SCOTLAND’S CASTLES

Shannon News, 23 April 1926, Page 3

SCOTLAND’S CASTLES

The medieval castle in Scotland, which is a relic of William the Conqueror and the French feudal system, will be the subject of the series for- the year of the Rhlnd lectures in archaeology. The first- of these was delivered on. February 17 in the music classroom of Edinburgh University by Mr W. Mackay Mackenzie, M.A., F.S.A.Scot., secretary of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, who opened with the mote and bailey castle. The outstanding feature of these early castles was the earthern mound or mote surrounded by a ditch and having up.on its summit the palisade surrounding a tower of wood. Normally there was an attached enclosure also having its palisade and its own ditch. This was known as the bailey, and the complete plan m this form was the mote-anct-bailey castle. Such was the type of castle introduced into Scotland by the Norman immigration in the reigns of David, Malcolm TV., an d William Die Lion.

As in other countries, its first appearance provoked revo't, particularly in districts like Galloway and Moray. It signified a revolutionary break in the ancient social and administrative organisations. In the reign of Alexander 11. the men of Moray, in a rising, were recorded to have burnt x°°den. fortifications in that province. Typical examples of such castle earthworks were still to be seen tu the Mote of Hawick, the Bass of Inverurie, and the Eoune of Invcrnochty, in Bracmar. But a complete survey of examples in Scotland nad only ben begun. In Galloway and Dumfriesshire, however, sixty examples of the mote-and-bailey type had been recorded. Many were comparatively small in size, and among' those there were no doubt mere hunting lodges.

The castle was not merely a military post. It was an institution in the feudal organisation in the country. Certain Royal castles were in the custody of Royal officials, known' as sheriffs, and the sheriffdom of a castle was called by its name. That was why most of the shires of Scotland had the name of their principal town. One way of delimiting the boundaries of a shire was to comprehend within it all lands which were held on condition of service of court —that was, membership of the Royal or Sheriff Court of Justice at the chief castlb and burgh. The history of the burgh also was intimately bound up with the castle. It, too, was a new thing, of which the core was, the market, where alone over a wide area all buying and selling had to be done. The burgh had its own rampart and palisade and ditch, and the principal elements in the population of burghs were of foreign origin, very largely Flemish. The first known burgess of the burgh of Glasgow was Randolph of Haddington, an East Eothian man. The earliest mentioned burgess of Inverness was Geoffrey Le Blund. The castle was an additional protection to those alien merchants.