Famine in Scotland - the 'Ill Years' of the 1690s 9780748641840

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FAMINE IN SCOTLAND: THE ‘ILL YEARS’ OF THE 1690S

SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW MONOGRAPHS SERIES No. 16

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Scottish Historical Review Monographs are major works of scholarly research covering all aspects of Scottish history. They are selected and sponsored by the Scottish Historical Review Trust Editorial Board. The trustees of the SHR Trust are: Professor Elaine McFarland (convenor), Dr Alison Cathcart (secretary), Dr David Caldwell, Dr Karen Cullen, Dr David Ditchburn, Dr Catriona Macdonald, Dr Emma Macleod, Alex Woolf and Dr John Young. CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING VOLUMES 1 Helen M. Dingwall 2 Ewen A. Cameron 3 Richard Anthony 4 R. Andrew McDonald 5 John R. McIntosh 6 Graeme Morton 7 Catriona M. M. Macdonald 8 James L. MacLeod

9 John Finlay 10 William Kenefick 11 J. J. Smyth 12 Roland Tanner 13 Ginny Gardner 14 Allan W. MacColl

15 Andrew G. Newby 16 Karen J. Cullen

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Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries: Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880–1923 Herds and Hinds: Farm Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1900–1939 The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, c. 1100–1336 Church and Theology in Enlightenment Scotland: The Evangelical Party, 1740–1800 Unionist-Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–1860 The Radical Thread: Political Change in Scotland. Paisley Politics, 1885–1924 The Second Disruption: The Free Church in Victorian Scotland and the Origins of the Free Presbyterian Church Men of Law in Pre-Reformation Scotland ‘Rebellious and Contrary’: The Glasgow Dockers, c. 1853–1932 Labour in Glasgow, 1896–1936, Socialism, Suffrage, Sectarianism The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, 1424–1488 ‘Shaken Together in the Bag of Affliction’: Scottish Exiles in the Netherlands, 1660–1690 Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843–1893 Ireland, Radicalism, and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1870–1912 Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

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FAMINE IN SCOTLAND: THE ‘ILL YEARS’ OF THE 1690S

KAREN J. CULLEN

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

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For Greg Richardson

© Karen J. Cullen, 2010 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10 on 12pt ITC New Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3887 1 (hardback) The right of Karen J. Cullen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6

Tables and Figures Abbreviations Glossary of Terms Acknowledgements County Map of Scotland

vi viii x xii xiii

Introduction Scotland’s Seven Ill Years: Contexts and Debates Climate, Weather and Agriculture: The Making of a Famine There Arose a Dearth: The Grain Market in Crisis Providing for the Destitute Famine: The Demographic Disaster Fleeing the Famine: Migration and Emigration Conclusion

1 10 31 54 93 123 157 187

Appendix: Poor Assessment Bibliography Index

192 197 214

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Tables and Figures Tables 3.1 Candlemas county oatmeal fiars, 1689–1703 3.2 Classification of harvest yield 3.3 Classification of harvest yield by oatmeal county fiar, with average English harvest yields for wheat 3.4 Amount of grain exported from Ireland to Scotland as registered in English Custom records 3.5 Percentage increase of Candlemas oatmeal fiars, on average of crop 1690–4 prices 3.6 Inverness-shire, Moray and Ross-shire fiars, 1690–1703 3.7 Percentage of excise duty payments made by region for tack 1695–7 5.1 Mortality index 5.2 Regional baptism indices 5.3 Marriage index 5.4 Seasonal burial peaks 5.5 Smallpox deaths in Peebles (Peeblesshire), 1687–1704 A.1 Parishes which enforced a stent, identified by Mitchison A.2 Parishes which enforced a stent, not identified by Mitchison

59 61 61 77 87 88 89 130 134 141 150 153 193 195

Figures 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Increase in oatmeal prices between the Candlemas and Lammas fiars Candlemas oatmeal fiars for Midlothian, Perthshire and Angus, 1689–1703 Burials of the poor and non-poor in Kettins (Angus) Burials of the poor and non-poor in Methlick (Aberdeenshire) Baptisms in Kenmore and Logierait (Highland Perthshire) Baptisms in Banffshire parishes Baptisms in Dingwall (Ross and Cromarty) and Harray and Birsay (Orkney) Adult and child burials in Kirkhill (Inverness-shire), by season Burials in Kilmorack (Inverness-shire), by season Baptisms and burials in Kilmorack (Inverness-shire)

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64 80 119 119 136 137 138 147 147 148

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Tables and Figures 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Burials in Monifieth (Angus) Burials in Coldingham (Berwickshire), by season Migration between Ayr (Ayrshire) and Ireland Baptisms in selected Ayrshire parishes

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vii 164 165 181 184

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Abbreviations All references to currency are in pounds, shillings and pence Scots, expressed as £ s d Scots, unless otherwise stated. Original spellings have been maintained in all quotations and in references; however, modern spellings and names have been used in the text for place names, and personal names referred to in primary sources. County names have been standardised throughout and for ease of reference the geographical locations of parishes correspond to those boundaries established after 1890. Thus disjoined parishes, for example Tulliallan and Culross, both Perthshire parishes which lay within the county boundaries of Fife, have been considered to be geographically part of the county of Fife. AL

Ardrossan Library Local History Department

AngA

Angus Archives

AyrA

Ayrshire Archives

DCA

Dundee City Archives

GROS

General Register Office for Scotland

HA

Highland Archives

KSR

Kirk Session Records

MA

Moray Archives

ML

Mitchell Library

NA

National Archives

NAS

National Archives of Scotland

NRAS

National Register of Archives Scotland

OA

Orkney Archives

OPR

Old Parish Register

PCM

Privy Council Minutes

PCRA

Privy Council Register of Acts

PKCA

Perth and Kinross Council Archive

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Abbreviations PM

Paisley Museum

PRONI

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

SA

Shetland Archives

SCA

Scottish Catholic Archives

SL

Signet Library

SPHRP

Scottish Population History Research Papers

StASC

St Andrews University Library Special Collections

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ix

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Glossary of Terms Bear/bere – a type of barley. Bier – a type of common coffin, or framework upon which a body was transported to the grave. Boll – Scots dry measure of weight equivalent to 140 lbs imperial measure. Candlemas – 2 February, a Scottish quarter day. Chalder – Scots dry measurement of weight equivalent to 16 bolls. Fiar – the price of a grain legally set per year in a county. Firlot – Scots dry measurement of weight equivalent to one-quarter of a boll. Forestall – to prevent a commodity [i.e. grain] from being made available for sale. Heritor – a landowner liable to contribute to the public burdens of a parish. Lammas – 1 August, a Scottish quarter day. Lippie – Scots dry measure of weight equivalent to one-quarter of a peck. Martinmas – 11 November, a Scottish quarter day. Merk – two-thirds of a pound Scots. Michaelmas – 29 September. Peck – Scots dry measurement of weight equivalent to one-sixteenth of a boll. Poind – Scots legal term, to seize and sell the goods of a debtor. Quarter – imperial dry measurement of weight. Seven quarters, seven bushels and three pecks (imperial) of wheat are equivalent to a Scots chalder of wheat. Regrate – to hoard a commodity [i.e. grain] to sell at a future time when the price has risen. Sorn – to exact free board and lodging by force or threats, to beg aggressively.

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Glossary of Terms

xi

Testificate/testimony – a reference of residence and character provided by a minister or kirk session to a parishioner wishing to formalise residence in another parish. Vital events – births, marriages and deaths (vital rates – per thousand of population). Whitsunday – 15 May, a Scottish quarter day.

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Acknowledgements Most of the research for this book was undertaken through funding provided by a major postgraduate award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of my Ph.D. and I am grateful for the opportunities that this has provided. The Scottish Historical Review Trust generously agreed to publish this book as part of its monograph series and has my thanks for its support of this publication. Many people contributed to this book, to all of whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. The most important thanks go, firstly, to Professor Christopher Whatley who I thank for his continued help, direction, support and encouragement, and to Professor Jim Hunter for providing me with the time and opportunity to continue my research. Many other individuals were kind enough to give up their time to offer me further advice. In particular I would like to express grateful thanks to Professor T. C. Smout, Dr Christopher Storrs, Dr Patrick Fitzgerald, Dr Robert Tyson, Dr Andrew MacKillop, Dr Mary Young, Professor Michael Anderson, Professor Charles McKean and Professor Callum Brown for their kind suggestions and help with many aspects of this research. Thanks also go to all of the archive staff at the repositories which I made many visits to for all of the assistance they provided me, particularly Professor Michael Anderson and the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh for their kind permission to study and use the research papers of the Scottish Population History volume, and for allowing me to consult publications in the Michael Flinn library. Dr Patrick Fitzgerald and the staff of the Migration Studies Department at the Ulster-American Folk Park also very kindly provided me with access to their library. I am grateful to Mr D. Maxwell Macdonald for permission to reference the Maxwells of Pollock papers held at the Mitchell Library, and Sir Robert Clerk of Penicuik and the Duke of Buccleuch for permission to reference the estate papers held at the National Archives of Scotland. I also wish to thank Sheila Spiers and the Aberdeen and North-East Scotland Family History Society for permission to use a map of Scottish counties. Finally I owe thanks to my family. To my parents for their continued love, support and encouragement. To my husband Greg for his love and forbearance, for generously giving up his time to help me construct databases and graphs for some of my demographic material, and for solving all of my computer-related problems.

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County Map of Scotland1

1

Source: The Parishes, Registers and Registrars of Scotland (Scottish Association of Family History Societies, 1993).

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Introduction The famine of the 1690s was the last national famine to occur in Scotland. It was the final time that the majority of the Scottish population faced the threat of starvation as a result of severe food shortage. In the nadir of the Little Ice Age, colder, wetter, unseasonable and erratic weather conditions wrought havoc on the underdeveloped Scottish agricultural sector. Beginning at a national level following the deficient harvest of 1695, the country experienced multiple harvest failures, high grain prices, a reduction in pastoral flocks and herds, increased mortality, economic difficulties and social dislocation. Widespread suffering was evident across the country in the five years following this, but localised famines, dearths, grain scarcity and cattle murrains were reported in the late 1680s and throughout the early 1690s, indicating deteriorating returns for subsistence farming throughout parts of the country in the years prior to 1695. Nationally, famine was evident from the harvest of 1695 to that of 1700, as across the country diminishing crop yields and grain shortage, as well as reduced cattle stocks and meat supplies sent food prices spiralling. The grain harvest, vital to the survival of the majority of Scots, failed nationally in 1695, 1696 and again most devastatingly in 1698, forcing a reliance on imports of emergency grain supplies to feed the population. Simultaneous famines, which occurred in many countries throughout northern and western Europe between 1693 and 1700, contributed to the severity of the crisis in Scotland and further increased competition for those dwindling grain supplies. Food prices were driven up and the poor suffered dramatic falls in living standards to the extent that a significant number starved to death. Local and national authorities from kirk sessions to the privy council were overwhelmed by the social, economic and demographic problems that resulted from the crisis. The poorest and weakest members of society were hardest hit, but the famine’s effects were felt by different ranks of society well into the early 1700s. Contemporary commentators, including the political pamphlet author Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, and the geographer and physician Sir Robert Sibbald, reported with alarm the pitiful condition of the poor roaming across the countryside, desperately seeking food and charity; those who failed succumbed to starvation and epidemic disease, expiring where they fell, unburied bodies littering roads and fields.1 As crop 1

Sir R. Sibbald, Provision for the Poor in Time of Dearth and Scarcity (Edinburgh, 1709); ‘The Second Discourse concerning the Affairs of Scotland written in the year 1698’, in D.

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Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

2

yields plummeted, land lay waste as tenants and subtenants died or fled to other estates, or migrated in their thousands to famine-free Ulster. Others consumed their seed corn to stave off immediate starvation, or refused to plant a crop which might produce lower yields than even the initial investment. The harvests of 1697 and 1699, although not actual failures, were reduced substantially as a consequence of these factors and the country was unable to produce sufficient grain to maintain its reduced population even in the best two years of the crisis. Rent arrears built up and landlords were forced to either evict burdensome, indebted tenants or offer concessions, rent abatements and even seed corn and subsidised food supplies to the destitute that they chose to retain on their land. When the crisis finally came to an end in 1700, the Scottish population was reduced by somewhere between 5 and 15 per cent through a combination of an increased death rate, a reduction in births and a migratory exodus to Ulster.2 The population of the worst-affected regions, particularly the Highlands and upland areas, was decimated with losses in excess of 20 per cent. These basic outlines of the famine are well established and references to the ‘Scottish famine’ of the 1690s are frequently made by historians writing about the other better-known famine crises in Europe of that decade and later. Yet, in spite of this, scholarly accounts of the famine are so limited in their scope that there is no single volume devoted to an examination of this momentous event. Current published knowledge about the causes, extent and impact of the famine in Scotland is limited and many conclusions have been speculative in the absence of detailed research. This is true of all Scottish famines, with the exception of the Highland famine of the 1840s, which has attracted significantly more scholarly attention and is the most extensively written about of all Scottish famine crises. Yet Tom Devine, in The Great Highland Famine, was also able to contrast the relatively little research carried out on that crisis in the Highlands in comparison with the more famous contemporaneous famine in Ireland.3 A purely regional phenomenon, the label of ‘famine’ is certainly debatable for the former,4 but its connection with Highland emigration and clearance has

2

3

4

Daiches (ed.), Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, Selected Political Writings and Speeches (Edinburgh, 1979), 46–7. M. W. Flinn et al., Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), 161, 181. T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine (Edinburgh, 1988), v. In comparison with study undertaken of famine crises in other European countries, for example the Irish famine of the 1840s, this is still not comparatively extensive. Cormac Ó Gráda even discussed the difficulty in finding a unique name for his book due to the ‘outpouring’ of literature on the subject, Black ’47 and beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory (Princeton, 1999), 3. T. M. Devine, ‘Why the Highlands did not starve: Ireland and Highland Scotland during the potato famine’, in S. J. Connolly, R. Houston and R. J. Morris (eds), Conflict, Identity and Economic Development (Preston, 1995); E. Richards, The Highland Clearances (Edinburgh, 2000), 199, 324. Nevertheless, it is possible to have famine without excess mortality; see

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Introduction

3

secured a greater degree of interest for the last crisis of its kind to occur in Scotland, rather than the last national famine, or any of those before it.5 Nevertheless, the legacy of the 1690s crisis also has significant longerterm resonance; on the politics of Union and the economic depression of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as well as the slow rate of population recovery and growth in the first half of the eighteenth century in which the famine may have acted as a Malthusian check to spare Scotland from the serious subsistence crises which plagued Europe in 1709 and 1739–41. More than this, the absence of serious national famine after the 1690s marks this crisis out as significant. Why did the Scots starve in the 1690s, but not thereafter? Chris Smout was the first historian to outline a chronology of the crisis in his 1963 study, Scottish Trade on the Eve of the Union, 1660–1707. In the same volume he declared that ‘the famine deserves more detailed consideration, because no historian has yet given a coherent account of what happened during this almost legendary disaster, though most have recognised it as an event of importance’.6 It was only from the late 1970s that significant steps were taken to rectify this. A major, and still the most important, national demographic study of the famine was undertaken as part of Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s, edited by Michael Flinn. It devoted a section to the famine, analysing mortality and some fertility trends from parishes across the country and concluded that the severity of the famine varied greatly at regional and local levels, with evidence from some parishes indicating that certain areas did not experience a crisis at all.7 Yet a coherent account was still missing. Ian Whyte, writing after the publication of Scottish Population History, bemoaned that a clear understanding of the severity of the famine was still not possible: ‘Until a systematic study is made, it is difficult to bridge the gap between sweeping generalisations about overall mortality at a national level and individual, possibly unrepresentative, instances of hardship’.8 Other historians following in Flinn and his colleagues’ footsteps continued to chip away at the mysteries of the topic, shedding light on a number of themes. Various aspects of the famine crisis were subsequently studied, including disruption to agriculture and the grain trade by Whyte and the effectiveness of the Poor Law in alleviating suffering by Rosalind Mitchison.9 These were followed by three

5 6 7 8 9

H. O’Neill and J. Taye, ‘Introduction’, in H. O’Neill and J. Taye (eds), A World without Famine? New Approaches to Aid and Development (Basingstoke, 1998), 3. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 164. T. C. Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of the Union 1660–1707 (Edinburgh, 1963), 245. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 179. I. D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), 247. See, for example, I. D. Whyte, ‘Human response to short- and long-term climatic fluctuations: the example of early Scotland’, in C. D. Smith and M. Parry (eds), Consequences of Climatic Change (Nottingham, 1981); R. Mitchison, The Old Poor Law in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000).

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Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

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detailed regional studies of Aberdeenshire and Angus counties and the Tayside region which identified the localised extent of suffering. Robert Tyson demonstrated in ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire, 1695–1699’ that the county experienced the worst demographic crisis outside the Highlands with a drop in population estimated to be as much as 21 per cent.10 Angus, previously presumed to have largely escaped the crisis,11 was shown to indeed have experienced famine; despite the absence of the ‘exceptional’ scale of mortality experienced in Aberdeenshire,12 the former region’s agricultural strengths did not prove sufficient to avert a disaster.13 Further examination of these themes continued in a study of the impact of the famine on the Tayside region, shedding new light on the difference in experience between the Highlands and Lowlands.14 These studies have highlighted the need for further detailed research by portraying not only the vast difference in local and regional experience of the famine, but also by raising the question of whether the severity of the famine at national level has been underestimated. This issue has been picked up most recently by Chris Whatley, who described the famine as ‘probably the most severe mortality crisis in the nation’s history’, and Michael Fry, who suggested that it ‘went beyond anything known or remembered. The whole nation seemed to fall back to a lower stage of development’.15 Despite all of this work, more than forty years after Smout’s outline chronology, a coherent account remains elusive. This book sets out to fill that gap. Building and expanding on these previous studies, this book will provide the first major scholarly account of the famine. As such it is intended to serve as a means to open the debate on this topic further than its heretofore limited arena. The absence of a single study of the crisis has not entirely dampened scholarly debate of the topic. Historians disagree about even the most basic outline details: the timing of the crisis, whether it was one single event, or indeed two or more separate famines, and most debate has settled around its severity. The primary aim of this book, therefore, is to produce a broader analysis of the famine at a national level, to challenge the debate about the timing and severity of the crisis and to provide a fuller account of the famine than is currently available. The chronology of the crisis will be mapped out 10

11 12 13

14

15

R. E. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire, 1695–1699: Anatomy of a Crisis’, in D. Stevenson (ed.), From Lairds to Louns: Country and Burgh Life in Aberdeenshire 1600–1800 (Aberdeen, 1986). Whyte, Agriculture and Society, 248. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 32. K. J. Cullen, ‘King William’s Ill Years: the Social, Economic and Demographic Effects of Famine in Angus, 1695–1700’, unpublished MA Hons dissertation (University of Dundee, 2001). K. J. Cullen, C. A. Whatley and M. Young, ‘King William’s Ill Years: new evidence on the impact of scarcity and harvest failure during the crisis of the 1690s on Tayside’, Scottish Historical Review, 85, 2: 220 (Oct. 2006). C. A. Whatley, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006), 142; M. Fry, The Union: England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707 (Edinburgh, 2006), 17.

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Introduction

5

through a series of themes to establish the meteorological, agricultural, economic and demographic boundaries of the famine. Themes touched on in the regional studies will be expanded and the demographic effects of the crisis will be examined in greater detail and for a larger number of parishes than in Scottish Population History. Most studies of the famine have only covered the years 1695 to 1699, beginning with the harvest of 1695, and have focused on the events between this date and the relatively good harvest of the latter year.16 However, this study will argue that the origins of the crisis are to be found in the years before 1695. The famine then extended across much of the country until the harvest of 1700, partly due to continued high grain prices following the harvest of 1699 which caused problems both at local and national level, and the social problems which continued to attract comment from local authorities and individual observers. The extent to which most historians have underestimated the duration, extent and severity of the famine will therefore be central questions. A secondary aim is to provide a comparative context in which to understand the Scottish experience of famine in the 1690s. Despite recognising the existence of mortality crises and famine in other European countries during the 1690s, Scottish historians have so far done little to place the famine that occurred in Scotland within a European pattern of harvest failure and famine. By examining the extent of the crisis and the resultant effects upon the population, the famine’s impact in Scotland will be assessed within some of the themes of European famine in the 1690s and wider early modern and modern famine literature. Although acknowledgement has been made of the differing extent of mortality in Scotland and other European countries,17 no real comparison has been made of the figures. Neither has consideration been given to the impact that simultaneous harvest failure across many European countries had on Scotland and, in particular, on its ability to obtain famine relief in the form of foreign grain supplies. The common causes of the famines stemmed from colder than average temperatures during the climax of the Little Ice Age. This 16

17

With the notable exception of Flinn, Scottish Population History, and Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, who both discussed the situation up to the harvest of 1700, and Cullen, Whatley and Young, ‘King William’s Ill Years’, and Whatley, The Scots and the Union, Chapter 4, who both discussed seven ill years, analysis of the famine has been focused on the four-year period up to the harvest of 1699. See Whyte, Agriculture and Society; Smout, Scottish Trade; A. J. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 1995) and R. Mitchison, ‘The Movements of Scottish Corn Prices in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 18 (1965). Flinn and Tyson both referred, for example, to the drop in population of Finland in 1697, estimated to be as much as a third, although the nature of the mortality crises in Scotland and Finland, or any of the other European countries to experience famine in the 1690s, were not examined further; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 7; Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 50. Whyte acknowledged the difficulties experienced in England during the period as well as the famines in France and Finland that coincided with the Scottish famine, but did not pursue the comparison either, Agriculture and Society, 251.

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resulted in bad weather conditions which had a detrimental impact on the vital grain crops of northern and western Europe. A series of harvest failures seriously reduced crop yields in many countries which led to grain shortages and, ultimately, famine. This experience and the measures taken to remedy it will be analysed within the theories of famine in subsistence and post-subsistence societies. The book has been divided into six chapters which examine the causes of the famine and its impact. The first chapter addresses the debate surrounding the famine as it currently stands amongst Scottish historians and its context as one of four ‘disasters’ to befall Scotland in this decade. Since a comparative approach is a key theme of the book, the famine will also be analysed within the context of the many European subsistence crises of the 1690s. The second chapter examines the origins of the famine crisis by exploring the climatic, and more particularly, meteorological reasons for harvest failure in both Scotland and many other northern European countries in the 1690s. This permits a more detailed chronology to be developed which maps the impact of these changing conditions upon Scottish agriculture. Tom Devine defined the famine as ‘an aberration, a reflection of an especially severe but short-lived spell of climatic deterioration’.18 This chapter, however, will examine the extent to which the famine only occurred nationally following at least a decade of unfavourable and worsening climatic conditions which had a detrimental impact on agriculture, particularly in the Borders region and the Northern Isles. In the case of Orkney and Shetland, climatic conditions led to famine in the late 1680s and early 1690s. Examination of the adverse weather conditions which were responsible for the harvest failures and an outline chronology of the crisis will be mapped out in this chapter which will question whether the famine can fairly be described as Scotland’s ‘Seven Ill Years’. The focus of the third chapter is the way in which those adverse weather conditions impacted upon the supply and price of grain. The famine was described by Smout as ‘a terrible instance of the vulnerability of a primitive economy to bad weather’,19 and some of the ways in which the economy, and particularly the grain market, responded to these adverse conditions and grain shortage are explored. Louise Tilly has observed that ‘capitalist markets moved food not necessarily to those who were hungry, but to those with money to buy’.20 Thus people could starve in a region which produced and exported large quantities of grain because the local population did not possess the purchasing power of the market in places such as Edinburgh. In such cases famine in that region was man-made and only intervention 18

19 20

T. M. Devine, ‘The Union of 1707 and Scottish Development’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 5 (1985), 25. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830 (London, 1987), 225. L. A. Tilly, ‘Food Entitlement, Famine and Conflict’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 14, 2 (Autumn 1983), 349.

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Introduction

7

in the grain market by the authorities could avert the suffering of the local population. Central government’s ability to implement adequate faminerelief measures, particularly during this period of economic difficulty, is a further determinant of the severity of the famine. The wider impact of the other ‘disasters’ of the 1690s clearly not only limited the government’s ability to provide financial relief, but also town councils, kirk sessions and some landowners may have found their income reduced due to the convergence of a number of economic crises which further limited the amount of specie circulating in the country. Consideration will also be given to some of the influences of foreign markets upon the Scottish economy. Although the economy was underdeveloped at the end of the seventeenth century, it was far from closed to the influences of foreign markets and trade. The extent to which the whole of northern Europe was affected by the weather conditions meant that sources of relief were limited. The last three chapters focus on the social and demographic effects of the crisis and outline the impact high grain prices and scarcity had on the population, examining how effective the authorities’ famine-relief measures were in relieving suffering. Since those primarily affected by price rises were the poor, the greatest impact of the famine must have been upon the poorer sections of society. The extent and increase of poverty and the nature, enforcement and success of the poor relief system form the basis, therefore, of Chapter four. Rosalind Mitchison’s work on The Old Poor Law in Scotland, in which she revealed the 1690s to be a key decade in the formation of an enforced system of poor relief paid for by kirk sessions and local landowners, is drawn on in this chapter. The extent to which parishes actually fulfilled their legal obligations and provided an adequate level of support to the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society during the crisis was limited, but arguably not quite as limited as Mitchison concluded. The nature and extent of poor relief across the famine period has been analysed to determine how effective the various systems employed by kirk sessions and town councils actually were. Ultimately, one of the key failings was the vast differences between these systems and, as a result, people moved out of their parishes and homes either because adequate poor relief and charity were not available there, or because they were aware that better provisions were being made for the poor elsewhere. Fear of starvation forced the poor out onto the roads and into the Lowland towns and market centres, but when food supplies, or the necessary money to purchase them, could not be secured, the desperate resorted to their own measures to obtain it. Chapter five analyses the demographic consequences of the famine through its impact on the Scottish population. This chapter continues the departure from Scottish Population History’s conclusion that the famine had short-term demographic consequences.21 In particular, study of the age 21

See, for example, Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’; M. W. Flinn, The European Demographic System 1500–1820 (Brighton, 1981), 21.

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8

Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

structure of mortality suggests that high adult mortality inhibited quick recovery of the population. Studying the impact of the famine upon the rates of all three vital events and across a wider geographical area than has previously been attempted, contributes to a greater understanding of what the famine’s demographic impact was, particularly in those regions for which only very limited information has been previously examined. Over the country as a whole, the famine’s effect on nuptiality, for example, has not been examined by any previous studies. The use of marriage registers poses methodological challenges, but is introduced in this study to more fully explain how the population reacted to the crisis, since marriage is the one demographic factor that can be most easily controlled. This chapter stresses the importance of the role of marriage in population recovery in the immediate post-famine period and as a factor in slow longer-term growth. The famine’s impact upon the population has been recognised by historians as varied at regional, county and even local parish level. By identifying and examining local and regional differences in the way in which the population experienced the famine to determine the factors which led to suffering at a local level, contrasts are drawn between rural and urban parishes, upland and lowland, and regions of arable and pastoral farming. An analysis of the roles played by epidemic disease and starvation in famine-related deaths is achieved partly through a comparison of adult-tochild burial ratios and partly through study of a range of non-quantitative sources to supplement limited demographic data in some key regions. The numbers of migrants or ‘strangers’ who died in large numbers in Lowland parishes, particularly in some parishes which experienced comparatively low death rates amongst residents, has been identified in an examination of local conditions. Normally excluded from burial registers, but occasionally recorded in kirk session records, such occurrences have been formerly underestimated by historians and previous estimates of population losses have therefore not included this significantly vulnerable section of the population. Chapter six focuses further on the elements of social dislocation identified in Chapters four and five and is divided into two main parts: internal movement and migration within Scotland, and emigration. Town council records and more particularly kirk session minutes have been used to identify the movement of large numbers of people across the country seeking food and charity, and establish how this impacted on various parishes and regions. A subsection of this chapter is devoted to Scottish emigration to Ulster, England and continental Europe in the 1690s, focusing on the way in which people were forced to leave their homes and parishes to seek a means of survival from the worst effects of the famine. Identification of the types of areas which people were leaving and those where they sought famine relief further helps to examine the regional and local impact of the famine crisis. However, consideration has also been given to the pull

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Introduction

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factors, as well as the push factors, which encouraged population movement. Within Scotland increased population movement was a feature of better opportunities becoming available in some regions. This was particularly the case with emigration as improved prospects were available in Ulster during the mid 1690s which encouraged Scots to emigrate and settle there. The most recent research by Patrick Fitzgerald has suggested that of the approximately 50,000 people that emigrated during this decade, a significant proportion did so in response to the famine crisis in Scotland.22 Much of the research so far, including that carried out by Fitzgerald, has focused on the Irish aspect of this migratory movement and has relied predominantly on Irish sources. This book’s examination of the topic uses mainly Scottish sources to contribute to this historiography and expand some key aspects of this topic to identify not only the type of people involved in this migration, but also the timing of the movement and the ways in which famine conditions in Scotland influenced these factors. The discussion of these themes will therefore build upon the existing historiography in the areas of migration, demography and poverty, and examine some previously little studied topics of the famine crisis, particularly the climatic causes of the harvest failures and the resultant impact upon the grain market. By identifying the causes and consequences of famine in Scotland during this decade, a clearer understanding of how severe the crisis was, what its impact was and how these factors differed regionally and locally will be achieved.

22

P. D. Fitzgerald, ‘“Black ’97”: Reconsidering Scottish Migration to Ireland in the Seventeenth Century and the Scotch Irish in America’, in W. Kelly and J. R. Young (eds), Ulster and Scotland, 1600–2000: History, Language and Identity (Dublin, 2004), 79.

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chapter one

Scotland’s Seven Ill Years: Contexts and Debates In 1698 the privy council openly admitted that Scotland was in the grip of ‘not only a Scarcity, but a perfeit Famine, which is more sensible than ever was known in this Nation’.1 By then, the country had suffered two consecutive national harvest failures, in 1695 and 1696, which sent mortality levels skyrocketing and forced the government to open the ports to foreign grain supplies. Over these years, the privy councillors witnessed an influx of hundreds of the country’s destitute into Edinburgh, fleeing the spectre of starvation and death in the countryside. Simultaneously, they obtained reports of ever-growing lists of broken and indebted tenants on their own estates as their rental income and profit from grain sales decreased dramatically. Yet the worst was undoubtedly still to come, as the months following the harvest of 1698 were among the most desperate of the entire crisis. Whether this was indeed the worst famine in Scottish history is debatable. Although some of the most recent published work to touch on the famine supports this claim, until further research is carried out on earlier Scottish subsistence crises this is not a question that can be answered with any certainty.2 It is extremely unlikely that it was the worst famine ever experienced in Scotland, or even possibly of the seventeenth century; however, it was the most severe and sustained in contemporary living memory. The most notable periods of national famine and dearth in the previous decades occurred in the 1590s, 1621–3, 1649–53 and 1674–5.3 The privy council’s claim, though, indicates that contemporaries of the 1690s believed that they were experiencing a crisis of previously unparalleled magnitude. The most basic defining factor of the severity of a famine is calculated by an examination of the deaths that are directly attributable to it, but famine-related mortality levels in the 1690s were potentially much lower than those of the 1590s or the 1620s. Firm data for both of these periods is difficult to verify, but in the 1620s existing burial records for a small number of parishes indicate a much higher mortality rate, certainly 1

2 3

NAS, Eglinton MSS, GD3/10/4/1/D, Replyes for the Tacksmen of the Excise, to the answers given in by His Majesties Advocat and Solicitor, to the said Tacksmens Petition [1698] [Hereafter, Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698]]. Whatley, The Scots and the Union; and particularly Fry, The Union, 17. For discussion of famine in the 1620s, the possibility of it in 1649–53, and dearth in 1674–5, see Flinn, Scottish Population History, 116–26, 150–4, 156–64.

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in 1623, than occurred in any single year in the 1690s. At mid-century, grain prices rose sharply after a rain-ruined harvest in 1648 which was the start of several years of localised, if not national, dearth and possibly even famine. The ravages of war, combined with plague 1644–9, may have hidden a severe subsistence crisis induced by adverse weather, but little is known about it. The national dearth of 1674–5, the last to occur before the 1690s, was both less serious and of much shorter duration than the subsequent famine. The mortality peak that accompanied the former was significant, but only on a localised basis. By the late seventeenth century, therefore, general famine or dearth crises afflicted the country much less frequently, and less severely, than in previous centuries. Indeed, the 1690s was the last time that famine was present in Scotland on a nationwide scale. During the seventeenth century a minimum of eight years of national famine and twelve years of local famine were experienced in Scotland. Despite dearth and possibly even localised famine in the 1740s and 1780s, eighteenth-century Scotland experienced no national famine and ‘relief from general famine was probably the major gain in welfare in Scotland in the eighteenth century’.4 As in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century and China and Russia in the twentieth century, the last of the famines to ‘kill’ in Scotland was a major one.5 The absence of serious famine in the decades prior to 1695 has been suggested by historians as an explanation for the population’s reaction to it; people had simply grown unaccustomed to such severe crises and therefore the experience was felt more harshly.6 The same could also be said of the French population, which prior to the disastrous famine of 1693–4 had experienced a period of plenty since 1661. The post-1662 generation which lived through the 1690s crisis was one ‘distinctly better off than its predecessors’, but French historians, unlike their Scottish counterparts, have not assigned the crisis there with any less severity as a result. By contrast, population growth in Scotland during those stable years may have contributed to the severity of the crisis as more people competed for access to limited resources.7 The most crucial question to be explored is how severe the famine was. Scepticism on the part of historians about the actual extent of suffering, death and other crisis-related problems has focused on the seemingly 4

5

6

7

For further discussion see Flinn, Scottish Population History, 209–40; Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 12. C. Ó Gráda, ‘Was the Great Famine Just Like Modern Famines?’, in O’Neill and Taye, A World Without Famine?, 51–2. I. D. Whyte, ‘Early Modern Scotland: Continuity and Change’, in G. Whittington and I. D. Whyte (eds), An Historical Geography of Scotland (London, 1983), 135; Whyte, Agriculture and Society, 251; T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 (London, 2000), 49. See also A. Cunningham and O. P. Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 200. Smout, History of the Scottish People, 144.

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exaggerated and incredible claims of a small number of contemporaries whose bleak portrayals of the famine do not immediately appear to be supported by demographic, and particularly mortality, sources. The French demographer Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie described the crisis of 1693–4, which claimed the lives of between 6 and 10 per cent of the French population, as ‘an apocalyptic famine of almost medieval proportions’.8 The authors of Scottish Population History, who estimated Scottish population losses between 5 and 15 per cent, comprising an undetermined combination of increased mortality, emigration and decreased fertility, played down the severity of what they defined as a four-year crisis in Scotland. It was simply, they argued, because this was the last ever, rather than the worst, national famine to occur in Scotland that resulted in it acquiring historical notoriety.9 Consequently, it remained in popular memory as a particularly disastrous episode in Scottish history, rather than some of the more severe famines of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Yet this does not explain its contemporary notoriety as the worst-ever Scottish famine. Seventeenth-century Scots had no exact definition of what a famine was, or how to measure it, the term frequently being interchanged with ‘scarcity’ and ‘dearth’. Writing about modern famine, Amartya Sen claimed that ‘while there is quite a literature on how to “define” famines one can very often diagnose it – even without being armed with a precise definition’.10 Nevertheless, in the 1690s contemporaries clearly recognised that they were living through such a crisis as all three terms were used in declarations for public fasts, in kirk session records the length and breadth of the country, and in the private correspondence of horrified contemporaries. Rosalind Mitchison has argued that ‘for famine to be a suitable word the season has to be such that the great bulk of the population are in danger of starvation and face the certainty of under-nourishment’, whereas ‘a shortage, mild or severe, would be a more suitable term for a situation where a substantial minority run a risk of starvation and a lot of people will go short’.11 If the famine was not universally disastrous then it is possible that during the ‘famine period’ most areas experienced a dearth, but not all experienced famine. Contemporaries in the 1690s used these terms to describe related problems, but the severity of the two types of crisis were considered to be very different. At a most basic level dearth related to a shortage of food, 8

9 10

11

E. Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, A History of France 1610–1774 (Oxford, 1996), 214–15; M. Lachiver, Les années de misère: La famine au temps du Grand Roi 1680–1720 (Paris, 1991), 17, 207. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 164. For a number of definitions, see A. Sen, Poverty and Famines, An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford, 1981), 39–40; G. W. Cox, ‘The Ecology of Famine: An Overview’, in J. R. K. Robson (ed.), Famine: Its Causes, Effects and Management (London, 1981), 5; D. Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford, 1988), 6–8. Mitchison, ‘The Movements of Scottish Corn Prices’, 284.

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and famine was what happened if that shortage was not supplied. Ayr (Ayrshire) kirk session’s reference to the two terms clarifies this. On 20 July 1696 the session was concerned about ‘the scarcitie and dearth of Meall’, but by January of the following year the situation appeared to have worsened as the minister read a proclamation for ‘a Nationall Fast and day of humilia[ti]on upon the Account of Grewing dearth and famine threatned’.12 A famine was clearly considered worse than a dearth and the session recognised that they were experiencing the lesser of the two. Famine cannot in this usage be described as merely a shortage of food. Dearth was a local shortage, with famine describing a far more wide-reaching or national crisis. The real difference between the two is that dearth was the actual scarcity and famine was the resultant disease and mortality. A suitable definition of famine in Scotland, therefore, is what happened when local shortage (i.e. dearth of victual) could not be supplied from elsewhere, resulting in starvation and death.13 It is difficult to identify the exact point at which a dearth developed into a famine and therefore specify when the famine actually began. Sorn (Ayrshire) kirk session described the reasons for a Synod-appointed fast on 6 October 1695: ‘our just & holy God is threatening us with a Scarcity (if not a famine) of bread by the extreme unseasonableness of the weather’.14 Lack of food, which would cause suffering, was clearly a scarcity or dearth, but the session’s fear that a ‘famine of bread’ might occur could indicate that they feared parishioners would die if the situation worsened. The use of the word ‘famine’ corresponds with the terms generally accepted by historians in the existing literature on famine in both Scotland and Europe during the 1690s. If famine is accepted as a general term by which to describe the national experience, what must be further clarified is whether Scotland experienced one or two famines in the late 1690s. The worst years of mortality and high prices occurred in 1697 and 1699 after the poor harvests of 1696 and 1698 which produced low crop yields and subsequently high grain prices. The better harvest of 1697 and the improved conditions which followed it across much of the country can be seen as having marked a clear break between the two crises, thus creating two famines. Ian Whyte, for example, described the crisis as ‘the famines of the 1690s’.15 That definition has not been adopted for this book since it is apparent that although mortality and suffering were greatly reduced over the country as a whole in crop year 1697, not all regions experienced this break and evidence of famine was still visible, particularly amongst the poor, in many areas. The Earl of Breadalbane, for example, only four months after the harvest of 1697, described ‘a very mortifying account 12 13 14 15

AyrA, CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8, 20 Jul. 1696 and 18 Jan. 1697. Cunningham and Grell, Four Horsemen, 201. AyrA, CH2/403/1, Sorn KSR 1692–1723, 6 Oct. 1695. Whyte, Agriculture and Society, 246.

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of the Country which is only in Gods hand to help’.16 The word famine, however, has limitations in its use. A more wholly embracing term which describes this disaster is ‘famine crisis’ which will be used to refer not just to the famine and its demographic impact, but to encompass the adverse weather conditions, harvest failures, cattle and sheep losses and food price increases that led to suffering, social dislocation and economic hardship. The suggestion that Scotland may not have experienced a crisis of faminelevel severity in the 1690s has largely been dismissed by historians writing on the subject over the last few years. Few of these historians have undertaken detailed research of the crisis to support this conclusion, instead turning to the well-known comments of contemporaries such as Sir Robert Sibbald and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, or the research of Smout and Flinn from the 1960s and 70s. Notably, not one of the 2006–7 publications celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Union of the Parliaments tackled the crucial question of how many people died in the famine – instead accepting the 5–15 per cent range laid down by Flinn and his colleagues in Scottish Population History in 1977. Before an estimation of population losses in the famine can be given, the timing of the crisis must be established to determine the period in which population loss is to be measured. Discerning the extent, severity and duration of the famine is central to comprehending how this crisis contributed to the economic downturn of the last decade of the seventeenth century, and, in turn, the Union. Seven ill years? The chronology of the famine is important, but also elusive. Most historians have selected the date range from the harvest of 1695 to that of 1699, but some contemporaries talked of ‘seven ill years’. This title, presumed to be a biblical reference to the seven years of famine in the Book of Genesis, has been largely dismissed by historians as inaccurate and based merely on religious belief that a lapse in moral standards was to blame for God’s wrath in sending such unseasonable weather to destroy the crops and punish the sins of the Scots.17 At a minimum, the crisis extended nationally over nearly five years, beginning with the harvest of 1695, and did not fully abate until that of 1700. This was compounded by increasing difficulties in the years immediately prior to the crisis which may have meant that the famine seemed worse to contemporaries because the problems they experienced were felt over an extended period of time. Identification of the beginning and end of the crisis is crucial in determining whether the seven-year claim is merely a loosely applied biblical reference, or whether the Scottish population was exposed to a disaster of much more widespread proportions than 16 17

NAS, Breadalbane MSS, GD112/39/177/5, [Breadalbane] to [-], 25 Jan. 1698. As Smout explained, ‘all the famines of the late 16th and 17th centuries were attributed to the sins of the nation’, History of the Scottish People, 89.

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most historians have been prepared to admit. William Ferguson acknowledged the argument that biblical association with the seven ill years may have led to an exaggerated representation of the famine, but exclaimed that ‘the point is hardly proved’.18 If the latter is true, then this must take its place globally amongst the longest famine crises of the early modern and modern periods. Even at the more conservative estimates of four or five years’ duration, the famine still ranks highly within this league, sitting alongside the five-year Irish famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s.19 The famine itself certainly did not last for seven years. In some regions it probably did not last for all of the five years that it was present nationally. Nevertheless, the wider difficulties and problems associated with the famine were apparent at least at various regional or local levels in the years and months prior to September 1695 and seven ill years is not a completely implausible definition of the social and economic difficulties faced by the Scottish population in the 1690s.20 What can be clearly established is that the series of national harvest failures began with the poor harvest of 1695. The harvest of 1694, however, had not been abundant, evidenced by grain price increases and the suggestion of food shortage in the western counties, and the crisis possibly started in the northern mainland as early as 1693.21 There is also substantial evidence from both the Northern Isles and the Borders that these regions experienced famine from the late 1680s and early 1690s. From late 1695 this was clearly a national crisis, but the poor harvests and resulting famine did not affect the whole of Scotland in a uniform pattern. Historians consider that the worst devastation described by contemporaries occurred only in certain regions, and was far from a universal experience. In general, regions of marginal agriculture, particularly the Highlands, were the worst affected. Flinn identified 1697, 1698 and 1699 as the worst years nationally, but concluded that of these only one or possibly two were ‘very serious’.22 In those years rising food prices and shortage led to an increase in mortality due to starvation and the spread of epidemic diseases. Understanding the ways in which the weather impacted on Scottish agriculture is key to providing an accurate timescale for the disaster. Throughout history it is the weather that has most frequently been held responsible for famine,23 but the relationships between climate, agriculture and demography are by no means accepted as interdependent by all 18 19 20

21 22 23

W. Ferguson, Scotland 1689 to the Present Vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1968), 78. Ó Gráda, Black ’47, 43. The difference in severity of a crisis across various parts of the area being examined makes timing a complex factor to identify precisely. See H. C. Johansen, ‘A Note on Professor Hollingsworth’s Crisis-Intensity-Index’, in H. Charbonneau and A. Larose (eds), The Great Mortalities: Methodological Studies of Demographic Crises in the Past (Liège, 1980), 153. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 165. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 179. Cox, ‘Ecology of Famine’, 7.

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historians. For example, an analysis of demographic data for France in the period 1740 to 1909 concluded that short-term changes in nutrition levels linked to economic crises had a greater impact upon the rates of demographic vital events than did short-term changes in climate and weather.24 Cormac Ó Gráda has described the way in which the weather ‘exacerbated’ the Irish famine of the late 1840s.25 In Scotland in the 1690s it was undoubtedly the weather which caused the famine. Other factors exacerbated and even prolonged its impact, but the origins of the crisis lie in the susceptibility of Scottish agriculture to the weather and the direct dependence of the vast majority of the population upon the outcome of the harvest and the productivity of their husbandry. In the same way that the famine in Ireland in the 1840s was so devastating due to the central reliance on the potato, in Scotland, the repeated failure of the oat crop in the 1690s spelled disaster for the population. Subsistence agriculture of the seventeenth century was, as it is in parts of the third world today, at the mercy of adverse weather conditions. Particularly prior to agricultural improvement, farming in Scotland and throughout Europe was a precarious business dependent not only upon the skill and knowledge of the farmer, but also the provision by God of suitable weather conditions during seedtime, the growing season and harvest. If unfavourable weather was present to a significant degree during any of these periods the outcome of the entire crop was placed in jeopardy. As such, crop failure or reduced crop yields were common features of seventeenth-century agriculture throughout the whole of Scotland. In regions of marginal land, into which category the majority of land in Scotland falls, crop yield is even more vulnerable to the impact of variable and adverse weather conditions.26 Farming in the upland regions of Scotland was even more risky than in lowland regions and crop failures were more frequent and more severe than on land at lower altitude with better quality soil. Similarly, multiple harvest failures had a disproportionately greater impact and were more likely to occur upon marginal than non-marginal agriculture. Multiple failures occurred much less regularly than single harvest failures, but were nevertheless not an uncommon feature of subsistence agriculture. The chances of economic survival were reduced during years of consecutive bad harvests as any reserves built up in normal years were largely consumed during the first year of harvest failure. Even after a 24

25 26

T. Richards, ‘Weather, Nutrition, and the Economy: Short-run Fluctuations in Births, Deaths, and Marriages, France 1740–1909’, Demography, 20, 2 (May 1983), 197. Ó Gráda, Black ’47, 35. T. C. Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief in Scotland’, in L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout (eds), Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977), 25. See also the map identifying areas of marginal land in M. L. Parry, ‘Evaluating the Impact of Climatic Change’, in Smith and Parry, Consequences of Climatic Change, 10.

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single harvest failure, the success of the following harvest could be threatened if tenants were forced to consume part of their seed crop to survive, thus famine could continue ‘beyond the immediate period of adverse weather’.27 This was undoubtedly a key factor in the prolonged duration of famine in the 1690s. It would equally apply if not only the quantity of grain was insufficient to support the population, but also the quality of grain was so poor that its nutritional value was reduced, or even in more extreme cases its edibility. Poor quality grain used as seed crop could also lead to a lower than average yield at the following harvest. In Aberdeenshire, after the bad harvest of 1782, it was determined that due to the poor quality of the grain, a larger quantity than normal would be required for use as seed corn.28 Despite lower yields, the crop was rarely a total failure as regardless of how late in the year the grain was harvested, generally some element of the crop could still be saved,29 but since this was the most important aspect of agriculture in Scotland, lower yields impacted negatively on the national economy.30 The famine of the 1690s occurred during the late Maunder Minimum and the lowest point of the Little Ice Age, a period of long-term climatic cooling between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century, which produced short-term changeable weather conditions that in turn impacted adversely upon agriculture.31 The coldest periods of the Little Ice Age were the 1590s, 1640s and 1690s,32 all of which coincided with years of harvest failure and subsistence crises in European countries: for example, Sweden in 1596–1603, 1649–52 and 1695–7; France in 1649–51 and 1693–4; England in 1597; and Scotland in 1594–8, 1649–53 and 1695–1700. These also correlate with periods in which volcanic eruptions created dust veils in the atmosphere, serving to reduce mean temperatures over the period to between 0.3° and 1.0°C lower than late-twentieth-century levels.33 The southern movement of cold air and polar water which caused this reduction may have had a greater impact in northern Europe and the temperature of Scotland and Norway was even colder than that of England and France, 27 28

29 30

31

32

33

M. L. Parry, Climatic Change, Agriculture and Settlement (Folkestone, 1978), 159. E. A. Wrigley, ‘Corn yields and prices’, in J. Walter and R. Schofield (eds), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), 243. Parry, Climatic Change, 87. B. H. Slicher van Bath as quoted in P. R. Galloway, ‘Long-Term Fluctuations in Climate and Population in the Preindustrial Era’, Population and Development Review, 12, 1 (Mar. 1986), 8. B. Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300–1850 (New York, 2000); J. M. Grove, The Little Ice Age (London, 1988), 3. The existence of the Little Ice Age is by no means accepted by all historians or scientists, despite John Post’s confidence that it ‘can no longer be questioned’, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore, 1977), 2. E. Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the year 1000 (London, 1972), 297. Post, Last Great Subsistence Crisis, xii; Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 227.

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being possibly ‘more than 2°C cooler than the averages for 1931–60’.34 The 1690s was one of the coldest periods ever recorded in western Europe and caused the advance of Alpine, Scandinavian and Icelandic glaciers.35 Sea temperatures off Orkney were possibly as much as 5°C lower than the modern day and ‘stories of eskimos in kayaks arriving dead or exhausted in Orkney and Scottish waters date from this period of outward-flowing Arctic currents’.36 The implication of this reduction in temperature on grain production is severe. In Iceland a reduction in summer temperatures of only 1°C will reduce hay yields by 15 to 17 per cent,37 while in England a 1°C change in summer temperature can lead to a 5 per cent change in the wheat yield.38 Lower average temperatures were not alone significant enough to cause serious harvest failure in many European countries.39 More important were the short-term changes in the weather and its impact on agriculture. During the famous ‘bad decades’ of the 1590s and 1690s, eight out of ten of the summers were characterised by depression tracks passing far south over Scotland and Denmark, between 56 degrees and 60 degrees north. When this happens floods of cool and damp pour over western Europe during what should be more clement months, and under early agricultural conditions might destroy the harvests and cause a famine.40 The main features of the weather across Europe in the 1690s were cold, harsh winters and cold and wet summers.41 The 1690s were by no means the absolute coldest years of the period, but they do indicate a combined trend of cooler seasons from the end of the 1680s falling during the middle of a period of colder than average temperatures and were consequently all the more severe.42 This type of weather connected to long-term climatic cooling was particularly disastrous to the outcome of the Scottish grain crop. The danger was not that the crop would be completely destroyed, but that the quality of the yield and the resultant quantity of usable grain would be compromised since wet and cold weather during the crucial summer and autumn growing periods ‘not only discourage ripening but encourage 34 35 36 37 38

39

40 41 42

Parry, Climatic Change, 99. Grove, Little Ice Age, 417. W. L. Thomson, History of Orkney (Edinburgh, 1987), 185. Parry, Climatic Change, 73. Bruce Campbell, ‘Harvest failure and harvest success: three centuries of English grain yields, 1211–1491’, ‘Weather, Climate Change, and British Farming in Historical Perspective’, British Agricultural History Society Conference, 6 Dec. 2008. E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, in P. Burke (ed.), Economy and Society in Modern Europe (London, 1972), 160. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 299–300. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 66. See G. Manley, ‘Central England temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 100 (1974).

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sprouting in the ear, and frequently the grain would have to be harvested green and wet and thus, before the days of efficient corn drying, easily became mildewed’.43 The nutritional deficiencies which led to starvation and famine were a direct result of the impact of meteorological conditions upon the vital grain crops. A reduced crop yield resulted in a reduction in grain supply. Economic crisis followed because prices were forced up beyond the reach of certain sections of society, and in turn the inability to secure food supplies of both adequate quantity and quality lowered levels of nutrition and had a direct demographic impact upon the population as deaths increased due to starvation. There is substantial qualitative evidence to confirm that some people did in fact starve to death in Scotland, unable to secure adequate supplies of food to meet the lowest nutritional levels necessary for survival. However, epidemics, resulting from, and spread by, low nutrition levels as people were less physically able to resist disease, claimed a much greater proportion of deaths during the famine. An examination of causes of death in London between 1675 and 1825 concluded that price increases led to an increase in death from typhus, smallpox and fever.44 As crop yields in Scotland fell, grain prices rose and fewer people could afford to purchase normal or even sufficient quantities. Increased infant mortality was another feature of lowered nutritional levels of both mother and child. In women of childbearing age, as nutrition levels dropped, famine amenorrhoea interrupted fertility cycles and led to a reduction in births. This would have been further reduced by an increase in miscarriages resulting from the poorer health of pregnant women. The birth rate declined due to an increase in deaths of those of childbearing age and a reduction in the physical capability of women to produce children. Furthermore, a reduction in the number of marriages during the famine period, postponed by a lessening in economic expectations, or cancelled due to the death of one or both partners, would have consequently been followed by a fall in the birth rate. The relationships between weather, economy and nutrition had a direct link to demographic vital events and a subsequent reduction in population. Climate and crisis in Europe in the 1690s – the human consequence of adverse weather conditions When examining the Scottish crisis of the late 1690s, it is important to appreciate that the famine did not happen in isolation. The famine was only one of four economic crises to afflict Scotland in the 1690s; similarly it was merely one of many European subsistence crises to occur in 43 44

Parry, Climatic Change, 159. P. R. Galloway, ‘Annual Variations in Deaths by Age, Deaths by Cause, Price, and Weather in London 1670 to 1830’, Population Studies, 39, 3 (Nov. 1985), 498–500.

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that decade. Most, though by no means all, countries in northern and western Europe experienced problems resulting from reduced crop yields which ranged from higher than average food prices to disastrous national famines. The fact that these agricultural difficulties were so widespread confirms that the common factor of climate was largely responsible.45 The extent to which adverse weather conditions were able to impact upon the population, however, was defined by local social, economic and political conditions. Setting the famine in Scotland within the wider European experience of crisis in the 1690s brings not only a comparative approach to analysis of the Scottish data, but also provides crucial quantitative data and models that are unavailable for Scotland. The most important of these are for climate and weather. Relatively little has been written about Scottish climate history during this period,46 and this factor combined with the absence of meteorological data recorded in Scotland, by instruments such as thermometers, during the seventeenth century, has resulted in a reliance on quantitative primary evidence and secondary material from other European countries. An examination of the causes and extent of harvest failure and famine, with a focus on climatic and weather patterns across Europe and at regional levels, provide a framework within which to investigate the Scottish famine of the 1690s. The different impact of climate and weather on crops across Europe resulted in two main famine periods: the years 1693–4 which affected western Europe, and 1695 to 1700 in northern Europe.47 France was the first country to be affected by poor harvests which resulted in famine in 1693 and 1694 in which between 6 and 10 per cent of the population died. Coinciding with this was harvest failure and starvation on a much smaller and more localised basis in parts of Spain, resulting in a serious food riot in Madrid in April 1699.48 The second famine period affected Scandinavia and the Baltic; Norway in 1695–6 and Sweden in 1696–7, both of which experienced population losses of probably no more than 10 per cent.49 In 45

46

47 48

49

This explanation for the cause of the European famines of the 1690s has been the subject of study, for example on France in Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine; and Norway in J. M. Grove and A. Battagel, ‘Tax Records as an Index of Little Ice Age Environmental and Economic Deterioration, from Sunnfjord Fogderi, Western Norway 1667–1815’, in Smith and Parry, Consequences of Climatic Change. Some of the most notable exceptions are Parry, Climatic Change; Parry, ‘Evaluating the Impact of Climatic Change’; Grove, Little Ice Age; Whyte, ‘Human response’; R. A. Dodgshon, ‘The Little Ice Age in the Scottish Highlands and Islands: Documenting its Human Impact’, Scottish Geography Journal, 121, 4; G. Whittington, ‘The Little Ice Age and Scotland’s Weather’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 101, 3 (1985). Ladurie, however, specified 1693–4 and 1697, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 90. H. Kamen, European Society 1500–1700 (London, 1996), 37; H. Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 1665–1700 (London, 1980), 46; Alexander Stanhope to Mr Secretary Vernon, 29 Apr. 1699, in A. Johansen, M. Frame and M. Van Ittersum (eds), The Western World (Boston, 2002), 147–8. Famine was also evident in Tobolsk, Siberia in 1696–7, W. A. Dando, ‘Man-made famine:

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1697 Finland lost an estimated one-third of its population, marking it out as the country most devastated, demographically, by the famines of the decade.50 Estonia, a major grain-exporting country during this period, was also badly affected and lost about 20 per cent of its population. A smaller mortality peak was finally evident in Denmark in 1700 at the very end of this crisis period after a ‘very poor’ harvest in 1699.51 The crisis in Scotland began in 1695 (coinciding with the peak of the crisis in Norway), indicating that Scottish agriculture was vulnerable to the same weather conditions as the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, ending the same year the crisis affected Denmark. The Scottish famine extended over a much longer time period than any of the crises in the countries specified, but the national demographic effect was probably no more serious than most of them. Most of the other European famines of the 1690s have been much more thoroughly researched than that of Scotland, and accounts of both the climatic and economic origins and the social, demographic and economic consequences are available for many. The first famine period of 1693–4 was shaped by a crisis in France which began in the autumn of 1693. However, this was not an isolated bad harvest year as agriculture in France suffered from poor harvests in 1691 and again in 1692 when the crucial summer growing season was described as cold and wet.52 The ‘disastrous’ harvest of 1693 which followed was a result of both a cold spring53 and ‘foggy and belatedly warm weather’ in summer combining to destroy the crop which produced only one- to two-thirds of the normal yield.54 The outcome of three consecutive years of substandard harvests was a reduced supply of grain resulting in high prices and famine. Between the summer of 1693 and that of 1694 an estimated one and a half to two million people died.55 There were, however, regional variations and the east and south-east were relatively unaffected.56 These areas in particular were associated with the ‘export orientated textile industry [which] could achieve a considerable prosperity . . . [and allowed] many people to avoid the worst consequences of the great hunger’.57 At a national level, France experienced a major crisis with some regions experiencing catastrophic

50

51 52 53 54 55

56

57

some geographical insights from an exploratory study of a Millennium of Russian famines’, in Robson, Famine, 139–54. E. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine in 1696–97’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 3, 1 (1955), 63. H. C. Johansen, Danish Population History 1600–1939 (Odense, 2002), 60–2. P. Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (London, 1970), 216. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 70. Goubert, Louis XIV, 216–17. Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, 215, estimated that two million people died as a result of the famine; more recently Lachiver revised this to 1.5 million, Les Années de misère, 17, 207. J. Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises and subsistence crises in France, 1650–1725’, in J. Walter and R. Schofield (eds), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), 193. Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, 216.

