Trongate and the surrounding area.

AT the time when King William authorised Bishop Joceline of Glasgow to have a Burgh that descriptive term had lost much of its original signification of a Fort, under the protection of which a market could be safely held. It had rather come to imply a market town, equipped with all the usual trading and judicial accessories. In accordance, therefore, with the practice of the period the privileges conferred by the Glasgow charter relate specially to a weekly market and the customs derivable from it. By one of William's statutes it was commanded that all merchandise should be presented at the market and market crosses of the King's burghs and there offered to the merchants, the custom dues being paid to the King.- Each royal burgh had its shire or district, the produce of which must come to its market ; and the Bishop's charter was granted for the purpose of affording corresponding benefits to him and his successors, as territorial lords. In its relation to the district latterly known as the barony and regality of Glasgow the Bishop's burgh occupied the same position as the King's burghs bore to their respective shires ; and while in the latter burghs the customs belonged to the King, in the burgh of Glasgow they were payable to the Bishop. In both classes of burghs the organisation was similar and most of the early laws were indiscriminately applicable to each.

That a primitive community of artificers and traders had already settled on the banks of the Molendinar Burn, near its confluence with the Clyde, need not be doubted, and it may even be conjectured that initiatory markets had been tried before authoritative sanction was secured by charter. But when the administrative and judicial machinery of the new burgh was fairly set in motion, accommodation for the officials and their work would be required, while increased commerce would bring an influx of strangers and lead to the erection of additional booths and dwellings. Adjoining the market cross was placed the tolbooth, originally the place for collecting the toll or custom payable by those bringing produce and goods to the market, and eventually the headquarters for municipal and judicial procedure ; and next to this structure stood a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Regarding the erection of the tolbooth and chapel no contemporary record has been preserved, but it happens that there exists a writing, dated within two or three years of the charter, whereby Bishop Joceline granted to the monks of Melrose " that toft in the burgh of Glasgow which Ranulf of Hadintun built in the first building of the burgh, to the use of the house of Maylros." It is not likely that Melrose Abbey had more than one property in Glasgow, and therefore it may be assumed that the twelfth century toft was the possession referred to on 10th May, 1454, as the "land of the lord Abbot of Melros," lying on the south side of the street which then led from the cross to the chapel of St. Tenu, latterly known as Trongate or its continuation.

For nearly four hundred years after its foundation the Burgh kept within narrow limits, as these were defined by the placing of ports or gates. The South Port was in Saltmarket Street, or as it was anciently called Walker-gait, indicating perhaps the thoroughfare leading to a Walk-mill frequented by walkers and other workers in cloth. Places adjacent and situated on the banks of the Molendinar and Camlachie Burns, which joined each other near the port, long retained the names of Milndam, Milnhill, and Crooks of the Milndam, indicating that at one time a mill or mills were in operation in the vicinity. In sixteenth century writings the South Port is usually styled Nether Barras-yet, probably because the gate was formed of wooden bars. Leaving the port and keeping on the right bank of the united burn, a track which developed into the modern Bridgegait led to a bridge over Clyde which had existed in one form or another since at least the thirteenth century. The West Port was situated in Trongate and the East Port in Gallowgate. The latter stood on the west side of Molendinar Burn till the year 1646, and even at the time of its final removal, in 1754, it was only about 400 yards east of the cross. The North Port was placed at a much greater distance from the cross than were the others, but included in this stretch was the area which prior to the Reformation was almost exclusively possessed by the clergy and country lairds, as well as the intermediate portion where, in the thirteenth century, the Friars Preachers laid out their gardens. It is supposed that the few buildings erected by the burgesses in High Street, north of the market cross, previous to the Reformation, reached no farther than the Grammar School on the one side and the place of the Friars Preachers on the other.

The street branching west from the cross extended beyond its port to a chapel dedicated at some remote but unknown date to St. Tenu, the mother of St. Kentigern, and for this reason it was usually designated St. Tenu's-gait. The chapel has given its transformed name of St. Enoch to the square which has absorbed its site, and accordingly its approximate position is well known. So early as the year 1426 a property lying to the west of St. Mary's Chapel is described as lying on the north side of the great street extending from the market cross to the chapels of St. Thomas the Martyr and " St. Tanew."  Our Lady-gait is another name which sometimes occurs, as in 1548-9, when a tenement is described as lying " in via Sancte Teneu alias Beate Marie semper Virginis."" In 1530 what appears to be the same property is described, in the vernacular, as " lyand in our Ladye gait, on the northt syid of the sammyne."^ About the middle of the sixteenth century the present name Trongate, so called on account of the tron or weighing apparatus being placed there, comes into notice, and it gradually superseded the name St. Tenu's-gait as applied to the portion of the street within the port.