Becoming a royal burgh was huge development in Glasgow's history

The National

20-05-2025

At one time or another, they all became official burghs with trading privileges and governance that greatly benefited them. I still have Edinburgh to write about, but you will find it also conforms to the formula and Glasgow certainly did.
As I wrote last week, we may be celebrating Glasgow's 850th 'birthday' this year, but the anniversary is only that of Glasgow's elevation to royal burgh status in 1175, whereas I date the foundation of Glasgow by St Mungo to 543.
Make no mistake, becoming a royal burgh was a huge development in Glasgow's history, and it is entirely correct that the 850th anniversary should be celebrated.
As I showed in my first piece on the city's ancient history, royal patronage is found from the sixth-century reign of King Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde. But when that ancient kingdom was subsumed into Alba, the then-name of Scotland, in the 11th century, afterwards Glasgow looked to the kings of Scots for support and got it.
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Yet it was not a king but a prince who first recognised the potential of Glasgow and gave the city its first serious status. Prince David was the son of King Malcolm Canmore and Queen (later Saint) Margaret. He was the last of Canmore's five sons to ascend the throne and I believe him to be the greatest monarch in Scottish history.
Historians refer to the 'Davidian Revolution' as King David I totally transformed Scotland, introducing the feudal system and governance driven by nobles he imported from the Continent and England.
Before he became king, however, he was Prince of Cumbria and he recognised Glasgow as the religious centre of his province, which stretched from Loch Lomond to the south of the Lake District. Consequently, he bestowed huge importance on Glasgow, appointing his own tutor, John, as Bishop of Glasgow.
Regular readers will know that I always try to acknowledge my sources, and no serious student of Glaswegian history can ignore the magisterial History Of Glasgow by Robert Renwick and Sir John Lindsay, which was published in an updated version in 1921. Both men were town clerks and thus had a great advantage for any historian – namely access to the records of the city dating back centuries.
What a story they had to tell, and I have relied greatly on their History for this account, which covers the period up until 1800.
David became king of Scots on the death of his brother Alexander I in 1124. Renwick and Lindsay are in no doubt about how important David and his grandson King William, the Lion or Lyon, were to Glasgow.
As you might expect from town clerks, Renwick and Lindsay go on at some length about the charters and benefices given by David and William to Glasgow's church, and rightly so as these are the foundation documents of Glasgow's religious and political history.
King David, who reigned until 1153, reorganised all of Scotland's bishoprics, and it is a very important point in Glasgow's development that he not only confirmed the town as a bishopric but also gave it lands – at what are now Partick and Govan – to support the new bishop, former tutor John.
More privileges were given to the fledgling town, where Bishop John had begun a cathedral on the site of St Mungo's cell, but nevertheless Glasgow was still second in importance in the 1150s to the burgh most favoured by David (below) to the south of the Clyde, namely Rutherglen.
That order of precedence began to change, but only after Glasgow had been sacked in the early 1160s by Somerled, the mighty Norse-Gaelic warrior who was Lord of the Isles.
In 1164, Somerled mounted a full-scale invasion with the probable intention of unseating King Malcolm IV, and he headed his army to Glasgow again.
This time, however, he was defeated and slain at the Battle of Renfrew – thanks in no small part to the intervention of Bishop Herbert of Glasgow. Renwick and Lindsay wrote: 'A cleric cut off the head of Somerled and gave it to the bishop, who ascribed the victory to St Kentigern.'
Herbert's successor-but-one was Bishop Jocelin – I have seen different spellings of his name but I am sticking to Jocelin. After Mungo himself, Jocelin was probably the most important bishop in Glasgow's early history, as it was he who obtained from King William the Lion a charter confirming Glasgow as a burgh with numerous trading and governance advantages.
This happened sometime between 1175 and 1178 – the date is uncertain as the original charter has long since been lost. Jocelin enjoyed the favour of King William, for whom he acted as chaplain, and who admired his opposition to the attempts by English bishops to make the Scottish church hierarchy answerable to the See of York.
The king gave Jocelin and Glasgow a huge privilege – it was the first burgh to have an annual 'fair', which was a combination of a large trading market and a holiday. Though much changed, the Glasgow Fair continues to this day.
Jocelin is also famed as the bishop who built Glasgow Cathedral in stone. It actually took centuries to complete but Jocelin made the start.
For the history of the early years of the second millennium in Glasgow, we have to rely on chronicles written far away from Glasgow, and usually much later than the events portrayed, for our basic information about the development of the city.
Two of the most detailed accounts are the Chronicle Of Melrose and the works of Andrew of Wyntoun, but while the former was almost contemporaneous, the latter was not produced until the late 14th century.