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effects.58 Despite the regional variations, this was a crisis on a national scale with no area being completely unaffected. The reasons for the severity of the crisis were that harvest failure caused by bad weather conditions was worsened by political, economic and social factors affecting the country in the early 1690s, some of which were common to Scotland. France had been at war from 1688 which led to the imposition of high taxation to fund the war economy. At the same time that taxes were increasing, however, agricultural output was decreasing from as early as 1680, but more particularly from 1690. The poor harvests of 1691, 1692 and 1693, therefore, occurred on top of an already decreasing grain supply. In addition to these financial pressures, sections of the French population were also subject to a decreased supply of grain due to the bulk buying of food provisions for the army, troops pillaging their supplies, price speculation, the export of grain from areas of relatively good supply to take advantage of sale at higher prices elsewhere, and the fear of scarcity which led to rioting. The resulting rise in prices was as high as five to six times those of normal harvest years,59 which led to an increase in vagrancy and a 10 per cent drop in the population through death from epidemic disease and starvation. The demographic impact upon some of those countries affected in the second famine period appears to have been even worse than this. Focused in northern Europe in the years 1695, 1696 and 1697, Norway, Sweden, Estonia and more particularly Finland experienced harvest failure and grain shortage which led to heavy loss of population. Poor harvests in Sweden in 1695 and 1696 preceded serious harvest failure in 1697 causing mortality rates to rise as high as 16 per cent.60 Nevertheless, there as in France, some regions were relatively unaffected by the grain shortage and did not experience very high death rates. These were particularly areas in the south of Sweden, such as Scania, which in normal harvest years were producers of surplus grain for export.61 Perhaps one reason why problems were not too severe across the whole of Sweden, in comparison to the situation in Finland, was because it was able to control grain imports from other parts of the realm. Estonia, which, with Livonia, has been termed the ‘granary of the [Swedish] state’, suffered from greater problems than Sweden partly because grain supplies were exported from Estonia to Sweden and Finland to relieve pressures there.62 Poor harvests in 1694 and 1695 were followed by harvest failure in 1696 in which only a quarter or a fifth of the crop was harvested. These man-made and natural reductions of the grain supply led to a rise in the death rate from the spring of 1696.63 By 58 59 60

61 62 63

Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises’, 191–2. Goubert, Louis XIV, 215–18. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 56. See also A. F. Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (Cambridge, 1998), 235–6. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 56. M. Huang (ed.), History of Estonia (Tallinn, 2000), 122. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 57.

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1698 between 70,000 and 75,000 people, or 20 per cent of the population of Estonia, were dead as a result.64 Although not by the same means, the Swedish Crown was also to blame for the severity of the famine in Finland. Finnish agriculture, like that of Estonia, suffered two deficient harvests prior to serious harvest failure in 1696 which led to a massive increase in mortality in 1697. Based on the data available for two of the four Finnish regions, a drop in the population of the country as a whole has been calculated at one-third.65 However, it is apparent that although these deaths were a combination of starvation and disease due to grain shortage and high prices, these supplies were not nonexistent. The Swedish government was able to distribute emergency supplies in the form of loans, but its insistence on immediate payment, or security for future payment combined with a rigid repayment schedule, diminished its effectiveness and failed to reduce death rates substantially.66 Famine and famine-related suffering in France, Sweden, Estonia, Finland and Denmark can clearly be linked to poorer than average harvests which can in turn be largely attributed to the cooler and wetter conditions known to have prevailed throughout northern and western Europe during this decade. In not one of those countries, however, is it clear to what extent climate was ultimately responsible for the level of suffering experienced by the population as political, economic and social factors within and between these countries contributed to the severity of the crises. It is in Norway and Iceland that the most obvious links between climate and agricultural problems are demonstrated. In both countries lower than average temperatures caused the advance, as in the Alps, of glaciers, which encroached on farmland while water released from the glaciers caused flooding of land otherwise unaffected by ice movements. An analysis of tax records for western Norway between 1667 and 1815 highlighted the economic difficulties faced by farmers in the light of longer-term climatic change; arable land and pastoral grazing land was destroyed and colder temperatures produced shorter growing seasons for grain, loss of cattle and a reduction in fish stocks off coastal areas.67 In Iceland, conditions were even worse due to the increase in extent, and longer duration, of sea ice around the coast which was particularly bad in 1695. A contemporary account described the impact: frosts and severe conditions came to most parts of this country; in most places sheep and horses perished in large numbers, and most people 64 65

66 67

Huang, History of Estonia, 122. The two provinces were Tavastland and Nyland, Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 63. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 61–2. Grove and Battagel, ‘Tax Records’. For a discussion of the demographic impact of these problems see S. Dyrvik, K. Mykland and J. Oldervol, The demographic crises in Norway in the 17th and 18th centuries (Bergen, 1976).

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had to slaughter half their stock of cattle and sheep, both in order to save hay and for food since fishing could not be conducted because of the extensive ice cover.68 At the end of the seventeenth century would any underdeveloped economy, dependent on the outputs of subsistence agriculture, have been able to withstand the ravages of these multiple years of adverse climate and weather unscathed? Much of northern Europe did not, but England did. It was one north-western European country which did not fit into this wider pattern of famine in the 1690s. Despite this, English agriculture was affected by the poor weather conditions of the decade which resulted in an increase in grain prices. It stands out as the decade with the highest number of days of snowfall ever recorded in London.69 T. H. Baker defined all of the grain harvests between 1692 and 1698 (except 1693) as either ‘deficient’, ‘poor’ or ‘bad’.70 Frosts, rain and frequently cold weather in autumn appear to have been the main causes of low crop yields, but 1698 stands out as the worst year in terms of adverse conditions, with sea ice recorded off the coast of Suffolk in February and snow across England in May. Despite claims that 1699 ‘was a better year for agriculture’ in England, the harvest that year was still described as ‘deficient’.71 Grain shortages in England in the 1690s resulted in widespread rioting suggesting some level of correlation with the poor harvests in France. The riots of summer 1693 support the claim that the harvest of 1692 was poor. Rioting in the spring and summer of 1694, however, indicates that the following grain harvest was not quite as ‘abundant’ as Baker described,72 although R. B. Outhwaite explained that ‘some respite’ was afforded in 1694 after the harvest of 1693, despite the fact that the national average of wheat prices that year was the highest between 1690 and 1699.73 A wet summer and autumn in which the fruit harvest was poor and sheep disease a major problem would presumably not have been as beneficial to crops across the whole of England as Baker seemed to conclude.74 An absence of references to grain-related riots throughout the rest of the period indicates 68 69 70

71 72 73

74

Grove, Little Ice Age, 21. Grove, Little Ice Age, 194. T. H. Baker in R. Whitlock (ed.), Agricultural Records A.D. 220–1968 (London, 1969), 60–3. Martin Parry, however, questioned the extent to which Baker’s material was useful since he failed to cite any sources for his claims, Climatic Change, 56. Despite this, it would appear to largely fit with other, verified sources about the weather and agriculture throughout northern Europe and his general claims about the pattern of cold and rainy years and resultant crop deficiencies do not seem unlikely. Whitlock, Agricultural Records, 63–4. Whitlock, Agricultural Records, 60. R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Food Crises in Early Modern England: Patterns of Public Response’, in M. Flinn (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Economic History Congress, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1978), 371. Whitlock, Agricultural Records, 60.

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that either the harvests following 1693 were not as deficient, or that the government had taken adequate steps to ensure a sufficient supply of grain. That the harvest of 1698 was particularly poor, however, is confirmed by the cessation of grain exports from England in February 1699, a factor of concern to its northern neighbour.75 Despite the evidence of poor harvests, grain rioting and emergency requirement to import grain, England did not suffer from either dearth or famine in the 1690s. The increase in grain prices brought about by reduced yields produced a drop in real wages between 1697 and 1699 which caused sections of the population ‘considerable hardship’, but crucially not famine.76 Despite high grain prices and increased unemployment, there was no resultant starvation (grain imports may have helped), but neither did epidemic disease break out among malnourished sections of the population. The impact of climate upon agriculture would appear not to have affected the demographic system in England as it did in Scotland, France, Scandinavia and the Baltic. Death rates remained low across the country until the summer of 1699 when warmer and drier conditions than had prevailed in the preceding years, combined with the deficient harvests of the previous two years, resulted in increased mortality through griping in the guts, convulsions and infantile diarrhoea.77 Colder, wetter weather and longer, more severe winters in the early and mid 1690s may have been responsible for repressing the spread of epidemic disease, helping to keep mortality at relatively low levels across England.78 To a lesser extent even the birth rate could be affected as exposure of the population to colder than average temperatures could cause resultant temporary reduction in female fertility levels.79 An alternative possibility is that the lower harvest yields and price rises did not lead directly to malnutrition on a large enough scale to cause a mortality crisis due to the intervention of other factors, as adverse weather conditions throughout the decade did not avert

75

76

77

78

79

R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Dearth and Government Intervention in English Grain Markets, 1590– 1700’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 34, 3 (Aug. 1981), 392. J. Walter and R. Schofield, ‘Famine, disease and crisis mortality in early modern society’, in Walter and Schofield, Famine, Disease and the Social Order, 36. There were small negative impacts upon the death and birth rates, although marriage rates were higher than normal. See R. Schofield, ‘The Impact of Scarcity and Plenty on Population Change in England, 1541–1871’, in R. I. Rotberg and T. K. Rabb (eds), Hunger and History: The Impact of Changing Food Consumption Patterns on Society (Cambridge, 1985), 87, 92. A. B. Appleby, ‘Epidemics and Famine in the Little Ice Age’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 10, 4 (Spring 1980), 655. Appleby, ‘Epidemics and Famine’, 654, 646. Conversely, increased numbers of deaths can be distinguished during periods in which winters were colder or longer than normal and are linked to an inability of the most vulnerable sections of the population to withstand such conditions. Galloway, ‘Long-Term Fluctuations in Climate’, 11. See also N. J. G. Pounds, as quoted in Galloway, ‘Annual Variations in Deaths by Age’, 20.

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either starvation or the spread of epidemic disease linked to malnutrition across other European countries.80 That England did not experience high mortality rates and famine during this period was to a certain extent due to the effective distribution of relief under the terms of the Poor Law. A more important factor may have been the structure of English arable agriculture and its division between springand winter-sown grains. This mixture provided a safeguard against famine by ensuring that if one type of grain failed, another type of grain would still be obtainable; because of this, ‘the English poor . . . had grains available at affordable prices during the 1690s; hence they did not starve’.81 A defining reason why Scotland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and France all experienced famine in the 1690s was their continued reliance on either spring- or autumn-sown grains. Scotland and Scandinavia were both heavily dependent on spring grains – Scotland on oats, Scandinavia on barley – and both areas suffered terrible starvation in the 1590s and 1690s. They experienced their greatest suffering when the spring grains failed, and not usually in the same years as the French famines.82 As the poor weather conditions caused a harvest failure, the price of grain rose and the absence of affordable food supplies resulted in famine. The difference in grain types grown across Europe accounts for the concurrence of harvest failure and famine in Scotland with Scandinavia, but not with France. A decade of disaster Given the devastation occurring in France, Estonia and Finland, it is unsurprising that Scotland, not as economically or agriculturally advanced as England, was also badly affected. To what extent has the gravity of the crisis been underplayed because this would not support the claims of those historians who perceive that Scotland progressed well economically in the later seventeenth century? A devastating famine would indicate that Scotland’s agricultural sector and its infrastructure had not developed sufficiently to enable the country to support itself during bad years, in the way that England had. The economic incentives for Union are important and continue to be hotly debated amongst Scottish historians. The famine was part 80

81

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Despite some element of grain shortage and high food prices in England in the 1690s, there was no resultant peak in mortality because ‘High food prices were not a significant cause of catastrophic mortality after the mid-seventeenth century’ in England, S. R. Duncan, S. Scott and C. J. Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics in Britain, 1550–1800’, Demography, 30, 3 (Aug. 1993), 419. A. B. Appleby, ‘Grain Prices and Subsistence Crises in England and France, 1590–1740’, Journal of Economic History, 39, 4 (Dec. 1979), 877. Appleby, ‘Grain Prices and Subsistence Crises’, 884.

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of this, thus an understanding of its extent contributes to understanding and quantifying the economic argument for Union. As in France, the famine was not the only crisis to affect the Scottish population or economy during those years and the suffering felt during the famine may have been magnified by the convergence of a number of economic and political problems impacting upon the country in the late 1690s, which, if they did not make the conditions of the famine worse, certainly did not aid the efforts of famine relief. Scotland suffered from not just the famine, but another three additional ‘disasters’ during the 1690s which were: the Nine Years War with France from 1688 to 1697, causing the loss of an important trading market and disruption to coastal and North Sea shipping trade; the failure of the Company of Scotland and the abandonment of Darien, which resulted in the loss of one-sixth to one-quarter of the country’s liquid capital; and the raising of foreign tariffs against Scottish goods, making exports difficult.83 Analysis of these other disasters will not be undertaken by this study, but recognition of their effects upon the economy which therefore contributed to the severity of the famine is important. Crucially, they all impacted unfavourably on Scotland’s economy and trade at a time when additional financial resources were necessary to purchase emergency grain supplies from abroad. Grain exports were crucial to Scotland’s relatively weak and underdeveloped economy which relied on selling its agricultural produce, raw materials and basic manufactures to maintain its precarious balance of payments, something already proving increasingly difficult in the light of foreign tariffs. As grain levels plummeted, exports were prohibited to relieve domestic shortage. The failure of this action alongside the removal of duty from grain imports to alleviate the problem forced the privy council to take exceptional measures and enter the international grain market as a buyer, rather than a seller, to secure a minimum flow of grain into the country. Thousands of pounds drained from the country’s coffers in the form of bounty payments on grain imports, a move made necessary since simultaneous harvest failures across northern Europe increased both prices of, and competition for, foreign grain supplies. A sermon preached by William Wisheart before parliament in 1700 described the problems that Scotland was suffering and warned the people of this ‘Poor Bleeding Sinking Nation’ that future difficulties were certain unless they turned away from their Sins: God hath been calling us to Repentance, by a great and long continued Dearth: By great Sickness and Mortality: By growing Poverty and Want among People: By God’s Defeating that Great, Laudable and Glorious Design and Undertaking of the Nation, for the Advancement of Foreign Trade [the colony at Darien], which if it be altogether 83

Smout, Scottish Trade, 245–53.

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crushed, Scotland is never like to enjoy such a fair Opportunity again, for Promoting her outward Health and Welfare.84 The importance of this decade of disaster has been debated by historians attempting to define the role of the Union of the Parliaments of 1707 in Scotland’s longer-term economic development. Smout and Whatley have stressed the importance of the four disasters of the 1690s in contributing to the economic arguments in favour of Union.85 Despite this, there is little evidence that contemporaries directly linked the two events of famine and Union, although the trauma of the crisis was used as anti-Union propaganda. In 1704 Mr Hodges (an agent for the country party leader, the Duke of Hamilton) inaccurately exclaimed that the English with ‘heathnish cruelty’ banned exports of grain despite having ‘fullnes and plenty’, their act being ‘chiefly designed against’ Scotland, ‘when thousands of our poor were dying for lack of bread’.86 Indeed, many of the petitions to parliament in 1700–1 complaining about the country’s bleak economic circumstances mention either the recent famine, or more commonly the ‘dearth of victual’, only in the context of complaints about the subsequent increase in the number of poor, rather than in wider political or economic contexts. More important to the petitioners was the ‘decay of trade’ and failure of the Darien colony.87 Dearth and famine were naturally, although less regularly, appearing occurrences. They were a fact of life in an economy dominated by subsistence agriculture, subject to the vagaries of weather. The 1690s famine must be seen in the context of early modern famine in which contemporaries understood the crisis to be the result of God’s judgement upon a sinful nation. A proclamation for a national fast in February 1699, for example, described that It hath pleased the holy and Righteous God for the many great & hainous sins & provocations of this Kingdom, To afflict the same wt the Lamentable Stroke of Dearth & Scarcity (which if not in his mercy prevented) doth Threaten a dreadfull famine.88 Presbyterians and Episcopalians used this as a means of attacking each other’s doctrine; Episcopalians pointed to God’s wrath following the Glorious Revolution and deposition of the rightful monarch James II, the 84

85

86 87

88

W. Wisheart, A sermon preached before His Grace, James Duke of Queensberry, His Majesties High Commissioner, and the honourable estates of Parliament, in the Parliament-House, the 1st of December 1700 (Edinburgh, 1701), 15, 17. See, for example, T. C. Smout, ‘The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. 1. The Economic Background’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 16, 3 (1964); Smout, Scottish Trade; Whatley, The Scots and the Union. NAS, Hamilton MSS, GD406/1/5118, T. Hodges to the Duke of Hamilton, 12 Jul. 1704. For example, NAS, Warrants of Parliament, PA6/32, Petition of the Burgh of Dysart, 9 Jan. 1701; Petition of the Burgh of Perth, 9 Jan. 1701. NAS, PC1/51, Privy Council Register of Acts 1696–9 [Hereafter, PCRA 1696–9], 7 Feb. 1699.

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Presbyterians to the sinful nature of the Scots. The labels of King William’s ‘Dear’ or ‘Ill’ years were used by Jacobite supporters to assign responsibility for the famine to an unpopular and ‘unlawful’ monarch. The intervention of profiteers in the market, driving up prices and reducing supplies, merely served to increase the distress felt by the populace and thus man-made problems contributed to the severity of the crisis, but were ultimately not responsible for it. The complication with determining the famine’s direct impact on Union is obviously its connection with the other disasters of the 1690s.89 One of the primary problems, beyond a reduction in estate income, growth in the number of poor and resultant expenditure on poor relief and famine relief, was a reduction in specie circulating in the country. In part this was a result of cash flowing out of the country to pay for grain imports and import bounties, but it was also an issue related to the money invested in the Company of Scotland and spent on the Darien colony venture. General depression in trade as a result of increased tariffs, attacks on shipping by French privateers and a ban on trade with France further increased the economic problems which the country faced on top of the failure of the grain export trade. The famine may have had an impact on elite attitudes to Union, but only within this wider context of economic downturn or recession. A direct link between famine and Union was not explicit. The conclusion that these crises were merely an ‘aberration’, a ‘blip’ or an ‘exceptional misfortune’ and not representative of the wider trends of Scottish economic conditions in the second half of the seventeenth century has received criticism on the basis that the crises acted as a ‘severe check’ to Scottish economic development which was furthermore not as strong as some historians have argued.90 What is evident is that the famine helped to create ‘a serious liquidity crisis, “a dearth of monies”, and a general slump in economic activity in several directions’, which may have resulted in a severe recession extending from 1688 until after 1707.91 In France, the war, high taxation, decreased agricultural output and famine caused a depression between 1690 and 1715 that resulted in a slump in tithes and rents by between 25 and 33 per cent of what they had been in the previous twenty-five years.92 This examination of the famine crisis will contribute to 89 90

91 92

Whatley makes this point in The Scots and the Union, Chapter 4. Devine, ‘The Union of 1707 and Scottish Development’, 25; M. Lynch, Scotland: A new history (London, 1992), 309; K. Wrightson, ‘Kindred adjoining kingdoms: an English perspective on the social and economic history of early modern Scotland’, in R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte (eds), Scottish Society 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1989), 255; Devine, The Scottish Nation, 49; Whatley, The Scots and the Union. See also C. A. Whatley, Scottish Society 1707–1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards Industrialisation (Manchester, 2000), Chapter 1; and C. A. Whatley, ‘Economic Causes and Consequences of the Union of 1707: A Survey’, Scottish Historical Review, 68, 2 (Oct. 1989). Smout, Scottish Trade, 248; Whatley, Scottish Society, 36. Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, 212–13.

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Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

the debate about whether the importance of this decade was merely as a temporary setback in Scottish national improvement, or as a more serious demonstration of the weakness of the economy prior to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. The famine unfolded during not only a period of extreme climatic change and meteorological variability, but one in which the Scottish economy was put under severe strain due to the increased burden of taxation it bore as a result of King William’s war with France. Much of Scotland was still recovering from the political and economic upheaval of the Revolution years, and the failure of many of the northern parishes to accommodate the subsequent political change of leadership within the Church of Scotland spelled ruin to some of the poorest sections of these communities when they needed help the most. Regardless of whether or not the sheer scale of this disaster was unprecedented, the Scottish state struggled to cope with its consequences. This study sets out to continue the revisionist recognition of the 1690s crisis by identifying it as one of the most serious famines to occur in Scotland since the medieval period.

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chapter two

Climate, Weather and Agriculture: The Making of a Famine In July 1695 the Scottish privy council passed the ‘Act for Encouraging the Export of Victual’, otherwise known as the ‘Corn Bounty Act’.1 It aimed to increase the profitability of grain production for landowners by placing a 20-shilling bounty on each boll of grain exported, thus emulating the successful English act promoting grain export instituted at the Glorious Revolution. Bounty payments were to start in November after the harvest, when the new crop entered circulation. As William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England and proposer of the ill-fated Darien colony, described, the move proved to be exceedingly short-sighted: ‘In Summer, 1695, they were very busie in giving rewards for having their Corn carried abroad, and a few Months after, as impatiently employed in buying it back again’.2 It is unlikely that any bounties were ever paid. Within a matter of only six months, the country was forced to begin importing, rather than exporting, grain. The harvest of 1695 was a national failure. The tacksmen of the excise declared that from September and October 1695 it was evident that the crop of the ‘whole nation’ had failed. It was so ‘Defective over the whole Kingdom’, that ‘the Nation was generally Allarum’d with Apprehensions of a Scarcity and Famine’.3 The failure across the country of the 1695 harvest was the first in a series of three national multiple harvest failures that triggered five years of grain scarcity, high prices, dearth and ultimately famine. It was not until the harvest of 1700 that the domestic food supply was once again sufficient to feed the population. On first perusal of this topic, the famine came out of nowhere. Low grain prices in the early 1690s had motivated the Corn Bounty Act and the tacksmen of the excise claimed that as late as 14 August 1695, it was too early to predict ‘whether the Harvest & Cropt would be Good or bad’, and that the crisis could not have been foreseen at that point. The assertion by the privy council that the first national harvest failure of the late 1690s was unpredictable after twenty years of ‘Great Plenty of Grain’ explains the 1

2 3

Act for encouraging Export of victual, 17 Jul. 1695, in T. Thomson (ed.), The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 9 (Edinburgh, 1822), 458–9. William Paterson as quoted in Smout, Scottish Trade, 246. NAS, GD3/10/4/1/E, The Petition of the Tacksmen of the In-land Excise [1698] [Hereafter, The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698]].

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government’s actions in passing the act in the months prior to the harvest of 1695.4 Deeper investigation, based on more modern research by historians, reveals that the vulnerable Scottish agricultural sector had been subject to increasingly variable and adverse weather, and deteriorating climatic conditions from the beginning of the decade and in some parts of the country from the late 1680s.5 Establishing the connections between climate, weather and agriculture in Scotland during the nadir of the Little Ice Age determines the human impact of colder temperatures and erratic weather conditions by setting it within a wider context of climate change and famine in Europe. This chapter will challenge the notion that this was a crisis which originated with the harvest of 1695 and will look at some of its wider climatic and agricultural roots, by building up a picture of a society vulnerable to the weather, and one which was in an increasingly precarious situation by mid-decade. By the time the crisis broke nationally in the months following the harvest of 1695, the Scottish population had been exposed to increased hardship through a combination of local scarcities, crop failures and an overall decline in crop yields in the preceding years. Although the famine crisis of the late 1690s in Scotland was a direct result of adverse short-term weather conditions, an understanding of the implications that longer-term climatic changes had for the country provide the context within which these meteorological changes fluctuated. The weather factors which combined to ruin the grain harvests in Scotland had been evident to a certain degree for something in the region of 150 years prior to 1695. The continued exposure of Scottish agriculture to a colder climate made agriculture throughout the country generally more vulnerable to further minor changes in the weather. This impact would be further intensified by the fact that ‘during colder periods there is greater variability in week-to-week and year-to-year weather’.6 Due to the focus of this study an extensive examination of the longer-term climatic causes of the harvest failures is not possible. However, the weather conditions in Scotland, and Europe more generally, do suggest a connection between a cooler climate and difficulties in agriculture, both during the famine period and the longer-term build-up to it. The complete absence of meteorological data from instrument records for Scotland during this period have forced a reliance on English and European data to provide a context in which to fit qualitative information in the form of weather diaries and eyewitness descriptive accounts of changes in the weather, and physical and biological or ‘proxy’ data provided by material such as grain prices.7 Partly due to the relatively small 4 5

6 7

The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698]. Parry, Climatic Change, 92–105; Whyte, ‘Human response’, 20–2; Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’. Galloway, ‘Long-Term Fluctuations in Climate’, 7–8. For a description of the various types of weather and climate sources, see H. H. Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World (London, 1982), 67–100.

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time period being examined with the need to identify fluctuations over a decade and change on a yearly basis within it, and partly due to methodological constraints, the types of sources used in this study are limited to only a small number of these. It is not the aim of this chapter to establish what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie described as a ‘rigorous annual series of meteorological data’ for Scotland in the later seventeenth century.8 Instead, this information has largely been adopted from English and European data that envelops, but is not exclusively focused on, Scotland.9 By accepting these as a means to examine the broader patterns of climate across the 1690s, it is then possible to use qualitative Scottish sources to identify local and national weather conditions and in turn determine ‘the possible influence of this factor on the life of men’.10 It must be stressed that these sources used and the methods employed are not always the ‘strictly meteorological facts’ applauded by Ladurie11 and non-climate-related documentary evidence has been interpreted to provide information about weather conditions. The main Scottish primary sources used are diaries containing detailed information about weather compiled by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and David Scrymgeour of Cartmore,12 in addition to meteorological observations in eyewitness accounts, travel diaries, personal diaries, kirk session minutes, town council minutes and estate records. Many of these sources are of only very limited use to the construction of weather patterns and events, and in some cases they contain only sporadic mentions of episodes considered unusual or serious, such as floods or storms. They do not cover the whole of the country and neither do they provide full coverage of either the famine period itself or the immediate pre-famine period. As a result the information contained in many of the sources is difficult to verify,13 but they are some of the few direct references to the weather and climate in Scotland during the famine crisis. Those examples which have survived can be used either by comparison with modern climatic patterns, or by reference to what is known for other northern European countries during 8 9

10

11 12

13

Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, 138. D. J. Schove explained, for example, that temperature changes determined from dendrochronology samples in Scandinavia returned results that were applicable to climate between northern Scotland and Finland, ‘Tree Rings and Summer Temperatures A.D. 1501–1930’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 66, 1 (Jun. 1950), 38. Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, 138. Thus Manley’s temperature series has been used here. Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, 158. NAS, Clerk of Penicuik MSS, GD18/2092, ‘Spiritual’ Journal of Sir John Clerk 1692–8 [Hereafter, Penicuik, ‘Spiritual Journal’]; and NAS, Buccleuch MSS, GD224/605/1, Book containing ‘ane account of some Memorable things’ 1652-99, attributed to Mr David Scrymgeor [of Cartmore] [Hereafter, Scrymgeor, ‘Memorable things’]. Hubert Lamb suggested that such sources should be checked with, ‘preferably, some knowledge of the character and motives of the observer – or with comparison with other independent reports for the same season’, Climate, History and the Modern World, 79.

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the same period, to estimate what impact conditions had. For instance, references by late-seventeenth-century travellers in Scotland to ‘permanent snow cover on the Cairngorm summits at around 1200 to 1300m’, which may have even resulted in the formation of glaciers in Scotland, confirms estimations that temperatures were cooler than those of the late twentieth century by between 2 and 2.5° C.14 The final type of source used covers the majority of the country across most of the time period studied, but provides a more indirect reference to the weather. Unbroken grain price series are available in county fiars throughout the 1690s in most regions outside of the Highlands. As prices fluctuated in response to grain supply, they can be used to identify changes in the weather through its impact on the crop yields.15 Caution must be exercised about over-reliance on the direct links between grain prices and harvest yields since this is likely only in ‘primitive “closed” agricultural economies’: the price mechanisms for grains in developed, open economies was more complex than can be accounted for by any local weather, harvest, and price relationship. In any given year, the price of grain was influenced not only by the preceding local grain harvest (and presumably the local weather), but also by harvests in other areas, by the amount of grain in storage from earlier harvests, by speculation and by governmental action.16 The links between price movements and these factors will be examined and discussed more fully in the following chapter; however, at a basic level it will be argued that during the crisis of the late 1690s in Scotland, weather conditions also played a role in almost all of these other relationships.17 Since the lowering of temperatures during the Little Ice Age is known to have caused greater variability in short-term weather conditions, such changes during the growing season of grain had an impact on the crop yield. The date of the harvest provides another means by which to estimate 14 15

16

17

Grove, Little Ice Age, 380–1. Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, 79. See also W. G. Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480–1619’, Agricultural History Review, 12 (1964) and Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations 1620–1759’, Agricultural History Review, 16 (1968). Appleby, ‘Epidemics and Famine’, 657–9. See also J. De Vries, ‘Measuring the Impact of Climate on History: The Search for Appropriate Methodologies’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 10, 4 (Spring 1980), 602. Christian Pfister noted, for example, that ‘it is well known that the yield of a crop is vulnerable to large-scale deviations from the long-term means during critical phases of the vegetative period’, ‘An Analysis of the Little Ice Age Climate in Switzerland and its Consequences for Agricultural Production’, in T. M. L. Wrigley, M. J. Ingram and G. Farmer (eds), Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man (Cambridge, 1981), 236.

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weather conditions. The earlier the harvest generally the better the weather during the growing season; conversely a late harvest indicates bad weather conditions during that period.18 Unfortunately such records regularly dating the actual harvest tend to be scarce and sporadic. One non-Scottish series which relates this over a sufficiently long period to identify clear trends is the records of the grape harvest across Europe, which between 1692 and 1698 were almost exclusively the latest of the period 1675 to 1725, indicating cold unfavourable weather between March/April and September/October.19 If similarly lower temperatures and adverse weather conditions affected Scotland during the same period, and it is reasonable to conclude that they did, the grain harvest would have been similarly late.20 The many references made by Scottish contemporaries blaming adverse weather conditions for the late harvests that occurred during the 1690s, signifies that they perceived a direct relationship between the two. That is not to disregard the importance of other factors such as long-term climatic deterioration, which farmers may or may not have recognised, but by analysing harvests over such a short period, local weather conditions must have played the greatest role in changes from year to year. Contemporary comments indicate that in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, the harvest was significantly late in eight years, with half falling during the famine: 1672, 1674, 1686, 1688, 1695, 1696, 1698 and 1699. Weather conditions in Scotland prior to 1695 At a national level the immediate pre-famine period in Scotland was a good time for arable agriculture and grain purchasers. The early 1690s was a period of relatively good harvests and bountiful, cheap grain supplies which resulted in low prices and motivated the passing of the Corn Bounty Act. These good harvests could well have been the direct result of a period of warm summers between 1690 and 1694,21 beneficial towards grain growth and crop yields. These relatively favourable conditions were not, however, universally experienced. Evidence from the Buccleuch estates in the Borders indicates that ‘in this part of Scotland at least farmers were experiencing difficulties a decade or so before the traditional onset of hard weather in the later 1690s’. A combination of cold winters and ‘unusually’ wet weather between 1684 and 1694 impacted adversely on grain production and caused the abandonment of some arable land from cultivation. These conditions also affected pastoral farming, with excessive rain causing increased disease and mortality in sheep.22 The famine of the late 1690s 18 19 20

21 22

Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, 148. Ladurie, ‘History and Climate’, 148, 154. Galloway, however, advocated prudence when using this as an indicator of the weather, ‘Long-Term Fluctuations in Climate’, 8. Schove, ‘Tree Rings and Summer Temperatures’, 39. Whyte, ‘Human response’, 20.

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therefore impacted upon a region already struggling under prolonged adverse weather conditions and economic difficulties. The disruption suffered on the Buccleuch estates in the period immediately prior to the famine was not solely related to adverse weather conditions. The ‘Devastation’ of 1673 and 1674 ‘which ruined so many of the Tennents and laid the land waste’, was followed by the ‘breakeing louse of the Borders’ in which tenants on the land were ‘sorly harressed’ by Meldrum Haming in the late 1670s and again in 1689. This, combined with the chaos wreaked in the region by Argyll’s invasion between 1685 and 1687, caused problems to farming and resulting reductions in the rentals for the estate.23 This in part accounts for an exodus of tenants from some of the landholdings on the estate, but previous claims of long-term abandonment of settlements in upland regions due to long-term climate change and short-term weather crises in the later seventeenth century have been more recently downplayed.24 The adverse weather conditions certainly existed and must have impacted upon agriculture; for example ‘the great death of bestiall’ in the mid 1670s was a direct result of the ‘Thirteen Drifty Days’ in February and March 1674, during which severe storms of frost and snow destroyed sheep stocks in the south of the country and led to cattle losses in the west.25 The Comlongan estate in Dumfriesshire registered land lying waste in the following years and mortality levels in Dumfries burgh more than doubled in 1675 suggesting the weather problems wreaked havoc upon the population.26 Land lying waste and tenants ruined through continued disorder in the Border region clearly played only one part in the troubled state of agriculture on these lands in the twenty years prior to the outbreak of famine. There is evidence to suggest that it was not only in the Borders that climatic variability was having a negative impact upon Scottish agriculture in the years immediately prior to the famine crisis. During the late 1680s problems were evident in the far north in the islands of Shetland and Orkney. Harvests were very poor in Orkney in 1693 and 1694 to the extent that tenants were unable to pay rent even prior to the bad harvests of 1695 and 1696. The problems associated with these lower crop yields in the early 1690s, however, were compounded by overzealous extraction of rents by the tacksman Sir Alexander Brand, whose main interest was to secure the return on his tack without any of the long-term interests of a landlord in 23

24

25

26

NAS, GD224/906/19/41, Information for Sir James Johnston of the Stenhall To The right Honourable her Grace the Dutches of Buccleugh her Commissioners; GD224/906/19/44, Memorial relating to the Dutches of Buccleughs Rents in Scotland. Parry, Climatic Change; R. Tipping, ‘Climatic Variability and “Marginal” Settlement in Upland British Landscapes: A Re-Evaluation’, Landscapes, 3, 2 (Autumn 2002). NAS, GD224/906/19/41, Information for Sir James Johnston of the Stenhall To The right Honourable her Grace the Dutches of Buccleugh her Commissioners; R. Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, Vol. II (Edinburgh, 1874), 366–7; Scrymgeor, ‘Memorable things’, 4–5. NRAS, 776, Papers of the Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield, 120/1.

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either retaining tenants or ensuring that rental would be guaranteed for future years.27 Although the economic and agricultural situation in Orkney was difficult by the close of the seventeenth century, in Shetland the impact of the adverse weather of the 1680s and 1690s was much worse. William Thomson explained that, ‘although Brand’s Years led to the bankruptcy of several leading families there was hardly the wholesale destruction of the old landowning class and its replacement by a new merchant class which Brian Smith has described in Shetland’.28 Smith claimed that the famine ‘sent the Shetland lairds out of the world forever’ as agricultural land lay waste and tenants could not be found to farm it.29 Shetland was, of course, a much more marginal region, agriculturally, than Orkney. While Orkney’s main supporting industry was the production, and export in good years, of grain, the economy of Shetland was much more dependent on pastoral farming and fishing and produced little grain, relying on imports from Orkney to supply the deficiency in what could be produced locally. As early as the mid 1680s the inhabitants of Shetland were experiencing difficulties in their small agricultural sector. A petition of 1688 claimed that by the great and exterordinarie storms and inundations that hath happened these four yiers bygone, wherthrowgh our corns hath been altogether blasted and destroyed, and ane sixt part of the land cast wast, and many poor inhabitants have dyed off famine.30 The adverse weather conditions which continued into the early 1690s also had negative effects upon pastoral farming and the fishing industry which were much more serious to the economy of the islands: besyd the scarcety of bread amowngst us, their hath bein and is a great decay in fishing, continwall murraines amongst beasts, both nolt and sheip, the comodities whearof did in tym bypast contribute much to the mentinace of the people; and our povertie is yit further and greatly occasioned by the faeling of trade formerly used by foreigners to this place, for the most pairt of them, who wer ordinary merchants from Hamburgh and Bream, being brockin in their stockes throw the great decay of fishing.31 Similar to the changes taking place in air temperature, colder currents of water moved south from the Arctic into the North Sea which reduced 27 28 29

30

31

Thomson, History of Orkney, 186. Thomson, History of Orkney, 187. B. Smith, ‘“Lairds” and “Improvement” in 17th and 18th century Shetland’, in T. M. Devine (ed.), Lairds and Improvement in the Scotland of the Enlightenment (Glasgow, 1978), 13. SA, Gardie House MSS, 1178, Petition by James Olip[hant] of Ure in the Cuntrey of Yetland, 1688. SA, 1181, Double of Instructions for Mr John Mitchell of Westshore, [c. 1691] [Hereafter, Instructions for Mr John Mitchell].

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the sea temperatures off the coast of Shetland, Orkney and Norway by as much as 5ºC lower than in modern times. Consequently, the fishing which normally took place in these waters was disrupted as the fish shoals migrated to warmer waters.32 The resultant great reduction in the fish stocks off Shetland meant that the local fishing industry suffered and the inhabitants lost not only this source of food, but also an important commodity to trade for grain and other supplies. A third drawback was the reduction of ‘commerce with the Hollands fishing fleit who at set tymes used to come in to severall harbours heir for buying of cource stockings, cloath mittones and uther product of the countray’.33 With the lack of fish stocks to pull this fleet north to Shetland, the number of trading opportunities was greatly lowered. On top of these major problems caused largely by variation in climate, there was a further serious problem which hit the economy of Shetland during the early 1690s. As was discovered in the Borders, political problems which occurred simultaneously further deepened the distress of the inhabitants. After the outbreak of war, French privateers plagued the remote islands of Shetland and Orkney, not only attacking vessels, but also wreaking havoc on the land by destroying or stealing livestock and other valuables.34 The examples provided by the Border region and the islands of the north both indicate that the adverse weather conditions of the late 1690s were by no means unusual and in these regions in particular, the famine occurred after sustained periods of difficulty resulting from naturally occurring and man-made problems. There is evidence of the weather’s adverse impact in other regions as well, although on a much more sporadic basis. Reverend William Martin, the author of The Statistical Account for Kilmuir, Skye (Inverness-shire), related that a great famine occurred on the island in 1688 when ‘the seasons were so eminently unfavourable, and corn was so deficient in quantity and quality, that the poor actually perished on the highways for want of aliment’.35 Two years previously, 90 per cent of the townships in Duirinish in the north of the island were facing such severe difficulties they had to be granted rests of rental.36 This was not the only 32

33 34

35

36

Cod in particular was scarce in the waters off Shetland in 1695, Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, 209–10. Instructions for Mr John Mitchell. Thomson, History of Orkney, 186; Instructions for Mr John Mitchell. For the general problem of privateering, see J. S. Bromley and A. N. Ryan, ‘Navies’, in J. S. Bromley (ed.), The Cambridge Modern History Vol. VI: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–1715/25 (Cambridge, 1970), 800–4. J. Sinclair (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, Vol. 2 The Lothians (Wakefield, 1975), 551. Martin described this as the last time that the inhabitants died of hunger, claiming that ‘none have died from want’ since that year. Given the notoriety attributed to the famines of the late 1690s by other Statistical Account authors, it does seem a little unlikely that the minister would not have mentioned problems occurring on Skye during this decade. Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’, 325–6.

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part of the country to be affected. The presbytery of Fordyce in Banffshire held a fast during the harvest in October 1687 due to the sad and deplorable condition of the corns and fruits of the ground be reason of the great deluge of rains which hath fallen out and the constant fogges and mists which have continewed since the harvest began, wherby the corns which for the most parte are in many places in fields, and these which are in the yeards are in hazard of being destroyed by roting and heating.37 On the Duchess of Buccleuch’s estates in the Borders that year and the following year, rain and ‘great shakeing winds’ were blamed for a ‘great default of corne’ which led the tenant Robert Thomson to request a rent abatement due to the severity of the resultant misfortune and economic difficulties that he faced.38 Across the country, the harvest of 1689 was not a particularly abundant one, although the resultant rise in prices may have been as much to do with the upheaval caused by the Revolution and resultant political unrest, particularly in the Highlands, as the weather. In Tarbat (Cromarty), a combination of the ‘badness of the crop’ combined with quartering of troops and their commandeering of goods and horses meant that tenants were struggling to pay their rents.39 A small price peak in grain was evident the following year.40 In the autumn of 1694 a sand storm completely buried a large section of agricultural land on the Culbin estate in Nairnshire. This coastal land had been a valuable, fertile part of the estate upon which grain crops were grown. It had suffered from some element of erosion and sand drifting over at least the forty years prior to 1694, but the storm had such a devastating effect that 3,600 acres of the land was rendered unfit for either habitation or agriculture. Thus the short-term weather conditions created by the storm were clearly devastating, but had merely continued the work wrought by changes which had taken place to the land over the course of the previous years. The loss of this land, with a yearly rental of £2,720 in cash and 2,560 bolls of grain in kind, must have been a severe blow to both tenants and landlord; its loss immediately prior to the famine period must have caused additional difficulty. Similar loss of land took place on Shetland in the 1670s and Bernera in 1697 resulting from shifting sand drifts.41 Even the good agricultural land of the eastern Lowlands was not immune from the impact of the weather. Crop yields on the Castle Lyon estate in the 37 38

39 40 41

W. Cramond (ed.), The Presbytery of Fordyce (Banff, 1885), 48. NAS, Leven and Melville MSS, GD26/5/469, Petition by Robert Thomson in Newmill, to the Commissioners of the Duchess of Buccleugh, 13 Dec. 1694. E. Richards and M. Clough, Cromartie: Highland Life 1650–1914 (Aberdeen, 1989), 40. Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 96–7. G. Bain, History of Nairnshire (Nairn, 1928), 225–6; Whatley, Scottish Society, 32; Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’, 331.

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Carse of Gowrie (Perthshire) fell sharply from the harvest of 1692 to that of 1695, the yield in the latter year being only half of what was harvested in the poorer than average crop of 1692.42 That crops were so badly affected in this fertile arable region makes it likely that in the years before the outbreak of famine many other farms, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in upland and marginal areas, were experiencing similar problems. A chronology of the crisis in agriculture In the south and east of the country the long, cold and severe winter of 1694–5 caused high levels of mortality among livestock.43 This was followed by drought during a ‘bad dry summer’ which according to the temperature means of central England was the coldest summer of the period 1680 to 1705.44 These conditions served to delay the harvest which subsequently produced a disappointingly low yield, the drought having destroyed the crop and even grass so that livestock had limited fodder.45 Consequently prices increased significantly between the following Candlemas fiar, which set the official price of grain for the 1696 harvest, and the middle of the summer of 1696 as grain shortage and scarcity became apparent. In Alloa (Clackmannanshire), Francis Masterton recorded that the price of grain rose dramatically in the county over only five months, from £8 in February to £20 in July.46 A second cold and severe winter in 1695–6 followed by heavy snow during the spring and a cold, frosty autumn delayed the harvest of 1696.47 In Shetland continued economic problems had resulted in one-third of the arable land lying waste, but even that grain which was planted was projected ‘by the Coldness & unseasonableness of the summar & great rains . . . not to ryppin nor come to perfectione’.48 Consequently the harvest of 1696 was the second crop failure in a row with the grain crop described as ‘blasted’ by the privy council and a fast ordered as a result of the ‘dearth, scarcity, 42

43 44 45 46

47

48

M. Young, ‘Scottish crop yields in the second half of the seventeenth century: evidence from the Mains of Castle Lyon in the Carse of Gowrie’, Agricultural History Review, 55, 1 (2007), 55, 64–9. Penicuik, ‘Spiritual Journal’. Manley, ‘Central England temperatures’. NAS, GD406/1/3998, Daniel Hamilton to Lord Bazill Hamilton, 12 Jul. 1695. V. A. N. Paton (ed.), ‘Masterton Papers 1660–1719’, in Miscellany of the Scottish History Society Volume 1, Scottish History Society Vol. 15 (Edinburgh, 1893), 475. Whyte, ‘Human response’, 22. These weather patterns do not, however, fit the trends indicated by Manley’s Central England temperature means. The average winter temperature for 1695–6 in particular was the highest of the entire decade. As explained previously, it is probable that the temperature in Scotland was at least 1°C colder than in England. Whyte’s description, based on weather trends in the Border region, indicates that Scotland was exposed to colder and more adverse weather that year than England. The postponement of the head court of Ayr due to the late harvest further confirms this, AyrA, B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702, 6 Oct. 1696. NAS, Exchequer Records, E41/24/35–36, Petition by heritors of Shetland, 22 Aug. 1696.

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and bad threatening weather’.49 The following month at Edinburgh the harvest was projected to be ‘very bad & Late, & much raine’ and as a result grain prices had increased to ‘very high’ rates.50 At Penicuik in Midlothian the crop in the fields was described as frosted with the ears unripened and green which delayed the beginning of the bear harvest until the end of October and that of oats until the beginning of November. The yield was described as remarkably low, ’52 thrave of Laswade bear yeolded only 4 bols ½ of beare’.51 In Clackmannanshire the reportedly cold summer, which was followed by rain and frost during the harvest period, meant that some of the crop had still not been harvested by Christmas.52 Reports of the greatest severity, however, came from the south and the north of the country. In Roxburghshire on 22 December, the adverse weather including ‘storms of snow’ meant that the crops were still ‘neither cut down nor led in, nor is the samen ripened nor fit for any use’. The price of meal in the county was high at between £14 and £16 per boll (see table 3.1 in Chapter three) and many people were described as being ‘reduced to pinching straits and want’.53 In recognition of the continuing problems of ‘growing dearth and famine threatned’ the privy council ordered a solemn national fast and humiliation to be kept in an attempt to avert the evident ‘displeasure and wrath of almighty God’.54 As late as the beginning of January 1697 the factor to the Earl of Mar was informed that in Kildrummy (Aberdeenshire) ‘the badnes of the weather and greatnes of the storme’ had delayed the harvest and the crop was still not gathered in. Despite being told that ‘ther was never such a year seen in this conatrey be any that is alive’ he was warned that the following year would not necessarily bring a better return of crops since some of the tenants would not be in a position to sow any seed.55 In effect, the weather conditions of 1697 were infinitely more favourable than those of the previous two years and brought relief to many parts of the country. In July, in recognition of the impending harvest, the privy council declared that due to a combination of imported grain and the supply of domestic grain, the danger of scarcity and dearth was over.56 The Borders, however, appear not to have enjoyed significantly better conditions. Adverse weather conditions in the spring, and more particularly autumn, meant that crop yields were low in the Borders,57 and exceedingly poor 49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Rev. R. Paul (ed.), ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull Minister of Alloa and Tyninghame 1657–1704’, in Miscellany of the Scottish History Society Volume 1, 369, 25 Aug. 1696. NAS, Alexander Brand Papers, RH15/53/4, [W. Binning] to Alexander Brand Stewart, 20 Sep. 1695. Penicuik, ‘Spiritual Journal’. Paton, ‘Masterton Papers 1660–1719’, 472. R. Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, Vol. III (Edinburgh, 1874), 139. PCRA 1696–9, 12 Dec. 1696. NAS, Erskine MSS, GD124/15/205, George Fraser to Robert Allan, 1 Jan. 1697. PCRA 1696–9, 20 Jul. 1697. Whyte, ‘Human response’, 22; NAS, GD224/906/16/36, Petitione for Nicoll Elliot in unthank To Her Grac the Dutches of Buccleughs Commor for Land Setting, 1700.

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throughout the Highlands. Sadly, at a national level the harvest of 1697 was not sufficient to remedy the problems caused by the grain shortages of 1695 and 1696. Bad weather in the form of winter storms and an ‘unkindly cold and winter-like spring’ in 1698 heralded that worse was yet to come.58 A fast was held in Dalry (Kirkcudbrightshire) in January ‘because God seemed at the time to contend with the land by the extraordinary severity and long continuance of stormy weather’.59 Cold, rainy and stormy weather continued beyond winter into April and even May when snow was recorded as falling in the first week of the month in Alloa (Clackmannanshire).60 The national fast held in May was due to the ‘so cold and unkindly a season and seed tyme After two years scarcity and Dearth, as also the great death of cattle through most p[ar]t of the Kingdom and growing dearth and famine threatened’.61 A more fortunate turn in the weather followed as the Reverend George Turnbull remarked in his diary that ‘about this time god was pleased to graciously send pleasant showrs and warm weather’.62 Despite this the crop could not be saved and the harvest of 1698 was the worst, nationally, of the late 1690s. With the exception of only a few counties during the years 1648–51, the price of oatmeal for crop 1698 was the highest of the 100-year period from 1625 to 1724, for which substantial records survive.63 These weather conditions and the resulting reduction of crop yields indicate close correlation with the type of problems experienced simultaneously in England: On some farms the first wheat was not cut until the middle of September, and much barley lay on the ground in December. Some of the harvest in the north was still ungathered at Christmas, and in Scotland corn was reaped in January 1699, the snow being beaten off. Bread made from it fell to pieces and tasted sweet, like malt.64 Unseasonably rainy, snowy and windy weather in September and October delayed the harvest which was recorded as being late in Alloa (Clackmannanshire), Kiltearn (Ross and Cromarty), Edinburgh (Midlothian), Hamilton (Lanarkshire), Clydesdale (Lanarkshire), Thurso (Caithness), Aberdeen (Aberdeenshire) and Ayr (Ayrshire). At Hamilton the snow was described as ‘knee deep . . . and the corns not halfe cutt down’, reiterated by a report from Clydesdale that the late harvest was producing ‘a very scarce cropt’ and the snow and frost were as ‘great as if it were 58 59

60

61 62 63 64

Chambers, Domestic Annals, Vol. III, 195. GROS, OPR 865/1, Dalry KSR, 23 Jan. 1698. Stormy weather was recorded on 12 and 16 December 1697 and 9 January 1698. Paul, ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull’, 375; NAS, Lothian MSS, GD40/9/113, Lady Caithness to the Countess of Lothian, 13 Apr. [16]98. PCRA 1696–9, 10 May 1698. Paul, ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull’, 376. Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 94–7. Whitlock, Agricultural Records, 63–4.

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December or January’.65 This was not necessarily a universal problem, as in Alloa, despite the rainy weather and delayed harvest, Francis Masterton of Parkmill estate was able to declare the grain ‘in end all weil won’,66 and at Montrose in Angus the harvest was underway by the middle of September despite ‘excessively’ rainy and stormy weather, indicating that the crop there was not as badly damaged either.67 These positive reports seem to have been relatively isolated examples. Across the country the situation was so bad that in November the privy council described ‘the Extraordinary unseasonableness of the weather for some moneths past & the misgiving of this years Cropt & harvest The scarcity of victual is increased to that height as threatens a Generall distress & calamity’.68 By the spring of 1699 the seriousness of the situation within many regions was evident as the country experienced the worst point of the entire crisis. Described as the worst seed time since the revolution of 1688, the privy council ordered yet another national fast on 7 February 1699, fearing that ‘the lamentable stroke of dearth and scarcity . . . doth threaten a dreadful famine’.69 The levels of grain supply within the country reached critically low levels, and mortality levels soared as grain prices rocketed. Drought in early summer destroyed ripening fruit in Hamilton,70 but fortunately improved weather meant that the harvest of 1699 was ‘plentiful’ across most of the country,71 despite strong winds in the Glasgow region at the end of August which damaged some of the ripest grain, and a late harvest in Ayrshire.72 Grain imports were banned and exports permitted until December when the extent of scarcity in the previous years began once 65

66 67 68 69 70 71

72

Paul, ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull’, 376; NAS, CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697– 1705, 24 Oct. 1698; at Edinburgh the bad weather meant that gathering in the crop would be difficult, Letter from James Hamilton of Pencaitland to James Duke of Hamilton, 4 Oct. 1698, in J. H. McMaster and M. Wood (eds), Historical Manuscripts Commission Supplementary Report on the Manuscript of His Grace the Duke of Hamilton (London, 1932), 142; Hamilton, NAS, GD406/1/4268, David Craw[ford] to the Duke of Hamilton, 24 Oct. 1698; Clydesdale, James Hamilton of Pencaitland to James Duke of Hamilton, 29 Oct. 1698, in McMaster and Wood, H. M. C. Supplementary Hamilton Report, 142–3; NAS, CH2/414/1, Thurso KSR 1647–1706, 24 Oct. 1698; on 10 Oct. the harvest had only just begun in Aberdeenshire, G. D. Henderson and H. H. Porter (eds), James Gordon’s Diary 1692–1710 (Aberdeen, 1949), 84; AyrA, B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702, 8 Oct. 1698. Paton, ‘Masterton Papers 1660–1719’, 472. Henderson and Porter, James Gordon’s Diary, 84, 17, 23 and 25 Sep. 1698. PCRA 1696–9, 9 Nov. 1698. Scrymgeor, ‘Memorable things’; PCRA 1696–9, 7 Feb. 1699. NAS, GD406/1/4428, David Crawford to [the Duke of Hamilton], 22 May 1699. NAS, PC1/52, Privy Council Register of Acts 1699–1703 [Hereafter, PCRA 1699–1703], 8 Nov. 1699. Letter from [-] to Mr G. Thomsone, 30 Aug. 1699, and Letter from [-] to Mr John Simone at Utrecht, Aug./Sep. 1699, in L. W. Sharp (ed.), ‘Early Letters of Robert Wodrow 1698– 1709’, Scottish History Society, 3rd ser., Vol. 24 (Edinburgh, 1937), 18, 20. AyrA, B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702, 20 Oct. 1699. The head court of Ayr was delayed for the second year in a row due to the late harvest.

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again to exert pressure upon the country’s domestic grain supply.73 As late as February 1700 a fast was held for the ‘Continued pinching dearth, notwithstanding of a favourable harvest’, which was unable to bring an end to the suffering produced during the years of harvest failure.74 Despite some unfavourable weather conditions throughout 1700, with a cold summer producing a late harvest, which the General Assembly feared ‘may be of a dreadfull Consequence towards the continueing and encreasing of the dearth and scarcity’,75 the crops not being gathered in until October at Tyninghame in East Lothian and even into November in other places, the harvest itself was not deficient.76 The run of bad harvests was over and more favourable weather conditions brought an end to the crisis. The agricultural, social and economic impact of harvest failure The general picture of cold, wet and unseasonable weather conditions and their impact upon agriculture at a national level portrays a five-year period in which both arable and pastoral farming failed to provide sufficient return to feed the population of Scotland. As bad weather delayed grain harvests and lowered crop yields, grain prices increased, in some cases dramatically over a few months, and the privy council was forced to allow grain imports to supply the domestic deficiency. This, however, largely obscures the varied and regional impact of adverse weather throughout the country. The extent to which crop failure or deficiency caused problems was dependant mainly on local and geographical factors. The worstaffected areas were farms in upland, highland or marginal regions in which agriculture was most vulnerable to the volatile changes in weather. An examination of local conditions in these types of areas reveals the ways in which contemporaries perceived both the connections between weather and harvest, and the damage which adverse weather caused to agriculture and the sustainability of tenant farmers’ livelihoods. A petition in 1697 made by twenty-five of the Duchess of Buccleuch’s tenants in Teviotdalehead (Roxburghshire) directly blamed the weather conditions of the previous year for heavy grain losses of the 1696 crop in which four five and six bolls of oats not producing above on[e] boll of very bad meal such as no body but those whom pinching necessitie obleidged would have made use of and the Bear generaly retaining nothing but the shap of Bear without any kirnell att all and qt had any kirnell through frost is altogether unfitt for food and the bread that is made 73 74 75 76

NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9, 12 Dec. 1699. PCRA 1699–1703, 20 Feb. 1700. PCRA 1699–1703, 2 Aug. 1700. Paul, ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull’, 396; Paton, ‘Masterton Papers 1660–1719’, 475.

