peeblesshire-1967-vol-1/03_047

Transcription

INTRODUCTION: GENERAL

being a new foundation and may probably be ascribed to David I, at the end of whose reign it
first appeared in the records. After the erection of the new royal burgh the earlier settlement on
the other side of the Eddleston Water would in course of time come to be known as the "old
town", but it remained a place of some importance, for its two churches in turn served both
burgh and parish until the end of the 18th century. ¹ A close parallel to the early history of
Peebles occurs at Selkirk, where a vetus villa lying close to the River Ettrick was superseded in
or after the 12th century by a burgh situated beside a royal castle to which it evidently owed its
origin. ²
The later development of Peebles is set out in considerable detail in J. W. Buchan's History
of Peeblesshire, and for the purposes of this Inventory it will be sufficient simply to draw atten-
tion to some of the principal factors in the town's history; the topographical development of
the burgh is discussed under No. 539.
Peebles never became a place of any great political importance. Although a royal burgh and
the head town of a sheriffdom by the 12th century, Peebles was not a site of great strategical
significance and its royal castle (No. 523), after playing a very minor part in the Wars of Inde-
pendence, disappeared during the 14th century. Nevertheless, the town was not sufficiently
secluded to escape periodic visitations from beyond the Border, being burnt by English armies
on at least three occasions between the end of the 14th century and the middle of the 16th
century. Lacking effective protection from the castle, the town had to rely on its own defences,
which at first comprised no more than the continuous "heid dykes" of the burgess tofts,
punctuated by fortified gateways or "ports", but which from about 1574 until about the middle
of the 18th century comprised a properly designed town-wall (No. 544). The upkeep of these
defences, together with the maintenance of the town's three main bridges, one over the Tweed
(No. 630) and two over the Eddleston Water, made continual demands upon the slender
financial resources of the burgh.
Occasional royal visits to Peebles are on record from the 12th century onwards, for the
burgh lay close to the favoured hunting-grounds of Ettrick Forest. Such visits are known to have
been particularly frequent in the 16th century, when hunting excursions were often combined
with punitive expeditions designed to put down lawlessness and disorder in neighbouring
parts of the Borders, while at the same period the town sometimes served as a mustering point
for armies preparing to meet English raids. The Union of the Crowns and the pacification of
the Borders gave the burgh at least some respite from the constant threat of invasion, although
a detachment of Cromwell's army occupied the town for some months during the Civil War,
and a small body of Highlanders encamped there in 1745.
Almost nothing is known about trade in medieval Peebles, but the burgh's charters of
privileges contained the usual clauses stipulating a certain number of annual fairs together with
a weekly market. The shrine at the Cross Kirk must, however, have been a useful source of
revenue to the burgh, being "lang syne verie celebrate throuch frequent and oft peregrina-
tione"; ³ pilgrimages, in fact, continued until the early 17th century (cf. No. 480). Such trade
as there may have been was probably centred upon the traditional Tweeddale products of

1 The burgh also contained a chapel, founded in the third quarter
of the 14th century and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary,
but this appears to have gone out of ecclesiastical use at the
Reformation. Peebles Chrs., 8; Buchan, Peeblesshire, ii, 187.
2 Inventory of Selkirkshire, p. 11.
3 Bishop Leslie, The Historie of Scotland (1578), S.T.S. ed., i, 19.

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