Wyntoun, a monk, wrote in poetry, including his eight-volume 'Orygynale Cronykil' of Scotland from which we learn: 'A thowsand a hundyr foure scor and ane Fra Jhesu Cryst had manhed tane, Joce, than Byschape off Glasgw. Rowmyt the kyrk off Sanct Mongw.'
Which translates to mean that in 1181, Bishop Jocelin tore down the old church and began the new one that would become the Cathedral. It suffered a disastrous fire in 1195 but Jocelin was determined to finish it.
Put this information together with the Chronicle Of Melrose's statement that in 'AD 1197, Joceline, bishop of Glasgow, dedicated his cathedral church, which he had built anew, upon Sunday, the day before the nones of July, in the 24th year of his episcopate,' and you have proof that Jocelin got the cathedral built and dedicated before his death in 1199.
Glasgow was developing as a township with wooden houses and paved streets – Rottenrow is said to have been the first formal street in Glasgow. As people flocked to the growing burgh with its burgeoning religious institutions housing many monks and friars, so buildings began to line the streets.
Renwick and Lindsay tell us: 'Ports or gates were placed at the entrances to the principal streets, with the view not only of facilitating the collection of burgh customs but also of keeping out unwelcome visitors, especially in times of pestilence.
'In the upper part of the town were the Rottenrow port, North or Stable-green port and Drygate port, the last-named being erected at the bridge over the Molendinar burn.
'In the streets branching from the market cross, and at short distances from this centre (thus indicating the restricted area over which buildings extended), ports were placed in the Walkergait, Trongait and Gallowgait.
"Occasionally, ports were removed to new sites so as to include building extensions, but latterly, under changed conditions, the ports became unnecessary for their original purposes, and were one by one removed as obstructions of street traffic.'
The alert among you will have spotted that Glasgow was missing one of the key elements of the development of our cities, namely a fortification. Indeed, there was no specific building such as a fort of Glasgow in the medieval period, but there was some kind of fortification at the site of Crookston Castle – not far from Pollok Country Park – which was developed by the Stewarts of Darnley in the 1400s on the site of the first castle.
It may have been Bishop Jocelin who built the other fortification in medieval Glasgow, namely the Bishop's Castle, also known as Glasgow Castle and the Bishop's Palace.
It was erected at some time in the 1100s on the land where Glasgow Royal Infirmary now stands, and though its chief use was as residence for the Bishop, it was recognised as a castle with a garrison by 1258 when it was mentioned in a charter.
The Bishop's Castle fell into disrepair after the Reformation of 1560 and was levelled, but that was long after it played an important role in the Wars of Independence.
Glasgow's role in the conflict is exemplified by Bishop Robert Wishart, counsellor and friend to Robert the Bruce. Wishart, along with Robert the Bruce, had made the Capitulation of Irvine in July 1297, and had promised not to take arms against the English.
Yet two months later, the bishop was actively assisting the uprising of William Wallace and Sir Andrew Murray, and seems to have fought in the victory over the English at Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297.
That same year Wallace recaptured the Bishop's Castle from the English, but he had less luck on a future visit to Glasgow when he was captured in 1305 at what is now Robroyston.
Wishart had himself been captured and imprisoned for three years in Roxburgh Castle, but in 1299, Pope Boniface VIII wrote to England's King Edward I ('Longshanks'), telling him to release the bishop and restore him to his Glasgow see.
Wishart reneged on his oath of fealty to Longshanks and in 1306 he played a vital role in Robert the Bruce becoming King of Scots – at Glasgow he gave Robert absolution for the murder of John Comyn, and then presided over the Bruce's coronation at Scone.
He also committed his diocese to support the new king, but paid for that by being captured by the English and imprisoned for eight years, only getting out after the Battle of Bannockburn.
The 14th century was notable for several outbreaks of plague in the town, which curtailed its development as an important trading centre and port.
There had been a wooden bridge over the Clyde, the first Glasgow Bridge, but in 1410 this was replaced by a stone arched bridge.
In 1451, with the town growing rapidly in importance, wealth and population, Bishop William Turnbull approached King James II about creating a university. Pope Nicholas V issued the necessary bull, and the University of Glasgow is now the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world.
The Reformation of 1560 affected Glasgow as much as any place in Scotland, and when the Protestant Lords sided against Mary, Queen of Scots, it was at Langside in Glasgow on May 13, 1568, that she made her final stand, only to lose and flee to imprisonment in England.
Her son James VI brought about the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and just over a century later, despite riots in the streets of the city against it, the Act of Union's boost to mercantile trade transformed Glasgow's fortunes, which eventually made it the Second City of the British Empire.
That, however, is a whole different story for another time and place.