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of it lookes and tastes as if it wer black sandie malt made in bread rather than any thing like bear . . . The petitioners acknowledged that the entire region had suffered a ‘generall calamitie’ due to the ‘blasting and frosting’ of grain crops which had affected all people in the upland parts of the estate, but begged relief from their rent as all of their grain had been used as either seed corn or food for their families to prevent them from starving.77 The chamberlain confirmed that the situation was indeed grievous. He declared the bear crop to be of such poor quality that he refused to receive any of it for rent and from all of the tenants combined he managed to take in only thirty bolls of oatmeal, also of substandard quality. The disastrous harvest of 1696 had, however, been preceded by a bad harvest in 1695 and the tenants declared that after suffering this multiple crop failure they were not in a position to pay any rent; bear for seed crop and grain for food would all have to be purchased to maintain their families until the next harvest.78 Petitions for rental relief made by struggling Buccleuch tenants at the end of the famine period in 1700 also cited adverse weather conditions as the prime reason for low crop yields and their subsequent failure to pay their rents. The ‘great frost’ of September 1696 prior to that year’s harvest was so devastating to the crops that it left the tenant of Unthank (Dumfriesshire) with such a small return of grain that it would only provide him with food for three months, with no provision for the rent or next year’s seed corn. The following year in October another great frost was accompanied by a flood which completely washed away some crops and left others covered in silt. Again the tenant was forced to purchase grain in order to survive. Furthermore, the undrained water remaining on the land rendered it useless for winter sowing and jeopardised the following year’s harvest. Another flood in March 1699 washed away the newly sown seed and waterlogged the land once more. This run of disastrous harvests which led the tenant to claim rental relief for those particular years had also caused longer-term problems. Damage caused by the floods had washed away, or rendered useless by silting, part of the land, and the tenant pleaded that the rental could no longer be supported even in good years, as the land had ceased to produce a sufficient return of crops.79 The adverse weather conditions which had made this farmland temporarily marginal during the late 1690s also had a longer-term impact in reducing the level of crops which could be grown and the viability of arable agriculture on the land. In those areas in which these conditions were most seriously manifested, the land went out of cultivation completely. 77 78

79

NAS, GD224/906/16/11, Petition of farmers in Teviotdalehead, 1697. NAS, GD224/906/16/8, Siderunt of The Duchess of Buccleuch Comts at Landsetting, Hawick, 12 Apr. 1697. NAS, GD224/906/16/36, Petitione for Nicoll Elliot in unthank To Her Grac the Dutches of Buccleughs Commor for Land Setting, 1700.

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Pastoral agriculture The primary importance of grain in the diet of Scots, combined with its dominance in the agriculture of many estates, meant that weather- and climate-induced problems with grain crops are relatively well recorded. Establishing the extent of the disaster within pastoral farming areas is more challenging. References to loss of sheep and cattle stock are sporadic, despite the much longer-term implications of this for both tenant farmers and landowners since stocks took years and significant capital investment to raise.80 The recording of pastoral rent arrears in cash, rather than in kind, as frequently occurred (grain rent was also transmuted into cash for the purposes of carrying rental debt forward) makes it difficult to determine what actual losses among stock were. Grain prices indicate the impact of weather on arable agriculture, but prices are less relevant than stock losses to pastoral farmers. Prices of beef and cattle rose during the crisis, but not in the same proportion as grain prices did. There is no evidence to suggest that the cost of either beef or mutton rose by more than 100 per cent, and even that increase of ox beef carcases in Aberdeen from 1697 to 1701 may have been exceptional.81 Grain remained the primary food source of the population and it is likely that it still remained a cheaper source of calorie intake than pastoral produce. Famine in Switzerland in the nineteenth century, for example, pushed grain prices up to three times their non-crisis value whereas beef prices rose by merely 25 per cent.82 Contemporary comments in Scotland mention the loss of cattle through disease, problems obtaining fodder for animals, and also a reduced supply of meat in the market as the beasts were consumed, rather than sold, by their producers. Such qualitative evidence is limited and sporadic and no significant quantitative data was found to provide any examples of the extent of stock losses. Estate records do refer to losses; however most, even in areas with a significant proportion of pastoral agriculture, such as the Buccleuch and Breadalbane estates, emphasise arable losses and rests are largely recorded in terms of unpaid grain rental and cash. Rests recorded by the tacksman of the crown rents in Orkney detail unpaid butter and oil, as well as bear, elements of rental, implying that stock losses were experienced there.83 A study of hay yields in Iceland revealed that colder winter temperatures had a greater negative impact upon grass growth, 80 81

82

83

Whyte, ‘Human response’, 23. The tables in Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 202–24, detail prices of both meat and pastoral by-products, but the prices series are limited and broken. See p. 195 for further details. Post, Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 42–3. Similarly, in the 1590s the price of cheaper grains consumed by the poor increased proportionally more than that of wheat in England, A. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), 6. OA, Earldom of Orkney (Morton) MSS, GD38/2017A/7, Compt of Rests due to Mr Robert Douglass Tacksman, Cropt 1696.

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and therefore livestock fodder, than colder summers.84 It has already been established that colder winter temperatures were a feature of the weather patterns of Scotland in the late 1690s and if grass growth there was similarly restricted, this would help explain the loss of livestock experienced by farmers in upland, pastoral regions. A national fast in May 1698 lamented ‘the great death of cattle through most part of the Kingdom’,85 but the problem appears to have been most acute in the Highlands and the Borders. A Catholic priest writing about his charges near Laggan in Inverness-shire claimed that those people that are [still] alive can scarce raise their thoughts to any thing that regards the next life: but are wholly occupied how they may find by buyeing, begging or even takeing what may prolong their little remnant of life the worst is that this year most part of their cattle especially milk-kine which could serv’d them for meal, are dead.86 The ‘exchange entitlement’87 of pastoral producers, dependent on selling animal by-products to purchase grain, reduced as the price of grain rapidly increased. Inverness town council described this situation occurring in the region after the bad harvest of 1696 when the price of cattle and other ‘bestiall’ had increased by a third, ‘for the want of corne makes the highlanders who breed them, eat them’.88 Scarcity meant that grain was not only difficult to obtain, but also more expensive. The Highlanders were forced to kill and eat their cattle rather than trade them for other forms of food at a potentially lower calorie intake than that provided by a grainsupplemented diet; particularly problematic if the bulk of the cattle stock was slaughtered before the worst years of the famine. In Perth a lack of tallow in the market was attributed to the slaughter and consumption of cattle and sheep by their owners.89 The drop in cattle numbers during these years can be attributed to an increase in cattle disease and a reduction in the fodder and grass available to feed them due to the changeable weather. Drought in the summer of 1695 had impeded the growth of grass to the extent that the cattle of Hamilton tenants in Bo’ness (West Lothian) were starving for want of food. The harvest of 1695 was projected to produce little in the way of fodder to help sustain these beasts through the winter.90 In March 1696, George 84

85 86 87 88

89 90

Bergthorsson studied the relationship between temperature and hay yields in Iceland 1901–75, as detailed in Galloway, ‘Long-Term Fluctuations in Climate’, 8. PCRA 1696–9, 10 May 1698. SCA, Thomas Innes Papers, PTI/3/1 No 6, [-] to Mr L. Innes, Drumgask, 6 May 1699. Sen, Poverty and Famines, 4. HA, Inverness Burgh Records, PA/1B/M/66/6, Answer to the Chancellors Letter to the mag[ist]ra[te]s of Inverness [24 Dec.] 1696. Whatley, The Scots and the Union, 147. NAS, GD406/1/3998, Daniel Hamilton to Lord Bazill Hamilton, 12 Jul. 1695 and GD406/1/3999, Daniel Hamilton to Earl of Aran, 14 Jun. 1695.

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Home of Kimmerghame (Edrom parish, Berwickshire) reported that he had bought hay from a tenant at Whitsome at nearly two and a half times the ‘normal’ market rate, but at present he considered the deal ‘cheap enough’.91 Between January 1698 and January 1699 there were complaints from across the country about lack of fodder and limited hay and grass. Cattle and horses were expensive to maintain under such circumstances and some were described as ‘lean’ or dying through lack of food.92 References to stock losses are also found in slightly more unusual sources. Several kirk session records for Highland parishes detail investigations of charming and witchcraft due to complaints from parishioners relating either to death or sickness among cattle and sheep. Such accusations were far from abnormal in the later seventeenth century, but the descriptions link them all to weather-related problems.93 Donald McConchie Roy complained to the kirk session of Kiltearn (Ross and Cromarty) in 1699 that since 1691 his flock of eighteen sheep had been ‘yearly diminishing’ to the extent that only one had survived. He believed not that the bad weather, poor grass and cattle disease of these bad years had affected his flock, but that Anna McCullie, a local woman with whom he had quarrelled, had cast an evil charm against them, causing them to die one by one.94 John Smyth in Ardclach parish (Nairn), impoverished during these difficult years, was unable to pay the full ‘pension’ to Margaret Mor to cast a protective charm against foxes over his sheep. When they too started dying in the summer of 1697 he believed that Margaret had unleashed dark magic against them to mark her displeasure at his failure to pay her fee.95 The bad weather conditions also had an impact on pastoral by-products including milk, butter and cheese, important produce to sell in exchange for grain. In Lochgoilhead (Argyllshire) in 1697, the kirk session reported ‘clamours in some corners of the country for want of the ordinary milkness’ as parishioners complained that their cows were not producing their usual quantity or standard of milk.96 The cause of this was never discovered, although several accusations of witchcraft were made. Similar suspicion was also cast 91 92

93

94 95 96

H. and K. Kelsall, An Album of Scottish Families, 1694–96 (Aberdeen, 1990), 130–1. NAS, GD406/1/6456, [Lord] Basil [Hamilton] to the Duke of Hamilton, 25 Jan. 1699; GD406/1/6518, Lord Archibald Hamilton to [the Duke of Hamilton], 8 Dec. 1698; Pyper of Newgrange, RH15/101/3, William Coutts to Mr Alexander Pyper, 15 Aug. 1698; Breadalbane MSS, GD112/39/177/5, the Earl of Breadalbane to [-], 25 Jan. 1698; PCRA 1696–9, 6 May 1698. See, for example, L. Henderson, ‘Witchcraft and Witch Belief in South-West Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 85, 1: 219 (Apr. 2006); J. Goodare, ‘The Scottish Witchcraft Act’, The American Society of Church History, 74, 1 (Mar. 2005); J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish witchhunt in context (Manchester, 2002). However, there is no direct link between famine and witch-hunting, S. Macdonald, The Witches of Fife: Witch-hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560–1710 (East Linton, 2002), 17. NAS, CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 9 Oct. 1699–29 Jan. 1700. NAS, CH2/717/1, Ardlach KSR 1686–1710, 25 Jun. 1697. NAS, CH2/1169/7, Lochgoilhead KSR 1692–1700, 26 May–27 Aug. 1697.

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upon the source of disease evident amongst cattle on Harris in the Western Isles as Malcolm Campbell, the steward, reported that his cows passed blood instead of milk.97 In those places where the shortfall could not be made up, or subsidised grain was not available, malnutrition weakened those who could not acquire sufficient food and made them more susceptible to disease. In desperation the local population became increasingly reliant on alternative food sources. Martin Martin reported that the inhabitants of Bernstill in Skye relied on the consumption of mussels scavenged on the shore to supplement their diets and in Inverness, the town council was forced to mediate in a dispute about rights to the burgh’s ‘grey fishing’ as non-residents were accused of encroaching on this valuable local source of food.98 Desertion of farmland as a result of the famine Pastoral husbandry predominated on marginal agricultural land on which only small amounts of oats or barley were grown, particularly in upland areas and in parts of the Borders region and the Highlands and Islands. In upland regions the susceptibility of grain crops to failure was much greater than in lowland regions. During the late seventeenth century the level of marginal land for arable agriculture was anything above 340 metres at which height the weather would have caused crop failure every year between 1688 and 1698.99 Martin Parry identified the gradual abandonment of upland farms in the Lammermuir hills in East Lothian as the changing climate of the sixteenth and seventeenth century resulted in the land becoming economically marginal. Such short-term crises as occurred in the 1690s, however, proved to be only the final motivation to the desertion of land, rather than its actual cause.100 More recent detailed work by Bob Dodgshon has highlighted the impact of the Little Ice Age in the Highlands and Islands with a focus on the Maunder Minimum period, roughly from 1645 to about 1715.101 He focused on the extent to which deteriorating weather conditions forced the abandonment of land in this marginal region and although he found examples of particular hardship, he did not find evidence of widespread abandonment of farming land, but instead some more temporary abandonment, particularly along the western seaboard. The widespread failure of tenants to regularly meet their rentals throughout the Highlands and Islands, and the amount of 97 98

99 100 101

M. Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1970), 39. Martin, A Description of the Western Islands, 145. He also attributed high levels of scurvy amongst the populations of Orkney and Shetland to an over-reliance on fish and lack of consumption of grain, 368, 373–4. HA, Inverness Burgh Records, IB1/1/7, Inverness Town Council Minute Book 1689–1702, 5 Apr. 1697. Grove, Little Ice Age, 411. Parry, Climatic Change, 9, 93. Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’.

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land recorded as lying waste for one or more years during and immediately following the famine years, indicates that Dodgshon’s conclusions are conservative, certainly in terms of the impact this had on Scottish society and the economy, particularly when placed alongside the increased mortality experienced and migration out of these areas. Admittedly, evidence of land lying waste is sporadic and frequently only available for a single year, but the sheer number of vacant, or part-vacant, tenancies listed across the country during and after the famine indicate that substantial amounts of land was lying unfarmed, at least periodically. Despite listing a range of examples of land lying waste on estates in the Western Isles, Skye and the Highlands, Dodgshon argued instead that ‘accelerated turnover of tenants does not appear to have led to significant numbers of townships lying waste’.102 The extent of waste tenancies on different estates varied greatly from merely a few in any given year to a substantial proportion causing serious concern to landowners. Cold, wet weather during both 1698 and 1699, following the adverse conditions of the previous few years, led to the abandonment of an unspecified amount of farmland in the Borders region.103 For other parts of the country we have more solid data such as just under a seventh of the tenancies in Glenorchy (Argyllshire) lying waste in 1700.104 In Orkney, the tacksman of the crown estate recorded the rests of 204 tenants for crop 1696 and by 1713 about half of the bishopric land on the island of Walls was unfarmed.105 The combined problems of the 1690s resulted in the desertion of so much land on Shetland by tenants that many of the landowners faced bankruptcy.106 From the upland regions of Aberdeenshire there are also reports of previously viable arable farmland being abandoned during the course of the famine. The author of the Old Statistical Account for Insch (Aberdeenshire) claimed that arable land in the parish was deserted during the 1690s, ‘when that part of the country was almost depopulated by 7 years of famine’ and 100 years later, 5,000 acres of the upland arable remained uncultivated.107 The Reverend Alexander Johnston, compiler of the Old Statistical Account for Montquhitter (Aberdeenshire), provided a comparable image of upland desertion: Of 16 families that resided on the farm of Littertie, 13 were extinguished. On the estate of Greens, which presently accommodates 169 individuals, 3 families (the proprietor’s included) only survived. The 102 103 104 105

106 107

Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’, 333. Whyte, ‘Human response’, 22. NAS, GD112/21/224, A Short Rentall of Glenurchan, 1700. OA, GD38/2017A/7, Compt of Rests due to Mr Robert Douglass Tacksman, Cropt 1696; Thomson, History of Orkney, 186–7. Smith, ‘“Lairds” and “Improvement”’, 13. J. Sinclair (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, Vol. 15 North and East Aberdeenshire (Wakefield, 1982), 483.

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extensive farms of Touchar, Greeness, Overhill, and Burnshide of Idoch, now containing more than 100 souls, together with some farms on the parish of Turiff, being entirely desolated, were converted into a sheep-walk by the Errol family, to whom they belonged. The inhabitants of the parish in general were diminished by death to one half, or as some affirm, to one fourth of the preceding number . . . Until the year 1709, many farms were waste.108 Obviously these reminiscences of 100 years later were frequently compiled from local stories and memories and are less likely to have been based on documentary evidence. However, references to uncultivated and untenanted farmland, during and after the 1690s, in the Old Statistical Accounts are so frequent for parishes in the north-east of the country that there is significant reason to presume that desertion of upland farms during the famine was not uncommon, a point confirmed by some contemporary commentators. As late as 1711, Mr Innes, factor to the Earl of Mar’s estate, claimed that the village of Corgarff in Strathdon parish (Aberdeenshire) had previously been a ‘populous place’, ‘bot it is farr from tht now, as all othyr Countries in the hylands ar, by reason off the late famine & dearth’.109 He did not identify whether the population was reduced as a result of increased mortality or migration, but indicated that the area, which produced a good rental prior to the crisis, had not been repopulated significantly following it. It is uncertain, therefore, whether the reduction of population throughout Aberdeenshire had meant that more appealing opportunities of vacant land available elsewhere in the county resulted in this remote region being unable to attract new tenants, or whether the land had ceased to adequately support such a large number of people. Future resettlement of such land could indicate that either population increase was exerting pressure which made cultivation of this land necessary, or more attractive to prospective tenants trying to acquire a landholding than it had been since the famine period, or that improved weather conditions and/or farming techniques meant that it was no longer marginal in agricultural terms. Although records of tenants facing financial difficulties during the famine period exist for the length and breadth of the country, it is for upland regions that the majority of cases exist. Tenants on such estates built up huge arrears of rests such as the £1,272 14s 6d owed by forty-six townships in Killin, Glenlochy and Desheor for the crop year 1697, or the £2,065 6s 4d and over 330 bolls of grain due for the crop year 1696 by the tenants of Kinloch, on the Earl of Breadalbane’s land in Perthshire and Argyllshire.110 Landlords, including Breadalbane, were forced to write off 108 109 110

Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. 15, 331. NAS, GD124/15/1033/1, Mr Innes to J. Melvil, 25 Jun. 1711. NAS, GD112/21/224, Scroll of rests Killin Glenorchy and Desheor except Lawers year 1697.

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significant amounts of lost rental income due to land lying unfarmed and the rent abatements they were forced to offer, sometimes for several years, in order to persuade a tenant to take the land. In 1701 and 1702, land lying waste on the Duke of Gordon’s land at Glenrinnes, Enochs and Pitglassie in Banffshire was offered to tenants at either a half, third or quarter off the normal rental, but despite these terms, some was still unfarmed in the latter year.111 In the Castleton of Braemar, on the Earl of Mar’s estate in Aberdeenshire, the terms were even more generous with free rent offered in 1702 and 1703 and full rent only payable from 1705.112 Eases of rent were offered to the majority of townships on the Nether Lorne part of the Breadalbane estate in Argyllshire in 1700 and 1701, although as late as 1708 rents for many townships were still actually lower than they had been at the start of the famine.113 It is difficult to establish without further focused and longer-term study of these areas whether this was only a temporary phenomenon or indicative of longer-term change. The extent to which some tenants were able to desert their landholdings in search of better opportunities elsewhere will be discussed in Chapter six. However, if new tenants could not be induced to take up the deserted farms, then it is possible that better-quality land was known to be available at favourable rents. This combined with a smaller population left to take up landholdings meant that some farms may have become economically marginal or undesirable for a period of time, but not absolutely in the longer term, in the respect that the land could not produce the same level of return for the farmer’s investment as was available elsewhere. Changeable and frequently unfavourable weather during the summer growing season and autumn harvest period combined with long and severe winters were key factors which caused harvest failure in Scotland and northern and western Europe in the 1690s. Martin Martin, describing the condition of agriculture on the Western Isles, noted, ‘the great Change of the Seasons, which of late Years is become more piercing and cold, by which the Growth of the Corn, both in the Spring and Summer Seasons are retarded’.114 As the yields of the vital grain crops were reduced, prices increased, which resulted in shortage and famine. Although long-term climatic change impacted upon the whole of Scotland as well as the rest of northern Europe, weather conditions did not affect the whole of the country in a uniform pattern. Climate cannot, therefore, be the sole determining factor in the national crisis which occurred. Other factors in combination with adverse weather produced famine in Scotland in the 1690s 111

112 113 114

NAS, Gordon MSS, GD44/51/75/2, Accompt of Glenrinnes Enochs and Pitglassie 1700, 1701, 1702. NAS, GD124/17/97, Setting of waste land in Castleton of Braemar, 1704. Dodgshon, ‘Little Ice Age’, 327. Martin, Description of the Western Islands, 76.

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and the extent to which these factors were evident in different regions, counties and even parishes determined the timing, duration and extent of grain shortage, dearth and famine in those areas. Even when considering the longer-term effects of the famine crisis in the worst-affected marginal regions it is difficult to establish to what extent climate was the primary cause of any temporary abandonment of upland, or even the continued lack of cultivation on this land. Comparing harvest failure and famine in France and England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where similar weather patterns prevailed, ‘famine was not so much a climatic problem as a result of economic, social, and governmental failures’.115 England encountered problems of reduced yields and higher prices resulting in shortage and even rioting, which were common with France, but famine did not occur in England. In the case of Scotland and Scandinavia, both areas of greater marginal cultivation, ‘climate played a larger role in fluctuating crop yields’ than in either England or France, and ‘human responses to the climate were more important than the climate itself both in causing famine and in eliminating it’.116 In Scotland, therefore, human adaptation to long-term climatic change and intervention in short-term crises caused by weather conditions was more difficult than in England. To what extent this factor was responsible for the famine crisis of 1695–1700, however, remains to be identified. Research on ‘the human consequences of climatic change’ in Europe set out to uncover all of the misfortunes that befell the contemporaries to the crisis. These misfortunes are, thus, temporally associated with the climatic crisis, but they are as the authors acknowledge, associated with much else as well . . . by offering no means of quantifying what portion of the contemporaneous misfortunes can reasonably be attributed to climate, these authors are not really in a strong position to make some claims.117 In examining the harvest failures and famine crisis of the late 1690s in Scotland, it may not be possible to attribute a specific portion of blame to the role of climate. What can be determined is that the harvest failures throughout Europe were directly caused by adverse weather conditions. What caused the famine is a more complicated issue.118

115 116 117 118

Appleby, ‘Epidemics and Famine’, 660. Appleby, ‘Epidemics and Famine’, 663. De Vries, ‘Measuring the Impact of Climate on History’, 603. See, for example, the discussion in O’Neill and Taye, ‘Introduction’, 2–5.

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chapter three

There Arose a Dearth – The Grain Market in Crisis Starvation, or death resulting from severe malnourishment, was at a most basic level caused by one of two factors prohibiting the purchase of sufficient food for survival. Prices increased beyond the levels at which some individuals could afford to feed themselves, or because they lacked ‘the wherewithal to buy that food’.1 Alternatively, people starved because there was no food, or insufficient quantities of food, available for purchase at any price.2 Both were features of the Scottish grain market during the famine. Prices spiralled as supply diminished during this ‘abnormally severe shortterm crisis’, reversing the trend of falling prices from the 1630s which reached a low in the 1680s and early 1690s.3 High prices over successive years and the weakness of the stagnant Scottish economy left the authorities unable to provide sufficiently for the poorest sections of society to avert widespread population loss. In France, the famine of 1693–4 was particularly bad because unfavourable weather conditions had conspired to reduce crop yields in the early 1690s which, combined with high levels of wartime taxation, meant that many people had little to fall back on when the crisis struck. The curé of Rumegies in northern France recalled that in 1693 the poor of his parish were ‘exhausted . . . by these exorbitant taxes, they fell into such poverty as might just as well be called famine . . . I speak of two thirds of this village if not more.’4 Similarly, the poor weather conditions and resulting agricultural problems in parts of Scotland prior to 1695, together with a slump in trade, high levels of taxation to fund William’s war with France, and an increasing poor relief burden, meant that the severity of the famine in Scotland was directly associated with the build up of problems in the early 1690s, and exacerbated by their continuation in the second half of the decade. Throughout the late 1690s all ranks of society felt the consequences of 1 2

3 4

Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 169. Sen explained the difference between these factors. Starvation he defined as: ‘people not having enough food to eat . . . not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat’, Poverty and Famines, 1. Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 165, 170. From Journal d un curé de campagne au XVIIe siècle, as quoted in P. Goubert, The Ancien Régime: French Society 1600–1750 (London, 1973), 47; Goubert, Louis XIV, 218; Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, 217.

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high grain prices and a reduction in supply. In at least four of the famine years the cost of oatmeal was so high that even a minimum diet could not be sustained by the families of some wage labourers. The excessive prices of crops 1696 and 1698, and even the improved harvests of 1697 and 1699, produced grain prices above the minimum subsistence level for this group, among others. Prices fluctuated in relation to grain supply, but wages changed only in response to longer-term trends. This was the first time that prices had outstripped wages to reduce the standard of living below minimum levels since the dearth of 1674–5 and after 1700 only a minor drop was experienced in 1709 until 1740.5 This supports the argument that the population had become accustomed to a better minimum standard of living, but does not diminish the reality that a significant section of the population was unable to support itself at the lowest levels of food intake necessary for survival. Grain provided 82 per cent of the average Scot’s daily calorie intake, and its price was the factor which determined the survival of those dependant on purchasing their food. Those on fixed incomes, such as wage labourers and pensioners, were most at risk from malnutrition and starvation during such a period of rapidly rising grain prices. Even pastoral producers were affected as grain price rises exceeded increases in the prices of meat and animal products. As animal stocks were decimated by disease, or consumed instead of sold by their producers, pastoral farmers faced increasing difficulties trading their dwindling stocks, or animal by-products, for the necessary supply of grain to feed themselves. Reduced crop yields forced some, who in normal years were able to produce part or all of the grain supply necessary to both feed themselves and produce seed for the next year’s crop, to enter the market as purchasers, rather than sellers.6 This was acutely evident on farmland most vulnerable to the changing climatic conditions, and on the farms of small tenants with limited resources.7 Even farms within regions which had experienced improved grain production in the later seventeenth century were not protected from crop failure, increasing debt and bankruptcy. On the Earl of Strathmore’s estates in the Carse of Gowrie, indebted tenants were evicted from land at Auchterhouse, although tenants in Castle Lyon, only a few miles away, even paid off old debts, profiting from high grain prices.8 Likewise, for those landowners who retained indebted tenants on their land, there were future profits to be made. The Earl recorded the cash equivalent for his Glamis tenants’ 5 6

7 8

See real wage graphs in Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 359–64. The issue of wages is not a straightforward one. Some wages were paid in money and in kind thereby reducing the amount of food that a worker had to purchase in cash. See Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, Chapter eight. See S. Devereaux, Theories of Famine (Hemel Hempstead, 1993), 75. M. Young, ‘Rural Society in Scotland from the Restoration to the Union: Challenge and Response in the Carse of Gowrie, circa 1660–1707’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Dundee, 2004), 48.

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undelivered grain rent for crop 1698 at £14 per boll, although the official price of grain in Angus was between £9 and £12 per boll, more than double the average price in pre-crisis years.9 Twenty out of fifty-seven tenants carried debts that year, increasing to twenty-eight the following year. Thus, by the end of the crisis almost half of the tenants on this estate were in debt to the Earl. Although yields were low, the harvests were not complete failures and there are very few reports of tenant farmers receiving no return of grain from crops sown. The worst harvest of the crisis experienced in Orkney was in 1696, when the crop yield was reportedly only one-twentieth of its normal level.10 Nevertheless, as discussed in the previous chapter, grain quantity was not the only defining factor of scarcity as grain of inferior quality fell below the standard required for seed corn, or even for human consumption. In France it was reported that illness resulted from the consumption of unripened rye, cut early from the fields and eaten through sheer desperation when still green.11 In summer 1697, Edinburgh magistrates scoured the meal markets of Leith to ensure that the grain was ‘sufficient mercat stuff which may be safely vended without hazard to the Eaters or makers of the same’. When meal which fell below these standards was discovered it was destroyed, despite reports that in some parts of the country people were scavenging for food, reduced to eating grass, nettles and even rotten meat in order to survive, while others actually starved to death. That the decision to destroy the meal was made on the same day that the privy council determined to put a stop to duty-free grain imports seems to be significant.12 Presumably prices were beginning to drop and a plentiful supply of food was being found, particularly in the Edinburgh markets. A reliance on bad-quality meal was, therefore, no longer necessary. A later example provides evidence that grain that was considered unfit for public consumption was not always destroyed or confiscated by the authorities. The magistrates of St Andrews (Fife) stopped the sale of bad-quality meal in 1758, following complaints from townspeople. The grain had previously been sold in the town’s market during a period of high grain prices. When prices dropped to more affordable levels, discontent arose about the quality of the product. The Dean of Guild explained that ‘in Times of Scarcity poor People are better contented with such Provision as they can get for the necessary Support 9

10 11 12

The Candlemas fiar for the county was £9 6s 8d, and even the Lammas fiar fell short of this figure at £12, NAS, Exchequer Miscellany, E20/60/8, Extract of the Fiars of the year 1689 to the year 1703, Forfarshyre [Hereafter, Forfarshyre Fiars]; NRAS 885, Papers of the Earl of Strathmore, Cropt Book of the Narrow Circle of Glammiss Cropt 1698 and 1699. Thomson, History of Orkney, 186. Journal d un curé de campagne au XVIIe siècle, as quoted in Goubert, The Ancien Régime, 48. The magistrates were sent to Leith on 29 June 1697 ‘to visitie the Girnells and Cellars wher meal or any other victuall is lying’ discovered bad meal there on 15 July 1697 and determined to have it destroyed on 20 July 1697, PCRA 1696–9, 20 Jul. 1697.

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of Life, than they will be satisfied with upon the Appearance of greater Plenty approaching’.13 The current historiography on the Scottish grain market has identified some of the ways in which the government attempted to regulate the market to avert famine, but there has been no thorough analysis of the grain market during the crisis, or a clear identification of the local and central government responses to famine conditions.14 This chapter examines the way in which the grain market responded to harvest failure. The extent to which prices increased beyond the purchasing power of sections of the population is a primary factor defining the severity of the crisis. The impact of the government’s actions, both at local and national level, and the effectiveness of their policies are assessed in terms of the extent to which famine was avoided, or the levels of food shortage controlled. At a national level, the privy council intervened in the market in a positive, but limited, manner permitting duty-free grain imports and even in desperation ultimately paying bounties to encourage imports.15 Beyond this, government action was exceedingly restricted with local grain supply and measures to relieve the poor largely resting in town council, church or private hands. Most famine-relief efforts implemented at local level were encouraged by the central government which required parishes to enforce maintenance of the poor. However, the powers of government to enforce these laws were limited and in many areas weak or recalcitrant authorities provided little relief to the suffering populace. As important as how the authorities acted is when they chose, or were forced, to intervene in the grain market. Famine did not suddenly occur throughout the country after a bad harvest; the impact was not immediate but dependant on a number of factors including the levels of grain supply within the country stored from previous years and the extent of imports. The Scottish grain market was influenced by the import and export of grain within Europe – a factor complicated by simultaneous multi-year harvest failure across northern and western Europe, and the disruption of trade by warfare until 1697. When prices increased in response to these factors, and by how much, explain the famine’s direct impact upon the population and illustrate whether the authorities were successful in averting a more serious crisis.

13

14

15

SL, Court of Session Papers 49; 11, The Petition of Mess Coutts Brothers, and Company, Merchants in Edinburgh, 8 Feb. 1760 against John Wilson Dean of Guild of St Andrews. See, for example, Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages; T. C. Smout and A. Fenton, ‘Scottish Agriculture before the Improvers – an Exploration’, Agricultural History Review, 13 (1965); A. J. Gibson and T. C. Smout, ‘Regional prices and market regions: the evolution of the early modern Scottish grain market’, Economic History Review, 48, 2 (1995); Mitchison, ‘The Movements of Scottish Corn Prices’; Whyte, Agriculture and Society, Chapter 9; Smout, Scottish Trade. For an account of this, see Smout, Scottish Trade, 246–8.

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Analysis of prices and harvest classification Deficient harvests and grain shortage led to higher grain prices in the late 1690s which peaked nationally in crop years 1696 and 1698 (see table 3.1). The official price of a boll of grain, or fiar, was set in February following the harvest by the Sheriff Court in each county. These were not market prices and instead tend to understate what marketplace buyers actually paid for their grain, particularly during a crisis.16 During a period of grain shortage, market prices could increase as the year progressed, particularly if the next harvest was also projected to be a poor one. In Aberdeenshire, Berwickshire and Kincardineshire, second oatmeal fiars set at Lammas in August produced prices equal to or higher than those set at Candlemas in February in every year of the crisis.17 Conversely, in Inverness after the improved harvest of September 1697 the market prices of the 1696 fiar were reduced and the town council could see an end to the Calamitous tymes of Dearth . . . since by the good provisione of God, the pryce of meall is considerably falling and Dayly expected to recsave a greater fall, and that Considerable quantities of new meall are always comeing to the mercat.18 The fiars price in any year reflected not only the yield of the harvest, but also the one prior to it. In most parts of the country 1697 produced an adequate harvest brought about by improved weather conditions. So ample was the yield that the privy council felt secure in reinstating acts prohibiting the importation of foreign victual.19 An examination of the fiars that year, however, demonstrates that grain prices remained high throughout the country. Despite the improved supply, the market still reverberated with the effects of the increased prices and grain shortages of the previous two years. High prices that year and in crop year 1699 were largely the result of an overall ‘rundown in the grain stock’ throughout the country.20 Fiars have been described as ‘an adequate tool’ for the historian attempting to compare Scottish grain prices and since no collection of market prices has been uncovered for this period, spanning either the geographical area or the yearly series covered by the fiars, the calculation of changing grain prices between individual years and over a substantial period 16

17

18 19 20

The fiars were based on the prices at which grain had sold within the county between the date on which the fiar was struck and the preceding November. See Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 69–77. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 34; J. Sinclair (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, Vol. 3 The Eastern Borders (Wakefield, 1979), 208; NAS, E20/60/10, Extract Fiars of the victuall of the sherrifdome of Kincardine from the year 1689 to the year 1703 [Hereafter, Kincardine Fiars]. HA, IB/1/1/7, Inverness Town Council Minute Book 1689–1702, 27 Sep. 1697. PCRA 1696–9, 5 Aug. 1697. As described in Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 170.

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4 13 4 6 10 0 3 13 4 3 13 4 3 13 4 3 10 0 7 10 0 8 16 8 5 13 4 8 16 8 7 13 4 4 13 4 3 12 0 4 10 0 4 16 8

Fife

15 16 0 16 10 0 14 10 0 14 16 0 16 10 0 15 12 0 17 10 0 10 10 0 16 18 0 12 10 0 18 16 0 14 16 0 13 18 0 14 16 0 14 18 0

Berwick 15 18 0 16 16 0 14 18 0 14 13 4 4 16 0 5 10 0 7 15 0 11 12 0 7 19 8 13 14 0 10 10 0 6 13 4 4 16 0 7 10 0 6 15 0

Midlothian 5 10 0 6 13 4 3 13 4 3 16 8 3 10 0 4 10 0 6 10 0 8 10 0 6 16 8 9 16 8 8 10 0 5 16 8 4 13 4 5 10 0

Angus 680 700 4 18 4 4 10 0 534 700 874 9 13 4 6 13 4 11 0 0 960 624 500 5 15 0 5 12 8

Glasgow 15 13 4 16 16 8 14 10 0 14 10 0 14 10 0 15 16 8 18 10 0 19 10 0 16 10 0 12 10 0 19 10 0 15 12 0 14 18 4 16 13 4 15 12 0

West Lothian 5 16 8 6 13 4 4 10 0 3 16 8 3 16 8 4 10 0 5 16 8 7 10 0 5 16 8 9 10 0 9 10 0 5 10 0 4 10 0 5 16 8 4 16 8

Perth 10 10 0 12 10 0 6 18 0 7 10 0 8 10 0 10 10 0 14 10 0 16 10 0 12 10 0 20 10 0 15 10 0 9 10 0 7 10 0 10 10 0 9 12 0

Roxburgh 16 13 4 16 10 0 14 10 0 14 18 4 16 10 0 16 16 8 17 10 0 19 10 0 16 10 0 10 10 0 18 10 0 16 13 4 14 10 0 15 16 8 14 15 0

Ayr 4 16 8 6 15 0 3 16 8 3 13 4 4 10 0 4 10 0 6 13 4 6 13 4 6 10 0 9 16 8 8 10 0 6 10 0 4 10 0 4 16 8 4 16 8

Kincardine 15 17 18 15 13 14 13 10 10 13 12 10 14 18 10 14 16 10 16 14 10 10 16 18 16 10 10 11 10 10 19 10 10 15 10 10 14 11 10 15 16 10 15 12 10

Peebles

4 13 4 5 13 4 8 13 4 8 16 8 6 16 8 9 13 4 8 13 4 5 13 4 4 18 4 5 13 4 5 13 4

Stirling

The fiars prices for this table were obtained from Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 94–7, other than those for Peeblesshire, Kincardineshire and Angus, for which see NAS, E20/60/13, Extract of the fiars of Peebles shyre from the 1689 to the 1703 [Hereafter, Peeblesshire Fiars]; Kincardine Fiars; Forfarshyre Fiars.

5 16 8 3 16 8 4 10 0 3 16 8 4 10 0 5 16 8 6 10 0 6 13 4 10 13 4 8 10 0 5 16 8 3 13 4 4 10 0 3 13 4

1689 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703

21

Aberdeen

Crop Year

Table 3.1: Candlemas county oatmeal fiars, 1689–170321 (prices per boll, £ s d Scots).

Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

60

of time must rely on this series.22 Unfortunately, there are not complete lists of prices for every county, and none at all for the Highland region.23 Unbroken series of oatmeal fiars exist for thirteen counties between crop years 1689 and 1703 (see table 3.1). A further complication is that each county used a different standard of measurement and direct comparisons between the prices of any one grain in different counties is problematic.24 Instead of attempting to standardise the various prices for different counties, this chapter focuses on the relationships between price increases across the country, and asserts that the extent to which prices increased beyond the purchasing power of the poorest sections of society indicates how severe the crisis was.25 Price increases are used to indicate the extent of grain shortage within the country and suggest the success of the harvest’s crop yield, as a poor harvest which produced a lower amount of grain than normal pushed prices upwards and the reverse occurred following a bountiful harvest. A study of famine in Ancien Régime France concluded that ‘prices reflect supplies (whether harvested or imported)’; price, therefore, is a key determinant of the severity of a crisis.26 Nevertheless, prices were not necessarily highest in areas of greatest shortage. The direct relationship between grain prices and actual grain supply is much more complicated. Large urban markets had greater purchasing capacity than rural areas, for example, and as a result higher prices in towns, particularly Edinburgh, attracted grain supplies from lower price regions.27 Oatmeal was the main food source of the population and its price was crucial to the survival of most people in Scotland.28 The fiars (see table 3.1) reveal that prices were not static before the crisis. Increases had begun 21

22 23

24

25

26

27 28

Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 77. However, there are some fiars prices of an unidentified crop available for Inverness-shire, NAS, E20/60/9, Extract of the fiars from and year 1690 to 1703 [Hereafter, Invernessshire Fiars]. The grain type was not specified, and only one price series was given. It is likely that these prices relate to one of the staple grains, i.e. oats, oatmeal or bear. A more limited series is also available for Ross-shire; see table 3.6. Gibson and Smout identified the different weights used in each county for the boll of grain, Prices, Food and Wages, 371–5. A direct relationship between an increase in prices and an increase in deaths was established in Galloway, ‘Annual Variations’, 496–7. C. Ó Gráda and J. Chevet, ‘Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France’, Journal of Economic History, 62, 3 (Sep. 2002), 720. John Post declared that even studying the relatively late subsistence crisis of the second decade of the nineteenth century, it was necessary to rely on grain prices to provide an ‘approximate index of harvest outcomes’, Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 36. Tilly, ‘Food Entitlement’, 349. See, for example, the studies of harvest failures and famine in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury France which used the price of the main grain, wheat, to determine the reaction of demographic vital events to changing economic conditions and the extent of harvest failure; Richards, ‘Weather, Nutrition, and the Economy’; Ó Gráda and Chevet, ‘Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France’, 719.

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Table 3.2: Classification of harvest yield.29 Good harvests

Bad harvests

Price below the norm by: Classification Price above the norm by: 30% or more Abundant 50% or more 10–30% Good 25–50% 10–25% 0–10% Average 0–10%

Classification Dearth Bad Deficient Average

Table 3.3: Classification of harvest yield by oatmeal county fiar, with average English harvest yields for wheat.30 County Perth Glasgow

West Lothian Midlothian England

Crop 1694

Crop 1695

Crop 1696

Crop 1697

Crop 1698

Crop 1699

Good –15 Deficient +15

Deficient +12 Bad +37

Dearth +57 Dearth +58

Dearth +92 Dearth +82

Dearth +90 Dearth +53

Average –5 Good –18

Bad +40 Bad +26

Dearth +58 Dearth +87

Deficient 13+ Average/ Deficient +10 Average +5 Deficient +20

Dearth +111 Dearth +112

Dearth +56 Dearth +60

Average –7

Bad +29

Deficient +23

Dearth +52

Bad +37

Average +7

in some of the southern and western counties – Berwickshire, Ayrshire, Glasgow and Roxburghshire – in crop years 1693 and 1694, whereas other counties enjoyed a longer run of low prices between crop years 1691 and 1694. Prices in those latter years stand out as particularly low over the whole period of crop years 1689–1703. Crop year 1690, by contrast, was a year of higher prices connected to the disruption caused by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, and a lower yield connected to a poorer than average harvest. To determine the outcome of the harvests of the late 1690s, the fiars have been applied to a model linking harvest yield to crop price. The ‘normal price’ is calculated over a moving average of thirty-one years and applied to a variety of classes by which to distinguish the different harvest yields, displayed in table 3.2. Limited price runs meant that it was only possible to apply this method to oatmeal prices in four different Scottish counties, as shown in table 3.3. 2930

29

30

For an explanation of the way in which the method was devised and applied to English wheat prices, see Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations, 1480–1619’; Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations, 1620–1759’. Scottish prices obtained from Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 94–7. English yield from Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations, 1620–1759’, 30.

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The results display a significant degree of correlation between price movements and yields across the four counties. The same years stand out as the worst overall and all four counties simultaneously experienced the poorest levels of harvest yield and dearth in crop years 1696, 1698 and 1699, with the harvest of 1698 the worst of the three, though this was not reflected in the movement of English wheat prices. Analysing crop prices to estimate harvest yields, W. G. Hoskins agreed with these conclusions, describing six of the harvests during the decade 1690–9 as ‘deficient’ and only one, 1690, as ‘good’. Crops 1693 and 1697 were the worst, producing prices in excess of 50 per cent above average, which Hoskins described as ‘dearth’ conditions. The harvest of 1698 was defined, by contrast, only as ‘bad’,31 although presumably the shortage of the previous years contributed to the seriousness of the deficiency that year. The harvest of 1693 returned a value of ‘dearth +59’ for England which correlates with the peak in French wheat prices, but all four Scottish counties that year registered a ‘good’ harvest for oatmeal. The price of wheat in Paris roughly trebled between August 1692 and May 1694. A second, lower peak in French prices occurred in 1698,32 coinciding with the nationwide climax of Scottish oatmeal prices. Does a dearth-level harvest yield indicate, therefore, that the population subsequently experienced famine? In England, prices reached ‘dearth’ levels, yet there was no apparent famine. An alternative classification model requires a price rise of between 75 and 100 per cent ‘over recent norms’ to imply a severe shortage of grain while over 100 per cent would indicate a famine.33 If the upper limit of prices in excess of 100 per cent above the norm is applied to the results obtained from table 3.3, only prices in West Lothian and Midlothian for crop year 1698 fit into this category of famine. Contemporary Scottish references to dearth and famine, however, correlate most closely to the results of the first model; thus the upper bracket of 100 per cent price rises is too high a standard against which to measure famine conditions in Scotland in the 1690s. The main criticism of such models is that grain prices do not directly reflect harvest yields. Prices are based on many more factors than merely the quantity of grain produced.34 By using a varied classification structure, the data in table 3.3 produces a clear picture of the movement of prices during the crisis. The poorer harvest in the western Lowlands in crop year 1694 which produced higher prices is confirmed by the ‘deficient’ harvest classification for Glasgow that year. Throughout the entire country the harvest of 1695 yielded a below average crop, not as severe as the three designated dearth or famine years, but clearly worse than that of 1697, with 31 32 33 34

Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations, 1620–1759’, 16–17. R. Briggs, Early Modern France, 1560–1715 (Oxford, 1998), 35, 206. Mitchison, ‘Movements of Scottish Corn Prices’, 286. Hoskins, ‘Harvest Fluctuations, 1480–1619’, 43.

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prices at crisis level in Glasgow and the Lothians.35 The harvest of 1699 did not bring an end to the crisis; the yield was better than 1698, but prices remained at crisis level. Despite providing valuable estimates of harvest deficiency or abundance, yearly price changes obscure the extent of any price fluctuations between the harvesting of two crops. Since grain supplies were likely to be at their lowest in the months prior to the next harvest, higher prices, food shortage and suffering could all have been more evident in the summer and autumn following a deficient harvest as supplies began to run out, a point confirmed by the desperation expressed in contemporary literary references in 1696, 1697, 1698 and 1699. Price changes during a crop year Examination of price increases throughout the year provides a more accurate depiction of the levels of scarcity faced by the population. Although market prices were on average 10 per cent above fiars prices,36 during the crisis of the late 1690s the margin of difference between the two was much wider. Consequently, the Candlemas fiars do not provide sufficient information to fully understand the movements of Scottish grain prices during the famine. Some counties struck fiars bi-annually, first at Candlemas in February and secondly at Lammas in August. Very few Lammas fiars have been identified in unbroken series for the 1690s; those that do indicate that in ‘normal’ years of good prices there was, on average, relatively little difference between the two values. However, on a year-to-year basis the difference between the two rates was frequently significantly more than 10 per cent, and even decreases which produced lower prices at Lammas were not uncommon.37 The changing prices reflected reduced circulation of the old crop as it was consumed or disposed of in advance of the new harvest. Prices tended to rise in relation to decreasing grain supply and in 1692 the Head Court of Rothesay considered a complaint that tenants had sold their crop for cash too early in the year and therefore at low, ‘inconsiderable rates, whereby they subjected themselves to the payment of a dear fiars price at the latter end of the year’ at double the rate.38 The price change following the Candlemas fiar was reliant on the prospects of the new crop, 35 36 37

38

Mitchison, ‘Movements of Scottish Corn Prices’, 287. Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 77. For example, in Angus in crop year 1693 the increase was 38.9 per cent, Forfarshyre Fiars. In Aberdeenshire the previous year there was a decrease of 16.7 per cent, D. Littlejohn, ‘Aberdeenshire Fiars’, in Miscellany of the New Spalding Club, Vol. 2 (Aberdeen, 1908), 20–3. The complaint was that through this ‘evil custom, masters were defrauded of their rents’ and tenants were therefore prohibited from selling any grain until they had first paid the rent due to the landlord. W. Ross (ed.), Blain’s History of Bute (Rothesay, 1880), 253–4.

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64 140

Berwickshire Angus Aberdeenshire Kincardineshire

120

Price increases (%)

100 80 60 40 20 0

1689 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703 1704 1705 1706 1707

–20 –40

Crop year

Figure 3.1: Increase in oatmeal prices between the Candlemas and Lammas fiars.39

the timing of the harvest and the quantity and quality of the grain. If the harvest was projected to be earlier than usual and the crop bountiful, then prices generally decreased in response to the expectation of an injection of an abundant fresh supply. In crisis years a far more extreme pattern emerged. Examining oatmeal prices for the four counties – Berwickshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire – which have significant runs of recorded Candlemas and Lammas fiars, large variations in prices were apparent during the famine crisis. The largest increases in all four counties occurred in crop year 1695: 113.3 per cent in Berwickshire, 100 per cent in Angus and 50 per cent in both Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire (see figure 3.1). These were perhaps not even the largest increases, as the price of a boll of grain in Clackmannanshire in 1696 is reported to have risen from £8 in February to £20 in July, an increase of 150 per cent. These figures cannot be verified by fiars prices, but the trend, although more extreme, mirrors those of the first four counties.40 Using the excessive upper limit of 100 per cent price to indicate famine, 39

39

40

The data for Berwickshire is compiled from Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. 3, 208; for Aberdeenshire from Littlejohn, ‘Aberdeenshire Fiars’, 20–3; for Kincardineshire from Kincardine Fiars; and for Angus from Forfarshyre Fiars. No Lammas fiar data was available for Kincardineshire prior to crop 1695. Paton, ‘Masterton Papers 1660–1719’, 475. The fiars prices for Clackmannanshire were not available for this period in Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, neither were they uncovered in other sources examined.

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in crop years 1695 in Angus and 1695 and 1697 in Berwickshire, price increases which would lead to famine conditions occurred in each instance within a six-month period between February and August of a single year. In each case the following crop year produced a high Candlemas fiar indicating that the projected poor harvest played a factor in the increase of the price at Lammas. If the figures for crop years 1698 and 1699 are examined, the opposite appears to be the case. The Lammas prices for 1698 were 25–30 per cent higher than Candlemas prices in each county, but the 1699 harvest was a good one which led to a lowering of Candlemas prices from the peak of the previous year. The prospect of gathering an improved harvest in 1699 was not enough to dampen the Lammas fiars of crop year 1698 and although there was a less marked difference between the two fiars struck in the latter year, in each county crop year 1698 produced the highest overall oatmeal prices of the crisis. There is sufficient data from these four counties, accompanied by the panicked comments of contemporaries, to suggest that many parts of the country experienced prices at famine level by the late summer of 1696. Public opinion about the severity of the crisis could have been exaggerated by alarm about future prospects, or heightened by those with specific interests in forcing prices upwards. The government, in an attempt to maintain order and avoid public panic, was unlikely to overestimate the seriousness of the situation. The reactions of the privy council to the harvest failures provide a breakdown of the changing nature and severity of the crisis across the country. Government intervention in the grain market Despite the problems highlighted above, grain prices can be used as good indicators of the harvest yield. For example, the good harvests and abundant grain supplies of the early 1690s produced a run of low prices and as a result low profits for landowners. The Corn Bounty Act of 1695 was a direct response to this, aimed at boosting trade of the country’s surplus grain and ensuring a sufficient return for those engaged in large-scale grain production through export bounties.41 The nationally deficient harvest gathered in the months following this act demonstrated the extent to which this confidence in the country’s domestic agriculture was sadly overestimated. Examining the origins of the crisis, the privy council accepted that from the harvest of 1695, ‘it was visible to the whole Nation, that the product of the Kingdom was not able to sustain the People, whereupon there arose a Dearth’, but, crucially, not a famine.42 The national increases of the 1696 41

42

Act for encouraging Export of victual, 17 Jul. 1695, in Thomson, The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 9, 458–9. NAS, GD3/10/4/1/D, Replyes for the Tacksmen to the answers given in by His Majesties Advocat and Solicitor, to the said Tacksmens Petition [1698] [Hereafter, Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698]].

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crop Candlemas fiars (see table 3.1) reflected this scarcity of the domestic harvest yield which prompted a change in the privy council’s grain market policy, despite assertions to the tacksmen of the excise that shortage was not actually apparent at that time. The decision in December 1695 to allow duty-free imports of Irish grain into ports on the west coast was a clear recognition of the dangerous situation faced in the western Lowlands by a second year of deficient harvests.43 It was a complete reversal of the government’s policy prohibiting grain imports and such interventionist measures confirm the existence of shortage, or at least fear of future shortage, occurring in the west by late 1695. The privy council initially permitted only the importation of meal and oats ‘to prevent the Famine of Meal . . . because Meal is necessary, for the support of life’. Later proclamations would allow the importation of any type of grain, but it is evident that in the winter of 1695, the government’s aim was to prevent shortage of the types of grain normally consumed by ‘the meaner sort’, who constituted the vast majority of the population.44 This was, consequently, a short-term emergency measure aimed directly at relieving the suffering of the poor. Illegal trading in grain between the west coast and Ireland had been carrying on for some time prior to this,45 indicating that a below average crop yield from the 1694 harvest, combined with the poor harvest of 1695, had necessitated the risk and expense of importing grain well before the privy council accepted the urgency of such actions. Initially, imports were legally permitted only until February, but subsequent proclamations extended this to May and opened up the import trade to any type of grain.46 The privy council declared that ‘the allowance to Import in the Western Shires, was sufficient to fill the whole Nation with Foraign Victual’,47 but in spite of these concessions the amount of relief afforded even to the western counties appears to have been limited. A petition to the treasury and exchequer in 1696 requested that the import duty of 20 shillings per boll on Irish grain be abolished because prices had not fallen despite grain imports. The 43

44 45

46

47

In the west coast the price of wheat was high in the Glasgow region after the harvest of 1694, Flinn, Scottish Population History, 165. See also table 3.3. Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698]. ML, Maxwells of Pollock MSS, T-PM/113/689, A. Stewart [of Blackhall] to Sir John Maxwell, Lord Pollock of Nether Pollok, 23 Dec. 1695. Stewart stated that one of his ‘best & wealthiest’ tenants had been summoned before the privy council for importing grain illegally from Ireland. He claimed that many people throughout the Highland and Lowland west-coast region were guilty of this and had managed to make good profits out of the trade, but that no other men had been charged for these crimes. An act of the privy council dated 7 February 1696 extended imports until 15 April, this was followed by an act of 25 February 1696 which permitted imports until 15 May, The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698]. The privy council register for September 1694 to September 1696 containing the details of these proclamations has been declared unfit for production, NAS, PC1/50, PCRA 1694–6. Another petition stated that in February 1696 the government allowed the importation of all grain, Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698]. Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698].

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rationale was that subsequent to privy council permission to import, Irish grain had increased in price to the extent that ‘it cannot be transported thither and sold with any reasonable advantage but at ane extravagant rate’, at which the ‘poor starveing people’ could not afford to purchase it.48 This action was finally taken in June 1696 when, with the prospect of another nationally deficient harvest, which would provide little relief to the country’s already depleted grain stocks, the privy council authorised dutyfree grain imports.49 In August the ‘unprecedented’ policy of subsidising grain imports was implemented for two months.50 Claimed to have cost the country as much as £100,000 sterling, it was in reality much lower, with in the region of only £22,000 Scots laid out in bounty payments.51 A petition of December 1696 highlighted the problem of ‘the great importation of victuall from England and other places [which] hes taken a Great deall of the species of money out of the Kingdome’, to the great detriment of the economy. The petitioners alleged that they could import grain in exchange for ‘the naturall product of this nation’, but required an incentive in the form of an import bounty of 20 shillings per boll.52 Although it had paid bounties only several months earlier, the privy council declined, but actually contemplated enforcing an act, presumably determined unworkable since none of the proclamations regulating grain imports during the famine included this clause, that all imported grain would be paid for ‘by the product of this Kingdome’, instead of cash.53 In October, notwithstanding the ‘late and unseasonable harvest’, the privy council did not extend 48

49

50

51

52 53

ML, T-PM/109/83, Reasones offered to the Lords of Excheqr for Discharging the 20s Scots of Custome and excyse upon the boll of victuall Imported from Ireland, 1696. Smout, Scottish Trade, 246. See also The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698], which states that the Proclamation of 9 June 1696 ‘not only Allowing the Importation of Victual; but Ordaining the same to be Entered Free of all publick Dues, and laying down several other Dues for the more convenient provision of the Poor, proceeded upon a Narrative of the Calamity of the Countrey by the present Scarcity and Dearth, which the said proclamation bears to be greatly Increased’. Act approving the Proclamations of Council for encouraging the Import of victuall, 9 Oct. 1696. T. Thomson (ed.), The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1823), 64. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 167. Chris Whatley also favours the higher expenditure, C. A. Whatley, ‘The Issues Facing Scotland in 1707’, in S. J. Brown and C. A. Whatley (eds), Union of 1707: New Dimensions (Edinburgh, 2008), 11–12. See also the claim by James Hamilton that ‘about 100,000 lib sterling being waived this last year in buying victuall from England and ther being bot a bad barlie harvest this year also ther is a great more victuall bought up to be imported’, Letter from James Hamilton of Pencaitland to the Earl of Arran, 21 Nov. 1696, in McMaster and Wood, HMC Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, 137. It is highly unlikely that the total cost of the June–August 1696 grain subsidy was this high. See NAS, E73/121/1–14, accounts and vouchers for the bounty system, and E73/127/1–11 Tacksmen Importation of Victual 1692–1702 which although possibly incomplete, suggest that the figure was much lower than this, being not more than £22,000 Scots. PCRA 1696–9, 17 Dec. 1696. PCRA 1696–9, 22 Dec. 1696.

