were
generally prohibited from trading, and of whom dyers, fleshers and
shoemakers were forbidden to enter the gildry. Deacons, wardens and
visitors were appointed by the crafts, and the rate of wages was fixed
by the magistrates. The crafts in Scotland were frequently incorporated,
not by royal charter, but, as in the case of the cordiners of Edinburgh,
by seals of cause from the corporation. The trade history of the free
burghs is very important. Thus in 1466 the privilege of importing and
exporting merchandise was confined to freemen, burgesses and their
factors. Ships were directed to trade to the king's free burghs, there
to pay the customs, and to receive their _cocquets_ or custom-house
seals; and in 1503 persons dwelling outside burghs were forbidden to
"use any merchandise," or to sell wine or staple goods. An act of 1633,
erroneously called a _Ratification_ of the privileges of burghs,
extended these privileges of buying and selling to retail as well as
wholesale trade, but restricted their enjoyment to royal burghs.
Accordingly, in 1672, a general declaratory act was passed confirming to
the freemen in royal burghs the wholesale trade in wine, wax, silk,
dyeing materials, &c., permitting generally to all persons the export of
native raw material, specially permitting the burgesses of barony and
regality to export their own manufactures, and such goods as they may
buy in "markets," and to import against these consignments certain
materials for tillage, building, or for use in their own manufactures,
with a general permission to retail all commodities. This extraordinary
system was again changed in 1690 by an act which declared that freemen
of royal burghs should have the sole right of importing everything by
sea or land except bestial, and also of exporting by sea everything
which was not native raw material, which might be freely exported by
land. The gentry were always allowed to import for their personal
consumption and to export an equal quantity of commodities. The act
mentions that the royal burghs as an estate of the kingdom contributed
one-sixth part of all public impositions, and were obliged to build and
maintain prison-houses. Some of these trade privileges were not
abolished till 1846.

In the north of Scotland there was an association of free burghs called
the Hanse or _Ansus_; and the lord chamberlain, by his _Iter_, or
circuit of visitation, maintained a common standard of right and duties
in a