whose collection both documents were, to have it, in order to lay before this Society; but, on doing so, we found to our astonishment and regret that what I was in quest of had somehow been abstracted from the folio volume in question. I would fain hope that it may yet be found, or that a duplicate of it may even be found in some other repositories. The letter, however, which I now exhibit to you, sufficiently demonstrates its interesting character, and is, I submit to you, a very decisive "testing of the accuracy" of the statement as to what the Letter of Guildry of 1605 proceeded from, as given by Mr. Ewing, being greater and more to be depended on than that now, and for the first time, given by Mr. Crawford upon that subject.

To the other expression in the dedication, or the assertion that the 14 Incorporations constituting the Trades' House "existed while the inhabitants of Glasgow were the serfs of the Roman Catholic Archbishop," I can as ill reconcile myself. The statement is equally improper and incorrect. If it be the occupants or rentallers of the neighbouring lands, from which the Archbishopric or Church revenues were derived; whom, as I rather suppose Mr. Crawford must mean to indicate or include under the term or character of serfs, because they possessed or cultivated the lands mentioned in the "Inquisito David Principis Cumbrensis de terris ad Ecclesiam Glasguen pertinen C. A.D. 1116," of which I have now, by permission, the privilege of exhibiting the authenticated copy received from the Scots College of Paris before these documents were again abstracted or said to be lost at the time of the first French Revolution, I can also assure Mr. Crawford he is egregiously mistaken both as to any idea of such parties or occupants and possessors of the land favouring the Catholic in preference to the Reformed religion, and as to the nature of their holding or the tenure of their lands. Church vassals, or churls, as that word has been contracted, in one sense they no doubt were, and such necessarily were all the landowners in almost the whole district of Clydesdale, with the exception of those in Renfrewshire, all of whose infeftments, I may remark, gave the title by courtesy of baron, as that of laird is now elsewhere given to the owners of land, and also with the exception of those of the Hamilton, Mynto, Maxwell, Fleming, and some other military barons. And for the character of these churls in our own immediate neighbourhood at least, it may be enough for me to refer to the case of the proprietors of Lambhill, with whom our citizens have some good cause of acquaintance, although I could also refer to others who have held their lands immediately at

and after the Reformation, whose religious sentiments are well known or demonstrable. But I will here refer only to the narrative of the first charter by the Crown, taken from the original saisine, which I hold in my hands, of Mr. Hutcheson, dated 2nd January, 1595, in which it is stated that the rights of these rentallers of the Archbishopric were, "for time past the memory of man," always estimated and reputed as equally sufficient to them as if the lands had been disponed to them, although the want of regular feus or charters unfortunately did not enable them to contend against the exorbitant demands for compositions and feudal casualties with which it was the wish of King James the Sixth to enrich his favourite, the Duke of Lennox. If the term serfs, however, is to be held as applicable only to the inhabitants of Glasgow, who were engaged either in merchandise, or trade, or mechanics, but who were not landowners or Bishops' rentallers, I still equally object to the statement as applicable either to the merchants or craftsmen, or any other parties. Then, as to the existence of the fourteen Incorporated Trade Associations now constituting the Trades' House, all of whom are said to have existed during the supposed era of serfdom, it would certainly have been desirable that, instead of the most meagre simple allusions to the dates of the early charters of the Corporations of Hammermen and others, of 11th October, 1536, or 1546, or 1556; 27th February, 1558; and of 4th June, 1528; of which charters and their dates, I have no doubt, we had been favoured with copies at length of these interesting documents, which are not printed in any of the accounts or annals of Glasgow, at least that have fallen into my hands; and this regret, extends, of course, most particularly to the charter so shortly quoted from, as given to the masons on 5th October, 1057, of which I have some recollection as having, many years ago, seen a copy; but I was under the impression that it had referred rather to the mystic ties existing between the Mason Lodge of St. John's, Glasgow-which, I believe, is admittedly as old as, or older than any such in Scotland-and our Grand National Establishment, or Association, than any connection with the respected civic body called the Trades' House of Glasgow, which I had no idea whatever of apparently dating so far back as the days of Malcolm Canmore, or so long before the annexation of England to the Crown of Scotland. Then as to the latest but one of the incorporated trades-that of the Barbers. The account of this respectable body, to whose profession belonged the most popular of our Scotch poets after Burns, and many

another man of talent, and which profession, with the clergy, I believe, at a very early date, monopolised nearly all the learning and skill of Europe, begins in these terms:-"The Barbers.-The Surgeons and Barbers were united under a charter granted by King James, dated 30th November, 1559. A gift to them, under the Privy Seal in 1599, was ratified by Parliament 1672, chap. 127, Charles II." But I must take the liberty of being more than sceptical about the existence of any such charter of union, as that dated 30th November, 1559; and as to the alleged gift to the barbers, or to the supposed united trade incorporations of surgeons and barbers, in 1599, said to be ratified by Parliament in 1672, it would seem that the sketchy historian refers to the Royal Charter or grant forming the constitution of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, dated 29th November, 1599, but for the unfortunate difference of a day as to the date, and the fact that there is not one word about the union of the barbers and surgeons, or about barbers at all, in the gift or charter to which I allude. And again, it so happens that the very first authentic mention which, after considerable pains and inquiries, that I know took place in regard to the history of the surgeons and barbers, or barber-surgeons, that was to be found at Glasgow, or reference to the barbers or their craft, is dated the 22nd day of June, 1602, and is in the following somewhat naive terms, which I quote from the Act Book or Records of the Royal Faculty:-"It is statut and ordained that barbers, being ane pendecle of chyrurgerie, shall pay at their admission fortie punds Scots, and ilk yeir of 20 shilling to the puir, and limited not to midle wt any thing farder belonging to chirurgerie, under the paine of five punds toties quoties, and shall pay to the clark of the calling for his beuking threttie shilling Scots, and to the officer twel shilling."