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the bounty policy and instead permitted only duty-free importation of meal, oats or pease from any country between 13 October and 1 December 1696.54 Even with the new crop in circulation, the level of scarcity within the country was so great that by the end of the year this was extended to include any type of grain.55 Across the country the harvest of 1696 was even worse than that of the previous year. The bad harvest this year alone would have pushed grain prices higher, but the two combined harvest failures produced a scarcity in which grain prices peaked throughout the country (see table 3.1).56 Despite the continued importation of meal into the western Lowlands from the previous year, it was still one of the regions of greatest scarcity which may have led directly to an outbreak of rioting in Glasgow in January 1697.57 A group of soldiers and townspeople banded together in an act of disorder ‘breaking the weights made use of for weighing of meall and destroying the Balks and other things made use of for the same’.58 Although the population of the western Lowlands is presumed to have escaped the suffering of other parts of the country due to the benefit of Irish grain imports, the subtacksmen for Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Glasgow excise alleged in 1698 that ‘scarce any place in the nation did smart more severly under the generall calamity’ than that region.59 By summer the national situation had improved sufficiently for the privy council to confidently proclaim the dangers of scarcity and dearth to be ‘Competently provyded against by the plenty of victuall already imported and the old victuall yet in the Countrey not consumed or spent and ther being lykewise the prospect of a very good harvest and plentiful cropt approaching’. Duty was reinstated upon any grain imported after 21 July 1697 and grain imports from Ireland were banned from the beginning of September.60 The importation of foreign grain which in the previous two years had been desperately sought to prevent starvation, was now described as highly prejudicial to the native product of Scotland and gives occasione to the unwarrantable exporting of much money furth of this our realme wherthrough the poorer sort of people are altogether destitut of the necessary means of buying and provyding them selves in the dayly mercats.61 54 55 56

57 58 59

60 61

PCRA 1696–9, 13 Oct. 1696. PCRA 1696–9, 29 Dec. 1696. Although notably not in Aberdeenshire where, unlike most other counties which had two price peaks, the only clear peak in oatmeal prices occurred in crop year 1699. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 168, makes a brief reference to this. PCRA 1696–9, 28 Jan. 1697. NAS, GD3/10/4/1/C, The Petitione of Heugh Montgomerie and partners late subtacksmen, 1698. This point is supported by Whatley, The Scots and the Union, 146. PCRA 1696–9, 20 Jul. 1697. PCRA 1696–9, 5 Aug. 1697.

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Exports were once again permitted as the plentiful new crop produced lower prices. As can be discerned from table 3.1, oatmeal prices for crop year 1697 were the lowest of the famine period in most counties (Aberdeenshire, Inverness-shire, Moray and Ross-shire – see table 3.6 – are notable exceptions). Nevertheless, prices did not drop to the lows of pre-crisis years and in December 1697 the Lord High Chancellor raised a concern with the privy council that prices had not dropped sufficiently to permit the exportation of grain.62 Two hundred bolls of wheat had been prepared for export to France, but the Chancellor argued that since its price was still in excess of £12 per boll, the upper statute level for exporting wheat, such exports ought to be prevented. The privy council did not share his concern in this matter, declaring that stopping the shipment was ‘not Convenient’.63 The council’s preoccupation with promoting the exportation of domestic products and maintaining a better balance of payments than had been possible during the previous two years, once again proved short sighted and ultimately such short-term gains were not in the nation’s best interest. Despite a vastly improved harvest in the autumn of 1697, the problems of scarcity accumulated over the previous years meant that the new crop did not provide the relief anticipated. In April 1698 renewed appearances of grain scarcity forced the privy council to once again ban any exports of grain from the country.64 From July this policy was extended to permit duty-free grain imports.65 The summer of 1698 marked the beginning of the worst year of grain scarcity during the whole famine period. From early in the year contemporaries had predicted that the changeable and unfavourable weather conditions of spring and summer would yield a deficient harvest. It was to be the worst harvest of the crisis and crop year 1698 oatmeal prices in most counties exceeded even those of 1696.66 The period of duty-free imports was extended throughout the year by various proclamations67 until the spring of 1699 when the crisis throughout the country peaked and the privy council was forced to resort to desperate measures. In March 1699 grain scarcity and high prices led to outbreaks of rioting in Dundee (Angus) and St Andrews (Fife) with fears of unrest in several other east-coast towns. In response the privy council ordered the Commissioners 62

63

64

65 66

67

Price maxima had been set by the ‘Act for encouraging Export of victual’, 17 Jul. 1695, which stipulated that grain exports would be forbidden if grain prices exceeded the maximum levels, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 9, 458–9. PCRA 1696–9, 28 Dec. 1697. The fiars price for wheat in Edinburgh for crop year 1697 was £11 13s 4d; at this time the 1696 fiars price of £12 13s 4d would still apply, Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 103. Initially this was for a period of two months, but in May this was extended until the next harvest, PCRA 1696–9, 26 Apr. and 10 May 1698. PCRA 1696–9, 14 Jul. 1698. See table 3.1. In the far north it is likely that the harvest of 1696 was the worst. See earlier comments about Orkney. PCRA 1696–9, 20 Sep. and 9 Nov. 1698.

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of Supply or Justices of the Peace in each county to gather information on the market price of grain and set a new ‘common price and fiar’, the highest price at which grain could be sold within that county between May or June and September.68 The February fiars no longer reflected the market prices within the individual counties and it was necessary to overrule the fiars and define clear price maxima to prevent further increases. The counties north of the river Tay were provided with additional protectionist measures, essential as the population in that region was ‘in hazard to be brought to great extremity by persons carrying victuall out and from these parts to othr places where they expect to have higher prices’.69 Commissioners were given the power to prohibit grain export and transportation out of county boundaries. In May this was extended to apply to any county, not just those in the north.70 In June the restrictions on inter-county grain movements were lifted, although scarcity, in the northern counties in particular, had not been counteracted in such a short period. The privy council explained that the methods intended to protect certain inhabitants had not been beneficial: thir being several places in the countrey [where the population was] not able to subsist upon the growth and victuall within their own Bounds, And in other places the poorer sort [were] not able competently to provide themselves att the current Rates: All which does necessarly require . . . a free course of Buying and selling victual through the whole Kingdom. This ‘free trade’ had in March been cited by the council as increasing the severity of famine in the northern counties. The region, despite being able to produce supplies of grain, was not able to retain it, as profiteering merchants exported it to higher-priced markets. In addition, the council reinstated a bounty of 20 shillings on each boll of foreign grain imported, since ‘a small supply from abroad may afoard great Relief, and keep the mercats at a moderat Rate’, a policy directly at odds with the 1697 proclamation describing the detrimental effect of foreign grain imports which forced prices above the reach of the poorer elements of the population.71 The plentiful harvest of 1699 brought an end to these emergency measures; exports were permitted and the usual restrictions imposed upon imports. Although, as table 3.1 shows, prices fell in most counties from the peak of the previous year, they did not return to normal levels, remaining 68

69 70 71

The Commissioners of Supply were to gather information on the market prices of grain within the towns of each county for the preceding five weeks to fix a new fiar which would be effective until 1 September 1699. The prices were to be set at meetings held between 31 March and 1 May 1699 south of the River Tay; north of the river this was extended until 1 June. PCRA 1696–9, 31 Mar. 1699. PCRA 1696–9, 4 May 1699. PCRA 1696–9, 9 Jun. 1699.

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higher than the prices for crop 1697. As occurred after the 1697 harvest, this period of sufficient grain supply proved merely temporary and in December, when the extent of scarcity in the previous years began once again to exert pressure upon the country’s domestic grain supply, exports were banned and imports permitted.72 It was only following the good harvest of 1700 that grain prices returned to normal levels and domestic supplies were sufficient to cater for the country’s needs. In September, Kilspindie kirk session in Perthshire at last considered the ‘dearth and scarcity . . . abated’.73 With the grain shortage over, the privy council was finally able in January 1701 to ban foreign grain imports.74 The extent to which the government’s policies brought relief to the population is difficult to ascertain. In some instances the outcome had the opposite effect. Adam Smith’s assumption that famine occurred only as a result of ‘the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth’, was rejected in relation to the government’s role in famine in early modern France.75 This theory clearly cannot be applied to Scotland in the 1690s either. If anything, government actions were cautious in their methods and limited in their extent, although regulations banning grain exports appear to have been lifted far too quickly, which may have caused additional shortage and further need for imports in the long term. The authorities of neither France nor Scotland created famine in the 1690s, but the same could not be argued of the Swedish government’s treatment of its Baltic provinces.76 Limited government action in England in the early 1690s provoked widespread rioting; in May 1693 at Worcester, Weymouth, Shrewsbury and Colchester; in March 1694 at Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford, Stafford, Salop, Northampton, Sudbury and Colchester; and in June 1694 at Stamford, Peterborough, Northampton and Kettering. Even official reaction to the harvest failure of 1698 was described as merely ‘muted and belated’, concerned as much with avoiding a repeat of popular protest as alleviating suffering, although there was no resultant widespread mortality.77 The Scottish privy council was aware that its intervention in the grain market could have a detrimental impact upon the population. The severity of the crisis in parts of the country forced the council to take unusual and emergency measures to avert widespread starvation. The realisation that this intervention did not provide a 72 73 74 75

76

77

NAS, PC4/2 PCM 1696–9, 12 Dec. 1699. GROS, OPR363/2, Kilspindie KSR, 22 Sep. 1700. NAS, PC1/52, PCRA 1699–1703, 6 Jan. 1701. Adam Smith, as quoted in Ó Gráda and Chevet, ‘Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France’, 706. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 61–2; Huang, History of Estonia, 122; D. Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World 1492–1772 (London, 1990), 257. Outhwaite, ‘Dearth and Government Intervention’, 396–7, 401. See also Outhwaite, ‘Food Crises in Early Modern England’, 372.

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sufficient solution, but actually increased problems elsewhere, was quickly followed by a renunciation of these policies. In France, the market’s ability to combat famine by supplying deficiencies in local supply through relocation of grain stocks ‘probably alleviated aggregate suffering’.78 In Scotland in the 1690s, this must also have been true. The large urban markets of the east coast were supplied by shipments of grain from the north and east of the country as well as what was available from the immediate agricultural hinterland. When the domestic supply was so deficient that sections of the population experienced severe suffering, duty-free and even bountysupported imports of grain were permitted in an attempt to make up the shortfall. Supply in the European grain market Despite the long-term improvement in domestic grain supply, in times of dearth or famine Scotland was reliant on importing food to supplement the national product. Traditional sources of imports were the Baltic states, but over the course of the seventeenth century Scotland turned increasingly to England and Ireland to supply any grain deficiencies.79 The main obstacles to this recourse of famine relief in the 1690s were the simultaneous harvest failures and famines across northern Europe, Scotland’s traditional import markets in England and the Baltic amongst those affected. The extent of food shortage combined with the ineffectiveness of relief were directly responsible for increased mortality, but war was another factor.80 Although the Nine Years War clearly placed a strain on the Scottish economy and population,81 because the campaigns were carried out on the continent, the country did not experience the ravages of active warfare,82 whereas in France, troops requisitioned grain stocks and the war broke down market regulations during the famine of 1693–4. Traditionally, in times of scarcity the French crown bore the expense of purchasing grain supplies to sell in urban markets below cost, but in the 1690s, partly as a result of its war expenses, the crown simply could not afford to take part in such activities.83 The Swedish government was in a position to distribute food supplies in 78 79 80

81

82

83

Ó Gráda and Chevet, ‘Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France’, 726. Smout and Fenton, ‘Scottish Agriculture before the Improvers’, 76–7. C. Ó Gráda, ‘Two Encyclopaedia Entries on Famine’, Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series (Jan. 2002). In addition to providing men for military service, by May 1695 the Scottish Parliament had raised £120,000 for troops and ships, D. Onnekink, ‘The Earl of Portland and Scotland (1689–1699): A Re-evaluation of Williamite Policy’, Scottish Historical Review, 85, 2: 220 (Oct. 2006), 248. Some localities had, however, been affected financially by troop movements and unrest following the Revolution of 1688. Getting compensation for this was slow and may still have been an issue in some areas by the start of the famine. P. Berger, ‘Pontchartrain and the Grain Trade During the Famine of 1693’, The Journal of Modern History, 48, 4 (Dec. 1976), 41, 43.

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Finland on credit, but demanded security for repayment that many could not provide, lessening the effectiveness of its relief policy.84 The Scottish government, by contrast, did not enter the grain market as a buyer, but local urban authorities did occasionally intervene, invoking emergency measures made under extreme circumstances, rather than utilising an accepted and normal method of famine prevention. That such actions were actually implemented by a number of town councils, including Aberdeen, Montrose, Dundee and Edinburgh, over the famine period suggests that those burghs were not overly crippled financially by the economic crisis of the decade.85 It is only possible to speculate whether more would have been done if the economic climate had been more favourable. Contemporaries, including the government, frequently bemoaned both the lack of specie circulating in the country and the significant amount that left the country to pay for grain imports, which ‘exhausted’ the country’s finances.86 In France it was not only an issue of how to redistribute resources within the country that affected the ability of the government to support the population and ensure that adequate supply reached the urban markets. The hostile activities of the English royal navy in the Channel put grain imports from the Baltic at risk of being attacked and seized before they reached French ports. Merchants were reluctant to invest in such risky ventures and it was necessary for the government to provide naval protection to shipments.87 In Scotland, French-sponsored privateers disrupted shipping plying the traditional trading routes for grain supplies between the fertile lands of the north and north-east and the large markets on the Forth, which required imports of grain to supply the demands of both the local populace and the merchants involved in the export trade. Three of Banff’s bailies wrote to Sir James Ogilvie (subsequently Earl of Seafield) in June 1693 claiming that the Moray Firth was ‘soe pested with priviteirs, that noe ship can goe alongs the coast’. They requested a naval boat to secure the safety of shipping routes in the region, hoping that Ogilvie would take a particular interest in this since he had his ‘own victuell goeing south’.88 84 85

86

87 88

Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 61–2. However, see the suggestion that Dundee’s high levels of debt by the late seventeenth century meant that it was able to offer the population much less support than it had in earlier crises, M. Young, K. J. Cullen and C. A. Whatley, ‘Battered but Unbowed – Dundee during the Seventeenth Century’, in R. Harris, C. A. McKean and C. A. Whatley (eds), Rediscovered Dundee: A Scottish Burgh in Transition, c.1603 – c.1800 (forthcoming). For a discussion of problems relating to specie, see Anon., A proposition for remeding the debasement of coyne in Scotland ([Edinburgh], [1696]); A. Cameron, Bank of Scotland 1695– 1995: A Very Singular Institution (Edinburgh, 1995); Whatley, The Scots and the Union, 149; Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun in ‘Two Discourses concerning the Affairs of Scotland written in the Year 1698’, Daiches, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 27–66. Berger, ‘Pontchartrain and the Grain Trade’, 52–3. Letter from Jo. Gordounn, Alex Wallace and R. Saunders to Sir James Ogilvie of Churchhill, 12 Jun. 1693, in J. Grant (ed.), ‘Seafield Correspondence from 1685 to 1708’, Scottish History Society 2nd ser., 3 (Edinburgh, 1912), 104.

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Nevertheless, the Earl was one of those landowners who ‘suffered severely’ from losses incurred through privateer activity from 1690 to 1697.89 Shipping was not the only target of the privateers. In the remote and relatively unprotected Shetland Islands between 1693 and 1696 local inhabitants and merchants from Hamburg and Bremen were terrorised by French privateers who repeatedly ‘plundered and destroyed’ goods, livestock and ships.90 Orkney was also a target. In June 1694 a party of French privateers caused the loss of over £1,000 worth of goods and property including the theft of livestock, food, beds, bedding, pots and pans as well as woollen and linen webs, yarn, fishing lines and the destruction of the sole fishing boat, essential to the inhabitants of the tiny island of Lambholm.91 With the exception of Shetland, which undoubtedly suffered disproportionately, and Orkney, the extent to which privateering and warfare contributed to the suffering of the Scottish population cannot be calculated. A number of Scottish burghs including Prestonpans (East Lothian) and Burntisland (Fife) lost a substantial number of their merchant ships to privateers during the war, but Scotland was not alone in suffering such losses. An estimated 4,000 English merchant ships were also lost to the conflict.92 In Scotland, such losses not only dampened trade and ruined merchants, but they also must have proved to be substantial disadvantages to the authorities’ attempts at providing famine relief. Scotland was only one of many countries seeking famine relief in the form of grain imports and as such the availability and price of those supplies depended heavily on the outcome of the harvest elsewhere. It was crucial that extreme shortage abroad did not prevent exportations of grain from the foreign markets that Scotland relied upon. However, competition for grain supplies from other countries facing shortage pushed prices even higher and was a key reason why the privy council was forced to pay import bounties. Although scarcity was apparent throughout northern Europe in a number of years during the 1690s, 1696, 1697 and 1698 were the worst of the decade, with crop years 1695 and 1696 particularly bad years in the Baltic. Sweden imported 80,000 tons of grain from its Baltic empire to feed its population in 1696 alone.93 The diversion of these grain stocks, depleting anticipated supply from other European markets, must have played a role in the Scottish privy council’s decision to pay import bounties in the summer of that year. By contrast, in the last quarter of 1697, conditions in Scotland improved as a result of the harvest, but this positive change 89 90

91

92 93

Smout, History of the Scottish People, 131. SA, 2/330, Instructions from the heritors of the cuntrey of Zetland to Allexander Brand, 22 Aug. 1696. OA, D5/1/10/1, Depositions of witnesses to a raid by French privateers on the island of Lamb Holm in June 1694. Whatley, The Scots and the Union, 140, 158–9. Kirby, Northern Europe, 257.

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in circumstances was not experienced across the rest of Europe. James Murison, a merchant in Amsterdam, complained that low grain supplies had pushed up the price of imports from Danzig (Gdansk, Poland) and he judged that the situation would only get worse since ‘we can expect but littel from dantzig in the spring prices are very high all the East contry over’.94 Reports from Campveer the following summer that ‘all Kinde of Graines ar Verry dear hear’,95 confirm Murison’s fears and indicate that crop year 1697 was a particularly difficult year in the Netherlands. Problems experienced on such a severe scale in the Netherlands had repercussions for the grain import markets of other countries. The vast majority of grain exported from the Baltic was shipped to the Netherlands, and just over 40 per cent of this was then re-exported. In 1698, owing to local scarcity and a reduction in imports which triggered food riots of unprecedented severity in the country, grain exports were forbidden.96 The following year was even worse throughout Europe as famine ‘gripped the Baltic countries’ and once again even the usually stable Dutch grain market experienced ‘some quite abnormal months’.97 Despite early reports from Denmark of the prospects of a good harvest and cheap grain prices following the harvest of 1698,98 and claims from Amsterdam that the wheat crop was expected to be ‘in all parts reasonable’,99 throughout northern Europe this harvest was disastrous. In September, James Murison wrote from Amsterdam to the merchant Alexander Pyper in Edinburgh claiming that ‘the mounting of the Prices of Corne in the East Country; & the badd weather, which wee have had here these dayes makes our Prices here run up extravagantly’. The shortage was so bad that he asked Pyper if there were any prospects of grain being exported from Scotland to supply the Dutch market.100 Upon being told that this was impossible due to the adverse harvest weather proving a ‘hazard’ to the Scottish crop, Murison declared that similar problems were being experienced in England where ‘it rains much . . . so tht the crop in the East & north parts is like to be much spoiled’.101 The harvest in England was so poor that grain exports were banned for a year from February 1699.102 The general grain shortage in many European countries in crop year 94 95 96

97

98 99 100 101 102

NAS, RH15/101/5, James Murison to Mr Alexander Pyper, 24 xr 1697. NAS, RH15/101/5, Robert Pantoune to Mr Alexr Pyper, 23 Jun. 1698. J. M. Price, ‘The Map of Commerce, 1683–1721’, in Bromley, The New Cambridge Modern History Volume VI, 837; S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London, 2004), 167. J. Meuvret, ‘The Condition of France, 1688–1715’, in Bromley, The New Cambridge Modern History Volume VI, 322. NAS, RH15/101/5, Alezxr Finlay to Mr Alexr Pyper, 20 Jul. 1698. NAS, RH15/101/5, James Murison to Mr Alexander Pyper, 1 Aug. 1698. NAS, RH15/101/5, James Murison to Mr Alexander Pyper, 16 Sep. 1698. NAS, RH15/101/5, James Murison to Mr Alexander Pyper, 14 Oct. 1698. Export bounties were also temporarily banned in the subsequent year, Outhwaite, ‘Dearth and Government Intervention’, 392.

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1698 meant that grain imports into Scotland were increasingly difficult to secure. This, combined with the dreadfully deficient domestic harvest of 1698, led to numerous complaints about the lack of grain available for sale. James Hamilton, writing to the Duke of Hamilton in October 1698, exclaimed that ‘the marcats are high and its feared pryces will yet ryse higher, ther being no expectatione of importing cornes from abroad’. By the end of the year circumstances had not improved, as he described Scotland as ‘a most callamitus country for scarcity of mony and grain and if God send us not some reliefe the nixt year it is impossible we can subsist a year longer in all probability’.103 Grain imports secured through the 1699 bounty totalled roughly 26,000 bolls, of which approximately three-quarters was imported from England and Ireland, the rest from the Baltic.104 Scots were trading directly with the Baltic ports this year; for example, Alexander Pyper imported peas from Prussia and Gdansk to Leith in May and June 1699.105 However, due to the ban on English grain exports from February 1699 it is plausible that the majority of the grain imported came from Ireland. Examining the bounty returns in more detail, roughly 70 per cent of the grain imported can be clearly identified as English or Irish with approximately equal proportions coming from each country. Despite later anti-Union claims that the English government deliberately tried to deny food to the starving Scots, the English twelve-month ban on grain exports was not enforced during the summer of that year.106 Nevertheless, English customs records which record Irish grain exports to Scotland (see table 3.4) indicate that very little grain was shipped to Scotland prior to the end of 1699. In the following year massive grain exports were recorded, confirming the suggestion that Scotland was still suffering from major deficiencies in its domestic grain crop after the harvest of 1699. That the greatest amount of grain imported was oatmeal indicates that these imports were still required to supplement basic food supplies. The exact extent of grain importation into Scotland and identification of the countries from which these imports originated are difficult to calculate, other than the grain imported under the bounty system. Illegal importation 103

104

105

106

Letter from James Hamilton of Pencaitland to James, Duke of Hamilton, 29 Oct. 1698, in McMaster and Wood, H. M. C. Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Hamilton, 142–3. Smout and Fenton, ‘Scottish Agriculture before the Improvers’, 76. See also NAS, E73/127/19, The particular accompt of the Bounty money paid out of the customs to the Importers of victuall by poclamatione of the privie councell daited 9 June 1699. The bounty money paid amounted to £25,883 3s 9d Scots. NAS, RH15/101/5, Contract between Alexander Pyper and William Gordone, Edinburgh, 9 Jun. 1699; RH15/101/1, Bill of Loading, Dantzigh 8 May 1699. NAS, GD406/1/5118, T. Hodges to the Duke of Hamilton, 12 Jul. 1704. Clearly the claims are misfounded; not only did England experience grain supply problems during this period, but in the summer of 1699 somewhere in the region of 9,000 bolls of grain were exported from England to Scotland.

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Table 3.4: Amount of grain (in quarter bushels – except oatmeal and wheatmeal which are both in barrels) exported from Ireland to Scotland as registered in English Custom records.107 25/12/1697– 25/12/1698 Barley Beans Malt Oats Peas Rye Wheat Oatmeal Wheatmeal

0.4 1 75

25/12/1698– 25/12/1699

25/12/1699– 25/12/1700 3344 18 1923:6 5517 411.6 24 478 17,755 ¾ 1¼

6

154

from Ireland in particular has escaped entry into customs records. Perhaps impossible to account for are grain exports from Scotland. Prohibited for much of the famine period, there were two periods: between the harvest of 1697 and April 1698, and the harvest of 1699 until December 1699, during which exports were permitted. Given the extent of grain imports in crop year 1699 and the general recovery experienced that year in many other European countries (other than Denmark), it is unlikely that much grain was exported from Scotland during the latter short period. Between the autumn of 1697 and the spring of 1698, however, the opposite was the case as Scotland enjoyed a better grain supply than many other countries. Despite previous assumptions that in the year following the 1697 harvest exports were ‘discouraged’,108 the actions of the privy council in December 1697 in failing to prevent the export of wheat from Edinburgh indicate that the government’s aims were quite the opposite. Merchants took advantage of the relaxation of prohibition on grain exports between the harvest of 1697 and April 1698 to trade overseas. Alexander Pyper shipped grain from the east coast of Scotland and Orkney to Ostend, in the Netherlands, and ports on the west coast of Norway between January and April 1698,109 because falling Scottish grain prices made export a more profitable venture. These examples have survived from the papers of only one merchant, but when the activities of merchants trading in grain supplies within Scotland 107

107

108 109

NA, Records of the Boards of Customs, CUST 15/1, Exportations to Scotland from Ireland, 25 Dec. 1697–25 Dec. 1698; 15/2, Exportations to Scotland from Ireland, 25 Dec. 1698–25 Dec. 1699; 15/3, Exportations to Scotland from Ireland, 25 Dec. 1699–25 Dec. 1700. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 168. NAS, RH15/101/1, Bill of loading, Montrose, 29 Mar. 1698; Bill of loading, Leith, 8 Jan. 1698; RH15/101/5, Contract between Alexander Pyper and Archibald Hodge, Leith, 25 Apr. 1698.

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are considered along with those taking part in the international trade, it is not unreasonable to suppose that export from Scotland was fairly extensive during the limited period it was permitted. Merchants were motivated by moving grain from areas of relative plenty where prices were cheap, to be sold in countries or regions experiencing high prices. In 1697 James Murison, the Amsterdam merchant, discussing trading prospects with Alexander Pyper, suggested that bear might be purchased from England at a reasonable rate and that the two could act as partners to buy the grain and sell it for a profit. Murison warned Pyper, however, ‘if you intend to ingage do it quietly and without loss of time’.110 It was important that the deal was timed to take advantage of the best price differential. The request that it be done ‘quietly’ may reflect this point, but is most likely a note of caution to Pyper to avoid stirring up local resentment to grain exportation. The activities of grain merchants moving and exporting grain during famine periods frequently aroused local concern about the market being stripped of local supplies which in turn pushed local market prices higher. One of the main criticisms of using fiars prices as an indication of the harvest yields of the late 1690s is that the prices in any one county would be altered by changing supply in relation to the inter-regional movement, importation and export abroad of grain. The privy council, for example, claimed that grain importation from Ireland ‘did raise the Prices high both in England and Ireland, and yet diminished nothing of the Prices here’.111 Other than the privy council’s intervention of March 1699, though, the control and regulation of prices remained at local level. Local reaction to grain shortage Local intervention in the grain supply was a less common feature of market regulation than central government control. When it did occur, it was inevitably in urban areas, but though town councils regularly fixed the prices at which certain goods were sold, the price of oatmeal was only set under the direst of circumstances. On most other occasions burgh markets precluded the need for additional interference from the town council.112 In 1699, perhaps in recognition of the special market forces which operated in the capital and due to the reluctance of town councils to regulate local prices, the privy council, in an attempt to maintain sufficient local supplies of grain and avoid the outbreak of further urban disorder, ordered Edinburgh town council to fix the price at which grain would be sold within the town (the Commissioners of Supply were also ordered to collate and establish new county prices). No other town councils were requested to 110 111 112

NAS, RH15/101/5, James Murison to Mr Alexander Pyper, 24 xr 1697. Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698]. Smout, History of the Scottish People, 144–5, 150.

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set prices independently of the county price and this example is a highly unusual occurrence, even within the general severity of famine conditions in the late 1690s.113 The first example of local urban intervention was undertaken as early as 1696 by the town council of Montrose.114 In the spring and summer of that year the town faced a crisis as sufficient supplies of grain were not being made available for sale and market prices rocketed. In an attempt to remedy this situation the council bought 300 bolls of meal from the Earl of Southesk to sell in the market. By July the situation had worsened and the need of the townspeople was so great that ‘they were next to ane starving condition and threatening at their ain hand to take the same [meal]’.115 The council set a price of £11 17s 4d per boll for oatmeal, vastly in excess of the £6 per boll Candlemas fiar price. The Lammas court that year set the new fiars price at £12 per boll.116 As early as July, the townspeople and authorities knew that the following harvest would be a particularly poor one and market prices were forced up in advance of the Lammas fiars court which doubled the official price of grain set in February, only six months earlier. The occurrence of price fixing in Montrose is even more unusual since the council acted independently of central government and in direct response to local conditions. Fear of disorder was obviously a motivating factor, but other towns experienced such problems during the famine and did not resort to such interventionist measures. The example of Montrose is atypical, but indicates that conditions forced the council to adopt drastic measures. Not all local intervention in the grain market, however, ensured the best interests of the local population. In May, responding to the privy council’s proclamation of 31 March 1699, the Commissioners of Supply of Perthshire and Angus banned the export of grain out of the county until September.117 In setting the price of grain, the Commissioners of both counties chose to use similar, or in some instances the exact, prices that had been struck by the Commissioners of 113 114

115

116 117

Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 43. However, in October 1695 Dundee town council set the price of wheat at £12 per boll, which was perhaps a response to the poor harvest and the fact that wheat prices had been high in Glasgow from the harvest of 1694, DCA, Dundee Town Council Minute Book 1669–1707, 12 Oct. 1695. The Candlemas fiar for crop year 1695 set the price of wheat in Angus at £8 per boll and the Lammas fiar set in August 1695 was £8 10s, Forfarshyre Fiars. Following the harvest of 1695, therefore, there was a significant jump in the price (41 per cent) at which wheat was sold in Dundee, from the price set by the fiar only two months earlier. AngA, Montrose Burgh Records, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book 1673–1702, 13 May and 20 Jul. 1696. Forfarshyre Fiars. PKCA, B59/31/8, Minutes of the Commissioners of Supply of Perthshire fixing fiars prices etc. The prices set by the Commissioners of Supply for Angus in early May 1699 were obtained from NAS, RH15/101/3, William Coutts to Alexander Pyper, 15 May 1699.

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Midlothian Perthshire Angus April/May 1699

Price per boll in pence Scots

3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1689

1691

1693

1695 1697 Crop year

1699

1701

1703

Figure 3.2: Candlemas oatmeal fiars for Midlothian, Perthshire and Angus, 1689–1703.118

Supply for Midlothian. This was a strange decision, since, as can be seen by the trends for oatmeal in figure 3.2, prices were almost always lower in these counties than in Midlothian. Particularly during crop year 1698 there was a significant difference in the price of oatmeal between the two counties and the capital, until the prices were reset in the spring of 1699. After the Candlemas fiar was struck, the price increase over the spring may have been much greater in these counties than in Midlothian and as a result prices in Perthshire and Angus jumped to almost the same level as in the capital. However, it is unlikely that prices increased so drastically in Perthshire and Angus in only a few months, when prices in the capital were static.119 Obviously, consideration must be given to the fact that the three 118

118

119

The fiars prices for Midlothian and Perthshire used in this graph were obtained from Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 96–7. For the Angus fiars prices see Forfarshyre Fiars. The prices set in April and May by the Commissioners of Supply were obtained from PKCA, Perth Burgh Records, B59/31/8, Minutes of the Commissioners of Supply of Perthshire fixing fiars prices etc., 9 May 1699; B59/31/7, Act of the Commissioners of Supply of the Sheriffdom of Edinburgh, anent the Settlement of the Prices of Victual within the said Shire, 28 Apr. 1699; NAS, RH15/101/3, William Coutts to Alexander Pyper, 15 May 1699. There is, however, some ambiguity about the city of Edinburgh and county of Midlothian prices. The town council of Edinburgh was ordered to set grain prices independently of the Commissioners of Supply for the Sheriffdom of Midlothian. The prices for wheat and oats were identical, the price for pease was not given by the town council, but the other prices were slightly different. On 29 April 1699 the council set the price of bear at £13 per boll, oatmeal at £13 12s, bearmeal at £8 8s and peasemeal at £10, H. Armet (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh 1689 to 1701 (Edinburgh, 1962), 245. This indicates

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bolls were composed of slightly different weights, but even when this is compensated for, the difference in prices between the three regions is minimal when contrasted with the difference in the fiars. Using the Linlithgow standard measure the prices of the Perthshire, Angus and Midlothian bolls of oatmeal were £12 5s 8d, £12 0s 3d and £12 19s 10d respectively.120 The prices set in Perthshire and Angus may have been deliberately raised to compensate grain sellers for the loss of a higher-priced market in which to sell their grain. Merchants and landowners were to be prohibited from selling locally produced grain outwith the county and local prices were increased to ensure that sellers still received the maximum price. Whether this was intended as a form of compensation, or merely to ensure that grain was indeed made available for sale locally, it increased the price of oatmeal within Perthshire by a further 38 per cent, and in Angus by 33 per cent, on top of the most expensive oatmeal prices of the famine, while Midlothian Commissioners held the price of oatmeal at the peak it had reached in February. Lacking data from other counties it is difficult to be certain about the reasons for these price changes in Perthshire and Angus. Local scarcity may have increased prices in these counties after the ban on inter-county grain movement. Edinburgh, by contrast, probably continued to benefit from grain imports from abroad and thus shortage was simply not as evident there. Nevertheless, the population of the capital was not any more insulated from the escalating crisis than the other east-coast burghs. Food riots and crime The high prices of grain during the famine period forced people to resort to desperate measures in order to secure adequate food supply. Some of the poor who failed to acquire the additional financial resources necessary to purchase food turned instead to stealing grain in order to escape hunger and starvation, particularly noticeable in Kincardineshire and Perthshire. David Chapman of Crieff (Perthshire) was accused of stealing a small amount of food and some money. The privy council considered his plea that relieving his family’s need had been the sole motivation of his crime and reduced his sentence from execution to scourging and banishment to the plantations.121 Thefts of these kinds appear to have been on a relatively small scale, a last resort carried out by some of the most desperate. On a much larger scale were the crises of disorder witnessed in several east-coast

120

121

a small increase in price from the Candlemas fiars for oatmeal, bearmeal and peasemeal, but a decrease in the price of bear for the town of Edinburgh. See Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 373, for an explanation of the relationship between the Linlithgow standard and those of the other three counties. Chambers, Domestic Annals, Vol. III, 199. There are also many other examples of individuals convicted of stealing small quantities of food during the famine period in J. Anderson, The Black Book of Kincardineshire (Stonehaven, 1843).

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towns during the later years of the 1690s as food supplies were reduced and grain prices peaked. In Montrose (Angus), Dundee (Angus), St Andrews (Fife) and Edinburgh (Midlothian) in the first quarter of 1699 the town councils were forced to take action as a result of either riots or the fear that rioting would break out among the townspeople. Shortage in Montrose led the town council to purchase grain from a local landowner in May 1696 to sell to the townspeople. Over the next two months the scarcity of grain doubled its price and by 20 July the council feared that the townspeople would be driven to secure food by force.122 This resort to intervention in the local grain market to secure supplies for the urban population had been taken previously by Aberdeen town council, first in July 1696 and on several further occasions over the following few years, with the authorities fearing an outbreak of rioting in 1698.123 Following the dismal harvest of 1698 grain shortage once again became apparent in Montrose. In 1699, in the months of February, March and June, the town council bought a total of 350 bolls of meal from various landowners to sell in the town particularly ‘for the use of the poor’.124 There was no suggestion on this occasion that the councillors feared a repetition of the situation in which they had found themselves in 1696, but when the motives behind Dundee and St Andrews magistrates’ decisions to intervene in their towns’ grain supplies are examined, these may have merely been precautionary steps. In April 1699 Dundee town council, for reasons similar to those of Montrose council, bought 200 bolls of oatmeal from the Laird of Kincardine, ‘inregard of the growing necessity of the poor in this place’. This move, however, was largely motivated by a riot in the town in March when a mob boarded a ship loaded with grain for export and attempted to unload it.125 Almost simultaneously a riot occurred in St Andrews as grain girnels were broken into and the grain stolen by rioters. So serious were these latter actions that the privy council dispatched troops to help suppress any further vigilante action on the part of the townspeople.126 Only a few days later, on 5 April 1699, Edinburgh town council bought 100 bolls of meal for the use of the poor.127 It is feasible that the town council’s purchase of this grain, which coincided with the difficulties apparent in other east-coast burghs, was as a result of perceived problems in the capital as well. The Earl of Ruglen had written from Edinburgh to the Duke of Hamilton in England only a few weeks earlier exclaiming that ‘affairs here are in great disorder and we have frequent tumults on the account 122 123

124

125 126 127

AngA, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book 1673–1702, 13 May and 20 Jul. 1696. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 38; A. I. Macinnes, Union and Empire: The Making of the United Kingdom in 1707 (Cambridge, 2007), 218–19. AngA, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book 1673-–702, 8 Feb., 8 Mar. and 17 Jun. 1699. DCA, Dundee Town Council Minute Book 1669–1707, 29 Mar. and 19 Apr. 1699. PCRA 1696–9, 23 Mar. 1699. Armet, Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 244.

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of our great scarcity’. He referred specifically to the ‘great’ tumults in St Andrews and Dundee, but it is possible that there were also more minor acts of disorder related to grain shortage. The Earl blamed the ‘excessive’ price of grain which had left ‘the people crying out upon the impositions’ forcing them to take violent action.128 As late as June that year the privy council was forced to write to the magistrates of Edinburgh ordering the suppression of tumults within the city.129 In neither Dundee nor Montrose did the local authorities subsidise the price of grain or enforce its sale at a lower price. The role of the magistrates was merely to make the grain available for purchase; thus it was not the prices that the townspeople found unpalatable, simply the lack of supply and presumably the assumption that grain was being deliberately and illegally withheld from sale in the local markets, evidenced by the attack on the grain girnels in St Andrews. When these riots are examined in the wider context of Scottish food riots, the motives behind the actions of the townspeople of St Andrews and Dundee can be seen as a direct result either of food shortage or feared future shortages and subsequently they tried to prevent food being removed for sale elsewhere. During the French famine of 1693–4 the intendant of Orléans warned that export of grain from the region to supply the urban markets was causing serious local concern: ‘I fear that scarcity lead the people to riot, particularly because they see boatloads of grain passing before their eyes while they starve’.130 The main cause of a wave of food riots in Scottish burghs in 1720 was the export of grain from the port towns and the resulting impact of this on the availability of grain in burgh marketplaces. In these cases, in the concerns of the rioters shortage of food took precedence over high prices.131 It has been argued that few riots occurred during the shortage and dearth of the late 1690s because ‘severe famine and famine mortality of the sort experienced in Scotland were not elsewhere conducive to rioting’.132 Does this then mean that because Dundee and St Andrews did experience riots during this period problems there were not as severe as in other towns such as Montrose or Aberdeen? During the subsistence crisis which swept much of northern and western Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, in the worst-affected areas ‘an overriding concern with survival’ averted the 128

129 130 131

132

NAS, GD406/1/6368, Earl of Ruglen to the Duke of Hamilton, Edinburgh, 23 and 25 Mar. 1699. NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9, 8 Jun. 1699. As quoted in Berger, ‘Pontchartrain and the Grain Trade’, 58. C. A. Whatley, ‘The Union of 1707, Integration and the Scottish Burghs: The Case of the 1720 Food Riots’, Scottish Historical Review, 78, 2 (Oct. 1999), 199, 202. Whatley, ‘The Union of 1707’, 198. The same was also true of England; see J. Bohstedt, ‘The Pragmatic Economy, the Politics of Provisions and the “Invention of the Food Riot Tradition”’, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth (eds), Moral Economy and Popular Protest, Crowds, Conflict and Authority (Basingstoke, 2000), 57.

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mob’s attention from riot and disorder, while simultaneously the successful intervention of welfare provision and charity in other regions ‘tended to dampen violent protest’.133 Certainly, Dundee did not experience a crisis on the scale or duration of that encountered by the inhabitants of Montrose. The fact that Montrose town council did not experience rioting in 1699, although this had been feared in July 1696, may indicate that the council had taken responsibility to ensure an adequate supply of grain to the town, which the council in Dundee failed to do in 1699. The council’s requests that the sheriff ‘see Dundee markets also well provided as that of Forfar’ points to evidence of a difference in the grain supply between the coastal and inland towns of Angus.134 Montrose and Aberdeen town councils’ actions in placing stents upon the townspeople to provide for the poor probably helped to avoid any realisation of the riots that had been feared previously.135 Dundee failed to follow a similar course of action. Other than the grant of the vacant minister’s stipend for the relief of the poor, no other special provision appears to have been made and there is no evidence that the town conformed to the acts of parliament in regards to poor relief.136 The riots in the east- and west-coast Scottish towns all demonstrate the heightened tensions and fears of urban dwellers at the height of the crisis in this region. These actions show, however, that there clearly were grain supplies either within the towns or in the surrounding countryside, but that they were not being brought voluntarily to urban markets for sale. On 1 April 1699, Henry Crawford, agent to the merchant Alexander Pyper, wrote to his employer from Dundee explaining that he had sold a consignment of bear to Deacon Hoburn of the bakers’ guild of Glasgow. He had first attempted to sell it to local brewers, but was offered only £12 per boll compared to the £12 13s 4d Hoburn was prepared to pay. The grain was put onboard a ship, but as it prepared to sail, Crawford related that ‘some of our meaner sort of people went and told the magestrates soe tht they caused [liberated] it and putt [it] in the Parkhouse for fear of a second mobb’. Crawford admitted that ‘the necessities of the Poor heir are verie great’ and speculated that the situation was likely to get worse as, ‘I doe not think we have victuall heir to maintain the countrie till jullie’. His motivation in this case was profit and his concern was not for the poor townspeople, but whether he was in some personal danger owing to the fact that he had ‘a litle victuall by me’.137 If this meant that he was hoarding grain intending to sell it at a good price, or even to keep a large quantity for his

133 134 135

136 137

Post, Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 75–6. DCA, Dundee Town Council Minute Book 1669–1707, 29 Mar. 1699. AngA, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book 1673–1702, 8 Feb. 1699; Macinnes, Union and Empire, 219. See Chapter four. NAS, RH15/101/5, Henry Crawford to Mr Alexander Pyper, 1 Apr. 1699.

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own use, then if discovered he would be at the mercy of the town’s magistrates, and potentially a second mob of food rioters. The privy council adopted the predictable fallback position of governments in such a situation by blaming the crisis on forestallers and regrators and reinforcing the laws against these criminals.138 On 30 March Lord Kincardine, who was able to supply Dundee magistrates with grain to sell in their market following the riot, was cited along with five other men as guilty of both charges.139 The following day the privy council issued the proclamation ordering that the prices of grain should be fixed in each county. The council specifically cited the hoarding of victual supplies, which had been prohibited in the proclamations of November 1698 and March 1699, as the main reason behind this new step. This new proclamation could be seen as a direct response by the council to the actions of the rioters and an attempt to maintain social order by enforcing control in the market. Local authorities also clamped down on the actions of unscrupulous meal sellers and hoarders, as in Hawick (Roxburghshire) and Leith (Midlothian).140 The actions of men abusing the grain market during the famine for their own profit at the expense of the local population provided the legitimacy for rioters’ actions and intervention by the authorities to control these abuses was a way in which they could be seen to combat the problem. In England, the government frequently placed the blame for dearth and famine on men who engaged in hoarding and profiteering of grain rather than the misfortunes of the weather. A 1632 court case judged that ‘last yeares famin was made by man and not by God’. Thus in rioting the poor reacted to this to force the authorities to intervene.141 In Scotland, the transport of grain out of the northern counties was also cited as a reason for high prices and increased suffering in that part of the country.142 The example of Dundee makes evident that export of grain played a significant role in the tensions, leading to outbreaks of rioting. Between 1693 and 1695 there were twenty-four food riots in England, sixteen in 1693 alone. The vast majority appear to have been related to the export or movement of grain, a common cause of riots in early modern England.143 138

139 140

141

142 143

Devereaux concluded that ‘in virtually every famine’ the withholding of food supply was blamed for the resultant problems, Theories of Famine, 91. NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9, 30 Mar. 1699. J. Wilson, Annals of Hawick A. D. MCCXIV–A. D. MDCCCXIV (Edinburgh, 1850), 105; PCRA 1696–9, 7 Jul. 1698. J. Walter and K. Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 71 (May 1976), 30–41. Riots were ‘invariably successful in stimulating authoritative action’, 41. PCRA 1696–9, 31 Mar. 1699. A. Charlesworth (ed.), An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain, 1548–1900 (London, 1983), 80; Walter and Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the Social Order’, 33. However, E. P. Thompson defined other illegal practices as responsible for food riots, some of which clearly apply to the Scottish riots of the 1690s, ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 50 (1971).

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There is, however, evidence of grain being exported from other parts of the country, but there are no recorded popular uprisings in response to food shortages in the other Scottish towns during the famine period. Other factors must have intervened to prevent these types of actions, and one of the most obvious, as in the case of Montrose, was adequate care of the poor. Grain shortage and famine in the north Over the entire famine period, the northern half of the country suffered disproportionately. Throughout the region there were frequent references by contemporaries to serious grain scarcity in the late spring and early summer of 1699. The Commissioners of Supply for Angus enforced the prohibition of grain exports in May, ‘in regaird there is hardly enough to serve the shyre’, and the merchant, William Coutts, wrote that bear and other types of grain were very scarce in the upper regions of the Forth.144 The port of Dundee, which served parts of the Angus and Perthshire hinterland, received no imports of grain between the harvests of 1698 and 1699.145 In Aberdeen and Inverness the grain markets collapsed completely.146 Such examples must have motivated the privy council to lift the ban on inter-county grain movements, although even this type of free trade was not beneficial to all regions. Uncontrolled export of grain stripped towns and villages in the grain-exporting regions in the north of the country of supply, despite local production of large quantities of grain. George Mackenzie, subtacksman of the excise from 1695 to 1697, explained that although there ‘was great scarcity and Dearth in most shyres of the Kingdome Yet the Northern shyres hade it to the degree of famine’.147 The lowland parts of the north and north-east were, in non-crisis years, regions of surplus grain production exporting grain for sale in the east-coast markets and abroad. This export did not cease despite falling harvest yields and shortage. Even in 1695, 16,000 bolls of grain were exported from Caithness following the below average yield of the 1694 harvest,148 while on the Tarbet estate in Easter Ross grain had to be distributed to help the poorer inhabitants.149 Purchasing power was lower in the north; thus although prices rose in all counties, those for the northern half of the country did not reach the same levels as elsewhere. Mackenzie explained that ‘the price of victualls cane 144 145 146

147

148

149

NAS, RH15/101/3, William Coutts to Alexander Pyper, 15 May 1699. DCA, Dundee Register of Ships, 1694–1700. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 38; HA, PA/1B/M/66/6, Answer to the Chancellors Letter to the mag[ist]ra[te]s of Inverness, [24 Dec.] 1696. NAS, GD26/7/439, Petitione and Representatione Geo: Mackenzie to the Lords of his Majtie Thesaury and Excheq, 1697. J. Brand, A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth and Caithness (Edinburgh, 1883), 225. D. J. Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty, 1650–1850’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Dundee, 1999), 37.

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Table 3.5: Percentage increase of Candlemas oatmeal fiars on average of crop 1690–4 prices.150 County

1695 % increase

1696 % increase

1697 % increase

1698 % increase

1699 % increase

Aberdeen Fife Berwick Midlothian Angus Glasgow West Lothian Perth Roxburgh Ayr Kincardine Peebles

33.3 84.2 44.8 54 45.2 46.4 65.5 25 65.1 26.5 56.9 52.2

50 119.3 93 130.4 93.5 69.1 86.2 75.8 82.2 62.7 56.9 134.7

66.7 49.1 23.6 48 53.2 16.6 24.1 25 36.7 8.4 41.2 36.3

166.7 119.3 131.7 162.3 125.8 92.4 148.1 110.9 127.8 80.7 119.2 161.2

100 101.8 70 98.7 106 62.7 86.2 110.9 70.8 44.6 88.2 104.4

be no rule to cognosee the scarcity, because the very ordinarie prices of the South and West, are excesive in the North’.151 Examining the trends of oatmeal price rises in table 3.1, it can be seen, for example, that the oatmeal fiar for Aberdeenshire did not rise as rapidly in the first few years of the famine as prices in other counties did. Nevertheless, the fiars price of oatmeal peaked in 1698 at £10 13s 4d, 166 per cent higher than the average fiar for 1690–4 (see table 3.5) and a much higher proportional increase than any other region. Different patterns can be discerned in the available fiars prices for Inverness-shire and Moray (table 3.6). Unfortunately, the grain type is not provided for either of these sets of prices, but it is likely that they related to oats/oatmeal or bear. Examination of both the values of these prices and the increases across the famine period confirms that prices in these counties did not reach similar levels as in other counties.152 Grain price increases in Inverness-shire and Moray reflect much more closely the movement of grain prices in the west-coast Lowlands than those in Aberdeenshire. Prices in all counties peaked in 1698, but increases in Inverness-shire, and potentially Moray, did not exceed 100 per cent, a pattern only reflected in Ayrshire and Glasgow. The west-coast fiars were kept low by the importation of Irish grain, but in Inverness-shire, Moray and Ross-shire low prices helped to facilitate the continued flow of grain 150

150

151

152

The data for all counties was obtained from Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 96–7, with the exception of Peeblesshire, Kincardineshire and Angus, Peeblesshire Fiars; Kincardine Fiars; and Forfarshyre Fiars. NAS, GD26/7/439, Petitione and Representatione Geo: Mackenzie to the Lords of his Majtie Thesaury and Excheq, 1697. See, for example, the prices in Kincardineshire, Kincardine Fiars; and Angus, Forfarshyre Fiars.

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Table 3.6: Inverness-shire, Moray and Ross-shire fiars, 1690–1703 (£ s d Scots).153

Crop

Inverness-shire price

Moray price

Ross-shire price oatmeal and bear

1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703

500 400 434 434 4 13 4 6 13 4 700 700 800 700 4 13 4 368 400 400

– – – – 434 600 600 6 13 4 800 6 13 4 468 – – –

400 300 368 3 13 4 400 468 500 5 13 4 – – – – – 433

out of the region. For example, in 1698 the Cromarty estate shipped three loads of bear crop 1697 to Leith and in 1699 one load of bear crop 1698.154 Thus the local population starved while food was exported, a situation not dissimilar to what happened in Ireland in the 1840s or Bangladesh in the 1970s.155 Even within the badly affected region of the north, certain areas did relatively well. Table 3.7 represents the excise duty George Mackenzie collected for each county on brewed grain for the duration of the 1695–7 tack. He demonstrated the severity of the problem in the north to gain abatement for the excise duty, explaining that during the crisis the rate of tax was much too high. This was in part due to the reduction in bear produced, with less available to make the ale on which the tax was paid, but more importantly the Commissioners of Supply ‘did in many places of the Country discharge all Brewing, that the Bear might be grinded into Meal, for preserving the Lives of the People’,156 as this inferior grain was used as a food substitute. Two brewers, Robert Scott and Thomas Donald in Bredisholm (Lanarkshire), complained that a combination of high bear prices caused by scarcity and the expense of the excise meant that 153

153

154

155 156

Inverness-shire Fiars; R. Young, Annals of the Parish and Burgh of Elgin (Elgin, 1879), 146; Ross-shire Fiars from Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change’, 382. Alston concluded that a single fiars price for Ross-shire was set for both oatmeal and bear, 83. Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change’, 383. Alston explained that the export of grain from crop 1697 took place when there were large price differentials between Ross-shire and Edinburgh fiars. This must also have been the case for the 1698 fiar. Devereaux, Theories of Famine, 71. The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698].

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Table 3.7: Percentage of excise duty payments made by region for tack 1695–7.157 County

% of tack duty paid

Orkney and Shetland Caithness Sutherland Ross-shire Inverness Cromarty Morayshire and Nairnshire Banffshire Aberdeenshire Dundee town Angus Kincardineshire

18.5 37.5 47.2 31.8 69.7 86.7 54.2 32.0 42.4 69.6 57.0 40.7

any ale brewed was so expensive that few people could afford to buy it.158 Cromarty followed by Inverness-shire were able to meet the greatest parts of their tax duty. Grain must have been produced in sufficient quantities that it was not necessary to substitute normal food grains for the lower-grade bear.159 Orkney and Shetland stand out as the worst areas of tax payment. Orkney’s agricultural focus on arable production meant that it was a grain exporter and continued throughout the famine to supply other parts of the country with its grain. Excessive export deprived the local population of sufficient supplies and potentially led to the consumption of bear as a food source. The town council of Inverness, despite its high return of excise, reported in the summer of 1697 that grain scarcity had caused the sale of bear, initially intended for brewing, as meal, ‘for the relief of the poor in Town and Country’.160 On the other hand, ale production probably slumped as bear was also exported to supply other regions. Inverness town council was keenly aware of the problems that resulted 157

157

158 159

160

This table is based upon the figures for duty payable and payments actually made given by Mackenzie in NAS, GD26/7/439, Petitione and Representatione Geo: Mackenzie to the Lords of his Majtie Thesaury and Excheq, 1697. NAS, GD3/10/4/1, Da[vid] Muirhead to the Laird of Douglastown, 16 Oct. 1696. Bear was only consumed as a form of meal in emergency situations, being otherwise considered a subordinate food source, Smout, History of the Scottish People, 119. David Alston determined that the crisis might not have been as severe in the north as in the south. He cited the example of a full cargo of bear from crop 1698 being shipped out of the region by one of the landowners, Lord Tarbat. He also compared the fiars prices of Ross-shire in 1696 and 1697, which rose by a much smaller percentage over the pre-famine years than southern county fiars, ‘Social and Economic Change’, 37–8. However, just because grain harvests were relatively good in this part of the country, levels of suffering were not necessarily less. HA, PA/1B/M/66/7, The Magistratts answer to the Chancellours Letter sent to Sir Thomas Moncreiff Clerk, 1 Jun. 1697.

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from grain being shipped out of the region. As early as November 1694 the magistrates received a complaint that some people were ‘monopolizeing’ meal brought to the town for sale, buying up large quantities ‘to the great prejudice of the remanent Inhabitants’. The council decreed that no person would be allowed to purchase more than half a boll of meal at one time, in order to ensure sufficient supply for the rest of the townspeople.161 Such regulations were common practice in France, but Inverness was unique among the Scottish burghs in implementing such a system.162 Nearly two years later, the council was alarmed that the amount of grain brought into the town for sale was much lower than in normal years,163 despite the harvest of 1696 proving much better in the region surrounding Inverness than the previous year. The bulk purchase of local supplies by Aberdeenshire and Banffshire merchants drove bear and malt prices up to 20 merks per boll (this market price of £13 8s 6d was substantially higher than the only existing fiar price for that year, potentially either oatmeal or bear, at £7 per boll, see table 3.6). By December 1696, the council feared that although the harvest was improved locally, ‘the badeness of the harvest in other places persuades us ther will be as much adoe with it’.164 In 1697 an Inverness merchant informed the laird of Glenurquhart that grain was simply not available ‘neither for gold or monie in hand’ as there was no supply in the market.165 Local grain levels and prices were subject to the changing factors of an open economy and contemporaries attributed these factors to the problems of scarcity in the local area. The impact of adverse weather upon agriculture was not the primary cause of the crisis that the town faced in the late 1690s; rather it was a man-made famine.166 The severity of the local situation although attracting the concern of the town council did not provoke any intervention from central government. The short-lived ban on the inter-county transportation of grain which could have prevented this was not put into effect for another two years. Although grain shortage was a problem throughout the north, the worstaffected part of this region was the most marginal agricultural land in the hilly and mountainous Highlands. In March 1698, the Earl of Breadalbane 161 162

163

164

165 166

HA, IB/1/1/7, Inverness Town Council Minute Book 1689–1702, 6 Nov. 1694. In France market regulation during the famine prohibited bulk grain buyers from purchasing in the marketplace until a fixed time in order to allow smaller purchases to be made first at lower prices, Berger, ‘Pontchartrain and the Grain Trade’, 40. The council considered the case of the tacksmen of the peck and firlot pettie custom and pole money charged for bringing grain into the town, who claimed that the value of the tax fell far short of what was expected due to the scarcity of grain, HA, IB/1/1/7, Inverness Town Council Minute Book 1689–1702, 28 Sep. 1696. HA, PA/1B/M/66/6, Answer to the Chancellors Letter to the mag[ist]ra[te]s of Inverness, [24 Dec.] 1696. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 171. Louise Tilly described ‘the certainty of early modern English authorities that dearth and famine were caused by human acts and could be prevented or corrected by public intervention’, in ‘Food Entitlement’, 333.

