FOUR BOROUGHS’ COURT, an ancient Scottish court, so called because composed of delegates from four royal burghs; originally the burghs of Edinburgh, Stirling, _ Berwick, and Roxburgh; but from the year 1348, when ’the two last burghs were in the hands of the English, the burghs of Edinburgh, Stirling, Lanark, and Linlithgow. These delegates were assembled yearly at Haddington, before the Lord Chamberlain of Scotland, and formed for appeals from the burgh courts and chamberlain ayres, a court which was to the inhabitants of the burghs what the high court of parliament was to the other inhabitants of the kingdom, the highest and ultimate court of appeal.

In 1405, when the regent, Robert duke of Albany, uncle to King James I-, was lord chamberlain, a court of the four burghs was held at Stirling, where it was resolved that deputies from the royal burghs south of the Spey should convene yearly with the four burghs, to consider and conclude on all matters affecting the common weal of all the royal burghs. This convention, though at first assembled with the court of four burghs, does not appear to have ever formed a constituent part of the latter assembly, and it seems also soon to have disregarded both the place and time of its meeting; for in 1487 its constitution was materially improved, representatives from all the royal burghs, “baith south and north,” being by a statute of that year appointed to meet in convention yearly at Inverkeithing, “there to commoun and treate upon the weilfare of merchandice, the gude rule and statutes for the common profite of burrowes, and to provide for remeid upon the skaith and injuries sustained within the burrowes.”

The chamberlain ayres, which had long been regarded by the nation as a grievance demanding immediate reformation, were thus substantially superseded, and accordingly soon afterwards fell into disuse. The court of four boroughs continued somewhat longer; but on the institution of the court of session, which was vested with a universal civil jurisdiction, its judicial functions were swallowed up, and it likewise expired. The office of lord chamberlain itself also, falling into the hands of the nobility and court favourites, ceased to be exercised; and his place in the convention came to be occupied by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who, though not a member, is the constant preses of the convention. The origin of this last circumstance, hitherto, we believe, unexplained by our writers, seems to be this. The convention was, by the statute above mentioned, appointed to meet at Inverkeithing. This, however, it did not long continue to do; but, like the court of four burghs and the other supreme courts of the kingdom, removed to Edinburgh as early as the time of Alexander Lord Home, who was great chamberlain from 1488 to 1517; and as that individual was at one time both lord provost of Edinburgh and great chamberlain of Scotland, and also, as it seems, the last in the latter office who exercised its duties in person, hence, no doubt, arose the practice of the lord provost of Edinburgh being the permanent preses, and the town-clerk of Edinburgh the perpetual clerk, of the convention. This civic parliament has continued till the present time. By stat. 1607, c. 6, letters of horning were allowed to issue on all its acts and decrees betwixt burgh and burgh, and burgesses of free burghs, on a simple charge of ten days.