I must also beg leave to express some doubts about the Regent Murray's gift to the Incorporation of Bakers of the ground at Partick, on which their first mill was built, in reward of the aid its members had afforded him. Of the antiquity of this corporation, and its important services to the king's troops at the time of the battle of Langside, there can be no doubt. But there is in Dr. Cleland's Annals of Glasgow, on whose authority Mr. Crawford, I presume, has relied, the account telling how, at a sumptuous entertainment or civic feast, immediately after the battle-" Having expressed his obligations to the citizens for their fidelity and bravery, and particularly to the heads of the corporation, the Regent desired to know if

in return he could be of any service to the corporation. This condescension was so unexpected that no immediate reply was given. At length Mathew Fawside, who was deacon of the bakers, thinking this a fit opportunity, informed the Regent that the corporation he represented liberally supplied the army with bread, and so forth, and that if it pleased His Highness to give the corporation a grant of the mill, it would be acknowledged as a public benefit. This oration had the desired effect, as the Regent instantly gave the corporation a grant of the mill and lands connected with it."

But, for my part, I believe as little, perhaps less of the worthy doctor's account of Deacon Mathew Fawside's oration and its effects as I do of the interesting fable of that of Ulysses seeking and obtaining the armour of Achilles, of which the doctor seems appropriately enough to have adopted the style to illustrate the eloquence or conduct of his supposed Laertian deacon after the battle of Langside; and perhaps it may be regretted, if my information on this point be correct, that in the foundation-stones of the mill last erected by the honourable Corporation at Partick, there has been deposited a plate giving the doctor's version of the acquisition of the mill and mill lands, without sufficiently inquiring into its accuracy. For, in the first place, it does not appear, so far as some inquiries have gone, that there was any such deacon of the bakers as Mathew Fawside at the time of the battle of Langside, unless, at least, he or "his father afore him," perhaps, should have actually been in arms there, in Professor Pillans' sense of the words; while it happens that there was a Deacon Mathew Fawside in the year 1663, or a few years less than a century after the battle, and the doctor's own record or series of these deacons, which he elsewhere happens to give, begins only with the year 1604. And again, it appears that about the time of "this real Mathew Fawside," an Act was obtained from the Scots Parliament, in the solicitation of which, it is probable the corporation minutes will show, he took an active and useful part, for the dissolution from the sheriffdom and annexation to the town of this mill, to

which the doctor, with great pre-historic vagueness tells us "it appears the town had also acquired some kind of right." And as we know it was the custom of early ages to confound one benefactor with another, and deify or attribute the origin of all good—real or supposed to the powers of him whose memory they last cherished; thence, I have no doubt, arose the learned doctor's mythology and the account of the persuasive eloquence of another Mathew, which Mr. Crawford seems also to have received for gospel. The real truth is, that Regent Murray, as well as King James himself, were by no means so thankful and so quick in making any reward for the services rendered at the battle of Langside, or anywhere else. Liberal enough in promises they likely, and, I believe, truly were; but it also so happens that one of the worthy gentlemen with whom my friend, I am told, now under review claims family connection, Mr. Thomas Crawford, of Jordanhill, who is most scandalously chronicled by him. as one of "the landowners in the neighbourhood who had acted with the Roman Catholic Archbishop in working the magistracy and political influence of the city," &c., and as "being Papist in heart," was certainly, as Mr. Crawford states, provost of Glasgow in the year 1577-1578; and he it was who had the merit, who, by one of the most daring and dexterous exploits recorded in our Scotch history, surprised, attacked, and took the supposed impregnable Castle of Dumbarton from Lord Fleeming, of Cumbernauld, who was holding it out for the Popish party. He also was present at the battle of Langside, and received, like the bakers, a promise of reward from their good friend Regent Murray, for his services; but the reward was not so "instantly" given. But true it is, and it was but fair that the Provost's turn should come before the Deacon's. He, after much solicitation, I believe, received from the Crown, only on 10th March, 1573, a charter of the mill and other lands in the neighbourhood of Partick, after which, I think, it is most probable that he gave the "some kind of right," which Dr. Cleland mentions, to the town of which he was provost, or perhaps exchanged the mills and mill lands for others in the neighbourhood. At all events, there is earlier and more lasting or tangible evidence of the indebtedness of the citizens of Glasgow or the neighbourhood to him, than either to Regent Murray, or that rough-spoken Presbyter, Mr. John Howie or Howison of Cambuslang, for he almost immediately evinced his good will and public spirit, and his desire to promote education, in founding the first bursary that was instituted at the College of Glasgow, by a