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exclaimed that ‘desolatione is universal in the Highlands’.167 Following the disastrous harvest that year he was forced to distribute grain to his tenants, ‘that each of thm may have some bread’. He ordered that what little grain they did have was not to be sold to the brewers for cash and that they were to be prevented from eating their seed corn as they had done the previous year.168 In Orkney, the chamberlain for the tacksman, Robert Douglas, provided bear seed to tenants in Birsay, Harray and Firth, costing a total of £176.169 Throughout much of the Highlands, with the absence of other elements of local authority, the responsibility for controlling the local grain market and securing additional supplies necessary for the survival of the local population must have frequently fallen to the landowner. Breadalbane, for example, was forced to intervene in the local market in the central and western Highlands, at least in crop years 1696 and 1697, to prevent exhaustion of local supplies and widespread starvation. The harvest of 1697, fairly successful in many areas, was not so in the western Highlands. Even worse was to come as the great ‘temporall miserie’170 of 1696 to 1698 reached even more extreme levels in 1699. Deficient grain harvests in the north and west of the country in 1694, and in Orkney and Shetland from at least the previous year, were followed by national harvest failures in 1695, 1696 and 1698. The harvests of 1697 and 1699, despite producing better crop yields than the other three years, were not sufficient to prevent widespread grain shortage. In 1699 the initial prospects of the new harvest bringing relief in the form of plentiful grain supplies did not materialise and the population experienced yet another year of famine-level prices and limited grain supplies. Nationally the harvest of 1698 was by far the worst and produced the highest grain prices of the decade and beyond. Prices increased across the whole country in response to the harvest failures, but the relationships between prices, levels of scarcity and population suffering were more complicated. The government’s attempts to regulate the grain market had mixed outcomes. Intervention at national level was frequently limited in its extent and was occasionally detrimental to the worst-affected regions. Alleviating the suffering of the poorest sections of society by ensuring an adequate supply of grain was hampered by factors such as wartime conditions, the convergence of harvest failures across Europe and problems importing grain supplies from England and the Baltic. The high cost of imports was a serious problem to the government during the economic crisis of the 1690s

167

168

169 170

NAS, Campbell of Barcaldine MSS, GD170/629/81, Breadalbane to Alexander Campbell of Barcaldine, 2 Mar. 1698. NAS, GD170/629/102, [Breadalbane] to [Alexander Campbell of Barcaldine], 30 Nov. 1698. OA, GD38/2017A/7, Compt of Rests due to Mr Robert Douglass Tacksman, Cropt 1696. SCA, PTI/3/1 No 6, [-] to Mr L. Innes, Drumgask, 6 May 1699.

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and it is difficult to determine whether more could, or would, have been done had conditions been less unfavourable. Within Scotland the market operated in favour of the large urban centres based in the Firth of Forth and regions of plentiful grain were stripped of local produce to supply their demand. Local government did, occasionally, take action to ensure that local supply was secured, but the extent to which magistrates were willing to intervene was limited. The north and north-east of the country experienced some of the worst levels of dearth and famine and this must partly be attributed to profiteering merchants buying up local grain stocks for export. Government desire to boost exports and limit imports for financial reasons meant that they generally preferred not to interfere in merchant activity. On the other hand, the evidence of serious shortage and starvation following the ban on inter-county movement may indicate that an earlier ban on grain movement might not have actually relieved suffering.

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chapter four

Providing for the Destitute The dramatic rise in grain prices between 1695 and 1700 brought devastating consequences for the Scottish population. Throughout the country, despite regional variations of severity, it was a specific section of the population, the poor, which suffered most. In Scotland in the early modern period, as in parts of the third world today, ‘poverty was at least as important as food scarcity in causing famine’,1 because ‘famine is strictly a social calamity’. The poor were the most economically vulnerable people in any Scottish community and those with the least resources to protect themselves from the price rises and food shortages of the famine. Failure to secure the additional financial means necessary to match the increase in food prices led to severe malnutrition and starvation as the poorest in society were those who, even in non-crisis years, lacked the ability to provide sufficiently for themselves. The burial registers of a handful of parishes specifically identify burials of the poor, allowing an estimate to be made of what proportion of deaths were from this section of the community. Such examples are relatively few in number and it is frequently not possible to distinguish either cause of death or social status of the deceased. Epidemic diseases, responsible for a large proportion of famine-related deaths, also claimed a great many lives of the non-poor.2 Consequently, a straightforward quantitative estimation of the extent to which famine-related suffering and death occurred due to poverty cannot be obtained. What can be illustrated, from both registers of burials identifying the poor and contemporary comment about poverty, is the rise in number throughout the famine period of those people described as poor and their increasingly worsening standard of living. The number of people clearly identified as poor, those in need of church-sponsored aid or local charity in order to survive, may have accounted for as much as onethird or two-fifths of the population.3 1 2 3

Devereaux, Theories of Famine, 66. Goubert, Louis XIV, 218. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 4. The most comprehensive research on the subjects of poverty and poor relief in early modern Scotland has been conducted by Rosalind Mitchison. See also R. Mitchison, ‘Who were the poor in Scotland 1690–1830?’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds), Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988); R. Mitchison, ‘North and South: The Development of the Gulf in Poor Law Practice’, in Houston and Whyte, Scottish Society; R. Mitchison, ‘Permissive poor laws: the Irish and Scottish systems considered together’, in S. J. Connolly, R. A. Houston and R. J. Morris (eds), Conflict, Identity and Economic Development: Ireland and Scotland, 1600–1939 (Preston,

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The poor in Scotland belonged to two distinct groups. The first were those unable to work and totally reliant on poor relief, generally people incapable, either mentally or physically, of looking after or providing for themselves, such as the old and infirm, orphans and individuals suffering from severe ill health. The second group were those people who might only need support in times of economic crisis, such as during a famine or temporary periods of unemployment. During such crises these groups were ‘blended’ as the ranks of the poor swelled.4 Despite this merging of the terms which defined the poor when their numbers increased, they were rarely treated as one equal group. There was a definite difference in both contemporary attitude and legally defined regulation of poor law provision towards the two types. The principal source of aid for the poor was the local kirk session which gave charity in the form of money, food and clothing to parishioners. The indigent poor were considered the most needy and deserving, and people in this group were the main recipients of regular church charity, with many parishes providing a small monthly or quarterly pension. On the other hand, those people who lived close enough to the margins of poverty to be in need of relief occasionally, or regularly during a crisis, were the able-bodied poor who were not entitled to pensions and had to apply to the session when in need of financial assistance. Kirk sessions frequently gave occasional payments to help this type of individual in periods of temporary distress, particularly, but not solely, to their own parishioners. Special collections could be ordered, for example, to help a family which had lost its home and possessions in a fire, for medical care, assistance in the purchase of livestock, or for providing a widower with a wet nurse for his motherless baby.5 Nevertheless, a proportion of the able-bodied poor formed a group which was frequently looked upon with suspicion by local communities, those people who moved between parishes as strangers in search of charity, often referred to as ‘sturdy beggars’ or ‘vagabonds’. Regular distributions were made by Monikie (Angus) kirk session, for example, to non-parishioners at certain seasons of the year. There were specific periods during which people faced temporary difficulties, and ‘seasonal rhythms’ in casual work could have been responsible for this pattern. Other than those named strangers who requested the session’s charity on a regular basis, 45 per cent of distributions

4 5

1995); R. Mitchison, ‘A Parish and its Poor. Yester in the second half of the seventeenth century’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, 14 (1974); R. Mitchison, ‘East Lothian as Innovator in the Old Poor Law’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, 19 (1987); R. Mitchison, ‘The Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, Past and Present, 63 (1974). See also R. E. Tyson, ‘Poverty and Poor Relief in Aberdeen, 1680–1705’, Scottish Archives, 8 (2002). Mitchison, ‘Who were the poor in Scotland?’, 140. Between 1600 and 1710, 11 per cent of distributions by Monikie kirk session were given to people who had lost their homes in a fire, I. D. and K. A. Whyte, ‘Geographical Mobility in a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Rural Community’, Local Population Studies, 32 (Spring 1984), 51; Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 23.

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between 1660 and 1710 were made to strangers.6 It was far from unusual for a parish to distribute money to strangers, despite the fact that this was specifically forbidden by the terms of the acts and proclamations of parliament and privy council relating to the poor. The suspicion and hostility with which the able-bodied poor were treated was much more likely to become apparent during periods of crisis in which the size of this group swelled far beyond the normally accepted low number requiring only occasional assistance. When local difficulties forced these individuals to move outwith their parishes to seek relief elsewhere, these tensions were amplified. The lengthening poor rolls and distribution lists in many kirk session records, particularly in the latter years of the famine, provide evidence of a significant proportion of the population reduced to dependency on charity to survive. Non-ecclesiastical contemporary accounts give some impressions of the extent of poverty during the famine and the ways in which the poor suffered from high food prices and scarcity. A flurry of legislation about the terms of poor relief beginning in 1692 also indicates an awareness at government level that the poor were both numerous and needy even in the immediate pre-crisis years. Throughout the famine as the proportion of poor increased and the poor relief laws were refined in an attempt to control both their number and movement, a change can be discerned in the attitude of local society and in government policy towards poverty and poor relief. The successful implementation and organisation of the poor relief system, supported by the benevolence of church and private charity, was essential to prevent mass suffering and starvation.7 This chapter will argue that many heritors, and even ministers and kirk sessions, chose not to fulfil their social and legal obligations to provide for the poor. It is equally acknowledged, though, that increasing economic constraints and the general problems of the famine period adversely affected most levels of society and meant that many people effectively had little to give to the poor. Ultimately, charitable distribution of money was of little use if there was simply no food available for purchase. The ways in which the non-poor, the government and the church reacted to the growth of the poor and increasing demands for relief throughout the crisis will be examined in this chapter, with a particular focus on the poor law and charity. The response of the poor across the country can be used as an indicator of how successfully the system of poor relief was enforced and to what extent their suffering was relieved by it. In those parishes or counties which recorded both increases in crime, principally convictions against those stealing small amounts of grain and collective popular action by the poor against the authorities, and an increase in burials of the poor, provision of poor relief was not sufficient to protect the poor from the crisis that followed the harvest failures. 6 7

Whyte and Whyte, ‘Geographical Mobility’, 50–1. Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief’, 30.

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Poor relief and charity The giving and receiving of charitable distributions were common features of Scottish early modern life. Encouraged, and in many ways principally controlled, by the church, the provision of charity or alms to less fortunate members of society was a Christian duty.8 The money that an individual put in the church’s collection plate was largely used for the relief and maintenance of the poor who would apply to the kirk session for a portion of the parish’s poor’s money. Since the church could not and would not meet all of the needs of the poor, individual charitable donations were expected to be given on a casual basis to family, neighbours and friends in need, as well as distributions of food or money to local beggars and strangers who requested assistance. Kiltearn kirk session, for example, stated that the distribution of collections to the poor was only to be given to those in dire need ‘to preserve their Lives, because the Respective families of the paroch look to them otherways for their dayly provisione’.9 An account of either the value or number of these unorganised payments is largely unobtainable,10 and subsequently an examination of the effectiveness of charity and poor relief during the famine must rely on the legally instituted poor law system which was organised and controlled by the church and heritors. Scotland’s first poor law act of 1574 required that ‘the poor, aged and impotent’ be provided for by a local tax and the practices of vagrancy and begging suppressed. All subsequent legislation, up to and during the late 1690s, built on these two principles, merely refining who was eligible for support and who was to provide the payment.11 The focus remained on providing for the indigent poor and discouraging the able bodied from begging. Strangers and vagabonds, or ‘sturdie’ beggars, were to be refused support and sent back to the parish of their birth. In reality, organised relief for the poor was supplied at local level by kirk sessions which controlled both the way in which finances were collected and to whom they should be distributed. Carmyllie kirk session in Angus declared at the height of the famine that no more than nine people would be maintained as pensioners at any one time, presumably regardless of how many individuals actually required this charity.12 The major piece of poor law legislation prior to the famine was the act of 1649 which declared that heritors were to be assessed by the kirk sessions to provide the financial resources for poor relief.13 8 9 10

11

12 13

Mitchison, ‘Permissive poor laws’, 62. NAS, CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 2 Aug. 1697. For an example of both organised and unorganised distributions of charity, see the diary kept by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, NAS, GD18/2094, ‘Poors journal’ account of money given to the poor. For a discussion of this legislation and its level of implementation see Mitchison, Old Poor Law, Chapters 1 and 2. NAS, CH2/558/1, Carmyllie KSR 1684–1709, 13 Nov. 1698. The Act for Establishing Correction-houses for idle Beggars and Vagabonds of 1672 appears to have had little impact.

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Widely ignored, in rural parishes ‘small contributions’ from tenants and subtenants largely continued to form the basis of relief.14 Nevertheless, there was an understanding that in crisis years the heritors would provide additional funds, as had occurred during the famine of 1623.15 As early as 1692 there was recognition among some contemporaries that the number of poor was increasing. In the summer of that year the Earl of Stair complained that he found the beggars of Edinburgh to be ‘very numerous and troublesome’.16 The privy council issued a new proclamation reinforcing previous laws regarding the poor who were to be provided for in their own parishes and stranger beggars who were to return, or be forcibly returned, to the parish of their birth. A significant difference was that householders and heritors were to provide equal shares of the funds for poor relief which were to be set and organised twice yearly.17 This act, similar to the ones before it, had only limited effect and the following year another proclamation protested that the poor still had not been provided for.18 This was true for the majority of the country, although a number of parishes did conform through pressure from the principal heritor, as in Kinross (Kinross-shire) and Kinnethmont (Aberdeenshire).19 The 1693 proclamation determined that in addition to the previous ruling, half of church collections were to be given to heritors to help provide for the poor. This piece of legislation was again ignored in many parishes, with kirk sessions continuing to be the main source of charity for the poor within a parish. It has previously been claimed that the terms of the proclamation indicated that the privy council ‘thought that it was the heritors rather than the kirk sessions who actively cared for the poor’.20 This seems highly unlikely as all of the members of the council would have been heritors in one or possibly numerous parishes and thus unlikely to be ignorant of the kirk session’s position as the provider of organised poor relief. More plausible is that the proclamation was intended to encourage heritors to assume their responsibility to the poor by offering them additional financial support and spreading the cost of poor relief across landowners, tenants and the kirk session. By the beginning of the famine in late 1695 poor law legislation had 14 15 16 17

18

19

20

Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 18. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 15–18. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 31. Proclamation of the Privy Council anent Beggars, 11 Aug. 1692, in J. G. Smith, A Digest of the Law of Scotland Relating to the Poor (Edinburgh, 1867), Appendix, x. The Proclamation of the Privy Council anent Beggars, 29 Aug. 1693, stated that previous acts had been ‘much disappointed and frustrated by the uncertainty of the parishes where the said respective beggars have been born, and for the want of suitable provision made by the heritors and magistrates’, Smith, A Digest of the Law of Scotland, Appendix, xiii. NAS, Kinross House MSS, GD29/66, /67, /68/1, /69; NAS, GD44/51/75/2, Victuall and money rent Customs, Barronie of Craigton for the year 1692, 93, 94, 95, 96, and 97. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 33.

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been in place in Scotland for over a century.21 The responsibilities of the church, tenants and heritors were all clearly established having been further refined in the years immediately prior to the harvest failures, and provision should have been in place for the poor to be maintained locally by the time that the crisis began. In the summer preceding the first harvest failure of 1695, an act of parliament reinforced this by ordering the ‘vigorous Execution’ of all previous acts relating to the maintenance of the poor and the suppression of begging.22 In reality, the supply of relief to the poor throughout this whole period continued to be ‘weak and mean’.23 Both before and during the famine crisis poor relief was limited and support was varied as parishes conformed to legislation by different degrees, or in some cases virtually ignored it. Ultimately, regardless of the number or type of poor maintained by a parish, it was either the discretion of the kirk session or the limits of local funds which determined how much aid should be given, as none of the acts or proclamations set out what an adequate level of provision actually was. The regular financial support that the indigent poor or pensioners received was not sufficient to support them completely and neither was it intended to be; it was merely supposed to be a supplement to other forms of charity. In Dunblane (Perthshire) between 1693 and 1699, 85 per cent of those claiming poor relief were given less than £3 a year and 50 per cent received less than £1 per year. The average charitable distribution in Old Machar (Aberdeenshire) in the early 1690s was 8s 6d, but by 1699 the average was only three shillings as the number of distributions had increased by five times the pre-crisis rate. All of these payments were far short of the amount necessary for an individual to survive on, even if food was their only expense.24 Although some people were able to claim relief more frequently than in non-crisis years, the value of those distributions was not increasing in proportion with grain price rises. Contemporary accounts of the poor The now oft-quoted yet still most graphic and alarming description of the miserable circumstances of the poor by a contemporary commentator was 21

22

23 24

For a more detailed account of poor law legislation in Scotland from 1574, see Mitchison, Old Poor Law. The appendix of Smith, Digest of the Law of Scotland, provides transcripts of the major pieces of legislation up to and including the poor law act of 1845. Act for Reviving the Acts of Council anent the Poor, 17 Jul. 1695, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland Vol. 9, 463. Smout, History of the Scottish People, 87. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 34–6; B. Inglis, ‘The Impact of Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, before and after 1690, on one parish: a case study of Dunblane kirk session minutes’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 33 (2003), 57; Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 344.

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written in 1699 by Sir Robert Sibbald. His published pamphlet described the impact that the famine crisis had on the poor and suggested ways in which they could be provided for during periods of scarcity: the Bad seasons these several Years past hath made so much Scarcity and so great a Dearth, that for Want, some Die in the Way-side, some drop down on the Streets, the poor sucking Babs are Starving for Want of Milk, which the empty breasts of their Mothers cannot furnish them: Every one may see Death in the Face of the Poor that abound everywhere; the Thinness of their Visage, their Ghostly Looks, their Feebleness, their Agues and their Fluxes threaten them with sudden Death, if Care be not taken of them . . . and in this their Necessity they take what they can get; Spoiled Victual; yea, some eat these Beasts which have died from some Disease, which may occasion a Plague among them.25 Much of this bears a remarkable similarity to contemporary records of the medieval famines of the second decade of the fourteenth century. Flemish and Dutch chroniclers wrote about the desperate eating raw meat and grass, and the migrant poor ‘falling supine on the ground’, dying where they lay. John of Fordun’s ‘Chronicle of the Scottish Nation’ alleged that victims of the famine were forced to consume ‘the flesh of horses and other unclean cattle’.26 For sections of the Scottish population in the late seventeenth century the experience of famine was not dissimilar.27 Sibbald’s words also echo eerily closely those of a French contemporary, describing the suffering of the population of Beauvais at the height of the famine in spring 1694, indicating that the experiences of the indigent were comparable in both countries: An infinite number of poor souls, weak from hunger and wretchedness and dying from want and lack of bread in the streets and squares, in the towns and countryside because having no work or occupation, they lack the money to buy bread . . . Seeking to prolong their lives a little and somewhat to appease their hunger, these poor folk for the most part, lacking bread, eat such unclean things as cats and flesh of horses flayed and cast on to dung heaps, the blood which flows when cows and oxen are slaughtered and the offal and lights and such which cooks throw into the streets . . . Other poor wretches eat roots and herbs which they boil in water, nettles and weeds of that kind . . . Yet others will grub up the beans and seed corn which were sown in the spring . . . and all this breeds corruption in the bodies of men and 25 26

27

Sibbald, Provision for the Poor, 2. J. Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague and Death in the Later Middle Ages (London, 2001), 13, 24. H. S. Lucas, ‘The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316 and 1317’, Speculum, 5, 4 (Oct. 1930).

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divers mortal and infectious maladies, such as malignant fevers . . . which assail even wealthy and well-provided persons.28 All describe multitudes on the verge of starvation, wandering the countryside, spreading disease and ultimately dropping dead in the streets. Disease could spread throughout the entire population, but it was the poor, those unable to provide for themselves, or those who could only just provide for themselves and their families during periods of normal food prices, that were most at risk of succumbing to one of the famine-related diseases described above. Due to a decrease in their ability to purchase food the poor became increasingly undernourished and some attempted to eat rotten or unsuitable food supplies which left them susceptible to disease, as in the case of a man in Monquhitter (Aberdeenshire), who, made desperate by hunger, was found dead with raw meat in his mouth.29 In turn these actions and the movement of the poor and desperate in search of food or charity spread this disease throughout the country, infecting even those who were otherwise relatively insulated from the famine. One reason why England managed to avoid an increase in mortality on a national and regional level during this period was the effective enforcement of government legislation to maintain the poor in their parish of residency, thereby suppressing migration during difficult times.30 Theoretically, Scottish poor relief was only available on the same basis, but in practice this was rarely fully enforced. Crucially, it was the able-bodied poor that significantly increased in number during the crisis.31 The number of indigent poor totally reliant on relief rose slightly as a consequence of the famine; for example there was an increase in the number of orphans or foundlings who had lost their parents through famine-related deaths,32 but this was limited in comparison to the growth in the number of able-bodied poor. Sibbald recognised by 1699 not only the problems that faced the poor in general, but also this dramatic growth in the number of people reduced to poverty by the economic difficulties of the famine. He described the poor as ‘not only common wandering Beggars . . . But many House-keepers who lived well by their Labour and their Industrie, . . . now by Want forced to abandon their Dwellings and they and their little ones must Beg’.33 The length and severity of the crisis meant that the number of people in need of charitable assistance was much higher than contemporaries had experienced in their lifetimes. The Lord Advocate acknowledged that the evidence of famine was made ‘so plain and visible, by the multitudes of poor people . . . seen 28 29 30 31 32 33

Quoted in Goubert, Louis XIV, 215. Smout, History of the Scottish People, 145. Walter and Schofield, ‘Famine, disease and crisis mortality’, 69. Mitchison described the first group of poor as ‘relatively static’, Old Poor Law, 4. See, for example, GROS, OPR147/7, Banff KSR, 17 Jul. 1698. Sibbald, Provision for the Poor, 2.

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every day in City and Countrey’.34 The poor were generally considered to be the ‘Scumm and Refuse of the people’,35 but many contemporary accounts referred to the ranks of the poor being swelled by normally self-sufficient and ‘respectable’ people who found themselves in reduced circumstances.36 The kirk session of South Leith (Midlothian), which in the winter of 1696 was struggling to cope with the number of poor dying without the means to provide for their own burials, concluded that coffins were no longer to be provided for any poor ‘except such persons as have been some considerate note and credit in ye place and are fallen back’.37 In Currie (Midlothian) parish the kirk session reported that it would pay for a distribution of meal out of the poor’s fund to the needy; those ‘having been formerly sober hous keepers’ were marked out as particularly deserving.38 This split in definition of the type of people which constituted the able-bodied poor in terms of respectability resulted in a different attitude being taken towards their entitlement to poor relief and frequently this latter section of the poor were more generously provided for by the distributions of kirk sessions. Kiltearn (Ross and Cromarty) kirk session provided a clearer interpretation of which of the able-bodied poor were most deserving of church charity, favouring the distribution of its collections to ‘such as have indeavoured honestlie to gaine a liveliehood to themselves, but have been blasted upon by providence’, rather than merely to ‘the Poore of y Paroch that beg from Doore to Doore’. Nevertheless, more important to the session than evidence of adherence to honest hard work was an applicant’s religious beliefs, as fear of God was the primary basis upon which relief was granted.39 In Dunblane (Perthshire) and Thurso (Caithness) parishes the poor applying for relief were subjected to scrutiny about their knowledge and fear of God before any distribution was considered and in Inverness (Inverness-shire) charity was only given to regular church attendees.40 Perhaps during the later years of the famine when the number of poor seeking relief had grown substantially, kirk sessions needed a method by which to differentiate from the mass of the poor those who both merited a claim on their small funds and were most in need of financial relief. More important may have been the church’s efforts to control and influence the religious lives of its parishioners ‘to set [them] upon a Course of 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698], 2. NAS, CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 2 Aug. 1697. Mitchison commented on distributions given to ‘gentlemen’ and ‘gentlewomen’ impoverished by the Revolution, Old Poor Law, 31. D. Robertson, South Leith Records (Edinburgh, 1911), 182. NAS, CH2/83/2, Currie KSR 1691–1700, 30 Aug. 1696. NAS CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 2 Aug. 1697. Dunblane Kirk Session Minutes 1696, in A. B. Barty, The History of Dunblane (Stirling, 1944), 101; NAS, CH2/414/1, Thurso KSR 1647–1706, 12 Mar. 1699; A. Mitchell (ed.), Inverness Kirk-Session Records 1661–1800 (Inverness, 1902), 40, 12 Jan. 1699.

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Reformatione’41 during a period in which a larger proportion of people were dependant upon it for charity. The Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale, for example, declared that there was among the population a great Contempt of the Gospell, much ignorance and ungodliness in the land, and self-seeking, and luke-warmness in the matter of God among all Ranks of persons and profaneness and wickedness grow, The shamefull sins of Drunkenness and uncleaness swearing, sabbath breaking The total neglect by some and superficial performing by others, of the worship of God, Both in secret and in families, abound in City and Countrey, and by frequent murders Blood Toucheth Blood . . . That for these and other sins The wrath and displeasure of God is visible against us in the unkindly cold and winter-like spring, wherby God threatens to blast our expectations and hopes, of the fruits of the Earth, and cutt off man and beast by famine and That already a great dearth arisen. The famine was caused by the sins of the people and the church ordered them to reform and humble themselves ‘by fasting and prayer and to be afflicted and mourn and weep and to turn unto the Lord and to pray that he would turn us unto him, and pardon our sins and the sins of the land’.42 The control of parish funds meant that the church could divert charitable distributions to those who demonstrated evidence of reform. There were particular concerns about requests for relief by the ablebodied poor. An anonymous pamphlet published in 1700 desired that an effective arrangement was made for the Competent Supply of the truly Poor, Unable to do for their own Subsistance, and [that steps be taken to] utterly Banish . . . that wicked Custom of Begging by Sorners and Healthy Persons of both Sexes, who generally as Beasts live Promiscuously, without respect to Laws, either Divine or Humane.43 The privy council attempted throughout the famine, by means of the acts and proclamations relating to the poor, to suppress the practice of begging and enforce alternative means of relief for the poor. This distinction between the truly ‘worthy’ poor and that larger section of the population reduced to serious, but possibly only temporary, levels of poverty remained and may have materially damaged the latter group’s chances of acquiring sufficient levels of charity to survive the crisis. Sibbald encouraged his readers to give relief to the poor, but it is not clear whether he urged this out of some compassion for their wretched 41 42 43

NAS CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 2 Aug. 1697. PCRA 1696–9, 6 May 1698. Anon., A Letter from One in the Country, to a Member of Parliament, intreating this Session, may take to their Consideration, the Lamentable Condition of the Poor ([Edinburgh], 1700).

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condition, or solely because he feared that ‘where there are many Poor, the Rich cannot be secure in the Possession of what they have’.44 The real dangers posed by large numbers of poor people moving throughout the country in search of supplies of food and charity will be discussed in more detail in Chapters five and six, but concerns expressed about the poor by contemporaries other than Sibbald were by no means solely related to the welfare of those unable to provide for themselves. Despite fear of reprisals, one of the main complaints about the poor and the need to provide for beggars was the cost involved. It was perhaps the fact that the hardships of the crisis were felt by ‘all ranks of People’45 that made the increased burden of supporting the poor unpopular. The ministers in Kingsbarns (Fife), Lady (Orkney) and Dunbarney (Perthshire) parishes were forced to request that parishioners increase their charitable donations to the poor as the supply for their relief had become insufficient.46 As the effects of the crisis on all but the very wealthy must have been to reduce living standards, at least temporarily as a greater proportion of income was spent on food, many people would not have been able to provide the additional financial resources that were necessary for the poor’s basic maintenance. A special collection organised by the kirk session of Westerkirk (Dumfriesshire) to boost funds for the poor box uncovered this problem. Some of the elders responsible for receiving this ‘voluntary’ collection met with refusals from householders who ‘being for ye most pairt poor yemselves’ refused to contribute.47 Collections in Edinburgh churches peaked during the famine period, but fell sharply in 1700, due to ‘donor fatigue’ and the crisis surrounding the failure of the Darien colony.48 This increase in poverty and the resulting reduction in the poor’s food purchasing power was demonstrated by a complaint registered with Montrose (Angus) town council in November 1699. It argued against a council ruling of 2 October 1699 that only members of the guild were permitted to buy or sell meal that was not for private use. Small meal sellers protested that the poor could not afford to purchase as much as a lippie of meal and requested that private traders might be allowed to sell grain in smaller proportions than the guild members.49 The fiars price of a boll of meal in Lammas crop year 1698 was £12 and a lippie 3s 11d.50 If a peck of meal, which was equal to four lippies, was the average weekly consumption 44 45 46

47 48

49 50

Sibbald, Provision for the Poor, 2. Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698], 2. StASC, CH2/819/3, Kingsbarns KSR 1678–1700, 13 Dec. 1696; OA, OCR15/1, Lady KSR 1698–1745, 9 Jul. 1699; NAS, CH2/100/3, Dunbarney KSR 1682–1702, 1 May 1699. NAS, CH2/368/1, Westerkirk KSR 1693–1739, 2 Feb. and 3 May 1696. R. A. Houston, ‘The economy of Edinburgh 1694–1763: the evidence of the Common Good’, in Connolly, Houston and Morris, Conflict, Identity and Economic Development, 59, 62. AngA, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book 1673–1702, 15 Nov. 1699. Forfarshyre Fiars.

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of an individual,51 the poor must have been in serious need if they could not afford to buy one lippie at a time. These high prices were not without precedent as they were equal to the previous peak in meal prices of £12 per boll in Lammas crop year 1695,52 which indicates that it was the sustained dearth, rather than merely the incidence of high prices, that had reduced the poor to such desperate straits. As Sibbald described, however, it was not merely the indigent or unemployed that struggled to obtain sufficient amounts of food during the famine. In Edinburgh, as much as a quarter of the population ‘suffered some degree of hardship’, yet only 4.3 per cent of residents were on the poor rolls of the city’s churches.53 Grain prices rose rapidly in the late 1690s, but wages did not keep pace, meaning that even those with a normally sufficient income, including Sibbald’s ‘house-keepers’, struggled. This resulted in an increased proportion of income having to be spent on food in order to survive. In ordinary circumstances purchasing oatmeal for a labourer’s family would have consumed half or more of the household budget.54 With price rises in excess of 100 per cent the poorest sections of society would not have been able to purchase an equal amount of grain during the crisis period as they could in years of plenty. Those unable to sustain themselves at normal levels of calorie intake became weakened, malnourished and more susceptible to famine-related diseases, such as typhus and fevers. An increase in the death rate occurred as a result of lowered resistance to disease through physical weakness, but in more extreme cases lack of food led to death through starvation. An increase in deaths among adults resulted in a higher number of destitute orphans who relied on the church for their survival. Holm (Orkney) kirk session paid Janet Anne £2 to care for a poor foundling for a whole year; the orphan in Flisk (Fife) parish was more generously supported at double this rate, although the fact that the neighbouring Creich kirk session shared the burden clearly made a difference.55 The care of orphaned children was a key function of kirk sessions, but during the famine crisis the church had to assist children whose parents were increasingly unable to provide for them. In Paris between 1690 and 1694 child abandonments rose by 150 per cent in response to a nearly 200 per cent rise in grain prices.56 In July 1698 Banff kirk session (Banffshire) protested that poor strangers frequently 51 52 53

54 55

56

Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 38. Forfarshyre Fiars. H. M. Dingwall, Late Seventeenth-century Edinburgh: A Demographic Study (Aldershot, 1994), 250, 257. Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 343. OA, OCR13/1, Holm KSR 1673-1707, 6 Nov. 1698; NAS, CH2/1544/1, Creich KSR 1693– 1743, 22 May 1700. K. A. Lynch, ‘Infant Mortality, Child Neglect and Child Abandonment in European History: A Comparative Analysis’, in T. Bengtsson and O. Saito (eds), Population and Economy: From Hunger to Modern Economic Growth (Oxford, 2003), 141.

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brought their children to the town and deserted them, forcing the town to pay for their maintenance.57 Two years later, when the worst of the crisis was over, the session had to make provision for a child from Elgin (Moray) ‘abandoned on the streets of Banff by its mother’.58 In Scotland in the late seventeenth century incidences of child abandonment, even in the largest burghs, were exceedingly rare.59 These occurrences during the famine indicate that the level of hardship and desperation among the population of the north-east of the country reached exceptional levels. Poor relief provision and vacant parishes Generally towns were the places best equipped to provide for the poor as they had more facilities to distribute charity than rural parishes. In addition to the kirk or general sessions, town councils, guilds, trades’ societies and town hospitals or correction houses also allocated money or support to the poor. The ability of these institutions to intervene in favour of the poor and prevent them becoming desperate, combined with the town councils’ power to intervene in grain markets – to which food supplies were sent from the countryside – should have meant that the poor were better provided for in urban parishes.60 In rural parishes the poor were primarily dependent on the kirk session led by the minister and the varying generosity of local landowners. Across the country, as late as the famine years, significant numbers of parishes were lying vacant through the want of a sufficient number of ‘suitable’ ministers. The reorganisation of the government of the Church of Scotland under Presbyterianism following the Revolution of 1688 led to the forced removal, throughout the 1690s, of Episcopalian ministers from their charges, either by the congregation or the General Assembly.61 Between 1689 and 1702, 664 ministers out of approximately 900 parishes either voluntarily left or were forcibly ejected from their charges. This continued into and beyond the famine period in Angus, northern Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Morayshire, and the Highland counties in particular. Between the departure of an Episcopalian minister and the arrival of a Presbyterian minister, parishes which fell vacant were without the services of a minister. A ‘functioning’ kirk session would have been unlikely to operate effec57 58 59

60 61

GROS, OPR147/7, Banff KSR, 17 Jul. 1698. W. Cramond, The Annals of Banff, Vol. 2 (Aberdeen, 1893), 72. K. Cullen, ‘The Famine of the 1690s and Its Aftermath: Survival and Recovery of the Family’, in E. Ewen and J. Nugent (eds), Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot, 2008), 157–8. Cunningham and Grell, Four Horsemen, 216. For a discussion of the reasons behind this reorganisation and the changes it brought about, see A. L. Drummond and J. Bulloch, The Scottish Church 1688–1843 (Edinburgh, 1973), 1–24. Its local impact is examined in Inglis, ‘The Impact of Episcopacy and Presbyterianism’.

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tively without the presence of a minister,62 and since it was the session that assumed primary responsibility for the collection and distribution of poor relief in a parish, the poor were likely to suffer during a vacancy. By the start of the famine in 1695 the disruption to the church’s social functions caused by the revolution was far from resolved in many parishes.63 Problems of either vacancies, as in Blackford (Perthshire), or friction between Episcopalian ministers, heritors and elders and the official Presbyterian minister and kirk session, which occurred in Chirnside (Berwickshire), all interfered with the sessions’ ability to effectively provide for the poor.64 Establishing a correlation between those parishes which fell vacant, especially for a significant period of time, and increased suffering on the part of parishioners throughout the 1690s is problematic as vacant parishes tend to have incomplete records. Often, the kirk session did not maintain the parish minutes, which would usually provide quantitative data in the form of poor relief distributed and qualitative information in the form of commentary on the situation within the parish, as occurred in Coupar Angus (Angus) where the minister was removed from office for not swearing allegiance to the King.65 In rural parishes in particular, vacancies within the church were disastrous for the poor during the famine. The vacancies were a matter of concern to the highest levels of church government. In April 1694, the General Assembly appointed sixteen ministers from parishes south of the River Tay to supply vacancies in parishes north of the river in the Synods of Angus and Kincardineshire, Aberdeenshire, Morayshire, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Caithness. The ministers were to supply the vacancies for a period of three months after which time each one would be replaced by another minister from a parish in the south.66 The church’s primary concern was for the spiritual welfare of the people in those vacant parishes. In the north-eastern counties as well as the islands of the Synod of Argyll in the west, the church worried specifically about the influence that Catholicism was able to exert in those parishes without a Presbyterian or conforming Episcopalian minister. Even the protestant non-conforming Episcopalian ministers in the north-east were considered a threat to the established church’s authority. Anxiety about the appeal of the church’s largest ecclesiastical opponent, Episcopalianism, extended beyond purely religious matters. The kirk session of the Canongate church in Edinburgh protested that their poor 62 63 64 65

66

Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 11. Flinn argues to the contrary, Scottish Population History, 166. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 30–1. Details of poor relief were omitted from the minutes between September 1698 and October 1699 when the new minister arrived, NAS, CH2/395/1, Coupar Angus KSR 1682–1720. Act appointing some Ministers for the Supply of the North, 16 Apr. 1694, The Church Law Society (ed.), Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Vol. 1, 1638–1728 (Edinburgh, 1843), 241.

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fund was reduced as an Episcopalian meeting house, which held sermons in the parish on a Tuesday, was attracting parishioners and their collection money.67 This problem of rival sessions and churches was present in a number of parishes, particularly those in which an Episcopalian incumbent was ejected from a parish with a sizeable proportion of non-Presbyterian adherents. This was reduced by the ‘Act concerning the Church’ of July 1695 which, in light of the continuing religious problems in the northeast and the lack of replacement Presbyterian ministers throughout the country, conceded that Episcopalian ministers prepared to take the Oath of Allegiance could continue in their stipends.68 Occasionally, the rival meeting house was Presbyterian, even after the Revolution settlement, as in South Leith where there were two separate kirk sessions as late as 1692. From 1687 the Presbyterians had a meeting house within the parish, but following the Revolution they attempted to have the Episcopalian minister and session, which retained control of the church, removed by the presbytery. In 1691 they alleged, similarly to Canongate session, that they could not provide charity to more than a quarter of the poor that attended the meeting house because they did not have control of the church rents and as a result some of the poor were likely to starve. By September of the following year the Presbyterians had been officially installed in the church, but still controlled only a portion of church funds as only one-third of the parishioners recognised the authority of the session and had their baptisms and marriages performed by the Presbyterian minister.69 Officially the problems with their Episcopalian rivals were solved, but in practical terms this division within the parish limited the session’s power over the inhabitants of the parish and consequently their ability to care for the poor. In South Leith the problems were resolved fairly soon after the Revolution, but similar difficulties continued in a number of parishes into the famine period. In Newtyle (Angus) the Episcopalian minister was still in illegal possession of the church in 1698,70 whereas in Rathven (Banffshire) the parish was vacant due to ‘the supin negligence and utter unwillingness of the said paroch to call a presbyterian minister’. Despite the presbytery’s efforts to settle several different ministers beginning in 1697, the heritors blocked the admittance of the new minister until 1700.71 In the later 1690s it was the turn of the Episcopalian meeting houses to struggle under financial constraints, now that they had lost their share of the parish’s rents and finances. What money they did get must have come from collections and baptism and marriage fees.72 Clearly this would have 67 68 69 70 71 72

Armet, Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 17, 4 Oct. 1689. Thomson, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland Vol. 9, 449–50. Robertson, South Leith Records, 162, 169. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 30. W. Cramond (ed.), The Church and Churchyard of Rathven (Banff, 1885), 31–4. Baptisms and marriages performed by ‘outed ministers’ were illegal and punishable by imprisonment as a result of the Act of Parliament Against Irregular Baptisms and

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posed a problem to the poor who frequented them. It is implausible that the meeting houses would have been in a position to provide them with much charity, but on the other hand, the money held by the official session would have also been reduced by the mere presence of a meeting house. Potentially, some of the poor would have been restricted to attending the official church, as many sessions demanded attendance at sermons by their poor prior to the distribution of any regular pensions. Since the collections taken at sermons formed the basis of most pensions, the poor must have suffered the most significantly reduced income in those parishes which had no minister to perform these for part, or all, of the famine period. The parish of Grange (Banffshire) was vacant for six and a half years between 1693 and 1700. Other than the obvious inconveniences to parishioners caused by the lack of a minister to perform the important ceremonies of baptism, marriage and burial, the parish poor fund also suffered as the money collected in fees or contributions were paid instead to a neighbouring parish in which a resident minister carried out these functions. It is not feasible to fully account for this loss to the parish of Grange, but examination of the difference between the collections taken by the session on a supply sermon Sunday with those of a reading Sunday (organised by the kirk session without a minister) provides evidence that the poor’s fund suffered from the absence of a permanent minister. Supply ministers gave sermons on 40 per cent of the Sundays during this period. The collections taken matched those during years with a settled ministry, but the majority of Sunday services were readings for which the collection was approximately one-seventh of a sermon Sunday. The longest gaps between the supply of ministers in Grange were all during the winter months: January to March 1695, November 1697 to January 1698, January to April 1699 and December 1699 to February 1700. It was during the winter, in particular, that the poor needed additional help from the session. Some parishes only provided pensions to the poor during the winter months; others provided additional funding to pensioners in the winter to buy commodities such as shoes. The absence of supply sermons over these months resulted in less charity being distributed to the poor, which may have resulted in migration out of the parish or greater mortality within it. As early as April 1697 the session expressed apprehension about the increasing needs of the poor and, since they had no reserve funds, the collections were distributed immediately with virtually nothing kept in the poor’s box.73 Upon the arrival of the new minister three years later the session reported that this practice had been continued due to

73

Marriages, 28 Jun. 1695, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland Vol. 9, 387. James Gordon, Episcopalian minister at the meeting house in Montrose during the famine, described defying the law in this way, Henderson and Porter, James Gordon’s Diary, 85. This does not apply to burials, as dissenting meeting houses during this period were unlikely to have a burial ground. There is no mention in the Grange kirk session minutes during the vacancy period of the

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‘the great straitning of the poor’.74 Rothesay (Bute) kirk session also complained about the paucity of its poor’s money due to a two-year vacancy in the parish during the later years of the famine.75 The records apportion blame for the reduction in collections to the fact that few sermons were held during the vacancy. However, even before the vacancy, the session had alleged in August 1695 that the collection money was low, as the minister’s absence from the parish had resulted in several weeks without sermons.76 Just how badly did these circumstances actually affect the poor? Sessions such as those in Peebles (Peeblesshire)77 and South Leith (Midlothian)78 complained that the church collection was reduced because large numbers of the poor gathered at the church door or gates and were given charity by churchgoers before they went to the sermon. In these and possibly in other parishes a reduction in the amount of money distributed by the session did not necessarily mean the poor received less charity overall. The organised system of poor relief could have merely provided ‘on a coherent basis the aid that would have been informally available anyway’.79 Since the session did not have control over the distribution of this money, it was not able to direct those funds to the most needy or deserving and, in particular, it was unable to stop strangers from outwith the parish receiving a large proportion of these private charitable distributions. There was no established method to provide for the poor in vacant parishes, and this is where the failings of the poor relief system were most evident. In Foveran (Aberdeenshire) in May 1698 the poor were reported to be in a starving condition because the outed Episcopalian minister had kept the bonds for loans which had been lent out of the poor’s money.80 The urban experience was less precarious, since even in the absence of a minister the town council could work with the kirk session to help the poor. Evidence of this includes several town councils buying meal to maintain the food supply in the towns’ markets. In Dundee (Angus), in addition to this action the presbytery allowed the general session to keep the salary of a vacant stipend for crop year 1696, repeated in the following two years, and use it for the relief of the poor who were ‘both numerous and through

74 75

76

77 78

79 80

minister’s stipend which in some vacant parishes was used to help the poor, transcribed in D. Merson, M. Wallace and N. Wallace (eds), Grange 1694–1702 (Aberdeen, 1995), 1–34. W. Cramond, The Church of Grange (Keith, 1898), 63–4. The parish was vacant from 24 April 1698 to 23 April 1700, NAS, CH2/890/2, Rothesay KSR 1685–1764. NAS, CH2/890/2, Rothesay KSR 1685–1764, 19 Aug. 1695. Ministers would necessarily be absent from their parishes for a variety of reasons including attendance at the general assembly and assisting at communion in a neighbouring parish. NAS, CH2/420/3, Peebles KSR 1691–1722, 1 May 1698. South Leith kirk session requested the magistrates of the town to have the beggars removed, 14 Oct. 1697, Robertson, South Leith Records, 183. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 25. Henderson and Porter, James Gordon’s Diary, 81.

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scarcity likely to starve’.81 Similar action was taken by Arbroath (Angus) and Perth (Perthshire) town councils in April and July 1696 when the latter distributed £400 from a vacant stipend ‘amongest the indigent and poor people in the Towne’.82 The distribution of this money may have helped make up for the reduction in collection money, but since many towns were large enough to have more than one minister, the problems relating to one vacancy were less serious than in smaller, single-stipend parishes. The minutes of the privy council detail many requests by, and grants to, individuals or organisations for the control of vacant stipends within a parish.83 In most cases it is not clear what they were used for, but there is little evidence to suggest that many were donated to kirk sessions to supply the needs of the poor. Poor relief assessment The growth in both levels of poverty and the number of poor resulted in increased pressure to conform to the demands of the law by those responsible for the provision of local poor relief. In each of the worst years of the famine there was either an act of parliament or a proclamation regarding provision for the poor to further develop poor law distribution and regulations.84 The frequency of that legislation during the crisis indicates heightened concern for the welfare and control of the poor and can be seen as a continuation of the increasing pressure exerted by government from 1692 to ensure some level of provision for the destitute. Parishes were repeatedly called upon to stent heritors and tenants and use this money to maintain their own poor. Regulations of terms of residency were set at seven years to define what actually constituted a parish’s ‘own’ poor, for whom the session was to ensure suitable provision without the need to beg.85 All strangers were to be returned to their own parishes and money was not to be distributed to anyone from outwith the parish. The suppression of movement throughout the countryside and the discouragement of 81

82

83

84

85

DCA, CH2/103/2, Dundee Presbytery Minutes 1691–1700, 29 Jul. 1696 and 3 Mar. 1697; Dundee Town Council Minute Book 1669–1707, 29 Sep. 1698 and 15 Mar. 1699. NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9, 15 Apr. 1696; PKCA, B59/16/11, Perth Town Council Minutes 1693–1713, 27 Jul. 1696. The entire stipend could not be used for this purpose, however, as supply ministers were to be granted twenty merks out of a vacant parish’s stipend for every Sunday that they preached a sermon in that parish, Act for Encouragement of Preachers at Vacant Churches benorth Forth, 5 Jul. 1695, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland Vol. 9, 415. For example, on 2 and 6 March 1699 respectively, the Earl of Annandale was granted the vacant stipend of Wamphray parish (Dumfriesshire) and Christine Forbes was granted the stipend for Keith (Banffshire), NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9. For a detailed breakdown of the acts and proclamations both prior to and during the famine see Mitchison, Old Poor Law, Chapters 1 and 2, and Mitchison, ‘The Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, 58–80. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 33.

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begging were enacted as an attempt not so much to provide for the poor as to control both their number and movement. There was concern that those entitled to relief should be provided with it, but equally those who were considered ineligible were discouraged from seeking charity. Both points related specifically to the able-bodied poor. In an attempt to discourage movement between parishes of this more troublesome section of the population, distributions were to be made solely to parishioners. This would stop parishes being swamped by requests for charity from strangers with no right to claim relief and avoid an influx of people into a particular area to prevent the further spread of epidemic diseases. The regulations prohibiting an individual from claiming charity outwith their own parish were in fact trivialised by the actions of the church, which, on occasions, at all levels actively encouraged the opposite. It was mainly kirk sessions and presbyteries that permitted individuals, on a fairly regular basis, to claim charity outside their parish of residence. In most cases those involved had suffered a severe misfortune, such as the burning of their house and possessions, or the loss of all their goods in a shipwreck. They tended not to be people who merely needed small amounts of financial assistance on a regular basis, but slightly more unusual cases, particularly when the money required was considered too large for a single parish to provide. The General Assembly and Synods could demand special voluntary collections from parishes across either specific regions or the entire country to help aid particular causes. During the 1690s there were numerous collections for bridge-building programmes across Scotland, but also slightly more unusual cases such as a collection to secure the release of Scottish men captured by a Turkish vessel and held as slaves to ransom. It was not only Scottish interests that were provided for by such collections. Considerable sums were donated by parishes to help build a protestant church in Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Prussia, at a time when many parishes were already struggling to maintain their own poor parishioners. This latter type of collection was not discouraged, but presumably in an attempt to reduce the amount of movement between parishes the General Assembly issued an act in January 1696 declaring that kirk sessions, presbyteries and Synods should not give recommendations for charity to any person from outwith their own areas of jurisdiction and that any letters of recommendation distributed to parishioners to travel and receive charity were to be for a limited time only.86 The first parliamentary act of the famine period relating to the poor, in October 1696, began by repeating the requests made in July 1695 that all previous acts be put into execution. There is almost no indication that the former was adhered to, although a process was raised against the heritors, elders, minister and kirk session of the parishes of Orwell and Portmoack 86

Act Anent Recommendations for Charity, 3 Jan. 1696, The Church Law Society, Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Vol. 1, 252.

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(Kinross-shire) ‘for yr negligence in not setling ye poores maintenance in due & orderlie manner and for not extirpating stranger vagabond & sturdie beggers’ according to the acts and proclamations.87 A new feature in the 1696 act permitted the privy council to appoint supervisors or overseers to make further provision for the poor and to ensure that the idle were given employment.88 Little effective action seems to have arisen as a direct result of this act and the latter point certainly does not appear to have been enforced.89 The decision by the heritors and tenants of Balmerino kirk session (Fife) to stent eight months later in June 1697 seems unrelated to any perceived renewal of pressure to conform.90 Following this, the improved harvest collected in many parts of the country in 1697 brought a change in the government’s attitude towards the state of the poor. In July, when it was apparent that the forthcoming crop would be a plentiful one, the privy council ordered the re-introduction of customs duties upon all imports of foreign victual. The poor were ‘Competently provyded’ for and no further government intervention in the grain supply was required.91 Poor-related legislation continued to be produced despite this, and in the proclamation of March 1698 the council complained that previous laws had hitherto produced little effect, partly because those responsible for their execution had been negligent, but also because provision had not been made for correction houses for the poor. Orders were given for the construction of institutions to which the poor were to be sent by November 1698.92 The disastrous harvest that year introduced a renewed urgency on the privy council’s part to ensure that provision was settled for the poor and a further act was put into effect in September 1698 which reiterated the key points of the act of 1696 and the proclamation of March 1698.93 The increasing problems produced by several years of crisis led to renewed pressure on parishes to enforce assessment and the subsequent proclamation of September 1699 went even further, introducing a new level of checks upon the actions of parishes by ordering the Commissioners of Supply in every county to ensure that the law was complied with. Forty-one of those sixty-eight parishes known to have introduced assessment during the 1690s did so between the two proclamations of March 1698 and September 1699, compared to only sixteen after this date.94 87

88

89 90 91 92

93 94

NAS, GD29/77/3, Double of And: Horn & David Whyts disowning ye advocation wtin wrin anent ye poore, 1695. Act for the better provideing the Poor and repressing of Beggars, 9 Oct. 1696, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 10, 64. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 34–5. NAS, CH2/1540/1, Balmerino KSR 1690–1727, 7 Jun. 1697. PRCA 1696–9, 20 Jul. 1697. Power was also given to kirk sessions to meet and organise provision for the poor, PRCA 1696–9, 3 Mar. 1698. Act anent the Poor, 1 Sep. 1698, Thomson, The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland Vol. 10, 177–8. See Appendix. Mitchison, however, believed that most parishes only stented after September 1699, Old Poor Law, 38.

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There was an apparent rush by a number of parishes to introduce a method of assessment following the latter proclamation, which indicates that only at this point did those parishes feel pressure to conform to poor law legislation, but this was not reflective of the majority of parishes which assessed heritors and tenants during the famine. A number of additional parishes did arrange a stent, defined as the setting of a rate on landowners according to their valuation, . . . a levy in grain, by ordering landowners and others to board the needy in their homes, or by simply giving a list of names to a landowner and telling him to supply people,95 but failed to action it. Initially, in accordance with the privy council proclamation, the heritors of Kettins met with the kirk session and agreed a monthly meal quota to be distributed to the poor of the parish. Despite this, the first batch of meal was not delivered and, as neighbouring parishes failed to take any similar action, the session determined not to enforce the decision.96 The heritors of Abernethy (Perthshire) rescinded their agreement to provide meal for their sixty-two listed poor for similar reasons.97 Both of these parishes initially felt compelled to obey the law, but eventually the recognition that pressure would not be put on the heritors to provide for the poor meant that the usual system of distributions from church collections remained in place as the favoured method of supply. It was those parishes in the counties closest to central government in Edinburgh that were most likely to comply with a form of assessment. However, in Currie (Midlothian), although a stent was arranged in December 1698, in March of the following year the session protested that the first instalment had not been paid and instead resorted to supporting the poor out of the collection box. The issue was not raised again until April 1700 and no further reference was made to whether the money was paid or not.98 Even in Kettins, further away from the control of central government, the session and heritors felt compelled as early as April 1698 to organise an assessment for the relief of the poor, after the privy council proclamation of the previous month, whereas similar action in many parishes did not occur until after the proclamation of October 1699. Perhaps by this time ‘desperation led to more powerful pressure on landlords’,99 but clearly this pressure was not sustained upon the heritors and sessions of parishes such as Abernethy and Kettins. Many more parishes, of course, did not meet these obligations, but in some cases it appears to be because assessment was simply not necessary. The sessions of Bolton (East Lothian) and Dunbarney (Perthshire) both 95 96 97 98 99

Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 211. NAS, CH2/518/1, Kettins KSR 1682–1714, 10–25 Apr. and 8 May 1698. GROS, OPR326/1, Abernethy KSR, 30 Apr. and 8 Nov. 1699. NAS, CH2/83/2, Currie KSR 1691–1700, 8 Dec. 1698, 15 Mar. 1699 and 4 Apr. 1700. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 36–8.

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had enough money to support their poor without stenting the heritors.100 In Dunbarney in May 1698 the session offered to maintain the poor ‘as formerly’ with a promise from heritors that they should contribute if the necessity arose. The session was able to supply the poor with meal and maintain them completely without the need for them to beg. There are indications that by the following year this was straining the session’s budget and it requested that the parishioners contribute more to the church’s collection plate to support their efforts.101 There is no mention of a direct request to, or offer from, the heritors for assistance. Perhaps it really was not considered necessary, or possibly the heritors could not be persuaded to keep their promise. Within parishes there was not always uniformity of adherence to the law. In the joint parish of Wandell and Lamington (Lanarkshire) the heritors and tenants arranged a stent in April 1698, but upon realisation in October that neighbouring parishes were not enforcing the act the tenants refused to pay their share of the assessment until other parishes conformed. Their particular complaint was that so many stranger poor were still seeking charity from them, that the additional burden of fully maintaining the parish’s poor was too high. The session did not attempt to persuade them otherwise, claiming that ‘it was non of their bussiness to dispouse with the laws of the Land’. The Laird of Lamington, one of the major heritors, however, clearly felt some kind of legal pressure to conform to the acts of parliament. He requested that his intention to continue to pay his proportion of the poor’s money be noted, in case any official enquiry was later made, and refused in turn to provide anything to stranger poor. This division of attitudes towards supply of the poor did not last. In May 1699 and again in December new stents were organised in the parish and the Laird of Lamington warned the tenants on his estate that if they did not pay their portion promptly they would be forced to pay double. Between April 1698 and December 1699 the number of poor maintained on the Lamington section of the parish rose from six to possibly as high as fifty-six.102 The opposite problem existed in the Wandell part of the parish as the main heritor, the Earl of Forfar, did not arrange payment until 25 December 1699, which had forced the tenants to maintain the poor themselves during the summer. The vast majority of those parishes found to have implemented a stent appear to have done so after March 1698, but before September 1699.103 It is possible that rather than one particular piece of legislation being responsible for these actions, the continued efforts of the privy council to 100 101 102

103

For Bolton parish see Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 38. NAS, CH2/100/3, Dunbarney KSR 1682–1702, 9 May 1698 and 1 May 1699. No figures were given for the Wandell part of the parish. On 19 December 1699 twenty poor were added to the list which on 21 Nov. had numbered thirty-six; it is not clear whether anyone was removed, GROS, OPR659/1, Wandell and Lamington KSR, 20 Apr. 1698–19 Dec. 1699. See Appendix.

