History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS. 219
it more for their advantage to buy flour than wheat, TpT^JfjRpTr
it is to be understood that they are to pay the 3s. corpora-
for each bag of flour so imported into the burgh by 1
them."
4. It was not till 1840 that this and other regfu-
^- Soke
* K 1
V-> /-J K
lations enacted by the council were seriously disputed. \^^^ 1^84^^
In that year action was taken against fiv^ bakers and
meal dealers— John Madder, Andrew Hope, George
Young, Robert Walker, and Alexander Balfour—-who
''
not only abstracted and withheld their grain from
the mills, but were in the practice of bringing into
the burorh, both in manufactured and unmanufactured
state, and also for their own private consumption,
like-
large quantities of grain, flour, and meal ; and
wise, in defraud of the thirlage, were in the practice
of purchasing grain of every description without
the burgh, and also by sample in the Jedburgh
markets, and getting the same ground at other
thereafter carrying the same into the
mills ; and
burgh without paying
multures to the tacksman of
the Jedburgh mills." The case was tried before the
Lord Justice Clerk in January 1843; when the
defenders pleaded (i) that the acts of the council
did not constitute a thirlage, and there was no
evidence that at the date of the purchase of the
mills in 1670 the town was thirled to the mills;
(2) that a commutation of the toll to money payment
in 1799 had not endured sufficiently long to establish
it as a custom ; this latter being a side issue, having
ultimately no bearing on the award of the court,
and being of no present interest. In support of the
case of the Corporation against the import of flour
and meal, various evidence was taken, some brief
extracts from which are of interest :-—
Richard Christie, baker.—Did you hear of such a thing as the
bakers bringing in flour without the miller knowing it ? Oh yes, I