[1535/44]¹

Of choosing burgh officers and bringing their accounts of their common goods yearly to the exchequer

²Item, because all our sovereign lord's burghs are put to poverty, wasted and destroyed in their goods and policy and almost ruinous through the fault of using of merchandise, and that through being of outland men,³ provost, bailies and aldermen within burgh for their own particular welfare in consuming of the common goods of burghs granted to them by our sovereign lord and his predecessors, kings of Scotland, for the upholding of honesty and policy within burghs, it is therefore statute and ordained that no man in time coming be chosen provost, bailie or alderman in to burgh but those who are honest and substantial burgesses, merchants and indwellers of the said burgh, under the pain of the loss of their freedom who does in the contrary; and that no man dwelling within burgh purchase lordship out of burgh in any action or quarrel to molest, trouble or give fear and dread to his neighbour and party, under the pain contained in the acts and statutes made thereupon of before; and that all provosts, bailies and aldermen of burghs bring yearly to the exchequer, at the day set for giving of their accounts, their account books of their common goods, to be seen and considered by the lords auditors if the same was spent for the common welfare of the burgh or not, under the pains foresaid; and that the said provosts, bailies and aldermen of every burgh warn yearly 15 days before their coming to the exchequer all those who wishes to come, for examining of the said accounts, that they may argue and impugn the same as they please so that all murmurs may cease in that regard.