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ensure provision for the poor, combined with the increasing number and reduced economic circumstances of the poor, persuaded heritors of the necessity to conform to the law. A sense of Christian responsibility towards the poor and destitute may ultimately have been a key factor in the decision to contribute towards the poor’s maintenance, but neither this nor privy council pressure was sufficient to encourage the majority of parishes to conform to the demands of the law, even in those regions closest to central government. The personalities of the heritors was a key factor in determining whether or not the poor would be maintained by assessment. Good examples of this are provided by the actions of heritors within two parishes in Midlothian. The privy council proclamation of 15 September 1699 called for the Commissioners of Supply to meet on 12 October to arrange ‘Effectual Methods’ of relief for the poor. At the meeting in Midlothian it was decided that one heritor in each parish should arrange meetings with the rest of the heritors, the kirk session and the tenants, to make up lists of the parish’s poor which were to be maintained for a period of three years. This list was to be sent to the Commissioners with details of whether the poor would be cared for within the parish or in Edinburgh’s correction house. The fee for the correction house was two shillings per person per day, but no figure was specified for the parish maintenance of the poor. The option to put the poor into the correction house does not appear to have been a popular one. Alexander Adair wrote to the Laird of Preston, one of the heritors’ representatives for Lasswade parish, stating that this form of action would not be ‘advisable’ since the heritors would be ‘bownd to a Certainty as to ther maintenance’ and he was not prepared to enter into a potentially permanent and costly commitment.104 He furthermore declined to pay a proportion of a parish stent, preferring instead to provide for the poor on his own lands. This was perhaps due to the fact that the parish had previously conformed to the privy council’s request to maintain the poor. Reacting to the proclamation of March 1698 the heritors and session had agreed that the session would contribute £117 to the poor’s fund from collections, with a further £640 to be paid by the heritors and tenants.105 Adair was perhaps reluctant to contribute a set fee to poor relief within the parish again and thought that he could offer cheaper provision for his own poor privately. In October 1699 another heritor also wished to avoid becoming involved in a formal and regular payment organised by the parish and resolved to take the same action, proclaiming that he considered this to be an effective way of obeying the privy council’s demands.106 Apparently even with increased pressure from the Commissioners of Supply many heritors still did not feel 104

105 106

NAS, GD18/3026, Alex Adair to the Leard of Preston, 26 Oct. 1699; Walderwood to Sir John Clerk of Pennycoik, 12 Oct. 1699. NAS, GD18/3026, Jo. Temt to Sir John Clark of Pennycook, 24 May 1698. NAS, GD18/3026, W. Drummond to Cuptin William Prostin, 26 Oct. 1699.

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compelled to conform to the law regarding the poor. In the parish of South Leith (Midlothian) the situation was even worse; only two heritors were represented at the parish meeting who consequently decided that it was not possible to ‘proceed in this affair at this time’.107 No action was taken in this parish in which poor individuals had starved to death from the very beginning of the crisis. Even in parishes which did manage to hold a meeting of the heritors and kirk session to discuss the issue of the poor, heritors still managed to avoid fulfilling their obligations. In May 1698 the minister of the joint parishes of Cortachy and Clova (Angus) attempted to enforce an assessment on the heritors. The heritors failed to co-operate and avoided the meetings called by the minister until February 1699. All that was decided upon was to supply the begging poor with wooden badges to distinguish them from strangers. Perhaps the reason the minister sought a form of assessment was that the previous incumbent was still in possession of £600 Scots that had been left to the poor and would not return it.108 Dundee sent a representative to a meeting of the heritors of Forfar in Angus which was to make arrangements for the proclamations of the privy council regarding the poor to be enforced in the county. They failed to either agree or implement an assessment and put off any further decisions until March of the following year.109 The strong demands of the proclamation of September 1699 may have been too late to protect the majority of the poor.110 Increased and earlier assistance to the poor would have helped many to survive, but even in assessed parishes the poor were not guaranteed an adequate level of maintenance. In Kilspindie (Perthshire) in April 1700, despite the fact that an assessment had been laid upon the heritors, the session complained that the poor were ‘very penurious and almost starving’.111 It is possible that the stent, which had been established in this parish in May 1699, was not continued into 1700. To help provide for the poor the session adopted a method previously used between January and July 1699, which was the distribution of meal to those in need. It was only with the harvest of 1700 that the session considered ‘the dearth and scarcity’ to be ‘in some measure abated’ and that it was no longer necessary for them to meet so frequently to help provide for the poor.112 Even in those parishes which introduced a method of assessment, distributions by the kirk session from collections still remained an important source of charity. The poor in assessed parishes probably received a greater amount of charity as it was frequently paid in kind, rather than in money, but some sessions were able to provide this 107 108 109 110 111 112

Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 39. NAS, CH2/561/1, Cortachy KSR 1697–1702, 27 Feb. 1699 and 17 Jul. 1698. DCA, Dundee Town Council Minute Book 1669–1707, 1 Feb. 1699. Mitchison, ‘Permissive poor laws’, 162; Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 213. GROS, OPR363/2, Kilspindie KSR, 28 Apr. 1700. GROS, OPR363/2, Kilspindie KSR, 22 Sep. 1700.

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level of assistance independently of the heritors. That a parish did not provide a stent for its poor did not necessarily mean that the poor were neglected, and some sessions may have been able to, or forced to, provide an adequate level of provision for their poor without additional assistance. Examination of the burial rates of the poor suggests, though, that this policy was not always successful. Burials of the poor One of the most obvious indicators that provision for the poor was insufficient to protect them from the famine’s impact was confirmation that people had actually died of starvation. Evidence that large numbers of the poor were unable to obtain sufficient food to survive highlights the ultimate failing on the part of the church and government to effectively enforce adequate supply of poor relief to those vulnerable members of society. It is impossible to estimate how many people did actually starve during the crisis, but contemporary comment indicates that it was not a rare occurrence. In 1698 the tacksmen of the excise claimed that during the period of their tack, August 1695 to Martinmas 1697, ‘many people were starved to Death for want, both in Town and Countrey’.113 Their attempts to gain an abatement of the excise payable during this period involved them painting as grim a picture of the economic state of the country as possible, and as such their words must be treated with some element of caution. Reference to grain shortage increasing prices beyond the limited purchasing means of the poor particularly highlighted that the tacksmen could not be expected to recover the full tax on malt brewed into ale, which had been set prior to the harvest of 1695. Detailed investigation into their plight led the Lord Advocate to confirm that ‘many poor people’ had indeed died ‘for want’ in the year following Candlemas 1696.114 By the summer of 1698 contemporaries were again beginning to comment on the visibility of famine through the deaths of the poor. In both June and November that year news reached Edinburgh of people found dead on the roads throughout the country.115 No indication was given for the causes of these deaths, but it seems plausible that starvation or severe malnourishment among poor people, moving between towns and parishes in search of food, were key factors. The link between effective poor relief provision and the survival of the poor was evident to some contemporaries. David Crawford, factor of the Hamilton estates, wrote to the Duke in June 1699 explaining: 113 114 115

The Petition of the Tacksmen [1698], 3. Replyes for the Tacksmen [1698], 2. NAS, GD406/1/9080, [Lord] Bassill [Hamilton], [Katherine Countess of Tullibardine and Earl of Tullibardine] to the Earl of Arran, 18 Jun. [1698]; GD406/1/6445, [Lord] Basil [Hamilton] to the Duke of Hamilton, 26 Nov. 1698.

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The condition of the Shire of Clidsdale is so bad That the poor are dying every day by the dyke sides and on ye highway for mere want, Especially in severall parishes who have not taken such a regular course for providing their poor as Hamilton has done. The Duchess of Hamilton had enforced poor law provision within the parish and used her position as sheriff of the county to pressure ‘negligent’ heritors to follow a similar course of action.116 Comparing the fate of the poor in two parishes in East Lothian, the result of the failure to care for the poor becomes apparent. In 1699 in Spott there was an exceedingly high level of mortality attributed to the failure of the heritors to fulfil their legal requirements to the parish and provide for the poor. Burials peaked at fifty during the autumn months of September, October and November while the average number of burials for those months in 1695–8 and 1700 was a mere seven.117 In Yester, where the heritors did provide for the growing number of poor people in need of relief, such high mortality levels were avoided.118 The effects of a parish’s failure to conform to requirements of the poor law can also be seen in the burial register of Kettins (Angus). By April 1698, when the proposed poor relief assessment was first arranged in Kettins, the number of pauper burials in the parish had increased from a low level prior to the crisis, but not to the extent that they would in the last year of the famine. The result of Kettins’ failure to support those on its poor roll was a drastic increase in the burial rate of the poor, illustrated in figure 4.1. This peak of pauper burials during the worst year of the crisis in Angus became a burden on what must have been an overstretched poor fund and in March 1700 (crop year 1699), the kirk session commissioned the construction of a bier, or common coffin, in which to bury them.119 In both Methlick (Aberdeenshire) and Kettins, the number of poor being buried at the height of the famine crisis peaked at a time when burials of the non-poor were falling, supporting the idea that adequate poor relief could have prevented this. In Kettins in crop year 1699 burials of the poor accounted for nearly three-quarters of all burials,120 whereas in Methlick (figure 4.2) burials of the poor actually exceeded burials of the non-poor in crop year 1698 by forty-three to thirty-eight. Even in Old Machar (Aberdeenshire), where the number of pauper burials was much lower, the figures rose and peaked at the same time in crop year 1697, as non-poor burials were actually falling, a year earlier than the same peak in Methlick.121 Unfortunately, the numbers involved 116 117 118 119 120

121

NAS, GD406/1/4402, David Crawford to the Duke of Hamilton, 8 Jun. 1699. SPHRP, OPR720/1, Spott Burials. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 178. NAS, CH2/518/1, Kettins KSR 1682–1714, 20 Mar. 1700. There were eleven burials of the poor out of a total of fifteen burials during crop year 1699. SPHRP, OPR168/b, Old Machar Burials.

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40 Poor burials Non-poor burials

Number of burials

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1685 1687 1689 1691 1693 1695 1697 1699 1701 1703 Crop year Figure 4.1: Burials of the poor and non-poor in Kettins (Angus).122

60

Number of burials

50 40 30 20

Poor burials Non-poor burials

10 0 1685 1687 1689 1691 1693 1695 1697 1699 1701 1703 Crop year Figure 4.2: Burials of the poor and non-poor in Methlick (Aberdeenshire).123

in the Old Machar register are so small that it is difficult to draw any solid conclusions about the comparative state of the poor in these two parishes. The proximity of Old Machar, adjacent to and virtually surrounding the town of Aberdeen, could have accounted for this, as the poor from Old 122

122 123

123

Data compiled from SPHRP, OPR294/5, Kettins Burials. Data compiled from SPHRP, OPR221/3, Methlick Burials.

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Machar may have moved into the town to take advantage of the better provisions for the poor available there. The peak of burials in St Nicholas churchyard in Aberdeen was in crop year 1698, during which period 244 of the 377 burials performed were free burials of the poor.124 Methlick, by contrast, was an inland parish in the north-eastern part of Aberdeenshire and more remote from a major town or urban centre that could have attracted in-migration of rural poor. Other than these examples, only a limited number of parishes distinguished pauper burials from normal burials and, in most cases, it is difficult to establish what proportion they actually formed, but evidence points to a significant increase. Kettins (Angus), Kiltearn (Ross and Cromarty), Newtyle (Angus), Falkland (Fife), Ashkirk (Roxburghshire), South Leith (Midlothian), Douglas (Lanarkshire), Aberlady (East Lothian), Carriden (West Lothian), Paisley (Renfrewshire) and Holm and Kirkwall (Orkney) parishes all purchased biers to bury the poor due to the rising cost of pauper burials.125 By 1698 and 1699 most of these parishes were spending a large proportion of the poor’s money buying coffins for those that died without the means to pay for them. South Leith parish complained as early as January 1695 that the poor were ‘in a very starving condition and yt much of ye money is spent in getting chists to them when they are removed by death’. By December 1696 there were several poor dying every day.126 In Kirkwall, burials of the poor, so destitute that they had ‘nothing to bestow’ to their burial upon death in this ‘time of dearth and calamity’, were so frequent by December 1695 that all charges were removed.127 Three of these seven parishes, Kiltearn, Douglas and Carriden, actually conformed to poor relief regulations and instituted a form of assessment to provide for the poor,128 indicating that a correlation between a parish’s provision for the poor and their death rates during the famine may not be straightforward. Assessment in these parishes may not have continued 124 125

126 127 128

Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 41. NAS, CH2/518/1, Kettins KSR 1682–1714, 20 Mar. 1700; CH2/569/1, Kiltearn KSR 1697–1705, 12 Sep. 1698; CH2/284/1, Newtyle KSR 1648–1710, 3 Apr. 1698; StASC, CH2/428/3, Falkland KSR 1661–1706, 24 Sep. 1699; NAS, CH2/650/2, Ashkirk KSR 1695–1717, 2 Jul. 1699; PM, Paisley Burgh Records, P1/1/16, Paisley Town Council Minutes, Vol. XIII, 1698–1716, 28 Apr. 1699; OA, OCR13/1, Holm KSR 1673–1707, 29 Jan. 1699 and OCR14/75, Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral KSR 1669–1711, 27 Jun. 1697; this was described as a half bier to be used for children; and South Leith, 24 Jan. 1695, Robertson, South Leith Records, 178. The examples of Douglas in 1698, Aberlady and Carriden were cited in Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 42. Banff kirk session also ordered the construction of a common bier for the burial of the poor ‘lest the box should be exhausted with expense in buying of dead chests to the prejudice of the living’. This decree was enacted on 4 January 1702, after the famine period, but a drain of finances and increased deaths connected to the crisis are likely to have been contributing factors, Cramond, The Annals of Banff, Vol. 2, 73. Robertson, South Leith Records, 178, 182. OA, OCR14/75, Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral KSR 1669–1711, 23 Dec. 1695. This is based on examination of the kirk session registers only; other sources might give details of assessment in some of the other parishes.

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long enough, or have been high enough, to provide adequate relief to the poor. Either way, unfortunately for the poor, even provision by assessment was not sufficient to protect them from the crisis. Much of the most prominent and interventionist action taken on behalf of the poor by heritors, tenants and kirk sessions occurred in the second half of the famine period following several years of bad harvests. The condition of the poor deteriorated as the crisis period lengthened, and by 1698, 1699 and 1700 their needs were even greater. Pressure from both parliament and the privy council upon parishes to provide adequate levels of assistance to their poor does not seem to have been extensively enforced until 1698 and, more particularly, 1699 although many of those heritors and tenants who chose assessment as a means of providing poor relief did so before the Commissioners of Supply were required to enforce it. It is inconclusive to what extent parishes that enforced assessment in 1698, 1699 and 1700 did so purely because of pressure from local and central government, or because the heritors and sessions recognised and accepted the poor’s overwhelming need for their assistance.129 The vast majority of heritors and tenants were not moved by either of these circumstances to stent themselves for the poor’s benefit. The relief effort in Scotland was constrained by a lack of centralised organisation and the country’s general poverty. A secondary cause was undoubtedly the recalcitrance of selfish individuals who withheld relief which they had within their power to give, were legally obliged to provide, but were ultimately unwilling to part with. In most parishes the poor continued to be supplied by small distributions from the collection plate and private charity. James Donaldson, writing in 1701, cited the latter point as a specific reason for the failure of the enforcement of this legislation. He felt that it was in part due to the neglect of those people responsible for enforcing the acts, but more significantly that it was a result of the ‘Indulgent Temper of some who could not forbear to give Alms to the Begging Poor’. The sheer number of the poor during the famine had led ‘Charitably Disposed People’ to be even more compassionate towards them than in normal years and beggars were less disposed to enter into hospitals or correction houses as long as they could gain charity elsewhere.130 These actions undermined the official attempts to control the numbers of the poor and regulate the distribution of relief to the most needy and deserving. Not everyone was inclined to agree that people were more generous to the poor during the famine crisis. Those responsible for poor relief provision frequently felt that people were withholding charity or unable to provide the additional support necessary. 129 130

Flinn, Scottish Population History, 179–80. J. Donaldson, Certain Infallible Measures laid down Whereby the whole Begging Poor of the Kingdom May be Alimented at much less Charge than they are at present; And Begging intirely Supprest, etc (Edinburgh, 1701), 3–6.

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That alternative forms of charitable distribution were really given to the poor in sufficient amounts during the crisis seems unlikely given contemporary references to the poor starving to death. The increase in both the number of people identified as poor and the actual levels of poverty during the famine crisis posed a major problem to rural and urban parishes across the country. Ultimately, the evidence of large numbers of people moving out of their own parishes to seek help elsewhere is an indication of a failure or inability on the part of the kirk session to provide the most basic provision for the poor. A combination of factors, including unwillingness to conform to the regulations of the poor law and vacancies within rural parishes, meant that many of the poor did not receive the additional financial support necessary during the years of high food prices and grain scarcity. The evidence of significantly increased burials of the poor, particularly in those parishes which did not record any level of poor relief assessment, suggests that there were many cases in which the poor died of sheer deprivation.

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chapter five

Famine: The Demographic Disaster In 1732, Patrick Walker recalled his memories of the famine which he ascribed as seven years of judgement sent by God to punish the sins of the Scots: Through the long continuance of these manifold judgments, deaths and burials were so many and common that the living were wearied in the burying of the dead. I have see corpses drawn in sleds, many got neither coffin nor winding-sheet . . . I have seen some walking about the sun-setting, and to-morrow about six a-clock in the summer morning found dead in their houses, without making any stir at their death, their head lying upon their hand, with as great a smell as if they had been four days dead, the mice or rats having eaten a great part of their hands and arms. Many had cleanness of teeth in our cities, and want of bread in our borders; and to some the staff of bread was so utterly broken (which makes complete famine) that they did eat, and were neither satisfied nor nourished. And some of them said to me that they could mind nothing but meat, and were nothing bettered by it; and that they were utterly unconcerned about their souls, whether they went to heaven or hell.1 The intervening three decades doubtless coloured Walker’s memories, yet his recollections merely repeat, if a little more graphically, the stories contained in the minutes of kirk session records the length and breadth of the country. High grain prices and scarcity of food meant that mortality levels rose dramatically. Epidemic disease and starvation stalked the Scottish people. Estimates of the extent of population loss during the famine range from a national figure as low as 5 per cent, to 21 per cent in Aberdeenshire, and as much as one-third in the very worst-affected areas.2 Walker himself suggested that one-third of the adolescent and adult population of West

1

2

P. Walker, ‘Some Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of that singularly exemplary holy in life, zealous and faithful unto the death, Mr Daniel Cargill with the accomplishments of a few of his many sententious sayings through his life, and at his death’ (Edinburgh, 1732), in D. H. Fleming (ed.), Six Saints of the Covenant by Patrick Walker Vol. 2 (London, 1901), 30–1. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 161, 181; Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’; Smout, History of the Scottish People, 225.

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Calder parish in Midlothian ‘wasted away’.3 Flinn’s Scottish Population History study of 1977 concluded, however, that there was ‘no suggestion anywhere that mortality of 30 per cent or 50 per cent was general or even common’.4 The exact figures, national, regional or local, will never be known. Attempting to calculate the loss of population during this period is fraught with difficulties relating to a lack of accurate population statistics. Calculation of hearth tax returns has estimated the Scottish population at 1,234,575 in 1691, only 31,000 lower than the figure given by the Reverend Alexander Webster’s census of 1755.5 Due to the losses of the famine, and to a much lesser extent the mortality crisis of 1739–41, it is not inconceivable that population growth between 1700 and 1755 was only just sufficient to make up those losses and return the Scottish population to its early 1690s level.6 That the Scottish population only just managed to recover during this sixty-four-year period suggests that the famine had a serious long-term demographic impact. What can be investigated and revealed for many parts of the country are the patterns of change in mortality, fertility and nuptiality which indicate how severe the famine was, when it had its greatest impact upon the population and in what ways. Indications of high levels of mortality among the poorest sections of society have been discussed in the previous chapter; to what extent this was experienced by the rest of the population will be explored further in this chapter. The extent of population loss and consequently the impact of the famine varied regionally, but also locally at county and parish level, and local conditions played an important part in the resulting demographic impact of this national famine. These variables examined together, with levels of migration and emigration, provide a means to evaluate the scale of the demographic disaster. The sources: old parish registers Pre-civil registration Scottish historical demography, particularly study of the period prior to 1750, has merely inched forward in the years since the publication of Scottish Population History. The key sources of demographic 3 4 5

6

Walker, ‘Some Remarkable Passages’, 32. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 171. J. G. Kyd (ed.), Scottish Population Statistics (Edinburgh, 1975), 8. For critical examinations of Webster’s population estimate, see A. J. Youngson, ‘Alexander Webster and his “Account of the Number of People in Scotland in the Year 1755”’, Population Studies, 15, 2 (Nov. 1961); Flinn, Scottish Population History, 58–64, 250–60; R. Mitchison, ‘Webster Revisited: A re-examination of the 1755 “census” of Scotland’, in T. M. Devine (ed.), Improvement and Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1989); R. E. Tyson, ‘Contrasting regimes: population growth in Ireland and Scotland during the eighteenth century’, in Connolly, Houston and Morris, Conflict, Identity and Economic Development, 66. For a discussion of the various estimates of Scotland’s population at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, see Flinn, Scottish Population History, 241–2. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 13; Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 49.

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data produced throughout the famine period were the old parish registers: records of baptisms, marriages, proclamations of banns and burials kept by individual parishes from the sixteenth century until the beginning of civil registration in 1855. Three main problems relate to the use of these registers. The first is systematic under-registration of vital events common throughout the pre-civil registration period, and similar to those identified in other early modern European countries. The second, again not restricted to Scottish registers, relates to the type of data which was recorded. The third is more specific to both the way in which the Scottish data was recorded and the factors which altered this, particularly during the 1690s. Incomplete registration is an accepted factor of pre-civil registration population data. Information varies between parishes and over time, and large gaps are frequent. Some parishes have few, if any, surviving registers. Shetland, Caithness and Sutherland have no surviving registers for the period 1685–1705 and Nairnshire has only two, both of which are unusable. Ross and Cromarty has three registers for two parishes and Bute has two registers for one parish. During a period of crisis, such as a famine, ‘random’7 gaps are more likely to occur in parish registers. This can be due to the death of the session clerk, or other person recording the data, or because the numbers of burials increased so much that the register was not kept properly, or at all. A related issue more specific to the period was the removal of the minister, leading to a vacancy in the parish. Reorganisation of the church after 1689 led to the removal of many Episcopalian ministers from their posts who would not swear an oath of allegiance to the crown. In many cases there was not a Presbyterian minister immediately able to take over the parish and some parishes were left vacant for years without a minister to perform baptisms, marriages or burials.8 This issue is further complicated by ousted Episcopalian ministers setting up separate ‘meeting houses’ within parishes. Baptisms and marriages performed by these ministers would not necessarily be recorded in the official Presbyterian registers, a problem occurring particularly in the Episcopalian strongholds of the north-east.9 A crisis of the magnitude experienced in Scotland in the 7

8

9

L. Henry, ‘Verification of Data in Historical Demography’, Population Studies, 22, 1 (Mar. 1968), 63. R. Mitchison, ‘Local and central agencies in the control of famine in pre-industrial Scotland’, in M. W. Flinn (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Economic History Congress Vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1978), 400. For an indication of the extent of the upheaval see the map of parishes which fell vacant following the establishment of Presbyterian government in P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), 401. Tyson, ‘Population History of Aberdeenshire’, 114. Burials would normally have been carried out by the minister of the parish church which controlled the graveyard. However, Gordon DesBrisay determined that in Aberdeen Episcopalians and Catholics were not always buried by the established Presbyterian church, ‘Authority and Discipline in Aberdeen: 1650–1700’, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (University of St Andrews, 1989), 105.

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1690s would have a significant impact on both the occurrence and the registration of baptisms, marriages and burials. As burials rose, baptisms and marriages would start to fall – but crucially, each type of vital event fluctuated in response to the shifts in the other two, as well as reacting to the worsening and improving economic conditions within the country. Higher food prices after a bad harvest led to a decrease in baptisms and marriages and an increase in burials. Detecting gaps and deficiencies in registration during the famine and separating these out from the naturally fluctuating changes in vital events is complicated by these concerns over the consistency of record keeping. The reliability of these registers as sources for the demographic historian and the extent to which conclusions drawn from them can be truly representative is therefore questionable. In spite of this they have been used by Scottish historians and accepted as some of the best material available for studies of pre-civil registration Scottish demographic history. Excepting the gaps and missing registers, the over-riding problem that their use poses is that ‘the data concerns numbers of events, whereas the interesting hypotheses concern rates’.10 Even the events registered are not actual records of births, deaths and, less frequently, marriages, and do not represent exactly the values of real interest to demographic historians.11 The negative impression of Scotland’s early modern demographic source offering has unfortunately led historians to presume that there are many areas of demographic research for which answers will never be uncovered. It is unquestionably the case that Scotland’s early modern population sources are small in number, patchy in geographical and chronological coverage and less reliable than those of many of its European counterparts, yet meaningful conclusions are still possible.12 This book employs data collected from 157 registers from 99 parishes selected and tabulated for study, based on information obtained from the Detailed List of the Old Parochial Registers of Scotland relating to the most complete registers and also those collected within the Scottish Population 10

11

12

R. D. Lee, ‘Methods and Models for Analyzing Historical Series of Births, Deaths and Marriages’, in R. D. Lee (ed.), Population Patterns in the Past (London, 1977), 337. For a discussion of some of the problems posed by using the Old Parish Registers as demographic sources, see Flinn, Scottish Population History, 45–51. For issues particularly related to seventeenth-century registers, see 110–11. Marriage and baptism registers and their relationship to actual marriages and births are discussed in relation to the study of eighteenth-century population change, but some points raised are also relevant to seventeenth-century demography, see 271–4, 284–5. This is also true of other countries; see, for example, E. A. Wrigley, ‘Births and Baptisms: The Use of Anglican Baptism Registers as a Source of Information about the Numbers of Births in England before the Beginning of Civil Registration’, Population Studies, 31, 2 (Jul. 1977). For a discussion of these issues see K. Cullen, ‘Baptism to marriage ratios and the reliability of late seventeenth-century Scottish parish registers’, Local Population Studies, 76 (Spring 2006); Scotland was not included, for example, in the study by P. R. Galloway, ‘Basic Patterns in Annual Variations in Fertility, Nuptiality, Mortality, and Prices in Pre-industrial Europe’, Population Studies, 42, 2 (Jul. 1988), 278–9.

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History project team research papers.13 All of the country’s burial registers were examined and the information from these supplemented with the records of mortcloth dues – the fee paid to use the mortcloth for burial.14 For baptisms and marriages, the registers with the fewest gaps and the longest chronological range during the period of study were selected. Parishes for which both registers survived were given preference, but in some cases limited numbers meant that parishes with baptism registers only were selected. Due to the difficulties posed by marriage data no parish was selected for which only marriage registers had survived and no proclamation registers – lists of the fee paid to register intention to marry – have been used.15 Parishes in the western Lowlands and Border regions were prioritised for study to redress the geographical balance of parishes examined during the famine, since most previous studies have focused on the eastern Lowlands and north-east of the country.16 The population of the west of Scotland is presumed to have escaped the worst effects of the famine due to the availability of grain imports from Ireland. By contrast, agriculture in the Borders is considered to have suffered particularly badly during the famine. The population of both of these regions is likely to have fallen as a result of migration to Ireland. This migration is discussed further in Chapter six. The best registers were selected, providing a selection of rural and urban, coastal and inland, upland and lowland parishes. Many dozen more registers were dismissed due to distinct flaws in registration. Incorporating a date range in crop years from October 1685 to September 1705 permits investigation of whether there is any evidence in the registers of the crisis beginning in the early 1690s, or possibly even the late 1680s. Added to this is the need to establish some recognition of what ‘normal’ levels of baptism, burial and marriage were before the beginning of the crisis. Given the particular problems with the registers due to the dislocation of the church in the years after 1689, any resulting serious deficiencies in the registers might be highlighted by comparison with data from the late 1680s. However, the number of parishes with usable registers from 1685 is limited and data 13

14

15

16

General Register Office (Scotland), Detailed List of the Old Parochial Registers of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1872). The list provides only rough outlines of major gaps in the registers; upon examination of the registers, many more had to be rejected. Sixty-two tabulated registers were obtained from SPHRP and the remainder from Cullen, ‘King William’s Ill Years’. Mortcloth dues must be used with caution. Since deaths of the poor increased during the famine, if the kirk session had to cover the cost of their burials, waiving the mortcloth fee, those burials may not have been recorded since no payment was made. T. C. Smout, ‘Scottish Marriage, Regular and Irregular 1500–1940’, in R. B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981). Proclamation registers frequently do not record the date of marriage and thus cannot confirm that a marriage actually took place. Cullen, ‘Baptism to marriage ratios’, 17–18. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’; Cullen, ‘King William’s Ill Years’; Cullen, Whatley and Young, ‘King William’s Ill Years’.

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from some of the registers selected runs only from the early 1690s, partly due to this disruption. The end date, five years after the end of the famine, permits analysis of the immediate short-term impact, extent and effects of the famine both at a national level and regionally, though only a fraction of these registers have continuous data across all of these years.17 The use of crop years is similarly related to the nature and aims of this book. The role of epidemic disease in mortality crises has led to harvest failure being given a ‘diminished role’ and as a result ‘most crisis studies have reverted to the use of the calendar year’.18 In longer-term studies which attempt to identify mortality crises and their causes, the calendar year is perhaps the easiest and best method to use.19 Admittedly, the harvest or crop year has been set according to a standard ‘normal’ harvest date, rather than the fluctuating date at which the harvest actually occurred either on a year-to-year basis, or regionally.20 The harvest did not occur simultaneously across the whole of Scotland, beginning later in upland marginal regions than in the most fertile Lowland farmland.21 Equally important is that food prices were not affected solely by the harvest; as was demonstrated in Chapter three, prices could rise steeply throughout the year in response to weather, local food shortage and the mere prospect of a forthcoming deficient harvest. Nevertheless, since the famine of the late 1690s in Scotland was largely caused by harvest failure, this study uses harvest years to discuss the demographic effects of a reduced supply of native grain and resulting high food prices. Despite using this method, consideration has been given to the issue of epidemics and their role in this crisis. This is of vital importance to the study of why mortality increased, as even during a famine more deaths were generally caused by the spread of epidemic disease than through actual starvation. Although an increase in deaths due to epidemics could fall across part of two harvest years, the same argument could equally be made against the use of calendar years. Thus an attempt has been made to examine the demographic data at monthly and seasonal levels, due to the seasonality of specific diseases, which indicate patterns not evident across several twelve-month periods.22 17

18

19

20 21

22

This was also the end date selected in Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’. Flinn used burial data in calendar years January 1690 to December 1710 and baptismal data between July 1694 and June 1701, Scottish Population History, 173–6. The data obtained from the burial registers in these years also forms part of the mortality indices on 483–8. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 48. See also D. E. C. Eversley, ‘Population History and Local History’, in D. E. C. Eversley, P. Laslett and E. A. Wrigley (eds), An Introduction to English Historical Demography (London, 1966), 31. Flinn, Scottish Population History, used calendar years, but Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, used crop years. For example, Flinn, Scottish Population History and E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A reconstruction (Cambridge, 1993). Eversley, ‘Population History and Local History’, 31. See, for example, the map showing the typical dates of the beginning of the barley harvest by region, in McNeill and MacQueen, Atlas of Scottish History, 18. R. S. Schofield, ‘“Crisis” Mortality’, Local Population Studies, 9 (Autumn 1972), 11. Eversley

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This chapter contrasts analysis of the Scottish data with the secondary literature available for other crises, to set Scottish demographic trends during this period within a wider European context of famine. The basic difference in the level of population loss between Scotland and various other northern European countries was discussed in Chapter one. The way in which that loss occurred and how the population recovered is compared with the experience of the population in some of those countries to provide a clearer understanding of how the Scottish population changed. The extent of the changing trends of births, deaths and marriages is used to determine how bad the crisis was within parishes, counties, regions and at national level. Mortality: measuring a crisis The famine did not bring universal suffering to people in all regions of Scotland. More importantly, even within regions the severity of the mortality crisis depended on local circumstances. Rural areas and Highland and upland regions were the worst affected, but the ability or willingness of the local population to support the poorest in society also played an important role in determining levels of mortality. The key method by which to estimate the severity of the crisis is to examine its impact upon mortality levels, as the most obvious indication of population loss is through an increase in the death rate. However, a famine is not merely a shortage of food accompanied by a mortality crisis.23 An increase in mortality within a parish or region could be related to many factors, but combined with a reduction in fertility and nuptiality, an increase in basic food prices, evidence of starvation and a rise in deaths among the poor, famine is an obvious explanation for such total demographic disruption.24 Although a famine would affect all vital events, the most immediate impact would have been caused by increased mortality. Yet a mortality crisis can exist without famine, just as famine can exist without excess mortality. A basic method employed to determine a mortality crisis is to take an average of burials over a period of years and use that as the normal level, while a mortality crisis is a point during that period in which the number of burials was significantly above average.25 Table 5.1 compares the burial data of ten Scottish parishes during the famine with those years immediately before and after. Crop years 1685–94 are used as a base against which

23 24

25

also claimed that by grouping monthly data into seasons the ‘short term influences’ on population would be more easily identified, ‘Population History and Local History’, 31 Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief’, 21. P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost – Further Explored (London, 1992), 128–9; Appleby, Famine, 115–18. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 47–8; Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief’, 22; Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises’, 192.

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Table 5.1: Mortality index.26 Crop years

National index

1685–94 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700–4

100 103 155 120 151 117 79

to measure the level of the crisis.27 In every year of the famine, burials were above average, but crop years 1696 and 1698 stand out as the worst with burials in excess of 50 per cent above ‘normal’. Across the five famine years, mortality increased to 29 per cent above normal. After the harvest of 1700 the mortality trend dropped off sharply and remained below prefamine levels until at least the harvest of 1705. This pattern reflects the common trends of a mortality crisis; during the famine the death rate rose, but afterwards the death rate was lower than in normal pre-famine years as those most vulnerable in society, the old, the sick and the poor, died during the famine. The remaining population, therefore, removed of its weakest and most vulnerable members, produced a lower death rate than normal. During the middle of the crisis, in crop year 1697 the trend in the national index dropped in response to the improved harvest, the resultant recovery in the national food supply and the drop in grain prices from the peak of the previous year, as described in Chapter three. Mortality was not consistently high throughout the famine years and the impact can be seen as occurring in two stages. The harvest of 1698 was the worst of the entire famine period28 but the peak in burials that year, slightly lower, not higher, than that of crop year 1696, would appear not to support this. Perhaps the second consecutive bad harvest of 1696 removed through death many of the weakest members of society and although the harvest in 1698 was worse than that of 1696, mortality was not necessarily higher. However, the small number of extant burial registers used to calculate the index raises concern about how representative this is. For example, Flinn observed that ‘[calendar year] 1699 appears from the parish registers to be the year in the famine period when mortality was at its worst in most areas’.29 26

26

27

28 29

SPHRP; OPR 100/1, Kilmorack Burials; OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials; OPR 131/1+2, Duffus Burials; OPR 168b/9, Old Machar Burials; OPR 294/5, Kettins Burials; OPR 441/1, Kingsbarns Burials; OPR 684/6, Duddingston Burials; OPR 720/1, Spott Burials; OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials; OPR 821/6, Dumfries Burials. Flinn described 1694 as ‘an unhealthy year’, Scottish Population History, 165. The year 1694 was probably not any more ‘unhealthy’ than crop year 1690 in which mortality levels and grain prices were high in many regions. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 168. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 170.

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Comparing the index with data from other burial registers, due to significant gaps, it is difficult to be certain about trends in many of them. However, the registers for Longside (Aberdeenshire), Ballingray (Fife), Coldingham (Berwickshire) and Edinburgh (Midlothian) all indicate that crop year 1698 was the worst in those parishes. In Longside burials were 42 per cent higher that year than the average for crop years 1693 and 1694. At Ballingray (Fife) burials in crop years 1694–6 and 1698–9 were more than double those of pre-famine years (crop year 1698 being only marginally the worst), but returned to almost normal levels in crop year 1697. Crop year 1698 was a bad year in Coldingham, with burials 233 per cent higher than in the post-famine years. Unfortunately, there is insufficient data to compare this to the pre-famine trend. Calendar years 1696, 1697 and 1699 were all years of higher than average mortality in Edinburgh Greyfriars, but burials in the peak year 1699 were only marginally higher than they had been in the bad year 1690. On the other hand two other burial registers indicate different trends. In Linlithgow (West Lothian) crop year 1696 was the worst, with burials about one-third higher than in crop years 1692–4 and in Glencorse (Midlothian), crop year 1699 was the worst year of the five famine years.30 The limited impressions gained from these burial registers suggest that more parishes did experience higher mortality levels in crop year 1698 than 1696. Two major mortality peaks in which burials were more than 50 per cent above normal confirms that a mortality crisis occurred in Scotland during the late 1690s. However, one difficulty in attempting to establish a standard is that it depends on whether the crisis was judged to be local, regional or national. Local crises, at parish or town level, could occur in a year in which the mortality rate of the country as a whole, or even the surrounding area, was not affected. Even in a national crisis it is likely that some areas were more badly affected than others. A national crisis is one of ‘extreme suffering in many places but not in all places; it will be a widespread, but scarcely ever a universal, disaster’.31 During periods of ‘normal’ mortality, urban areas experienced higher levels of mortality than rural areas. However, during the famine period, as a general rule, rural areas suffered a greater increase in mortality rates than urban centres. Even within rural areas, regions of marginal arable cultivation were more severely affected than the main grain-producing regions. The reasons for the lower increase in mortality in the towns can be largely attributed to their role as market centres which could better control the supply of food and the provision of poor relief, as demonstrated in the previous chapters. The index smoothes over significant regional variation. Although this was a ‘national’ famine in 30

31

SPHRP; OPR 218/2, Longside Burials; OPR 408/1, Ballingray Burials; OPR 732/1, Coldingham Burials; OPR 685(1)/80, 82, 83+84, Edinburgh Burials; OPR 668/7+8, Linlithgow Burials; OPR 687/2, Glencross Burials. Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief’, 22.

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Scotland, there are indications that it was not a truly universal experience as not every region experienced higher mortality rates in each year of the crisis. In France in 1693–4, the ‘apocalyptic famine of almost medieval proportions’, responsible for the death of nearly two million people in France, notably ‘spared Brittany and the south-east’:32 during the course of the crisis of 1691–5 the peak of mortality moved: from the east and south-east in 1691 to the south-west in 1693, and then on to the south, the centre, the Paris region and the north in 1694, and to the west in 1694–5. One gets the impression of a slow diffusion like a drop of oil, not of a sudden and simultaneous crisis.33 Study of Scottish burial registers suggests that the famine was a more synchronised crisis than in France, despite local variations. The most severe adverse weather conditions which led to harvest failure affected the whole of Scotland simultaneously in the late 1690s. This is perhaps due to the fact that the Scottish crisis was directly linked to at least three major harvest failures, compared to the single harvest failure in 1693 in France. The Scottish crisis, therefore, extended over a longer period and had more than one sharp mortality peak. Nevertheless, it is equally evident that the timing of those peaks differed by region as in France. In Scotland, examining the limited burial data from the index from three regions, the Highlands, the northeast and the eastern Lowlands, demonstrates a wide degree of variability between the level of mortality experienced locally in individual parishes. For example, in Spott parish in East Lothian, burials peaked in crop year 1699 at nearly six times the pre-famine average. The highest peak in Duddingston in Midlothian the previous year was 43 per cent higher than the pre-famine average. At regional level some clearer trends emerge suggesting that high mortality in the Highlands and north-east was heaviest in crop years 1696, 1697 and 1698. In the eastern Lowlands crop years 1696, 1698 and 1699 stand out as the worst years, which more closely follows the national trend. The worst of the crisis in the Highlands and north-east was sustained over three consecutive years with no respite in crop year 1697. In comparison to the national averages, the levels of severity in the Highlands and northeast were at a more critical state in both crop years 1696 and 1697 and in the eastern Lowlands in crop years 1698 and 1699. These impressions, drawn from mortality figures of the timing and severity of the famine in the eastern Lowlands, largely support Flinn’s conclusion that the year 1699, comparable to crop year 1698, was the worst in the south-east. They do not, however, confirm his claim that the year ’1697 was usually the worst in the North-East’34 as crop year 1698 was the most acute among the parishes in 32

33 34

Ladurie, The Ancien Régime, 214, 216. See also Ó Gráda and Chevet, ‘Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France’, 712. Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises’, 196. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 179.

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that region. This conclusion is verified by Tyson’s findings that the harvest of 1698 was the worst of the period in Aberdeenshire and that mortality was highest in that region in the crop year following it.35 Overall the Scottish burial registers display a significant degree of regional variation in mortality. Across the country the population was affected by increased mortality; however, the timing and severity of the peaks highlight the varied regional impact and nature of the famine. Increased mortality is the most obvious and easily identifiable evidence of the immediate effects of harvest failure. Interpreting the famine’s impact on fertility and nuptiality does not provide such a clear impression of the timing of the peaks of the crisis, but the changing trends of these events do contribute to an overall understanding of the way in which the population was affected. The association between rising grain prices and falling nuptiality and fertility levels has been firmly established for England in the early modern period with a doubling of wheat prices reducing marriages by 22 per cent and baptisms by 14 per cent.36 These trends are even more important in attempting to calculate demographic change in parishes which have little or no burial data. Over the whole country, the reduction in population caused by the famine was due not just to an increase in deaths, but also to a reduction in the number of births. Fertility and mortality The key causes of reduced birth rates during famines are famine amenorrhoea, temporary ‘cessation of menstruation, attended by sterility’, or anovulatory cycles due to a reduction in adequate levels of food intake, a reduction in weight of 15 per cent being sufficient to cause female sterility for several months.37 Other factors include an increase in miscarriages again due to lack of food or starvation, and also as a result of the spread of disease, the deliberate avoidance of sexual activity ‘due to ascetic foresight or lack of desire’ and a reduction in the number of marriages performed throughout the famine period.38 Determining to what extent each of these factors was responsible for a reduction in births is not possible. The reduction in marriages will be examined in the following section, which will enable conclusions to be drawn about whether this factor had a strong correlation to a reduction in 35 36

37

38

Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 33, 41–4. R. Schofield, ‘Short-run and Secular Demographic Response to Fluctuations in the Standard of Living in England, 1540–1834’, in Bengtsson and Saito, Population and Economy, 68. E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Famine amenorrhoea (Seventeenth–Twentieth Centuries)’, in R. Forster and O. Ranum (eds), Biology of man in history: selections from the Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisations (Baltimore, 1975), 164; J. Dupâquier et al., Histoire de la population française, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1991), 426. Ladurie, ‘Famine amenorrhoea’, 164.

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Table 5.2: Regional baptism indices.39 Crop Year

Eastern Lowlands

Highlands

Western Lowlands

North-East

Eastern Borders

Western Borders

1691–4 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700–4

100 92.3 81.1 87.2 80.9 53.6 91.8

100 78 67 72.3 69.7 56 92.1

100 98.1 84.3 91 91.7 67.9 88.9

100 92.2 74.7 69 67.9 52.1 87.4

100 87.8 78.8 81.8 76.7 50.1 72

100 104.7 79.7 91.8 84.3 58.4 73.5

births. Increased mortality also influenced the birth rate as an increased number of women of childbearing age or their partners died. In order to determine what the famine’s impact upon births was, baptism indices have been constructed. These do not provide exact representations of births and, during the famine in particular, may underestimate the number of weak or sickly children born who died before they could be baptised. To a large extent baptism registers during the period studied do reflect births because almost all children were baptised, and most very soon after birth.40 Regional baptism indices between October 1691 and September 1705 are displayed in table 5.2, presenting the number of baptisms for each of the famine years as a percentage of the average of those in the ‘normal’ crop years 1691–4.41 The table displays a drop in baptisms in every region during 39

39

40

41

The index for the eastern Lowlands was compiled from: GROS, OPR 326/1, Abernethy Baptisms; OPR 351/1+2, Errol Baptisms; OPR 310/2, Monifieth Baptisms; SPHRP, OPR 683/1, Dalkeith Baptisms; OPR 441/1, Kingsbarns Baptisms and OPR 397/1, Tulliallan Baptisms. The Highlands from SPHRP, OPR 507/1, Campbeltown Baptisms and OPR 100/1, Kilmorack Baptisms. The western Lowlands from GROS, OPR 578/2, Ayr Baptisms; OPR 586/1, Dalmellington Baptisms; OPR 620/1, West Kilbride Baptisms; OPR 559/1, Abbey Paisley Baptisms and SPHRP, OPR 592/1, Fenwick Baptisms. The north-east from GROS, OPR 153/1, Fordyce Baptisms; OPR 154/1, Forglen Baptisms and OPR 221/1, Methlick Baptisms. The eastern Borders from GROS, OPR 811/1, Yetholm Baptisms; OPR 792/2, Jedburgh Baptisms; SPHRP, OPR 768/2, Peebles Baptisms and OPR 799/1, Melrose Baptisms. The western Borders from SPHRP, OPR 821/1, Dumfries Baptisms and GROS, OPR 865/1, Dalry Baptisms. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 49. However, Mitchison and Leneman claimed that there was ‘no strong pressure to get children to the font quickly after birth since baptism was not necessary for salvation’, R. Mitchison and L. Leneman, Girls in Trouble: Sexuality and Social Control in Rural Scotland 1660–1780 (Edinburgh, 1998), 14. See also R. E. Tyson, ‘The Population History of Aberdeenshire, 1695–1755: A New Approach’, Northern Scotland, 6 (1985), 122; R. Houston, ‘Births and Baptisms: Haddington in the mid Seventeenth century’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists’ Society, 18 (1984), 43. The date range, beginning in crop year 1691 rather than 1685, was chosen to provide a greater number of suitable registers with which to calculate the indices. The selection process for the parishes used was based on those registers which displayed no obvious gaps. No weighting has been provided to account for differing sizes of these parishes;

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the famine with a slight recovery in all regions, except the north-east, in crop year 1697. The baptism figures support the conclusion that the population in the north-east suffered a crisis of longer duration, and possibly more severe, than any region other than the Highlands. Just as the mortality figures for the region revealed that there was no reduction in crop year 1697, the baptism index demonstrates a continuous decline in the number of baptisms from crop years 1695 to 1699, by which year there were almost half of the ‘normal’ number of baptisms of the pre-famine years. Across all regions crop year 1699 recorded the lowest number of baptisms of the famine, suggesting that the increased mortality of 1698 resulted in a lower number of births in the following year. The baptism figures for the Highlands are based on Kilmorack and the data from only one other parish, Campbeltown in Argyllshire. They do not return lower levels of baptisms than those in the north-east as might be expected to have been produced by claims of very high levels of mortality in the region. The highest estimate was of a drop in population in Glenlivet (Banffshire) of more than two-thirds in the two years before March 1699, when people continued to die daily ‘perishing for famine’.42 Obviously there is nothing to support this claim, which seems excessively high. Nevertheless, it does provide the impression that contemporaries living in the Highlands were aware of a significant population drop in the region. Burials were 62 per cent higher in Kirkhill and 82 per cent higher in Kilmorack during crop years 1695–9 than in the pre-famine period. There are two additional surviving baptism registers for Highland Perthshire parishes, Kenmore and Logierait. Unfortunately each register contains a number of years of defective registration and subsequently this data could not be included in the index. They are plotted in figure 5.1 and largely support the conclusion obtained in the index that the lowest numbers of baptisms in the Highlands were recorded between crop years 1696 and 1699, with limited recovery in 1697 and 1698 in Kenmore. The recovery in baptism numbers also appears to have been significantly better, and more closely related to the results of the index, in Kenmore than in Logierait. Parishes on the fringes of the Highland region probably experienced heavy mortality combined with at least three years of particularly low fertility rates. References to high mortality elsewhere in the north of the country, particularly Banffshire, indicate that it was not only the Highland part of that county which suffered badly as a result of the famine. Unfortunately there are no surviving burial registers for Banffshire, which, combined with a lack of usable marriage registers, has meant a reliance purely on baptism registers and qualitative sources to identify population trends. In a petition

42

however, the registers which provided both the greatest and smallest numbers of baptisms per year have not been included. SCA, PTI/3/1 No. 5, J. Melvil to M. Paul Brilelé (for Mr L. Innes), 27 Mar. 1699. See also J. Watts, Scalan: The Forbidden College, 1716–1799 (East Linton, 1999), 20.

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136 120

Kenmore Logierait

Number of baptisms

100 80 60 40 20 0 1687

1689

1691

1693

1695 1697 Crop year

1699

1701

1703

Figure 5.1: Baptisms in Kenmore and Logierait (Highland Perthshire).43

to the Convention of Royal Burghs in June 1700, Banff town council described ‘the mean and low condition of this burgh of Banff occasioned by the totall decay of what mean trade therin and the calamities and hardship of the bygone tymes and death of more nor the half of the inhabitants’.44 This claim of population loss in excess of 50 per cent of the town’s population must be treated with caution, particularly since the council was attempting to get a tax reduction from the Convention and may have exaggerated the town’s economic difficulties to improve their chances of success. However, though the accuracy of the claim is questionable it is reasonable to conclude that Banff witnessed a large increase in mortality during the famine. That the county as a whole witnessed increased mortality is further supported by other qualitative sources, some of which have already been discussed. In Aberdour, an Aberdeenshire parish bordering Banffshire, as early as 1696 the kirk session described ‘a tyme of great dearth and many every day dying’. Between February 1698 and February 1700 there are periodic entries relating to burial of the poor of the parish and of strangers who died there.45 In Bellie parish in Morayshire, adjoining the western border of Banffshire, in the spring of 1699, with grain prices 43

43

44

45

Data obtained from GROS, OPR 360/1+2, Kenmore Baptisms, 1695 was a year of defective registration and no data is available prior to crop year 1691; OPR 376/1, Logierait Baptisms, 1700 was a defective year and there is a gap in the register prior to crop year 1687. Due to the large numbers of non-resident baptisms included in Logierait’s register these have been removed. Extract of 22 Jun. 1700 of ‘Instructions for Baillie Mark, Commissioner to the Conventione of Burrowes’, in W. Cramond (ed.), The Annals of Banff, Vol. 1 (Aberdeen, 1891), 171. W. Cramond (ed.), The Church of Aberdour (Fraserburgh, 189-), 32–42.

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140 Fordyce Forglen Rothiemay

Number of baptisms

120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1685 1687 1689 1691 1693 1695 1697 1699 1701 1703 Crop year Figure 5.2: Baptisms in Banffshire parishes.46

high following the poor harvest of 1698, the poor were reported to be ‘all rewined and starving for want of bread’.47 The evidence indicates that the population in parts of Banffshire suffered at least as badly, if not worse than that in Aberdeenshire. Although no burial data is available for Banffshire, the trends displayed in figure 5.2 reveal that the famine had a serious impact in both Fordyce and Rothiemay, demonstrated by the sharp dips in baptisms beginning possibly as early as crop years 1692 and 1694 respectively, dropping to lows of less than 50 per cent of normal levels in crop year 1699.48 It was not until crop year 1700 that recovery to approximately normal levels seems to have occurred. These clear indications of demographic change are not evident at all in the figures for Forglen. One trend that does appear to be common to these three parishes is that from crop year 1700 the trend of baptisms 46

46

47 48

Data compiled from GROS, OPR 153/1, Fordyce Baptisms; OPR 154/1, Forglen Baptisms and OPR 165/1, Rothiemay Baptisms. Crop year 1691 was a period of defective registration in Rothiemay. SCA, Blair Letters, BL2/48/14, Mr A. Dunbar to Monsieur Brilett, 6 Apr. 1699. In crop year 1699 the number of baptisms was 43.4 per cent of the average of baptisms between 1685 and 1694 in Fordyce and only 28.3 per cent of the pre-famine average in Rothiemay. When contrasting the famine’s impact on baptisms in parishes such as Forglen, Rothiemay and Fordyce, variation in the first two parishes is much more likely to be subject to random changes in baptisms due to the much smaller numbers involved than in the latter parish. Nevertheless, correlations between the movement of baptisms in Fordyce and Rothiemay do suggest that those parishes both experienced a reduction in baptisms which can be related to the famine.

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138 50

Dingwall Harray and Birsay

Number of baptisms

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1685 1687 1689 1691 1693 1695 1697 1699 1701 1703 Crop year Figure 5.3: Baptisms in Dingwall (Ross and Cromarty) and Harray and Birsay (Orkney).49

levels out at a steadier rate comparable to the average of, or just below, what they had been prior to the famine period. Population data for the far north of the country is exceptionally sparse with so few registers running for more than a couple of years without breaks, that only two baptism registers are actually usable over the whole of the period studied. The data for Dingwall (Ross and Cromarty) and Harray and Birsay (Orkney), shows a decline in baptisms in both parishes from crop year 1688 until 1700–1 (see figure 5.3). The climatic, agricultural and economic problems that affected Orkney and Shetland in the late 1680s and the northern mainland in the early 1690s had an adverse impact upon the population which led to a reduction in the birth rate as mortality rose. The continuous decline in the baptism trends persisted over the course of the 1690s with indications that recovery began after 1700–1. In August 1696 the heritors of Shetland sent a petition to the privy council regarding the ‘sade & deplorable conditione [of] the poor inhabitants of this island’. The list of problems included the quartering of troops upon the inhabitants in 1694 and 1696, the further ‘decay of trade’, and destruction and theft wrought by privateers, but most serious of all was the impact of the famine which had reduced ‘many hundred families’ to surviving only on 49

49

Data obtained from GROS, OPR 62/1, Dingwall Baptisms and OPR 13/1, Birsay Baptisms. The baptism register for the joint parish Harray and Birsay must be treated with caution. The parish was apparently vacant from July 1689 until a new minister intruded in July 1692. Another gap in the ministry fell between his demotion in June 1698 and September 1701, when another minister was settled in the parish, H. Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Vol. 7 (Edinburgh, 1928), 240.

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fish, being unable to buy bread.50 The continuing and worsening problems experienced throughout the north is reflected in the low baptism numbers of the late 1690s. The baptism data confirms the trends revealed in the limited burial registers, that the experience of famine in the northern half of the country was particularly severe. On the other hand, the demographic trends in the southern half of the country demonstrate much greater variety in the level of impact. The western Lowlands experienced the smallest drop in baptisms over the whole period and even this only became serious in crop year 1699. This has largely been attributed to the relief provided by grain imports from Ireland and the migration of people from the region to Ulster (see Chapters three and six). In sharp contrast to the situation in the western half of the country, the eastern Lowlands and the north-east experienced their worst death rates in crop year 1698, followed by an almost 50 per cent decrease in baptisms in crop year 1699. Fertility and mortality trends in the eastern Borders to some extent followed these trends. Overall the percentage of baptisms recorded in the region was slightly lower than in the eastern Lowlands, but the real difference between the two regions was in the recovery period, during which baptisms were much lower in the eastern Borders. If the substantial increase in burials that occurred in Coldingham in crop year 1698 was reflected across the region, this could explain the trend. The baptism figures for the western Borders were the second highest of all regions; only those of the western Lowlands were higher throughout the famine period. The burial register for Dumfries indicates that mortality in the region peaked in crop years 1696 and 1699, the years of the lowest number of baptisms in the region. Overall, mortality in the parish was 20 per cent higher during the famine than in the pre-famine years, but the mortality peak of 1699 was 72 per cent higher, suggesting that only in that year did conditions in the region reach particularly bad levels. The unusual feature of the return to normal conditions is that there was no immediate ‘demographic response’ to the crisis demonstrated by a post-famine surge in births.51 In the French Vexin, the population returned to its pre-crisis level within only six years of the famine of 1693–4 through a drop in mortality and increase in fertility.52 In not one region did the number of baptisms rise above pre-famine levels in Scotland in the following five years. There was a significant increase in all areas from the lows of crop year 1699, but as baptism levels were lower than normal the population was not yet making up the losses of the famine. The seri50 51

52

NAS, E41/24/35–36, Petition by heritors of Shetland, 22 Aug. 1696. Stephen Devereaux explained that after a famine population levels recover quickly through increases in the birth rate. This happened, for example, in the space of only a year after the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, Theories of Famine, 48–9. Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, Vol. 2, 422–3.

