse from Caithness and seems, with the building of castles on the Beauly and Cromarty Firths, to have if not expected then reconciled himself to more losses of the lands to the north.

However, south of his new, assumed border William would somewhat extend the burgh system, this time encouraging Anglo-French settlement but with the same linguistic caveats/realities as before. By the time of his death in 1214 AD in the north Banff and Auldearn had been added to the royal burgh list, perhaps as much to discourage the Moray Norse as anything, in the south Dumfries and Ayr, the first in the East Neuk of Fife at Crail, whilst in Angus there was Forfar and Dundee. But still there were otherwise none in Buchan and it was now three quarters of a millennium since the arrival of Calefrisian.

And it was at this point after the first rushes that almost all went quiet on the burgh front. Perhaps like free-ports they had proved not as commercially advantageous as had been imagined. Only one more, Inverkeithing, was added over the next century and in the next century and a half only four, Selkirk, Cupar in Fife and, perhaps as again a buttress against Norse pressure, Elgin and Forres. It seems too of subsequent monarchs Alexander I had no interest, Alexander II virtually none, Margaret, the Maid of Norway again nothing, for her the problem of the north resolved, Robert the Bruce a passing flirtation as described, and David II none once more. In fact the only matters of note in the interim have been the creation in 1341 AD of the first non-royal and perhaps purely commercial burgh in trading Calefrisia at Inverbervie and that already we have reached 1371 AD and Calefrisian has had its nine hundredth birthday.

Indeed it was only with the accessions of James VI first to the Scottish throne, and then twenty years in to the English throne could there be said to be both any real pick up of pace. From 1588 and before his move to London he would grant nine royal charters, some upgrades from non-royal, eight in Fife and the Forth and there would be the foundation of eighteen new non-royals, thirteen in Calefrisia including Fraserburgh and Peterhead. Moreover after that London move there would three more royals including Glasgow and St. Andrews, and eleven non-royal, twelve and twenty-nine in total. But still there was no royal charter north of Aberdeen and east of Banff. Nor has there ever been.