Birgham or Brigham, a village in Eccles parish, Berwickshire, 330 yards from the Tweed, opposite Carham in Northumberland, and 3½ miles W by S of Coldstream. It has a post office under that town, a public school, and the graveyard of a pre-Reformation chapel, remains of which were standing 70 years ago. A meeting of William the Lyon and some of his nobles and prelates with an ecclesiastical envoy from Henry II. of England took place at Birgham in 1188, to resist the alleged supremacy of the English over the Scottish Church; and a convention of the Scottish Estates, to consider the proposed marriage between the Princess Margaret of Scotland and Prince Edward of England, also was held here in 1289. It was followed, on 18 July of nextyear, by the signing here of an international deed, the treaty of Brigham, which minutely provided for the independence of Scotland. 'Go to Birgham' is equivalent, in the surrounding country, to 'Go to Banff,' or 'Bath,' or 'Jericho' elsewhere.
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