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ousness of a crisis is most evident in the population’s recovery time.53 In inland Aberdeenshire parishes ‘the famine was so severe and caused such indebtedness and poverty that there was no rise in the birth rate, at least until after 1705’.54 Significantly, in only one of the Banffshire parishes was there any increased growth in the number of baptisms above normal in the post-famine period to indicate a rise in the birth rate to ‘make up’ the losses of the famine. In Forglen the number of baptisms was 0.5 per cent higher between crop years 1700 and 1704 than between 1685 and 1694. In Fordyce, however, the number of recorded baptisms was only 88.4 per cent of the pre-famine average. In Harray and Birsay as well as in Dingwall post-famine baptisms averaged 98.9 per cent and 53.1 per cent of the pre-famine figures, suggesting this area as a whole did not witness strong demographic recovery in the immediate post-famine years. Reviewing the regional baptism indices in table 5.2, however, it is clear that the northeast, despite experiencing the second biggest drop in baptisms during the crisis, was by no means the slowest region to experience a recovery in the birth rate. In every region, although baptisms increased after the crisis, there was no return to normal pre-famine levels. The Scottish population by September 1705 was still not reproducing itself at a rate necessary to sustain itself during periods of normal mortality, never mind producing a surplus or surge of births that would replace the numbers lost in the famine. The crisis caused ‘structural damage’ to the population from which losses could not be quickly made up through the improved prospects of the survivors.55 Marriages and nuptiality It is not possible to construct an index of marriages similar to that for baptisms due to the small number of marriage registers that have sufficient continuous records with no obvious gaps. Examination of marriage registers between crop year 1692 and 1704 revealed that ten parishes had marriage data which fitted these requirements. Employing a similar method to that used for the baptism index, the data from these parishes returned the results displayed in table 5.3. Crop years 1692–4 were taken as the base ‘normal’ years at 100. Calculated from this point the famine years 1695 to 1699 returned an average index figure of 80.3 with the post-famine period 1700 to 1704 at 86. In a similar way to the baptism indices, with the exception of the northeast, there was a slight recovery in marriages in crop year 1697, presumably linked to better conditions following the improved harvest of 1697. The 53

54 55

L. Del Panta and M. Livi Bacci, ‘Chronology, Intensity and Diffusion of Mortality in Italy, 1600–1850’, in Charbonneau and Larose, The Great Mortalities, 76–7. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 49. Del Panta and Livi Bacci, ‘Chronology, Intensity and Diffusion of Mortality in Italy’, 72, 76–7.

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Table 5.3: Marriage index.56 Crop year

National index

1692–4 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700–4

100 92.5 80.5 91.4 64.4 73 86

marriage register for Longside (Aberdeenshire) also followed this pattern.57 Thus a slight recovery in marriages solemnised in the north-east in crop year 1697 is not unlikely. A greater difference from the trend of the national index is that in the north-east parish the first trough in marriages was in crop year 1695, not 1696, a year of not particularly exceptional mortality in the region. As such, reduced economic circumstances may have been a significant factor in the decreasing number of marriages that year. The most noticeable difference between the marriage and baptism indices is in crop year 1699 when the number of marriages solemnised was higher than in the previous year, whereas the opposite was the case in terms of baptisms in all regions. The low point in the baptism index in crop year 1699 could, of course, be directly related to the drop in marriages and increased mortality the previous year. The rise in marriages in 1699 could also be related to the increased mortality of crop year 1698 as widows and widowers remarried or opportunities arose for new couples to marry. Those marriages, however, would not appear to have been immediately productive and the slow recovery in the birth rate could be attributed to continued problems of high grain prices and scarcity which meant that some women were physically incapable of bearing children.58 56

56

57 58

The method used to compile the marriage index was the same as that for the baptism indices; however, the first year selected was crop year 1692 in order to include a greater number of parishes with continuous records. GROS, OPR 792/1, Jedburgh Marriages; OPR 491/2, Strathblane Marriages; OPR 368/1, Kinnaird Marriages; OPR 465/3, Alloa Marriages; OPR 337/1, Caputh Marriages; OPR 799/1, Melrose Marriages; OPR 578/7, Ayr Marriages; OPR 218/2, Longside Marriages; OPR 310/5, Monifieth Marriages and SPHRP, OPR 821/4, Dumfries Marriages. Proclamation registers were not used since the actual event of marriage cannot always be confirmed. SPHRP, OPR 218/2, Longside Marriages. Analysing the local mortality crisis which affected the Forest of Arden from 1613 to 1619, Victor Skipp discovered that infant mortality was highest at the start of the crisis after which it fell significantly. High infant mortality rates were experienced as those vulnerable children succumbed to death through inadequate food. Thereafter infant mortality fell as women of childbearing age were less likely to conceive children followed by a period during which pregnant women were too malnourished to carry a baby to full term, V. Skipp, Crisis and Development: An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden, 1570–1674 (Cambridge, 1978), 34–6.

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The drop in the number of marriages celebrated during the famine followed by a rise in the post-famine period is consistent with the typical pattern of marriages during such a crisis. By comparison with figures for France during the famine of 1693–4, it is surprising that the number of marriages formalised during the post-famine period was not significantly higher. In the Paris basin marriages were 54.5 per cent higher than the pre-famine level in the year immediately after the famine and 30.6 per cent in the year after that.59 Nationally, French marriages fell to an average of 81 per cent of the pre-famine norm between 1692 and 1694, but in 1695–6 marriages rose to 116 per cent of this norm.60 No such dramatic increase took place in the post-famine Scottish marriage index, as the number of marriages remained below pre-famine levels. It is possible that the trend in Scottish marriages did not rise significantly in the immediate postfamine years because population loss in those parishes examined was not high enough to encourage or promote marriage. If proportionately fewer people died in those parishes than in the parishes of the Paris basin, there would be fewer marriages broken by the famine and consequently fewer widows and widowers seeking remarriage in the next few years. Equally, if famine-related deaths were not sufficiently high to remove a large number of adults from the population, then economic inducements to couples to marry earlier than they might have expected would not present themselves either. The most plausible explanation is that an element of economic depression in the post-famine period, combined with very high death rates among adults, accounted for limited increases in nuptiality in the immediate post-famine years. Three Perthshire parishes attributed economic constraints to a dampening of the marriage rate during the famine and even, in the case of Abernethy, as late as September 1700.61 Disease vs starvation Closer analysis of mortality, fertility and nuptiality trends at local parish level reveals that the famine had an even more varied demographic impact than that identified by the regional and national indices. Examination of individual parish registers provides more information about the extent of population suffering in a local area and also the way in which the trends of vital events were altered as a result. In the case of births and marriages some elements of the population may have deliberately chosen to alter these trends, for example delaying marriage until after the crisis, or specifically choosing to avoid pregnancy. It is not possible to determine what percentage of the drop in marriages and baptisms was attributable to these 59 60 61

As described in Flinn, The European Demographic System, 21. Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, Vol. 2, 424. NAS, CH2/593/1, Tibbermore KSR 1694–1711, 28 Jun. 1696; CH2/100/3, Dunbarney KSR 1682–1702, 20 Dec. 1698; GROS, OPR 326/1, Abernethy KSR, 22 Sep. 1700.

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factors. In the case of deaths, however, it is possible through closer examination of the burial registers, in combination with qualitative sources, to obtain a clearer impression of what caused the very high increases above normal levels.62 By supporting the demographic material with information gleaned from qualitative sources, more solid conclusions may be made about the famine’s impact upon the population. Problems with, or lack of, sources for some areas limit the regions and parishes which can be studied in any detail. As such, analysis is focused on the themes of epidemic disease and starvation and how they impacted at local, parish level. The two main causes of increased mortality during the famine are starvation and epidemic disease. Cause of death was rarely recorded in burial registers, except in unusual circumstances, but analysis of the seasonal distribution of deaths provides an indication of which of these factors was more likely to have been responsible for increased deaths over a specific period.63 References were occasionally made in parish registers and kirk session minutes to parishioners or strangers who had starved to death, but more common was the statement that the poor were in a ‘starving condition’, probably suffering from severe malnutrition due to their inability to buy adequate food supplies. Increased burials recorded around the same period may therefore indicate that some had actually starved to death. For example, at Ardclach (Nairnshire) in August 1696 the kirk session reported that there were ‘many poor sterving and mor like to sterve’.64 The extent of this suffering was not specified further in the minutes, but those of other parishes made more direct references to actual deaths. In July and August 1698 the kirk session of Cullen (Banffshire) paid for the burial of a number of poor people who died through either ‘famine’ or ‘scarcity’65 (presumably starvation rather than epidemic disease) and in January of the following year the kirk session of Thurso (Caithness) paid 10 shillings to make graves for ‘poor famished people’.66 The Commissioners of Supply for Banffshire in June 1699 described the death of many people in the county by both sickness and famine.67 The majority of deaths attributed to a famine are not caused by starvation. Instead epidemic disease is the primary cause of increased mortality.68 Lateseventeenth-century burial registers rarely identify a specific disease, other 62 63

64 65

66 67 68

Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief’, 21–2. Appleby did this for Cumberland and Westmorland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Famine, 97–114. See also A. B. Appleby, ‘Disease or Famine? Mortality in Cumberland and Westmorland 1580–1640’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 26, 3 (1973). NAS, CH2/717/1, Ardclach KSR 1686–1710, 9 Aug. 1696. On 10 July and 6 August 1698 money was given to the beadle to bury an unspecified number of poor people, J. Grant (ed.), Records of the County of Banff 1660–1760 (Aberdeen, 1922), 193. NAS, CH2/414/1, Thurso KSR 1647–1706, 4 Jan. 1699. Grant, Records of the County of Banff, 193. J. Drèze and A. Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford, 1989), 65.

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than for smallpox, and any comment usually cites an unspecified variety of ‘fever’ or ‘flux’. These terms most likely relate to three diseases which commonly affected the population during food shortages and were frequently fatal to those who were severely undernourished: dysentery, typhus and typhoid. Dysentery, also known as the ‘bloody flux’, ‘griping of the guts’ or ‘infantile diarrhoea’ was common in the warmer weather of the summer. Typhus was associated with cold winter weather and was known as ‘spotted fever’ or ‘famine fever’, such were the close links between the disease and food shortages.69 The spread of typhoid, or typhoid fever, differed from the other two diseases being mainly associated during such a crisis with the consumption of contaminated food. The Duchess of Gordon, for example, declared in June 1699 that many people throughout the country had been ‘starved for hunger or killd by ill food’.70 Despite not specifically describing disease as a factor, typhoid was potentially responsible for a proportion of deaths during the difficult summer of 1699. In less serious cases, failure to secure adequate supplies of grain would have caused vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition, leading to diseases such as pellagra, scurvy and rickets, and although the latter two were neither uncommon nor directly responsible for increases in mortality, they weakened sufferers and left them more susceptible to more severe, life-threatening diseases.71 Famine did not cause any of these diseases, but it did create conditions in which they could flourish.72 Mortality peaks and the ratio of adult to child burials Investigative work in India and Southeast Asia defined a mortality crisis as one which altered the age structure of the population through a greater proportion of child mortality. Children, as particularly vulnerable members of society, were likely to account for a greater proportion of overall burials during a crisis.73 Similar results were found for subsistence crises in early modern France, but notably the opposite was the case in England.74 This model does not conform to results produced by analysis of Scottish burials during the 1690s which reveals higher levels of adult than child mortality and an altering in the age structure of the population through a change in the adult-to-child burial ratio. The proportion of adult to child burials registered during a period of 69

70 71 72

73

74

L. Clarkson, Death, Disease and Famine in Pre-industrial England (Dublin, 1975), 40, 45, 50–1. SCA, BL2/49/7, Duchess of Gordon to [-], 16 Jun. 1699. Clarkson, Death, Disease and Famine, 36. L. M. Geary, ‘Famine, Fever and the Bloody Flux’, in C. Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine (Dublin, 1995), 75–7. A. D. Gupta, ‘Catastrophes and their Population Symptoms’, in Charbonneau and Larose, The Great Mortalities, 61–4. Laslett, The World We Have Lost – Further Explored, 132.

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high death rates helps to shed further light on the nature of the mortality crisis during a specific period. Two of the main famine-related diseases, typhus and typhoid, are more commonly fatal in adults than in children. Typhus is particularly dangerous to older people and typhoid affects children with a milder form of the disease than adults, with fewer serious complications forming in the young. If a disproportionate number of adult burials were recorded in comparison to child burials then one of these diseases may have been responsible. If death through starvation was the main cause of increased mortality then all age groups would have been affected and the defining difference between those who survived and those who did not would have been on a basis of economic entitlement.75 In the Irish famine of the late 1840s, ‘deaths from starvation remain[ed] the exception rather than the norm’.76 Starvation accounted for just over 20,000, or approximately 2 per cent of all deaths during these years. Dysentery and unspecified fever accounted for over 8 and 18 per cent of deaths respectively. Increased death through disease was caused by a reduction in both the quantity and quality of food consumed by the population; infectious diseases including typhus and typhoid were then spread through the movement of the population.77 Child burials are identified separately from adult burials in nine of the Scottish parishes studied: Hamilton (Lanarkshire), Linlithgow (West Lothian), Kingsbarns (Fife), Coldingham (Berwickshire), Methlick (Aberdeenshire), Peebles (Peeblesshire), Duddingston (Midlothian), Kirkhill (Inverness-shire), Coldingham (Berwickshire) and Monifieth (Angus).78 Examining these registers by season provides much more detailed information about the way the famine affected the structure of the population.79 In eight of the nine parishes the peak in adult burials above child burials 75

76

77

78

79

Although children and older people are the sections of the population most vulnerable to starvation, Appleby, Famine, 7, 97, 103. M. E. Daly, Famine in Ireland (Dundalk, 1986), 102. This was true of most famines, although see the conclusions reached about the role of starvation and semi-starvation in V. Hionidou, ‘Why Do People Die in Famines? Evidence from Three Island Populations’, Population Studies, 56, 1 (Mar. 2002). T. Dyson and C. Ó Gráda (eds), Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present (Oxford, 2002), 20–2, 26, 29. SPHRP, OPR 647/4, Hamilton Burials; OPR 668/7+8, Linlithgow Burials; OPR 441/1, Kingsbarns Burials; OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials; OPR 732/1, Coldingham Burials; OPR 221/3, Methlick Burials; OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials; OPR 684/6, Duddingston Burials and GROS, OPR 310/5, Monifieth Burials. The Kingsbarns register is slightly less reliable than the others since there are possible breaks in the registration of child burials; however, the number of burials overall is small, with child burials forming a fairly low proportion of these and it is possible that consistent under-registration of infant mortality was to blame for these breaks. Those parishes which seriously under-registered child burials were not included. Winter relates to December of the previous year and January and February of the current year which is specified: spring to March, April and May; summer to June, July and August and autumn to September, October and November.

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occurred around autumn 1699 (September, October and November), but in Kirkhill the peak was in autumn 1697. Both these seasons of particularly high mortality coincided with the two best harvests of the famine period. Availability of this new grain in the market would have been limited until the end of the year or possibly into the start of the following year, and consequently increased deaths due to starvation may still have been evident after the harvest. Increased Lammas oats fiars prices in three out of the four counties detailed in figure 3.1 in autumn 1697 and all four counties in autumn 1699, suggest that despite privy council confidence in the new crop, which led to bans on grain imports and allowances to export, prices increased as the amount of grain actually in circulation had not yet risen. However, it seems unlikely that starvation was a significant cause of this increased mortality. These huge increases in adult deaths must have resulted from epidemic disease particularly fatal to adults, presumably typhus or typhoid. The highest peak of adult mortality among all nine parishes was experienced in Kirkhill, although this is not apparent by analysing the figures over a calendar year. Adult mortality rose from a roughly equal ratio to child burials in 1695 and 1700 to double the number of child burials in 1697, whereas many other parishes recorded a three-fold increase in the adult-to-child burial ratio over the course of 1699.80 Examining Kirkhill’s figures at a seasonal level (see figure 5.4) identifies that adult mortality peaked in autumn 1697 when the ratio was 5.3 adult burials to every child burial. Comparing this to the data available for Kilmorack (figure 5.5), the only other parish in this part of the country which has a surviving complete burial register, there was clearly a close relationship in the factors affecting the population of both parishes in 1697, particularly during autumn when both experienced peaks in mortality levels. The peak was sharpest in Kirkhill, falling mainly within a three-month period during and after the harvest. In Kilmorack it was sustained over a longer period from the summer of 1697 until February 1698. Comments in Kirkhill’s Bills of Mortality register confirm that disease was the major cause: the clerk recorded that 1697 ‘was the yeare of the greatest mortality that I ever remember. In this corner nor all Scotland over: running contagion of a plague fluxes of all sorts’.81 There does not appear to have been a further mortality peak in Kilmorack, but in Kirkhill, a smaller yet still significant rise in burials occurred in summer (June, July and August) 1699, made up of more equal proportions of adult and child burials, the former being only marginally higher. The register related that there was also ‘great mortality this year . . . fluxes and fevers raged’.82 The ratio of adult to child burials suggests that 80 81

82

Flinn, Scottish Population History, 172. SPHRP, OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials. With reference to both Kirkhill and Kilmorack David Alston also suggested that disease was largely responsible for this increase in deaths, ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty’, 37. SPHRP, OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials.

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35 Adult burials Child burials

Number of burials

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

WIN95 AUT95 SUM96 SPR97 WIN98 AUT98 SUM99 SPR00 Season

Figure 5.4: Adult and child burials in Kirkhill (Inverness-shire), by season.83 25

Number of burials

20

15

10

5

0 WIN95 AUT95 SUM96 SPR97 WIN98 AUT98 SUM99 SPR00 Season

Figure 5.5: Burials in Kilmorack (Inverness-shire), by season.84

this disease was different from that which affected the population in 1697. Food supplies were low after the poor harvest of 1698 and this shortage was at its worst in the months prior to the harvesting of the new crop. In Ardclach parish in the neighbouring county of Nairnshire, the kirk session 83

83 84

84

Data obtained from SPHRP, OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials. Data obtained from SPHRP, OPR 100/1, Kilmorack Burials.

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148 90

Burials Baptisms

80

Number of events

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1685 1687 1689 1691 1693 1695 1697 1699 1701 1703 Crop year Figure 5.6: Baptisms and burials in Kilmorack (Inverness-shire).85

recorded its concern in July about ‘the sterving condition of the poors of the parioch by the scarcity of victuall and greatness of famine’, but by September it was ‘the great sickness that rageth in the country’ that moved the elders ‘to pray with, converse and discourse about matters tending to the edification and eternal welfare of their [parishioners’] souls’.86 It seems plausible that the parishioners of Kirkhill were subject to similar problems in the summer of 1699 and that a mixture of malnutrition, starvation and epidemic disease, such as dysentery, caused the increase in mortality of both adults and children that year. The register for Kilmorack indicates that the inhabitants of that parish did not experience these same factors in 1699, as burials remained remarkably unresponsive. The reasons for this are unclear; however, the removal by death of a large section of the adult population in 1697 and a corresponding reduction in baptisms (see figure 5.6) throughout the famine period must have reduced the population in the parish, possibly supplemented by out-migration, and in turn reduced competition for food supplies and charity.87 At the very point at which child burials increased in Kirkhill and the ratio 85

85

86 87

Data obtained from SPHRP, OPR 100/1, Kilmorack Baptisms and Burials. An element of caution must be exercised when using this data, however, as it is probable that infant deaths were under-recorded in this parish since the baptism rate is significantly higher than the death rate in non-crisis years. NAS, CH2/717/1, Ardclach KSR 1686–1710, 16 Jul. and 24 Sep. 1699. S. Sogner, ‘Nature and Dynamics of Crises (Including Recent Crises in Developing Countries)’, in Charbonneau and Larose, The Great Mortalities, 311.

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between adult and child mortality returned to roughly equal proportions, burial trends across the rest of the country indicated that the very opposite was occurring elsewhere. In 1698 and 1699 adult burials outnumbered child burials consistently in Methlick, Kingsbarns, Coldingham, Linlithgow, and Hamilton and Monifieth from summer 1698. In Methlick, Kingsbarns, Coldingham and Hamilton the ratios increased most significantly from roughly 1:1 at the beginning and/or end of the famine period to 5, 3.25, 2.5 and 2.9 adult burials, respectively, to every child burial.88 This suggests that disease such as typhus or typhoid accounted for a significant proportion of deaths in the southern half of the country in autumn 1699. Starvation seems a rather unlikely explanation for this increase in mortality, unless the harvest had come too late to save those suffering from severe malnutrition during the difficult summer of 1699 when food stocks were at their lowest levels and prices at their highest. In Duddingston the only clear peak in adult burials above child burials occurred in autumn 1699. In this and the other urban Lothian parish, Linlithgow, however, the differences between adult and child mortality in autumn 1699 were not nearly so pronounced as in the other parishes, and the proximity of these parishes to the grain markets on the Forth may have helped prevent greater increases in adult mortality. In Duddingston, adult burials were outnumbered by child burials 1:3 in 1690 and 1:2 in 1700, but in 1699 this ratio fell to 1:1.89 This fall was also most pronounced in the autumn, as adult burials outnumbered child burials 1.4:1. In the West Lothian parish of Linlithgow, although adult burials outnumbered child burials by a ratio of 3:1 in 1699, compared to a roughly equal ratio both before and after the famine,90 during the peak of burials in summer and autumn 1699, adult burials only outnumbered child burials by a ratio of 2:1 and 1.5:1.91 In Linlithgow, although adult burials remained at consistently high levels during 1699, child burials formed a significant part of all burials during the seasons of highest mortality, indicating that factors other than those which merely affected adults were present in the parish. The reasons for low child mortality levels experienced in some of these parishes in the later years of the famine may simply be related to lower numbers of babies being born than normal. For example, in Methlick child mortality appears to have remained relatively stable, falling slightly during the famine in summer 1698 and then more severely in 1700. These falls could be related to the corresponding fall in baptisms and as a result the number of infant deaths fell in proportion to the fewer children being born. A surge in baptisms in winter 1699 occurred one year after the peak in 88

89 90 91

The peak in adult burials over child burials occurred in Methlick in spring 1699, Kingsbarns in autumn 1699, Coldingham in autumn 1699 and Hamilton in winter 1700. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 178. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 179. SPHRP, OPR 684/6, Duddingston Burials.

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Table 5.4: Seasonal burial peaks.92 Season

Parishes

Winter 1696 Summer 1696 Spring 1697

Traquair, Dumfries Peebles Hamilton, Old Machar, Longside, Peebles, Duddingston, Monifieth Traquair, Pettinain, Kingsbarns, Torryburn Torryburn Kilmorack, Kirkhill, Dumfries Hamilton, Longside Old Machar, Longside, Duddingston, Coldingham Kirkhill, Coldingham, Linlithgow Kingsbarns, Duddingston, Linlithgow, Spott, Traquair, Peebles, Pettinain, Coldingham, Glasgow, Glencorse, Torryburn Methlick Dumfries, Hamilton Dumfries

Winter 1697 Spring 1697 Autumn 1697 Winter/Spring 1698 Spring 1699 Summer 1699 Autumn 1699

Winter/Spring 1699 Winter 1700 Summer 1700

child burials and could indicate that the remaining population attempted to make up for this loss throughout the better conditions of 1698. After the second burial peak baptisms did not recover as quickly, potentially indicating that increased mortality over the previous two years had taken a greater toll on the population by the end of 1699.93 The peaks in adult burials generally constituted the overall mortality peaks within a parish. The general trends of mortality from these parishes, therefore, follow those of the national and regional trends: two main peaks in crop years 1696 and 1698. Analysing the seasonal distribution of burials demonstrates that at parish level the timing of mortality was much more varied. Table 5.4 charts those peaks demonstrating that the impact of the first mortality peak was fairly spread out across the country affecting different parishes during different seasons. In December 1696, however, the privy council ordered a fast to avert ‘the displeasure and wrath of almighty God [which] is very visible agt the Land in the judgements of great sicknes and mortality in most parts of the kingdome as also of growing dearth and famine threatned’.94 Consequently, more parishes than those identified 92

92

93 94

GROS, OPR 653/2, Pettinain Mortcloth Dues; OPR 771/1, Traquair Burials; OPR 310/5, Monifieth Burials. SPHRP, OPR 221/3, Methlick Burials; OPR 100/1, Kilmorack Burials; OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials; OPR 441/1, Kingsbarns Burials; OPR 647/4, Hamilton Burials; OPR 684/6, Duddingston Burials; OPR 687/2, Glencross Burials; OPR 168b/9, Old Machar Burials; OPR 218/2, Longside Burials; OPR 821/1, Dumfries Burials; OPR 720/1, Spott Burials; OPR 644(1)/45, Glasgow High Burials; OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials; OPR 668/7+8, Linlithgow Burials; OPR 732/1, Coldingham Burials. No data is available for Torryburn (Fife); however, see Smout, History of the Scottish People, 144–5. SPHRP, OPR 221/1, Methlick Baptisms. PCRA 1696–9, 12 Dec. 1696.

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experienced mortality peaks in the late autumn of 1696 and early winter of 1697. The second peak was much more focused, both regionally and seasonally, and confirms Flinn’s suspicions that this was the worst single year in the majority of parishes.95 In autumn 1699 burials increased in parishes in the south-east, focused around the central belt. Having attributed this increase to typhus or typhoid, people in the other parishes which experienced mortality peaks in autumn 1699 were probably also subject to the spread of epidemic disease.96 In Hamilton in the western Lowlands, a very different pattern of mortality emerges than that evident for the eastern half of the country. No peak was evident in 1699; instead mortality was highest after the harvest of 1694, in 1697 and 1698, followed by a late peak in winter 1700 which is reflected fairly closely by burial trends in Dumfries (Dumfriesshire) in the south-west of the country. The burial data confirms that adult mortality and child mortality were affected by different factors during the famine crisis. The huge increases in adult burials in some parishes were related to outbreaks of specific types of epidemic disease. One other parish which differentiated between the burials of adults and children was Peebles (Peeblesshire), but the trends of mortality within that parish were very different from those identified elsewhere. Whereas the trends of mortality from the other eight parishes provide interesting details about the impact of the famine upon adults in particular, the data from Peebles’ burial register provides an example of the very different way in which child burials could be affected. Although the causes of infant and child mortality are less frequently recorded, or more difficult to estimate, smallpox, a disease particularly related to increased child and infant mortality, was identified at Peebles. Smallpox and infant/child mortality Across Scotland, and much of England, in the late seventeenth century smallpox was an epidemic disease which appeared in all but the largest towns and cities at intervals of about five years.97 A highly infectious disease, it was a major killer, particularly of children.98 Due to the virulence of the disease it infected the susceptible population in only a few months, leading to increased death rates mainly among infants and very young children. 95 96 97

98

Flinn, Scottish Population History, 168. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 177. Discussing its periodicity in eighteenth-century Scotland, Flinn claimed that ‘in rural parishes and small towns it appeared every four years or so, usually in summer and sent up child mortality sharply’, Flinn, Scottish Population History, 290. In the seventeenth century outside of London, Duncan, Scott and Duncan determined its periodicity to be every five to six years, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 407, 418. Smallpox was estimated to account for 20 per cent of all deaths in the first half of the eighteenth century, Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 405–23.

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Thereafter the disease died out and a sufficient number of new births were required to build up a large enough susceptible population before a new outbreak occurred. In the late seventeenth century it was both endemic and epidemic in London, which had a large enough population to sustain the disease. However, in the eighteenth century it was also endemic in the larger populations of Glasgow and Edinburgh on top of which epidemics occurred every two to three years.99 Smallpox has no direct link to food intake; thus it is dissimilar to the famine fevers that raged throughout Scotland during the crisis, but the increase in population movement provided the conditions in which it could spread and thrive.100 A study of infant mortality in Penrith in north-west England suggested that there were links between years of high grain prices and outbreaks of smallpox epidemics and that reductions in nutrition levels made the population more susceptible to the disease.101 In Scotland during the 1690s a number of smallpox epidemics were identified in the burial registers. Smallpox is one of the few diseases that was cited as a cause of death in the registers, which must in part be due to the fact that it was much more easy to identify than some of the other major infectious diseases of the late seventeenth century. Epidemics broke out at Kirkhill (Inverness-shire) in 1690, Montrose (Angus) in 1694, Ballingray (Fife) in 1696 and Peebles (Peeblesshire) in 1687, 1691–9 and 1704.102 In Peebles two clear epidemic years occurred between crop years 1685 and 1704, in 1687 and 1704 when in each year smallpox accounted for just over 40 per cent of all deaths. In between these epidemics a number of smaller and highly irregular annual outbreaks occurred from 1691 to 1699, accounting for between 11 and 27.5 per cent of all deaths (see table 5.5). Penrith, with a population of roughly 2,000, probably not much larger than Peebles, was subject to ‘periodic epidemics’, but the population was too small for it to occur between these episodes.103 Continued smallpox mortality in Peebles during the famine and 99 100 101 102

103

Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 410–11. Geary, ‘Famine, Fever and the Bloody Flux’, 77. Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 418. SPHRP, OPR 103/1, Kirkhill Burials, Mar. and Apr. 1690. There was also another smallpox epidemic in this parish in 1704–5; OPR 312/8, Montrose Burials; OPR 408/1, Ballingray Burials, Apr.–Sep. 1696; OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials. There was another epidemic at Hamilton from April to June 1704, OPR 647/4, Hamilton Burials. Brand also described a smallpox outbreak in Shetland in 1700 which affected both the old and young, Brand, Brief Description of Orkney, 109. Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 407. The population of Penrith with average yearly burials and baptisms each numbering sixty was estimated between 1600 and 1750 at approximately 2,000. Due to gaps in the registers a long series of baptism data is not known for Peebles; however, between crop year 1695 and 1703 the average yearly number of baptisms was fifty-seven, and the average yearly number of burials between crop year 1685 and 1704 was sixty-six. Clearly, taking the average number of baptisms and burials across the famine period may return a baptism rate that is lower than normal and a burial rate higher than in a normal non-crisis period. Nevertheless the figures are not hugely different from those for Penrith. The first count of the population

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Table 5.5: Smallpox deaths in Peebles (Peeblesshire), 1687–1704.104 Calendar year 1687 1688 1689 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703 1704

Number of deaths from smallpox

Smallpox as a percentage of all deaths

28 0 0 0 11 14 15 15 13 20 20 10 22 0 0 0 0 31

43% 0 0 0 15.7% 14.7% 23.4% 26.8% 26% 20.2% 21.3% 11% 27.5% 0 0 0 0 41.9%

in the difficult years immediately preceding it indicates that lower levels of nutrition made the population more susceptible to the disease than in non-crisis years.105 Determining why smallpox was present to such a degree in these years can only be surmised. In the large urban population of London immigration has been suggested as a reason for the high incidence of smallpox as it supplied a new influx of people susceptible to the disease.106 In Peebles during the 1690s, migrants or travellers moving into, or through, the town may have spread the disease to the susceptible population; alternatively, 104

104

105

106

of the parish was given by Webster in 1755 at 1,896, Kyd, Scottish Population Statistics, 18. In 1791 this figure was 1,920, of which 440 lived outside of the town, Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. 3, 873. The data used in this table was obtained from SPHRP, OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials. In 1687 smallpox deaths fell between January–February and May–June, 1691 January–June, 1692 June–December, 1693 January–December, 1694 January–December, 1695 January– December, 1696 January–December, 1697 January–December, 1698 January–December, 1699 January–September, 1704 August–November. Flinn also recorded smallpox epidemics in Peebles in 1684 and 1685, Scottish Population History, 163. D. Oxley, ‘“The seat of death and terror”: urbanization, stunting, and smallpox’, Economic History Review, 56, 4 (2003), 628, related that the level of contraction was not higher among the undernourished, but resultant fatalities were. See J. Landers’ argument in Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 419. Duncan, Scott and Duncan, however, conclude that migration was only of ‘secondary importance’.

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migrants who died of smallpox were recorded in the town’s burial registers. Many of the smallpox epidemics which occurred at Penrith were introduced by travellers since the town was situated on one of the main roads between Scotland and England.107 The burial of strangers was occasionally noted in Peebles’ register, but either they were not recorded consistently, or some of the burials recorded in the register were those of strangers but just not noted as such, as is apparent by comparing the burial register with remarks in the kirk session minutes. On 30 April 1699 the kirk session made a bier to bury poor strangers because of the ‘great expense’ involved in burying them up until this point.108 The last recorded burial of a stranger in the burial register prior to this, however, occurred in January 1698. The number of strangers in the town during the famine period was sufficiently high to cause the town council and kirk session problems. In February 1700 the town council recorded that there were ‘many stranger beggars’ living within the burgh who were competing with the town’s own poor for charity.109 Between December 1696 and the beginning of poor relief assessment in early 1700, the kirk session minutes made frequent mention to the indigent condition of the poor. They were, individually and collectively, regularly referred to as being in ‘great straits’ and in a ‘starving condition’. In April 1697 the kirk session recorded that there was ‘greatt sicknes and mortality in the paroch’.110 They did not attribute this directly to smallpox, and although child burials were higher than adult burials during the spring of 1697, they were only marginally so.111 High levels of adult burials and low levels of child burials in the preceding winter also suggest that another epidemic disease was present at the same time, possibly typhus. The improved harvest of 1697 which followed appears to have brought relief in the form of lower mortality levels, but suffering among the poor continued to be a major problem within the parish and may have led to many being weakened and malnourished. Increased levels of mortality after the bad harvest of 1698 may be related to the inability of some of the poorest inhabitants to sustain themselves once food prices increased dramatically. In common with many other parishes in the south-east, mortality peaked in autumn 1699. However, unlike the other parishes detailed, child burials outnumbered adult burials, which can be accounted for by the high number of smallpox-related deaths, primarily among children.112 107 108 109

110 111 112

Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’, 414. NAS, CH2/420/3, Peebles KSR 1691–1722, 30 Apr. 1699. The council proclaimed that in future they were to be consulted before a house was let to a stranger, R. Renwick (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Peebles 1652–1714 (Glasgow, 1910), 156. NAS, CH2/420/3, Peebles KSR 1691–1722, 11 Apr. 1697. SPHRP, OPR 768/4, Peebles Burials. Duncan, Scott and Duncan, ‘The Dynamics of Smallpox Epidemics’. Anderson and Mey found that the average age of infection was twelve, as detailed in 407. However, Duncan,

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Scottish Population History concluded that in demographic terms the famine was ‘not a lasting disaster but a sharp dislocation quickly repaired’, with two-thirds of the population lost during the crisis recovered by 1710. In ‘typical’ parishes the population was estimated to have returned to its pre1695 level by 1715 or ‘almost certainly’ by 1720.113 The European Demographic System published only a few years later revised this, suggesting that the period of recovery from a combination of increased mortality, decreased fertility and migration induced by this crisis may have been as much as fifty years.114 This national recovery time would certainly not have been necessary in regions such as the eastern Lowlands, but could have exceeded this in the north-east as the population in Aberdeenshire had not returned to its pre-famine level by 1755.115 It would not seem unreasonable to presume that in Banffshire and the Highlands this was also the case. The only way that the population could begin to make up its losses was to produce a surplus of births over deaths. Although death rates fell to relatively low levels in the years immediately following crop year 1699, in many parishes the number of baptisms recorded in the post-famine years did not exceed the pre-famine average, but was actually lower. Examination of the structure of mortality indicated that the famine, particularly in crop year 1698, removed by death a large number of adults, a significant proportion of whom would have been of childbearing age. Thus lower numbers of prospective parents resulted in lower numbers of children produced in the immediate post-famine years. Children could of course have been born to young couples able to afford marriage because of circumstances such as the death of leaseholders making landholding positions available and permitting marriage to take place earlier than might otherwise have been expected. Alternatively the performance of those marriages which had been delayed during the famine period may also have led to a surge in baptisms. The marriage index (table 5.3) proved that there was no surge in marriages after the famine, as occurred in France after the famine of 1693–4. The hypothesis that an increase in fertility and lower mortality after the famine led to a very quick recovery of the population’s losses seems unlikely for many regions outside of the eastern Lowlands. Even those parishes which apparently escaped the worst of the mortality crisis still experienced changes in the birth and marriage rates which indicate that famine was indeed present. David Alston speculated that high child mortality during the famine would produce lower marriage rates in the period 1714–17.116 It is not possible to determine whether that was the case from the results of this study,

113 114 115 116

Scott and Duncan found that it was mainly a disease that infected young children and deaths were predominantly among infants; see p. 409. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 181–3. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 21. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 50. Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty’, 43.

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but increased levels of mortality among children and higher infant mortality, combined with a drop in the number of children born between crop years 1695 and 1704, could potentially have lowered the number of marriages even ten or twenty years beyond the dates proposed by Alston. It is possible, however, that increased deaths and fewer births meant that those children who survived the crisis had a better chance of reaching adulthood and subsequently marrying than had those prior to the famine.117 Lower mortality levels and reduced competition for resources may have led to improved expectations for the famine’s survivors. Famine-level mortality is lowest among adults of reproductive age.118 In Scotland adult deaths increased disproportionately, but the age structure of mortality cannot be constructed from the burial register data. The majority of adult deaths may have been made up of a population that was beyond its reproductive years. However, the failure to quickly make up the losses of the population indicates that deaths among adults of reproductive age were significant enough to depress the birth rate in the years after the famine. Study of French population in the early modern period led to the conclusion that all but the very worst mortality crises produced a positive effect on marriage and birth levels in the immediate post-crisis period.119 That neither was true of Scotland in the five years after the famine points to a demographic crisis of catastrophic proportions.

117

118 119

As in the Netherlands following World War II, N. Hart, ‘Famine, Maternal Nutrition and Infant Mortality: A Re-Examination of the Dutch Hunger Winter’, Population Studies, 47, 1 (Mar. 1993). Devereaux, Theories of Famine, 48. Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, Vol. 2, 428–9.

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chapter six

Fleeing the Famine: Migration and Emigration The significant levels of population loss experienced in parishes across the north of the country was due to an increase in deaths through starvation and epidemic disease, and migration of those forced to leave their homes to find sustenance and charity in areas in which better economic circumstances were available, frequently from the hilly and mountainous regions to areas of better grain supply in the towns and villages of the Lowlands.1 This could account for part of the quicker rate of population recovery experienced in the eastern Lowlands as people from uplands areas moved into the towns and villages of this more prosperous region during the famine and found opportunities of employment or landholdings made vacant by famine-related mortality. This ‘exceptional movement’ of the Scottish population was different from the normal ‘background mobility’ which was a common feature of late-seventeenth-century society.2 Most normal migratory movement within Scotland was localised with the majority of people travelling less than ten miles, frequently involving a move between farms of servants and tenants, or to urban areas to seek employment or apprenticeships. Famine mobility involved a larger variation of people and destinations as those unable to provide for themselves during the crisis sought sources of food and charity. Migration during the famine varied between short- and long-distance travel and temporary and permanent migration, but formed two main types of movement. The first was the movement of people between Scottish parishes; generally from a parish with no resident minister or effective means of supplying the poor to another parish which could provide for the poor, from upland to lowland parishes and from rural parishes to urban centres. This was not a movement that was specifically related to the famine, as in non-crisis years there were people who either for certain periods of time, or at certain seasons of the year, travelled and lived on charitable support outwith their parish of residence. In bad harvest years, however, the everpresent numbers of those vagabonds and beggars increased as the poorest 1

2

K. Walton, ‘Climate and famines in north east Scotland’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 68, 1 (1952), 16. R. Houston, ‘Geographical mobility in Scotland, 1652–1811: the evidence of testimonials’, Journal of Historical Geography, 11, 4 (1985), 391.

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elements of society were unable to support themselves through periods of crisis.3 Due to political upheaval and economic depression, both of which intensified pressure on resources available, vagrancy was on the increase in Scotland from the late 1680s and early 1690s. The famine crisis occurred at a time when a greater proportion of the population was unemployed and travelling throughout the country living on charitable distributions. In 1698, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun estimated that as much as one-sixth of the population, or 200,000 people, had left their homes to beg for food and charity within Scotland, a doubling of the 100,000 vagrants that he estimated travelled the country during non-crisis years.4 These figures are almost certainly alarmist and grossly exaggerated, but they do indicate that contemporaries were aware of a large increase in the number of stranger poor travelling throughout the country. Rosalind Mitchison and Leah Leneman in studying the crisis gave even less credit to Fletcher’s claims, arguing that they could not find ‘a scrap of evidence for such a horde of outlaws’ as he described, despite their study of kirk session records for the 1690s indicating an increase in the number of people moving in search of relief. Beyond the usual types of travelling chapmen they indicated that this increase was made up of people migrating to and from England, unemployed soldiers and Episcopalian ministers who had lost their living after the Revolution.5 Although Mitchison and Leneman identified these new groups, which are clearly visible in church records as recipients of charity, they correctly argued that these individuals made up a very small proportion of people collecting relief. They failed to highlight one of the major categories of people moving throughout Scotland, either independently or by reliance on church charity, that of migrants travelling to Ireland. Most crucially they underestimated the extent to which the poor were forced to move outwith their own parishes to secure relief. There is evidence of groups of vagrants and ‘outlaws’ travelling throughout the country, but families and individuals from the various ranks of the poor were by far the largest group moving in search of relief during the famine crisis. Admittedly, it is not possible to give a reliable quantitative figure for this movement, but the perception of an increase can be corroborated by the number of references to the distribution of charity to strangers by many kirk sessions and the concerns voiced by town councils about the influx of strangers to urban areas. The claims of contemporaries, despite their obvious bias, should not be so quickly dismissed, particularly when they can be supported by evidence from official sources, as they provide some evidence of elite attitudes to, or fears about, the movement of the poor. This was not merely a migration of the begging poor, but of many more elements of Scottish society. The harvest failures pushed normally self3 4 5

Smout, History of the Scottish People, 144. Fletcher of Saltoun, ‘The Second Discourse’, in Daiches, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 55. Mitchison and Leneman, Girls in Trouble, 16.

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sufficient tenants and subtenants into poverty. Many accrued large rent debts with the landowner and in some areas tenants were forced to eat their seed corn in order to survive. Those who were unable to gain rent abatements or assistance from the landowner risked losing their land holdings. It was tenants, either in this situation, or those who feared being ‘broken’ by the crisis, that formed part of a very different type of famine-related migration. Frequently, they did not leave their places of residence to beg throughout Scotland, but rather to find better opportunities and ways of improving their economic prospects outside the country. The second type of faminerelated movement, therefore, was emigration from Scotland, primarily to Ulster, but also to England and to a lesser extent Europe and the American colonies. Unfortunately, it is as difficult to estimate the number of Scots emigrating as it is to quantify the number moving within Scotland during the famine. Contemporary Scottish comment about emigration is particularly limited. What can be studied are the extent and trends of both of these types of migration. Examination of population movement at a local level between rural parishes, towns and counties identifies the types of destinations chosen by migrants. This in turn reveals the type of people most likely to become migrants during the famine and consequently their motives for moving. Migration within Scotland The first broad category, the permanent or temporary migration of people between parishes and counties within Scotland, was overwhelmingly the larger type of population movement. In part this was due to the fact that many people who sought to move outwith Scotland, either to England, or more frequently to Ireland, moved between parishes in Scotland for at least some, or perhaps most, of their journey. This can be detected in entries in many kirk session registers across the country which recorded strangers claiming church charity to help them travel to Ireland. Some registers, such as those for Ayr parish (Ayrshire), provide detailed information about the migrants. In the majority of cases no information is provided to illustrate the parish of origin or final destination of a migrant, or indeed why they were travelling between parishes during the famine. The most regular accounts of such movement are provided by town council minutes and church records, particularly kirk session registers detailing charitable distributions to strangers.6 Subsequently, the main type of migrants detected in these records are the poor, those who were forced to move temporarily out of their homes to seek charity elsewhere in the form of money or food. In many cases it was not the very poorest members of society that resorted to migration to survive the famine. Those in receipt of church pensions, as 6

Robert Houston’s study of mobility in Scotland used testimonials recorded in kirk session minutes; however, as they rarely detail temporary movement they are of more limited use to this study, Houston, ‘Geographical mobility in Scotland’, 390.

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discussed previously, were the people in a parish least able to provide for themselves. Pensioners, however, needed to remain in their own parish to benefit from this regular source of income. The most common types of migrant were: those in need of regular church charity during the crisis, but who had been resident of a parish which could not, or would not, provide that kind of financial support; people who were usually self-sufficient or perhaps only occasionally in need of charity in normal years; those living on marginal arable land, particularly the badly affected Highland region, forced to travel to areas with a better supply of grain; and lastly, and arguably smallest in number, those tenants and subtenants either evicted from their farms, or who voluntarily relocated in search of better opportunities. These latter migrants were rarely identified in church or town council minute books, appearing mainly in estate records. It is not inconceivable, though, that some of them were forced to join the large and expanding groups of vagrant beggars roaming the country in search of food and charity. Migration of the poor The months following the poor harvest of 1695 provoked little comment from kirk sessions or town councils of a perceived increase in the number of migrants, with the exception of Kirkwall in Orkney where famine had been apparent for a number of years prior to this and the town was ‘oppressed’ with stranger poor by December.7 The town council in Glasgow was one of the first authorities on the mainland to complain about problems associated with strangers when, in March 1696, it appointed constables to keep stranger beggars out of the city to stop the ‘exploitation’ of the charity it reserved for the town’s own poor.8 Glasgow’s early perception of an influx of strangers reflects high grain prices in that part of the country from the harvest of 1694. Across the rest of the country it was not until after the severe harvest failure of 1696 that a significant influx of people into urban areas was recorded in the council minute books. The multitude of poor beggars that descended on Edinburgh in search of relief forced the town council in December 1696 to erect a ‘refugee camp’ in Greyfriars churchyard to house all of them.9 For the next four months the poor were provided with shelter and provisions at the townspeople’s expense.10 As the case of Glasgow demonstrates, though, not all towns welcomed stranger poor and the example set by Edinburgh was by no means followed in other parts of the country. Perth town council was so anxious to discourage strangers that in 1697 it employed Thomas Thomsone, the executioner, to keep 7 8 9 10

OA, OCR14/75, Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral KSR, 1669–1711, 9 Dec. 1695. G. Eyre-Todd, History of Glasgow Vol. III (Glasgow, 1934), 50. Flinn, Scottish Population History, 168. Armet, Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 208–9, 213–14.

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vagabond beggars out of the town and any that were found were to be put in the thief’s hole.11 Town councils’ motives for excluding strangers varied, but generally they fall into two main categories: cost and crime. The biggest concern was financial, and the fear of diminished provision for the local population, as in Glasgow, if too many strangers received relief. Hawick town council (Roxburghshire) protested in April 1699 that ‘the frequent confluence and thronging in upon the said town of many mendicating persons and familys’ from the countryside had led to the ‘utter ruin’ of the native poor.12 The council in Peebles (Peeblesshire) complained of this problem as late as February 1700. It enforced a ruling, enacted in many other towns and parishes, requiring the townspeople to consult the town council for approval before renting a house to strangers.13 Stirling (Stirlingshire) had lots of strangers ‘daily frequenting’, rather than residing, in the burgh and therefore could not take this course of action to remedy the problem of its poor’s supply being claimed by strangers. Instead, in May 1699, it issued beggars’ badges to its own poor to distinguish them as genuine objects of local charity, as well as appointing constables to keep ‘all extraneous and vagrant poor’ out of the town. The town’s merchant guild offered a voluntary weekly contribution for its own poor, but there is no suggestion that the heritors and tenants were stented.14 Even Edinburgh town council, which had provided ‘lodgeing and intertainment’ at temporary housing in Greyfriars churchyard during the winter of 1696–7, to ‘all poor as well as those who hade no relation to this City’, decided to bring an end to this generosity in April 1697.15 In consideration of the expense incurred by the town for the provision of these beggars, the vast majority of whom were not residents, all of the stranger poor were ejected and given money to help fund their journey back to their own parishes. Poor relief costs were therefore a major concern in urban areas. A second reason for apprehension was the increase in thieving brought about by large numbers of hungry beggars roaming the streets. In Lanark (Lanarkshire) in 1698 a 24-hour guard was set up to watch the town’s pease fields in order to stop strangers stealing the town’s food.16 This was not a purely urban problem and an increase in famine-related crime appears to have been most serious in the rural north-east. In 1698 and 1699 Aberdeenshire Highlanders were convicted of stealing food in Kincardineshire.17 The problem was even worse in Banffshire where the authorities attempted to deal with a large 11 12 13 14

15 16 17

PKCA, B59/16/11, Perth Town Council Minutes 1693–1713, 22 Feb. 1697. Wilson, Annals of Hawick, 105–6. Renwick, Records of the Burgh of Peebles, 162. R. Renwick (ed.), Extracts from the records of the royal burgh of Stirling 1667–1752 (Glasgow, 1899), 90; W. B. Cook and D. B. Morris (eds), The Stirling guildry book: Extracts from the records of the merchant guild of Stirling A.D. 1592–1846 (Stirling, 1916), 82. Armet, Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 213. A. D. Robertson, Lanark: The Burgh and its Councils 1469–1880 (Lanark, 1974), 142. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 40.

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group of Highlanders that roamed throughout the county during the crisis stealing food and other goods from towns, villages and small hamlets.18 On 17 November 1700, the ringleader of the group, James MacPherson, was hanged in Banff for thieving and sorning throughout the county.19 During the famine period, partly due to the danger posed to local people by groups of thieves, but also because of the sheer number of poor people on the move throughout Scotland, attitudes towards strangers began to harden. Both the local population and the church became less likely to give aid to strangers, particularly in those areas worst affected by the famine. Compassion fatigue set in early in Orkney where lack of Christian charity towards the unfortunate victims of the famine extended beyond a failure to provide for the poor in life. The kirk session of Holm complained in spring 1695 that ‘there are many in the parish that are very refractory in giving assistance to the burying of the dead, especially if the deceased is of the meaner sort’. Reluctant coffin bearers were to be fined six shillings.20 Two years later, St Magnus kirk session in Kirkwall threatened to involve the town’s magistrates if parishioners continued to be ‘careless’ in their duty to bury the poor ‘timeously’.21 The authorities in Banffshire in particular struggled to cope with the problems resulting from large numbers of the poorest sections of society moving throughout the county. In June 1699 the Earl of Findlater wrote complaining of the ‘inhumanity of the people’ of the district as they ‘willfully neglect[ed] to burie the dead or carry them to convenient burial places’. Strangers were dying on the roads and in the fields in such large numbers that local residents had ceased to assist the authorities in their burial. Findlater was primarily worried that the unburied corpses would lead to an outbreak of disease and ordered that where any persone deceise . . . all persones next adjacent . . . doe . . . meit and convene and transport the sd deceised person and give deu attendance whill the corps deceised be decently interred in the nixt adjacent convenient burriall place.22 The kirk session of Drumoak, a parish close to Aberdeen, experienced a similar problem and claimed ‘that a generalitie of the people . . . were become so unchristian and inhuman’ that they would not help carry ‘the dead bodies of poor persons who were daily dying before them’.23 This problem, resulting from a large number of sick and malnourished strangers moving through the country in search of food and charity, was 18

19 20 21 22 23

The town of Cullen (Banffshire) also complained in 1698 that grain, kail and peat were being stolen by poor inhabitants who otherwise were ‘not in capacity to maintain themselves’, W. Cramond (ed.), The Annals of Cullen 961–1904 (Buckie, 1904), 59. Grant, Records of the County of Banff, 104. OA, OCR13/1, Holm KSR 1673–1707, 17 Mar., 28 Apr. 1695. OA, OCR14/75, Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral KSR 1669–1711, 9 Aug. 1697. Grant, Records of the County of Banff, 204. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire’, 40.

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not an issue solely contained within the high mortality regions of the north and north-east. In Monifieth in Angus, for example, a disproportionately large number of poor strangers compared to local people died in the parish. In particular, between September 1698 and December 1699 there was an almost unbroken weekly list recording the deaths of strangers. The numbers dying and the consequent cost of the burials to the kirk session increased so rapidly that on 12 March 1699 the minutes recorded that it was not possible to continue to provide them all with coffins.24 The solution to this growing problem in Monifieth was the same as that adopted in several other parishes during the famine period, which was the construction of a bier solely to transport strangers to their graves, instead of coffins.25 In Monifieth in particular, these increases in the deaths of strangers during the famine were disproportionately larger and peaked during different years than increases in deaths in the local community. As figure 6.1 demonstrates, parish burials peaked in crop years 1694 and 1696 after which the figure dropped below its pre-famine average. Burials of strangers, however, increased from crop year 1696 and peaked in crop year 1698. Strangers were dying in increased numbers during the famine, but at a time when local conditions had improved for the remaining resident population. Disproportionate stranger deaths may have occurred because strangers did not have the full access to the local church charity that parishioners did, and therefore could not purchase sufficient food to survive. Alternatively, they died from famine-related disease rather than starvation. In Tavastland, Finland, during the 1696–7 famine deaths increased significantly among the population which lived beside one of the region’s main roads.26 Malnourished strangers travelling along the road in search of food supplies spread epidemic diseases to the local community with devastating effects upon the population. Death was quite literally ‘on the march’.27 Strangers could have been travelling through the parish of Monifieth to reach the port town of Dundee and the session minutes reported on several occasions that strangers were found ‘dead on the road’.28 There is no evidence of an outbreak of epidemic disease among 24 25

26 27 28

DCA, CH2/270/1, Monifieth KSR 1678–1706, 12 Mar. 1699. Other parishes which specifically cited the cost of burying stranger poor as a reason for the construction of biers were: Blackford (Perthshire), 4 Dec. 1698, NAS, CH2/500/1, Blackford KSR 1697–1737; Peebles (Peeblesshire), 30 Apr. 1699, NAS, CH2/420/3, Peebles KSR 1691–1722; Longforgan (Perthshire), Apr. 1699, DCA, CH2/249/2, Longforgan KSR 1673–99 and Arbuthnott (Kincardineshire), Nov. 1699, G. A. Henderson, The Kirk of St. Ternan Arbuthnott (Edinburgh, 1962), 166. South Leith session, on the other hand, stated on 24 January 1695 that their bier was to be used for the burial of the ‘poor of ye place and stranger poor’, Robertson, South Leith Records, 178. Falkland (Fife) also constructed a common bier to bury all poor, including strangers, on 24 September 1699, NAS, CH2/428/3, Falkland KSR 1661–1706. Jutikkala, ‘The Great Finnish Famine’, 51. Pierre Chaunu in Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, Vol. 2, 419. DCA, CH2/270/1, Monifieth KSR 1678–1706, 8 Nov. 1696, 10 Oct. 1697.

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164 35

Burials of parishioners Burials of strangers

30

Number of burials

25

20

15

10

5

0 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703 1704 Crop year

Figure 6.1: Burials in Monifieth (Angus).29

the local population, although fear of spreading disease was the reason that the bodies of strangers were burned in St Madoes (Perthshire).30 If disease was responsible for the deaths of strangers in Monifieth it does not appear to have spread throughout the community as there was no subsequent increase in the burial rate of local people. Malnutrition and starvation were probably the primary causes of those strangers’ deaths. The burial register of Montrose, another Angus parish, was comparatively poorly kept, preventing any estimation of numbers, but four entries between November 1697 and May 1698 relate to people who had ‘died in the hills’.31 Presumably these individuals were moving out of upland areas into the town or surrounding villages in search of food and charity. Similarly to those who died in Monifieth, starvation was the likely cause of their deaths. Although a number of parishes referred to the expense and problems involved in burying strangers, few actually listed their deaths in the burial registers. Those that did indicate that, as in Monifieth, the greatest number of strangers were buried in crop year 1698.32 In Coldingham (Berwickshire) deaths of strangers occurred mainly during the spring, summer and autumn of 1699, when burials among the resident popula29

29 30 31 32

The data used to compile this graph was taken from GROS, OPR310/3, Monifieth Baptisms. Young, ‘Rural Society in Scotland’, 46. GROS, OPR312/8, Montrose Burials, 27 Nov. 1697, 17 and 29 Jan., 1 May 1698. A gap in the burial register for Montrose from 25 December 1698 to 4 February 1701 means that it is not possible to determine whether burials of strangers was higher in crop year 1698.

