The provosts sometimes availed themselves of their situation to an
unjustifiable degree, and obtained grants of lands and tenements
belonging to the common good, or public property of the burgh,
and thus made the citizens pay dear for the countenance which they
afforded. Others were satisfied to receive the powerful aid of
the townsmen in their own feudal quarrels, with such other marks
of respect and benevolence as the burgh over which they presided
were willing to gratify them with, in order to secure their active
services in case of necessity. The baron, who was the regular
protector of a royal burgh, accepted such freewill offerings without
scruple, and repaid them by defending the rights of the town by
arguments in the council and by bold deeds in the field.

The citizens of the town, or, as they loved better to call it, the
Fair City, of Perth, had for several generations found a protector
and provost of this kind in the knightly family of Charteris,
Lords of Kinfauns, in the neighbourhood of the burgh. It was scarce
a century (in the time of Robert III) since the first of this
distinguished family had settled in the strong castle which now
belonged to them, with the picturesque and fertile scenes adjoining
to it. But the history of the first settler, chivalrous and romantic
in itself, was calculated to facilitate the settlement of an alien
in the land in which his lot was cast. We relate it as it is given
by an ancient and uniform tradition, which carries in it great
indications of truth, and is warrant enough, perhaps, for it
insertion in graver histories than the present.

During the brief career of the celebrated patriot Sir William
Wallace, and when his arms had for a time expelled the English
invaders from his native country, he is said to have undertaken a