Violence

On 24 July 1562 the town magistrates convicted John Chalmer for the ‘iniuring of divers nytbors and inhabitants thereof in deid and sklandering of thaim in word’. The authorities determined that ‘for misbehawne of him self in sic sundry wayis’ Chalmer was to be declared an unlawful neighbour and banished from the town. ¹ Although Chalmer denied the charges levelled at him, a sworn assise found that he ‘aucht not to be sufferit to pas at libertie in this town to commit sic misorder and enormities as he daly committis’. ² While the account does not provide clear details of Chalmers’ crimes, the court clerk does suggest that they included a verbal assault as well as some other deed or deeds that threatened the social fabric of the sixteenth-century burgh. ³ This the clerk makes more clear in the later account that Chalmer was responsible for causing disorder within the community on a daily basis. While ‘injury’ frequently referred to some form of verbal crime, ‘injuring in deed’ suggests the possibility of physical violence. What is clear is that the town magistrates, acting on behalf of the whole community, determined that Chalmer’s behaviour, or rather misbehaviour, required immediate remedy and should result in the loss of his freedom. While we cannot with any certainty know whether the authorities actually banished Chalmer from the town, a lifetime of wrongdoing most likely ended with his removal from the community. ⁴ Chalmer’s case, like so many others, reveals that the leading men of the burgh had a clear idea of what they believed constituted a threat to ‘neighbourliness’ and that such behaviour had no place in the burgh community.