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70

Number of burials

60

All burials Stranger burials

50 40 30 20 10 0 SPR 97

AUT 97

SPR 98

AUT SPR 98 99 Season

AUT 99

SPR 00

AUT 00

Figure 6.2: Burials in Coldingham (Berwickshire), by season.33

tion also peaked (see figure 6.2). In Linlithgow (West Lothian) data is only available from summer 1698, but the first recorded burial of a stranger was in May 1699 and between that month and October of the same year twenty-two burials of strangers were recorded. The following year only one stranger appeared in the burial register.34 In Kirkhill (Inverness-shire) six strangers were buried between 1690 and 1696, but this rose to thirty-five across the following three years.35 The differentiation between those people who belonged to a parish and strangers became even more evident as increasing pressure was placed upon kirk sessions and town councils to suppress the movement of strangers and discourage the distribution of charity to them. Every parish was ordered to maintain its own poor and restrain vagabond beggars who were to return to the parish of their birth, or, if that was unknown, to the last parish of at least seven years’ residence. In compliance with this legislation, the town council and kirk session of Ayr provided some stranger poor with money to leave the town and return to the parish of their birth, while other poor people who had previously received church pensions were cut off because they had not been born in the parish. On 8 November 1697 one fortunate woman had her pension restored as examination of the parish register had led to her ‘being found to be born here’ after all.36 33

33 34 35 36

Data obtained from SPHRP, OPR732/1, Coldingham Burials. SPHRP, OPR668/7+8, Linlithgow Burials. Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty’, 44. Between 20 September and 8 November 1697 there are entries relating to non-native poor being removed from the poor roll. AyrA, CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8.

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As discussed in Chapter four, not all parishes enforced a means of supply for their own poor. The poor in those parishes frequently resorted to seeking help elsewhere, but the ruling against providing relief to stranger poor meant that this was much more difficult to obtain. Some sessions, such as that in Kilmartin parish in Argyllshire, enforced this not so much as a result of the privy council proclamation, but through concern about the financial cost of supplying stranger poor. This was similar to the complaints voiced by many town councils, indicating that it was not only urban areas that the poor moved to in order to receive supply. In December 1697 Kilmartin session recorded that such ‘a great resorte of stranger poores’ had moved into the vicinity that the poor of the parish were ‘much neglected’ by the fact that the church could not afford to supply both its ‘own & forrigne [stranger] poor’. They concluded that in future only poor residents would be eligible to receive charity out of the poor’s fund.37 This rule was not enforced vigorously in all parishes, as can be seen from the example of Guthrie kirk session in Angus which recorded the distribution of money to strangers throughout the famine period. Between January 1696 and October 1700 there was only one month recorded in which money was not distributed to strangers, with the highest number of strangers receiving financial aid in crop year 1697. Strangers from nineteen parishes across the county, and to a lesser extent from outside Angus, were recorded as having received charity, such as ‘John Watt an old man in the parish of Tannadice’ and ‘Marrie Guthrie widow of Mr Thomas Ramsay late schoolmaster in Monikie with five small children’.38 The recipients of charitable distributions to strangers by Guthrie kirk session during the famine period differed significantly from those receiving charity in the immediate pre-famine period. During the famine the number of recipients from counties other than Angus fell from 27 per cent to only 9 per cent of the total. During the famine the highest number of distributions to people from a single parish went to parishioners of Brechin, 21.8 per cent. This parish was declared vacant after it was abandoned in August 1697 by the minister, John Skinner, who refused to take the Oath of Allegiance.39 If the kirk session was unable to provide adequate provision for the poor without a minister, then people may have been forced to move out of the parish to find supply elsewhere. Prior to the famine the parishes of origin had been much more varied, with strangers from as far away as Kirkwall (Orkney), Glasgow (Lanarkshire) and Haddington (East Lothian) claiming charity. Throughout the famine the only strangers from outwith Angus came from the neighbouring counties of Aberdeenshire 37 38 39

NAS, CH2/793/1, Kilmartin KSR 1691–1706, 23 Dec. 1697. NAS, CH2/535/1, Guthrie KSR 1663–1737, 26 Jul. and 12 Apr. 1696. The parish of Brechin had two ministers’ stipends, but the first charge had been vacant since the minister’s death in 1691. H. Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Vol. 5 Synods of Fife, and of Angus and Mearns (Edinburgh, 1925), 376–80.

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and Kincardineshire, although in both periods unidentified ‘strangers’ received charity without a record of their parish of origin.40 A study of distributions to vagrants by Monikie kirk session, in Angus, between 1660 and 1710 concluded that vagrants moved ‘around a restricted area, possibly through a regular circuit of parishes’.41 The session minutes of Guthrie reflect this trend with the majority of charitable payments to strangers given to residents of Angus. During the famine, the average distances travelled by strangers to Guthrie was reduced and the number of claimants from neighbouring parishes increased. It is difficult to establish a reason for this trend, but it could be that those migrants who did travel longer distances during the famine to obtain poor relief were attracted to towns rather than rural parishes. Guthrie’s position in the eastern half of Angus, closer to the small, inland towns of Brechin and Forfar than the large port towns Dundee and Montrose, could have meant that it did not attract migrants moving towards these grain markets. Forfar and Brechin town councils made no mention of the issues of strangers, beggars or grain shortage and the proximity of these towns to good agricultural land may have shielded them from the shortages experienced elsewhere. By contrast, Monifieth, Lunan, Kinnell, Guthrie, Rescobie, Kettins and Newtyle seemed to suffer the greatest problems in Angus of strangers and beggars moving into the parishes and seeking help or dying there. Lunan, Kinnell, Guthrie and Rescobie, in particular, are close to the towns of Forfar and Brechin in which grain shortages do not appear to have been a problem. It is possible that these markets were the best supplied in the area and strangers in need passed through the four parishes en route to purchase grain at the markets. The large number of stranger poor from Brechin seeking relief in Guthrie would then be explained by the fact that they were in need not because there was no grain available to buy, but because they could not afford to purchase it. Anecdotes told 100 years later led the Reverend Mr William Gordon, minister of Urquhart in Moray, to record in the Statistical Account that during the famine people from Angus were forced to travel great distances and actually walked over the Grampian mountains into Morayshire to obtain food supplies.42 It is unlikely that anyone travelled through the difficult terrain of the Highlands, one of the worst-affected parts of the country, to buy grain from the fertile coastal area of Morayshire, which would in turn have been difficult to transport overland. Desperation may have forced some individuals to travel from Angus as there was still sufficient 40

41

42

Data gathered from NAS, CH2/535/1, Guthrie KSR 1663–1737, Jan. 1692 to Dec. 1699. There were gaps in the session minutes prior to January 1692 and from 30 June 1695 to January 1696. The pre-famine figure, therefore, relates to January 1692 to 30 June 1695 and the famine figures relate to the period January 1696 to December 1699. I. D. Whyte, ‘Population mobility in early modern Scotland’, in Houston and Whyte, Scottish Society, 56–7. J. Sinclair (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, Vol. 16 Banffshire, Moray and Nairnshire (Wakefield, 1982), 699.

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grain being produced in parts of Morayshire to export by sea to other parts of the country.43 The same was equally true of parts of Angus which would have been far more accessible than travel through the Highland parishes of Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Morayshire. The general trends of movement appear to have been from Highland to Lowland regions and from rural to urban parishes but, given the scale and necessity of migration to seek charity and food while the bulk of the country’s population was experiencing problems, it is entirely possible that some people were forced to travel long distances to secure adequate sustenance. Although some historians have argued that the famine was brought to an end by the improved harvest of 1699,44 the impact of the crisis upon the population was certainly far from resolved by an increase in the native grain supply. As late as 1700 the movement of strangers still appears to have been a problem in the north-east. The heritors and session of Aberdour (Aberdeenshire) met in February in pursuance of the Act of the Commissioners of the shire that every land should mantain their own poor and a scourger to be appointed for holding out stranger beggars it was unanimously agreed to do it as far as they could but withal it wold be hard to keep out strangers there being so great multitudes of poor going up and down.45 Given the severity of the crisis in that region, it is not surprising that exceptional levels of migration and vagrancy were still occurring. In Peebles (Peeblesshire) in the same month the town council was still concerned about the number of strangers residing and begging within the town to the detriment of the native poor.46 Famine-related movement continued because food prices had not fallen low enough to remove the impetus for migration. There was, however, a different kind of movement that was not related to the need to secure charity and in many cases was not evident from the charitable distributions recorded in the kirk session registers, or in the concerns detailed in the town council minute books. Migration of tenants and subtenants The movement of people of more substantial means between farms and estates formed a smaller, yet significant, section of migrants. Short-distance migration was a common feature of seventeenth-century life in rural Scotland. Typically, Lowland migrants, both individuals and family groups, 43

44 45 46

See, for example, papers concerning the shipment of grain from Findhorn to ports in the Firth of Forth even during the worst year of the famine, crop year 1698, in NAS, RH15/101/1, Bill of Loading, Findhorn 6 Apr. 1699, and RH12/101/5, Charter party between Alexr Pyper and Malcolm Mcaulay, Leith 24 Jan. 1699. As discussed earlier in the Introduction and Chapter one. Extract from the kirk session minutes 10 Feb. 1700, in Cramond, The Church of Aberdour, 42. Renwick, Records of the Burgh of Peebles, 162.

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moved between parishes less than ten miles apart, and in many cases individuals moved from an adjacent parish.47 A high proportion were young and single, particularly farm servants who frequently moved between estates or to different farms on an estate at six-month or yearly intervals, usually at Whitsunday and Martinmas. A smaller proportion of this type of migration comprised tenants moving upon the completion of their leases. However, tenants were ‘less migratory than cottars or farm servants and tenants on larger holdings were less mobile than smaller tenants’.48 A study of estate rentals in four Angus baronies between 1650 and 1714 concluded that 45 per cent of tenancies lasted five years or less and the resulting move was an average of only 3.7 miles.49 The famine crisis had a mixed impact upon this type of migration. In some areas it seems to have suppressed the movement of people, but in others it clearly provided different opportunities. Ian Whyte has observed that Proprietors and estate officers usually made great efforts to retain tenants when times were difficult – partly out of paternalism but also, one suspects, because they did not want tenants to remove leaving unpaid arrears of rent. On the estates of the Earls of Panmure for example, turnover of tenants during the crisis of the late 1690s was actually lower than in previous good years. There was nowhere for them to go with conditions generally being so severe.50 The same reasons played a key part in the retention of tenants on the Duchess of Buccleuch’s estate. However, the pleading petitions by tenants and the scruples deliberated by factors indicate that the emphasis was on the landowner permitting tenants to remain, rather than the tenants actively choosing to remove elsewhere.51 Her Grace’s chamberlains in Teviotdale were greatly troubled by the situation they were faced with following the region’s disastrous harvest of 1696. Upon the discovery in April 1697 that not only had virtually none of the rent been paid for the previous year, but that the tenants had very little prospect of making up this debt in the ensuing year, the chamberlains considered whether the tacks should in fact be reset to the tenants or whether they should be removed: it seems not only hard to turn out so many tennents the most part whereof and their predicessors have lived in her Graces lands past memorie of man But also inconvenient to her Grace to have thes 47 48 49 50

51

Houston, ‘Geographical mobility in Scotland’, 387. Whyte, ‘Population mobility in early modern Scotland’, 49–51. Detailed in Houston, ‘Geographical mobility in Scotland’, 379. I. D. Whyte, ‘Migration in early-modern Scotland and England: a comparative perspective’, in C. G. Pooley and I. D. Whyte (eds), Migrants, Emigrants and Immigrants: A Social History of Migration (London, 1991), 93–4. Similarly in Kinross-shire, where conditions were not nearly as bad, Sir William Bruce was prepared to ‘spare’ his tenants who were in arrears ‘for a Little Whyle to see what they can do’, NAS, GD29/2004/9, Master Kennoway from Blane, 12 Aug. 1697.

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three barronies for the most part cast waist . . . they give their humble opinion that the land be sett to such of the tennents as are not in any considerable arrear befor but only are at a loss by the present calamitie.52 This situation was not repeated on the Earl of Breadalbane’s estates during the same crisis, as tenants struggling with several years of debts and an increasing inability to pay their rents during seasons of very high prices, found that neighbouring landowners were willing to provide them with land at reduced rentals. Dugall Campbell, factor to Breadalbane, feared in February 1698 that the Earl’s lands in Ardmaddy (Kilbrandon parish, Argyllshire) would be ‘laid waste’ due to the ‘ill condition’ of the tenantry there. He reported that ‘none will come to yo[u]r Lo[rdshi]p[’s] lands from other places’ as they were being offered at full rent only, whereas neighbouring landlords were prepared to offer land at ‘half rent & free of all fears’.53 The Earl, already facing problems of reduced rental income due to many of his tenants’ inability to pay, was anxious to avoid losing tenants who would leave their land unfarmed, which would result in no rental being produced at all, and with no prospect of any of the debt ever being recovered. The sufficient availability of alternative vacant land offered at preferential rates must have been caused either by an increase in faminerelated deaths in the region or by tenants removing to seek better opportunities in other areas. The same must also have been true on the Black Isle in the north-eastern Highlands which witnessed an influx of population from the north-west of the country, particularly to towns and villages involved in the salt fish trade, clearly indicating that the crisis had freed up more attractive economic opportunities in this region.54 This balance between the desire to gather in rental from the tenants and the necessity of retaining them despite their inability to pay was further highlighted by actions taken on the Earl of Breadalbane’s estates. With the rests of rent for Glen Dorchart and Strathfillan in Perthshire standing at £493 9s 4d for crop 1697, the Earl instructed Alexander McNab to gather this money in the February of the following year. If any tenants failed to deliver their payments McNab was to appoint officers to seize and poind their cattle.55 At Lawers in western Perthshire in the spring following the bad harvest of 1698, Archibald, one of the factors, adopted similar tactics and fearing the worst did use his utmost indevour to get all the rents he could among his fingers and because of his oppression and severity in 52

53

54 55

NAS, GD224/906/16/8, Siderunt of The Duchess of Buccleuch Comts at Landsetting, Hawick, 12 Apr. 1697. NAS, GD112/39/177/8, Dug[all] Campbell to Earle of Breadalbane, Ardmadie, 12 Feb. 1698. Alston, ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty’, 35, 44. NAS, GD112/21/224, Scroll of the Rests Glendochart and Strafillane for the year 1697.

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exacting bygone rests in ane instant of the poor tenents they were all just on the winge to goe away to other mens land and some of them had actualy taken Land. Mungo Campbell, anxious to stop the tenants deserting the Earl’s land, negotiated a reduction in the price of their meal rent, explaining ‘they are greatly impoverished and not able to pay the rent [any] longer prices current in the country being verie dear so there will be a necessity to give it [to] them’.56 The tenants were granted half of their meal rent converted to money at £5 per boll, an indicator of the severity of their situation, at a time when a boll of meal in the region was probably in excess of £9.57 Breadalbane thus reduced the amount of debt recoverable in future years from the tenants to prevent them leaving his estates. A letter from Breadalbane in 1698 indicates that there was also a more humanitarian reason for helping the tenants. He recorded that ‘I am sensible of the lowness of the Condition of the tennants, and that they are to be used tenderly although it is not to be made known to them’.58 This does not preclude the Earl from also being anxious to avoid the desertion of his land by tenants, such as that which occurred on Arran in Bute, part of the Hamilton estates. Many of the tenants were in difficulties by the summer of 1698. In a few cases the farms had been deserted by their occupiers. One farm possessed only by subtenants described as ‘part broke’ was laid to waste for that crop year because the tenants had run away. Lord Basil Hamilton passed an act of court ordering those tenants who had abandoned their possessions to return as they were still held liable to pay the rents due. In this part of the region it was opportunities not on neighbouring but on foreign estates that were enticing tenants away from Hamilton land. A completely ‘broken’ tenant had also deserted his tack, without full payment of his rent for the previous crop year, and had fled to Ireland, presumably in search of better prospects being offered in that country by the greater availability of cheaper leases.59 In Argyllshire on the west coast there was greater opportunity for migration between estates than on the Panmure estates on the east coast of Scotland. Despite Whyte’s claim that the Panmure tenants had nowhere else to go due to the severity of conditions, it seems unlikely that circumstances were as bad there as on the Breadalbane estates. Tenants in 56

57

58 59

NAS, GD112/39/178/10, M[ungo] Campbell to Earle of Breadalbane, Lawers, 4 Apr. 1699. The Perthshire fiar for crop year 1698 was £9, Gibson and Smout, Prices, Food and Wages, 97. In December 1698 a deal was proposed to sell meal from the Breadalbane estates at £9 6s the boll and it is likely that prices in April 1699 would be at a similar level, NAS, GD112/39/177/21, Major General Maitland to [Breadalbane], Fort William, 6 Dec. 1698. NAS, GD170/629/76, Breadalbane to Alexander Campell of Barcaldine, 15 Jan. 1698. NRAS, Hamilton MSS, 2177/2922, Memorandum of the Condition of the Tennents in the Isle of Arran taken up by Lord Basil Hamilton, 14 Jul. 1698.

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Argyllshire could move between estates and landowners had to offer rent reductions to persuade current tenants to stay and encourage prospective tenants to take up vacant lands, even in the years after the famine. This movement, and the steps taken to encourage or discourage it, appears to have been more specifically a result of famine conditions on the west coast and less related to the normal movement between farms and estates that took place during non-crisis years. The proximity of the Hamilton estates to Ulster meant that as well as relief being provided from Ireland in the form of grain imports, short-distance emigration to a country free from famine was also available to struggling tenants on the west coast of Scotland. This movement of tenants abroad was not a factor solely associated with the famine in Scotland, although the crisis certainly increased the number of emigrants. Even before the bad harvests and famine of the latter part of the decade, the Hamilton estates were losing tenants to Ireland. As early as March 1691 steps were being taken to prevent two tenants moving to Ireland and leaving their rents unpaid.60 This emigration was caused as much by the pull factors of cheap leases in Ireland as the increasing push factors from Scotland evident during the famine. Emigration The marked growth in population movement within Scotland resulting from the famine crisis was mirrored by increased migration abroad. The internal movement of people to parishes or areas which offered improved prospects during this period of economic crisis was complemented by an increase in both temporary and permanent emigration. These trends of movement abroad, similar to those within Scotland, appear predominantly to have been extensions of pre-famine emigration patterns to Europe, England, America and principally Ireland. Scottish emigration to countries across northern Europe in the late seventeenth century was primarily economic in nature with Scots taking up employment opportunities in trade and foreign military forces. The biggest single cause of movement of Scots to Europe during the 1690s was the war with France between 1689 and 1697 which resulted in large numbers of Scottish men, possibly as many as 30,000, particularly Highlanders, serving King William as soldiers and sailors.61 This temporary movement of men abroad is not considered to be a migratory movement, but upon the declaration of peace in 1697 with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick, many of 60 61

NAS, GD406/1/11770, David Marshall to John Clark, Hamilton, 23 Mar. 1691. Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun estimated a total of 30,000 men and broke this figure down to 8,000 Scots in the Royal Navy and a further 2,000 to 3,000 in the Dutch navy, in addition to Scots soldiers making up twenty battalions of foot and six squadrons of dragoons. Supplementary to those Scottish regiments, he claimed to be ‘credibly informed’ that a fifth of the English forces were also made up of Scots or Scots-Irish men, ‘The First Discourse’, in Daiches, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 34.

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these men were to feature among the migrants seeking charity throughout Scotland, as well as financial support for emigration.62 Movement of Scots over the border into England was relatively common in the late seventeenth century, particularly from the parishes adjacent to the border and the southern Scottish counties. People moved on a temporary and even daily basis across the border to trade, take livestock to northern English markets and to take part in religious ceremonies.63 During the 1690s there are references in kirk session minutes to the irregular marriages of Scots taking place in England. Other moves, the extent of which again are difficult to estimate, were on a permanent basis to take up employment, or migration into English towns. There may have been an increased flow of Scots into England, which did not experience a famine. However, examination of charity distributed to strangers and parishioners by kirk sessions across Scotland detail very few entries in which people were given money to assist a move to England.64 Comments are also absent from kirk session minute books or town council records in the southern Scottish counties on any perceived movement of people from the region, or through it, to England. Coldingham parish in Berwickshire, however, recorded a large number of strangers dying in the parish in crop year 1698, as discussed earlier, which could represent the deaths of poor migrants attempting to get to England. Nevertheless, the migration, temporary or permanent, of Scots to England and northern Europe during the 1690s is difficult to quantify and with the exception of men involved in military service, the numbers must have been relatively small. The movement of the poor into England in particular must have been stifled by the effective and rigid Poor Law system prohibiting the distribution of relief to strangers. Simultaneously, the movement of Scots to the Continent was suppressed by the famine conditions experienced in many countries. Consequently, it is the two other destinations of emigrants, America and more particularly Ulster, that have been examined in more detail to identify the characteristics of people emigrating and their motives for leaving Scotland. On a much smaller scale than emigration to Europe was the movement of Scots to the plantations of America.65 Even during the famine period the 62

63

64

65

A number of kirk session registers record the distribution of charity to soldiers in particular. Those for Ayr specifically cite migration to Ireland of both soldiers and the wives or widows of soldiers as a reason for requesting financial aid. See AyrA, CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8 and CH2/751/9, Ayr KSR 1698–1709. Examples of these types of movements can be found in some kirk session records; in Melrose (Roxburghshire) eight people were reported to the session for travelling to Newcastle on the Sabbath, NAS, CH2/386/2, Melrose KSR 1668–1702, 19 Jul. 1698; in Galashiels (Selkirkshire) parishioners also breached the Lord’s day by purchasing grain in England, CH2/1255/1, Galashiels KSR 1692–1710, 20 Aug. 1696. Such entries are not, however, absent from the registers and Mitchison and Leneman specifically highlighted this type of migrant as receiving session charity, Mitchison and Leneman, Girls in Trouble, 16. Between 1650 and 1700 roughly 7,000 Scots migrated to America, 60,000 to 100,000 to

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prospects offered in the English colonies were not considered sufficient to tempt many migrants.66 A significant proportion of those Scots departing for the colonies during the seventeenth century were forced migrants, transported for religious or political crimes in the years prior to the Revolution.67 Despite changes in these policies following 1689, forced transportation continued during the famine years; in January 1696, thirtyfour ‘whores’ were banished to the English plantations in America for life.68 Other categories of transported criminals generally had their sentence transmuted from death for crimes such as theft.69 Transportation, or even voluntary migration, for religious reasons was significantly reduced following the Revolution and emigration of Scots to America slowed following 1689.70 Throughout the 1690s, voluntary transportation of indentured servants to the plantations in America or the West Indies was a numerically significant form of organised population movement. In October 1698 Alexander Pyper, the Edinburgh merchant, shipped 120 men and boys to Barbados to be sold as indentured servants.71 Whether the economic difficulties of the period served as a push factor to those who engaged to take the voyage is unclear, but one of the organisers of the venture stated a few months prior to departure that there was an ‘abundance of all sorts willing’ to go.72 A contemporary observer commented in 1700 that ‘our people in great multitudes, have been forced to sell themselves as bound servants; and actually continue in Bondage, to other Nations in their Plantations’,73 suggesting that the crisis had indeed played a role in individuals’ decisions

66

67

68 69

70

71

72 73

Ireland and 10,000 to 20,000 to Europe and England, T. C. Smout, N. C. Landsman and T. M. Devine, ‘Scottish emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in N. Canny (ed.), Europeans on the Move (Oxford, 1994), 90. Patrick Fitzgerald suggested that 2,000 Scots emigrated to America and the Caribbean during the 1690s, Fitzgerald, ‘“Black ’97”’, 78. The political and religious upheavals in Scotland caused by the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Union resulted in the forced exile of about 2,000 Scots between 1648 and 1660 as prisoners of war to the English colonies in North America and the West Indies, Smout, Landsman and Devine, ‘Scottish emigration’, 86. David Dobson also claimed that ‘relatively few’ Scots in the colonies were voluntary migrants, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607–1785 (Athens, 1994), 55. NAS, PC4/2, PCM 1696–9, 26 Jan. 1696. There are numerous examples of individuals either initially sentenced to transportation or receiving it after a grant of clemency from the death sentence in the privy council register. The case of Joseph Martine, however, states that he was offered the option of banishment rather than stand trial for his ‘various crimes’, PCRA 1696–9, 9 Dec. 1697. One noticeable exception was the migration of some Scots Episcopalians, particularly ministers, who settled in Virginia as members of the Anglican Church after 1689, Dobson, Scottish Emigration, 53, 58. NAS, RH15/101/2, Bill of Loading, Leith, 5 Oct. 1698. See also I. H. Adams and M. Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope: Scottish Emigration to North America 1603–1803 (Edinburgh, 1993), 21, which records that 112 people were shipped from Montrose to Pennsylvania in February 1696. NAS, RH15/101/5, William Fall to Mr Daniell Edward Mason, 6 Aug. 1698. Anon., A Letter to a Member of Parliament, 6.

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to migrate. A proportion of those Scots who emigrated to North America prior to the 1690s were involved in two attempts to establish Scottish colonies, at East New Jersey in 1683 and Stuart’s Town, South Carolina in 1684.74 The failure of these two colonies to bring wealth and improved trade to Scotland resulted in a further attempt to found a colony in America which occurred during the famine period. Migration to Darien The well-documented migration of 2,800 people to set up a Scots colony at Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama, organised by the Company Trading to Africa and the Indies in 1698 and 1699, aroused a great deal of enthusiasm and volunteers from Scotland. It was the largest single movement of Scots to America in the 1690s, but was less directly connected to the famine in Scotland than the others. The settlement of the colony was arranged and sponsored by the company and prospective migrants applied to take part in the settlement. In economic terms, the type of migrant was also quite different, with 300 ‘Gentlemen Volunteers’ forming part of the first settlement.75 Soldiers also formed a large proportion of the settlers, required by the company to enforce and protect the new colony. This last category also formed a substantial number of the migrants mentioned in kirk session books in receipt of charity throughout Scotland, and in Ayr in particular, as having received financial aid to migrate to Ulster. The main reason for men of this profession appearing amongst migrants was the disbanding of Scottish soldiers after 1697 which resulted in a large number of men seeking employment or financial support in the form of church charity during the middle of the famine. Many soldiers took the opportunity to secure better economic prospects during the famine by migrating to Darien.76 A significant proportion of migrants must have been merely attracted by the good financial prospects of the new colony. The motives behind this migration are difficult to determine and were probably mixed and dependant on the economic status of the individual migrant. What is known is that many more people wished to take part in the settlement than there were actual places for on the first voyage. Lord Seafield, for example, complained of the ‘multitudes of broken officers’ that came to him seeking a position in the colony.77 A letter from the Earl of Panmure to the Duke of Hamilton which discussed the migration of men to Darien in 1699 stated: I doubt not but they will send more men then was at first intended but am afraid they will not be able to send so many as you propose for tho 74

75 76 77

N. C. Landsman, Scotland and its first American Colony, 1683–1765 (Princeton, 1985), 99–147. See also Dobson, Scottish Emigration, 40–73. J. Prebble, The Darien Disaster (London, 1968), 100. Prebble, The Darien Disaster, 100; Dobson, Scottish Emigration, 79. Prebble, The Darien Disaster, 100.

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there be no want of men yet there is such scarcity of provisions here that it would be hard to gett as much as would but serve them for the voyage.78 Presumably to encourage prospective emigrants to support the colony, the privy council issued a ‘Proclamation discharging the transporting of persons to the plantations of foreigners in America’ in December 1698. Such actions were considered ‘inconsistent both w[i]t[h] the honour and Interest’ of Scotland and special permission was necessary before people could be shipped from Scotland to the other colonies.79 It seems unlikely, given the Earl of Panmure’s assertions, that the Darien settlement needed this kind of support and when Andrew Sympson petitioned the privy council for a licence to transport eighty servants to the West Indies it was granted. He claimed the servants ‘were rather a burden then a benefite to the nation’ and were people who were forced ‘to seek their Bread & Subsistence’ abroad. Given the timing of the petition during the worst famine year, the crisis was almost certainly a factor in the emigrants’ decision to leave Scotland. Nevertheless, prior to the ship’s departure the council thought it wise to have the servants questioned about whether they had engaged to emigrate voluntarily or had been coerced by Sympson and his partners.80 The restricted numbers involved in migration to foreign plantations and Darien, coupled with the colony’s failure by the end of the famine period, meant that despite the organised nature of the movement it made up a relatively small part of migration during the 1690s. The largest movement of Scots abroad during the famine period was to Ulster, which reflected the importance of that province as a destination for Scots emigrants throughout the seventeenth century. By the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 more Scots lived in Ulster than in any other country in the world apart from Scotland.81 Migration to Ulster This movement must firstly be seen as an extension of seventeenth-century migration from Scotland to Ireland in terms of the continuing pull of cheap land available and better prospects offered through Plantation settlement.82 The investment of Scottish landowners in Ulster in particular resulted in the majority of Scots settling in that province, an estimated 78

79 80

81 82

NAS, GD406/1/4383, Earl of Panmure to the Duke of Hamilton, Edinburgh, 2 May 1699. D. Watt, The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh, 2007), 123–4. PCRA 1696–9, 27 Dec. 1698. PCRA 1696–9, ‘Act allowing Andrew Sympson to transport some persons to the West Indies’, 14 Feb. 1699. Smout, Scottish Trade, 93. See, for example, M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London, 1973), and J. G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill, 1962).

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20–30,000 by 1641.83 By the late seventeenth century strong trade links had been established between the west coast of Scotland and Ulster. The proximity of Ayrshire, Argyllshire and Wigtownshire to Belfast, Londonderry and the north-east of Ulster meant that voyages could be made in a day by relatively small boats. Indeed, from the late 1630s some Ulster Scots who would not conform to the Anglican established church in Ireland travelled across the North Channel to celebrate communion and have their children baptised by Presbyterian ministers in Scotland.84 Analysis of hearth tax and poll tax returns reveals that by the late 1660s Scots made up 20 per cent of the total population and 60 per cent of the British population of Ulster.85 Migration from Scotland continued slowly throughout the 1670s and 1680s. However, it was in the 1690s that a large influx of Scots to Ulster occurred. Scottish Presbyterian settlement grew rapidly between 1691 and 1720,86 the majority of which is believed to have taken place during the 1690s.87 It is by no means certain that the end of the famine brought an end to Scottish migration to Ulster as evidenced by continued movement between the two countries after the famine. In 1714, for example, Bishop MacMahon wrote complaining about an influx of Scots moving into County Monaghan: ‘Calvinists are coming over here daily in large groups of families, occupying the town and villages, seizing the farms in the richer parts of the country and expelling the natives’.88 Nevertheless, the most concentrated volume of movement occurred between 1690 and 1700 during which period leases were easily available in Ulster and economic prospects in Scotland were at their worst. From 1715, about the time when many of these leases were running out and rents were rising, the migratory pattern changed and many of those Scots who had temporarily settled in Ulster emigrated to the British colonies in America in search of the better prospects available there.89 During the 1690s, it was the lure of cheap rents and increased opportunities in the years immediately following the Williamite war in Ireland that encouraged Scots to settle in Ulster. The war had resulted in the destruction of property and crops and much of the land was left wasted or barren for at least part of the duration of hostilities. Thousands of protestants abandoned the land, fleeing in advance of James’ armies. Much cultivated 83 84 85

86

87

88 89

Smout, Landsman and Devine, ‘Scottish emigration’, 78. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, 122. S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), 161. A. Gailey, ‘The Scots Element in North Irish Popular Culture’, Ethnologia Europaea, 8 (1975), 5–7. L. M. Cullen, ‘Population Trends in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Economic and Social Review, 6 (1975), 151. J. Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 2001), 171. See, for example, R. J. Dickson, Ulster Emigration to Colonial America 1718–1775 (London, 1966), and P. Griffin, The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689–1764 (Princeton, 2001).

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land was destroyed by the armies of both sides and following the success of William’s army in Ulster some native Irish catholics migrated to settle in the southern counties. Land deserted by the Irish during the war in counties Donegal and Antrim was subsequently settled by families from the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland.90 The condition of the county is summed up by William Monlyneux who wrote in 1696 about the tenants on his estate: Upon my arrivall from England Anno 1690 my father committed the management of the Manor of Castle Dillon wholly to my care. The land was then almost destitute of tenants being all driven away by the late calamitys in the Kingdome, but some of them returned and many new ones offer’d themselves, and thus it was that all the leases except some few were renew’d with abatements of the rent for some certaine time till the poore people could put themselves in a condition of living and paying their land lord, upon these new leases I advanced the full rent considerably and if ever I renew them againe, I hope to raise them yet much higher.91 As with more localised movement between Scottish parishes, a lack of sufficient sources impedes estimation of the scale of this emigration. Most estimates have had to rely on contemporary comment which has placed Scottish emigration to Ulster during the famine at possibly in excess of 100,000 people. A pamphlet published in 1698 suggested that 80,000 families had migrated to Ireland from Scotland since 1688.92 Another contemporary report by Bishop Synge put the figure much lower, at 50,000 families migrating between 1689 and 1715.93 Nevertheless, historians have considered both these claims to be exaggerated as a result of Anglican fears about the religious impact of this influx of Presbyterians; ‘Anglicans had before them the dreadful example of Scotland, where Presbyterianism had only a few years before supplanted episcopacy as the established religion’.94 A less alarmist contemporary account reflects more closely the conclusions drawn from the limited demographic data available, that between 1690 and 90

91

92

93 94

In Inishowen, in County Donegal, they joined the Anglican church and formed a congregation of 400–500. R. Mant, History of the Church of Ireland Vol. II (London, 1840), 21–2. PRONI, MIC/80/3, Lease book of the manor of Castledillon, Co. Armagh, with very detailed observations by William Molyneux, c. 1700. J. G. Simms, ‘The establishment of protestant ascendancy, 1691–1714’, in T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds), A New History of Ireland, Vol. IV: Eighteenth Century Ireland 1691– 1800 (Oxford, 1986), 23. Simms, ‘The establishment of protestant ascendancy’, 23. Seán Connolly, as quoted in Fitzgerald, ‘“Black ’97”’, 79. Hostility towards Scots Presbyterians was also due to the fact that they arrived in such great numbers, combined with their economic success and power in Ulster once established. See, for example, [J. Kirkpatrick], An historical essay upon the loyalty of Presbyterians in Great-Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to this present year 1713 ([Belfast], 1713) and J. C. Beckett, Protestant Dissent in Ireland 1687–1780 (London, 1948), 36–8.

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1698 approximately 50,000 Scots settled in Ulster, 20,000 of them between the famine years 1696 and 1698.95 If Sir William Petty’s estimate of approximately 100,000 Scots settled in Ulster by 1691 can be believed,96 then it seems reasonable to indicate that the Scottish population in that province increased by something in the region of 50 per cent by 1715. This would largely fit with the finding that ‘the Presbyterians were able to record a doubling of their congregations between 1660 and 1715’,97 the majority of which must have taken place due to migration after 1691. Although this famine migration is connected to the flows of trade and migration between Scotland and Ireland prior to 1690, these ties were not the sole aspects on which movement to Ulster was based. Movement throughout Scotland was to areas of better supply of food or money and this is reflected in the relatively short move from the west coast to Ulster. Despite its proximity to Scotland, Ireland did not experience harvest failures, or famine, on anything like the Scottish scale; during the late 1690s, though, the country was not entirely isolated from adverse weather conditions. In 1698 the General Synod of Ulster, ‘considering the unseasonableness of the Weather in seed Time and Harvest these Years last Past, [and] the Scarcity of Victualls in Scotland’, appointed a fast to be held before the harvest ‘to deprecate the Lord’s Anger with the Evidences & Effects thereof, and wrestle with Him for a Blessing to our selves and others, particularly for a Seasonable Harvest this Year’.98 Despite the Synod’s concern, they gave no indication that Ulster had actually experienced grain shortage; indeed throughout the period of famine in Scotland, Ireland was able to export grain to ports in the west of Scotland to supply the shortfall in the domestic supply, as discussed in Chapter three. The ease and regularity of trade and travel between the two countries also played an important part and were major factors contributing to the movement of a large number of people during the famine period. Scots, mainly from the west and south-western counties, migrated to Ulster in search of improved opportunities and an escape from the severe economic conditions of the famine. It was not just tenants and those of substantial means who emigrated, as discussed earlier, but establishing the 95

96 97

98

Fitzgerald, ‘“Black ’97”’, 79; I. D. Whyte estimated this figure between 1689 and 1700, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution: an economic and social history, c.1050–c.1750 (London, 1995), 120. Smout, Scottish Trade, 91. Bardon, History of Ulster, 171. Attempts to quantify the extent of Scottish migration into Ulster in the 1690s have been seriously hampered by the patchy nature of church records remaining from that decade. This is partly due to the disruptions caused to church administration by the Williamite war and the presence of only limited numbers of ministers, which in the case of the Church of Ireland was largely related to absenteeism. General Synod of Ulster, Records of the General Synod of Ulster from 1691 to 1820 Vol. 1 (Belfast, 1890), 31.

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precise social composition of the emigrants has proved difficult. Other than the migration to Darien, which is covered by well-documented records kept by the company,99 identification of emigrants is undermined by lack of detail in many sources. Those for the town and parish of Ayr (Ayrshire) have proved the exception and illuminate a migrant stream through that port to Ulster. Migration from Ayr to Ulster Contemporary accounts describe tens of thousands of Scots migrating to Ulster during the 1690s both in family groups and as individuals. What is not clear is how many of them were new migrants or how many actually settled there permanently. Movement between the west coast of Scotland and the north-east coast of Ireland could be fairly easily and quickly achieved by individuals and the move could be made more than once. The proportion of Scots who were return migrants, those who had previously settled in Ulster and only sought refuge in Scotland temporarily to avoid the war, is indistinguishable from new migrants in the comments of contemporaries who witnessed thousands of Scots moving into Ulster after 1691. The fluidity of similar movement between, and temporary residence in, the two countries was restricted by a proclamation of the Scottish privy council in December 1695 which required all travellers going to Ireland to secure a pass authorising their journey. The council complained that, in an attempt to avoid service, men from the western counties crossed the channel to stay in Ireland whenever recruits were being sought for the army. This convenient move between the two kingdoms was also used by beggars from Ireland whom the council declared ‘have been in use to haunt and frequent this our Kingdom, for several years by past, during the Summer time only, and have retired themselves into the Kingdom of Ireland, how soon the Winter did approach’.100 Whether or not this proclamation successfully controlled temporary or permanent migration, it certainly did not stop movement in either direction. Figure 6.3 has been compiled from data selected from the kirk session records and town council minutes for Ayr between January 1689 and December 1699. The figures for those going to Ireland are formed from references to people receiving charity to aid their travel. Parishioners who were granted testificates to travel to Ireland are also included.101 The figures depicting the records of people travelling from Ireland are compiled from records of charity distributed to those who arrived in Ayr in 99

100

101

See, for example, the published material in G. P. Insh, ‘Papers relating to the ships and voyages of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies 1696–1707’, Scottish History Society 3rd ser., 6 (1924). NAS, RH14/487, A Proclamation Discharging Persons to Travel to Ireland without Passes, 31 Dec. 1695. Ayr kirk session only recorded testificates in the minutes from 1695.

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40 From Ireland Going to Ireland

35

Number of people

30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1689

1690

1691

1692

1693

1694 Year

1695

1696

1697

1698

1699

Figure 6.3: Migration between Ayr (Ayrshire) and Ireland.102

need of assistance from the church or town council. The first section of the graph from 1689 to 1692 shows a large movement of Irish migrants into Ayr, which reflects the wider influx of protestant Irish into Scotland fleeing the conflict of the Williamite war in Ireland. The Scottish privy council ordered a collection across the whole country in 1689 due to ‘the starving condition of many of the poor protestants who came from Ireland’103 and the Synod of Argyll claimed a large portion of this collection since there were ‘a great many residing of the said Protestants in Kintyre’.104 Most of the references to Irish migrants seeking residence and charity were from parishes in the west of Scotland, but it is also possible that some travelled at least as far as Edinburgh with Linlithgow (West Lothian) kirk session minutes detailing problems of large numbers of poor Irish strangers moving through the parish to return home in September 1689.105 Although the war was not formally over until October 1691, military activity in Ulster had largely ceased by late 1689106 and part of the resulting return migration there from the west of Scotland is identified by the hatched columns in the graph for the years 1690 and 1691. The migration of those returning to Ireland is largely 102

102

103

104 105

106

The data used to compile this graph was obtained from: AyrA, B6/18/6, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1690–1700; B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702; CH2/751/7, Ayr KSR 1686–93; CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8 and CH2/751/9, Ayr KSR 1698–1709. P. D. Fitzgerald, ‘Poverty and Vagrancy in Early Modern Ireland 1540–1770’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Queen’s University Belfast, 1994), 429. NAS, CH2/557/25, Argyll Synod Minutes 1687–1700, 4 Jul. 1689. GROS, OPR668/5, Linlithgow KSR, 8 Sep. 1689. See also J. R. Young, ‘Scotland and Ulster in the seventeenth century: the movement of peoples over the North Channel’, in Kelly and Young, Ulster and Scotland, 26–7. L. M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), 27.

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believed by historians to have been completed before the beginning of the famine in Scotland in 1695.107 Following that, it has been argued that the majority of movement to Ulster in particular comprised new migrants seeking better opportunities and the availability of cheap leases resulting from the disruption of the war, in the face of economic and social difficulties in Scotland. Examination of the trends produced in this graph and of the background of migrants from Ayr and other areas indicates that this is oversimplified. Scots migrants of the 1690s have been presumed to be fairly substantial people, including tenants or subtenants, but certainly those able to support themselves financially.108 A contemporary pamphlet entitled The Scots in Ireland, 1697 suggested that from 1695 as many as 20,000 ‘poor’ Scots had been forced to migrate to Ireland owing to famine conditions in Scotland.109 Analysis of the kirk session register for Ayr indicates that this type of migrant certainly accounted for a section of the movement between that town and Ulster. The majority of people recorded as travelling from Ayr received charity from the session to fund their journey. Some were poor families, but Patrick Jackson, a mason, was also able to claim charity for his family’s removal to Ireland, indicating that some of the reliefdependant migrants would in non-crisis years have been self-sufficient. Women travelling either alone or with children formed a large proportion of those in receipt of money. Some, presumably, were widows, but others such as Jonat Gordon were moving to Ireland to join their husbands.110 Several of the female migrants were listed on the session poor roll as pensioners. They received extra financial aid to migrate upon the stipulation that they left and ceased to be a burden on the poor’s money. Ayr was not the only kirk session which attempted to reduce its poor roll by encouraging troublesome dependents to migrate to Ireland; Kilmartin in Argyllshire and Dalry in Kirkcudbrightshire were two other sessions which employed this method. The minutes of Dalry kirk session record that William Corsan was given £5 to go to Ireland and ‘make the paroch free of his trouble for the future’.111 This sum was much higher than the few shillings that most recipients of charity could expect and the session clearly thought having the man permanently removed from their poor’s list was worth the lump sum payment. Although a large number of those receiving charity from Ayr session to travel to Ulster during the famine were parishioners, money was also distributed to strangers. Soldiers, in particular, accounted for a sizeable portion of this type of emigrant, particularly after January 1698. This surge in emigration among the poorer sections of society could be 107 108 109 110 111

Cullen, ‘Population Trends in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, 151. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, 131. Quoted in Fitzgerald, ‘“Black ’97”’, 82. AyrA, CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8, 4 and 30 Nov. 1696. GROS, OPR865/1, Dalry KSR, 23 May 1699.

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reflected by the comments made in Anglican vestry minutes in various parishes in Ulster about a growth in vagrancy at the end of the famine period. The vestry minutes of Clones recorded an act distributed to the parishes of County Monaghan in January 1700 which referred to ‘the great increase of vagrant persons and idle beggars’ which it complained was ‘a Great Grievance And Anoyance to the inhabitants of this county’. Vestries were to maintain their own poor and distribute beggars’ badges to them while watches were to be kept for vagabond and stranger beggars who were to be whipped and returned to their parish of residence.112 Records from Tynan parish in County Armagh and Raphoe parish in County Donegal which describe the distribution of badges to their poor suggests that vagrancy was an increasing problem across several counties.113 The other main category of stranger poor receiving money from the session were Irish people returning home even beyond the period of initial post-war return migration. They continued to be listed in the session minutes between 1693 and as late as the height of the famine in 1698, in which year more were recorded than in any year since 1691. After 1695 those migrants were frequently described as being in a ‘distressed’ condition, presumably as a result of the deteriorating economic situation in Scotland and the tightening of poor law regulations in some parishes relating to distributions to strangers. Even more surprising than the relatively late return of these migrants was the number of people that arrived in Ayr from Ireland in 1698. The reason that they appeared in the session’s register was that they were in need of charity and many were described as ‘desperate’ or ‘distressed’. Although the economic situation in Ulster was better than that in Scotland, those who migrated to Ulster without sufficient financial means to provide for themselves were potentially in a worse situation there than in Scotland. For those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder, provision for the poor provided by the Presbyterian Church in Scotland was probably better than that available in Ulster, due to the relatively weak position of Presbyterianism in Ireland. At least two of the pensioners from Ayr who were given financial encouragement to migrate returned during the famine and had to be reinstated on the poor roll. For example, Mary Fetch, a widow with four small children, was granted £3 to go to Ireland on 22 July 1695, ‘provyding she goe away & not to be given till she be just going into the boat’. She left on 19 August 1695, but returned to Ayr and resumed her place as a pensioner on the poor roll on 27 January 1696.114 A significant number of people migrated either from Ayr, or through Ayr 112 113

114

PRONI, MIC/1/147/A/1, Clones, Co. Monaghan Vestry Minutes, 9 May 1700. PRONI, MIC/1/12/1, Parish of Tynan, Diocese Armagh, Co. Armagh Vestry Minutes, 11 Apr. 1700; MIC/1/95/1, Parish of Raphoe, Diocese Raphoe, Co. Donegal Vestry Book, 25 Jun. 1700. Fitzgerald identified six parishes in the east of Ulster which introduced badges for their poor in the decade following 1699, ‘“Black ’97”’, 83. AyrA, CH2/751/8, Ayr KSR 1693–8.

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184 120

Ayr West Kilbride

Dalmellington Fenwick

Number of baptisms

100

80

60

40

20

0 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700 1701 1702 1703 1704 Crop year

Figure 6.4: Baptisms in selected Ayrshire parishes.115

to Ireland during both the early 1690s and the famine period. The result of this would have been a noticeable reduction in the population in the original parishes of residence of migrants. Due to insufficient population statistics, calculating the extent of this drop in population is problematic, as is determining the extent to which migration rather than mortality was responsible. Bearing in mind the famine’s different effects in individual parishes, by comparing the baptism rate in Ayr with three parishes from the surrounding region in figure 6.4, the unusual baptism trend for this port town within the western Lowlands supports the conclusion that substantial migration took place from Ayr. The trend for West Kilbride is similar to the majority of baptism trends in parishes across the country; the number of baptisms fell during the worst years of the famine, which in the western Lowlands extended from crop years 1694 to 1697, after which baptisms increased as recovery began. Baptisms in the other three parishes, however, do not fit this trend. The graph indicates that in Dalmellington the crisis did not have a major impact on the birth rate as, despite a slightly reduced rate from 1699, there were no significant troughs or recovery peaks in the baptism level, as can be seen for Fenwick. A completely different image emerges from the data for Ayr as the decline in baptisms continued well beyond the end of the famine period. The town council complained as early as 1696 that the population in the town had dropped.116 The birth 115

115

116

The data used in this graph was compiled from GROS, OPR578/2, Ayr Baptisms; GROS, OPR586/1, Dalmellington Baptisms; GROS, OPR620/1, West Kilbride Baptisms and SPHRP, OPR592/1, Fenwick Baptisms. AyrA, B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702, 20 Mar. 1696.

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rate in Ayr did not recover quickly following the famine and the decrease in fertility (which was partly caused by increased mortality and famine conditions) was compounded by migration out of the town. No estimates can be made about the exact scale of this migration, as the figures available only indicate those in receipt of charity from one parish. It is very difficult to trace other migrants who were not entered into the books of kirk sessions or town councils and indeed most other west-coast parishes do not have records concerning this matter as detailed as those of Ayr. What can be obtained from this limited material is an indication of movement trends between Scotland and Ulster in the famine period that do not fit with the patterns generally cited by historians. It is clear that a large number of people migrated from Scotland to Ulster. What is less evident is how many of them were returning Irish migrants, or what number of Scots did not choose, or were not able, to settle there permanently. That migration was not always permanent, even on the part of more substantial emigrants to Ulster, is shown by the example of Malcolm M’Neill, a tenant farmer who returned to Scotland after the famine following a brief period of settlement in Ireland. He originally left Kintyre after the Revolution and took a tenancy on some lands lying waste at Ballymaskanlan in Ireland. In 1702, he returned to Scotland to become a tenant on some waste land on the Duke of Argyll’s estate in Argyllshire.117 After the famine some opportunities for economic enhancement were available in Scotland that were more attractive to enterprising individuals than remaining in Ireland. It is uncertain whether the Argyll land was lying waste due to the migration, or death, of previous tenants resulting from the famine, but these would seem to be not unreasonable hypotheses. M’Neill was able to take advantage of post-famine problems experienced by landowners in the west of Scotland, not dissimilar to those faced by Ulster landowners following the Williamite war. He returned to Scotland after substantial increased immigration and recovery in Ulster’s economy had put an end to the cheapest agricultural leases available there. M’Neill’s return migration was not straightforward, as he had to petition the Scottish privy council, supported by Argyll, for special permission to transport his livestock from Ireland.118 The fact that Argyll was prepared to go to this effort could indicate that this was an easier move than trying to secure a new tenant from within the west of Scotland itself. Migration to and from Ulster during the famine appears to have been slightly more fluid and less of a one-way process than previously thought. In particular, the temporary nature of some of this movement suggests that in a number of cases migration from the west coast of Scotland to Ulster was more closely linked to famine migration within Scotland than to previous permanent emigration to Ireland. 117 118

Chambers, Domestic Annals, Vol. III, 242. Chambers, Domestic Annals, Vol. III, 242.

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The extent of population movement during the famine is not possible to quantify, nor is it always possible to determine whether migration during that period was actually undertaken as a result of the crisis. There is evidence of increased population movement throughout the country both in contemporary comment and in records of charitable distributions to strangers. Urban areas in particular reported an influx of strangers, predominantly in the later years of the famine, with the larger towns probably attracting the greatest numbers of migrants. Some rural parishes also struggled to cope with large numbers of stranger poor moving into or through the area and competing with the local population for poor relief resources. There were two main regions in which migration increased significantly. Internal migration was most concentrated in the north-east, particularly in Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, but to a lesser extent in Kincardineshire and Angus. Migration throughout Ayrshire and Argyllshire, on the other hand, appears to have been connected with an emigration out of Scotland to Ulster. Differences also occurred in the type of people migrating. In the north-east the most likely migrants were the poor and vagrants moving between parishes in search of better supplies of grain and charity. On the west coast, as well as a movement of the poor, there was a migration of tenants and subtenants, some clearly in financial difficulties as a result of the crisis, but others merely moving to areas of better opportunities either within Scotland or in Ulster. A significant proportion of the drop in the Scottish population by the end of the famine must have been accounted for by emigration. It would not seem unreasonable to conclude that somewhere in the region of 50,000 Scots emigrated to Ulster alone during the 1690s, although not all of this emigration can be attributed to the famine crisis. Furthermore, the deaths of strangers, reported in sources such as kirk session minutes, indicate that a large number of people died outwith their own parishes during the famine. In very few sources are these deaths actually enumerated so it is impossible to calculate how many strangers actually died while moving throughout the country in search of food or charity. As most parish registers only recorded the deaths or burials of their own parishioners, a significant proportion of famine-related deaths must have gone unrecorded. In parishes such as Monifieth (Angus) there is reason to suspect that some of the strangers died due to starvation or serious malnutritional problems. In other areas travelling strangers carried with them epidemic diseases which would have spread and impacted seriously upon the local community, but it is difficult to find hard evidence to support this. This certainly was a concern held by the privy council in its attempts to reduce the movement of vagrants and the poor between parishes. The failure of many local authorities to enforce this and the continuation of charitable distributions to strangers in some parishes allowed and even encouraged the migration of the poor and non-poor throughout the famine crisis.

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Conclusion The famine was a demographic disaster for Scotland. The crisis surrounding the famine had far-reaching consequences for the Scottish population and economy both in the second half of the 1690s and in the following decades. Yet, even now it is regarded by historians of the late seventeenth century as only one, and not necessarily the most important, of four disasters to impact on Scotland in the 1690s. To what extent has the famine been overshadowed by the huge political and economic significance of the Union of the Parliaments, or the more famous Highland famine of the mid-nineteenth century, in terms of both the collective memory of the Scottish people and Scottish history? Tom Devine wrote in the 1980s about ‘a disaster of exceptional magnitude. Because of its duration and through the interaction of crop failure and economic crisis it inflicted a quite unprecedented scale of misery.’1 He was describing the Highland potato famine of the 1840s, not the devastating national famine crisis of the 1690s, yet the former has remained in the popular memory of the people of the region. The last famine to occur on mainland Britain, its connections to, and impact on, clearance and the changing economy and society of the region have also led to it receiving recognition by historians as a singularly important episode in Scottish history. Joel Mokyr went so far as to claim that the last Irish famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s not only ‘altered the course of Irish history, [it] left an indelible mark on the mentality, attitudes, and beliefs of the Irish’. Similar powerful collective memories are evident for famine in India in the nineteenth century.2 The Scottish famine of the 1690s does not register on anything like this scale, despite Ian Whyte’s claim that it had ‘a striking impact on folk memory’.3 Even the titles it is given, ‘the seven ill years’, ‘the lean years’ or ‘King William’s ill years’, fall short of the emotive power of the ‘Great Famine’ or ‘Great Hunger’ of Ireland and the ‘Potato Famine’ of the Highlands. Patrick Fitzgerald compared the outpouring of publications to mark the 150th anniversary of the famine in Ireland with the virtual lack of acknowledgement of the 300th anniversary of the last national famine to occur 1

2 3

T. M. Devine, ‘Highland Landowners and the Highland Potato Famine’, in L. Leneman (ed.), Perspectives in Scottish History: essays in honour of Rosalind Mitchison (Aberdeen, 1988), 143. Arnold, Famine, 11–14, quote on p. 11. Whyte, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution, 124. See also Flinn, Scottish Population History, 164.

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in Scotland.4 This book has set out to address that gap. By tackling the questions relating to the extent and severity of the famine crisis, this book has sought to identify it as one of the most devastating famines to occur in Scotland since the medieval period. The famine of the 1690s was undoubtedly one of the most significant famines to have occurred in Scotland, in part because it was the last to occur nationally, but also because it contributed to the economic problems the country faced at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth century. Its importance as a ‘disaster’ in this decade of crisis has hitherto been difficult to define since the economic, social and, to a lesser extent, demographic costs of the famine have not been thoroughly researched. This book has set out to provide an analysis of this underresearched event in Scottish history. Each theme – climate and weather, the grain market, demography, poverty and poor relief, and migration – has been examined in greater detail than previously. One of the main reasons why this topic has not previously been tackled in greater detail is the issue of both the quantity and the reliability of primary demographic sources. Yet the problems relating to the usability of the surviving old parish registers are common to those for the demographic sources available for many other early modern European countries. Through close examination of these sources it has been possible to identify the reaction of the demographic trends to the crisis, and particularly the rise in mortality rates evident in many parishes, in order to demonstrate the extent to which the famine had devastating effects both locally and at national level. Demographically, the northern half of the country suffered the most, the eastern Lowlands the least. It is probable that population loss during the famine, including that lost through emigration to Ulster, was closer to the 15 per cent upper limit proposed by the authors of Scottish Population History. However, losses in the worst-affected regions cannot be quantified and could have pushed this figure even higher. Mortality levels were almost certainly higher than even those identified in Chapter five due to the systematic under-registration of the burials of strangers and paupers in many parishes. Through a disproportionate increase in adult deaths the famine caused the Scottish population structural damage that, in combination with heavily reduced levels of fertility and nuptiality both during and immediately after the famine, it took decades to fully recover from. As grain prices more than doubled, the majority of the Scottish population faced economic hardship and a substantial proportion experienced at least three years of sub-minimum living standards, relying on charity in order to survive. The attempts to provide adequate poor relief were sound in theory and certainly more widespread than previously identified, but that it was not universally implemented caused greater problems, including the ejection of the non-resident poor who were forced to move back to 4

Fitzgerald, Black ’97, 76.

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Conclusion

189

their own parishes. As high famine-related mortality was mainly linked to epidemic disease rather than to death by starvation, such a system merely encouraged the spread of disease as the malnourished and ill travelled throughout the country. Emigration to Ulster, which accounted for a further drop in the Scottish population of somewhere in the region of 2 per cent during the famine, has been examined previously only by Irish historians, relying predominantly on Irish sources. Although the Scottish material uncovered in this book has not provided any more conclusive evidence regarding the actual numbers involved, it has identified more clearly the nature of that movement. Migrants came from a wide cross-section of Scottish society: soldiers, widows, families, children, paupers, tradesmen and tenants all moved from the south-west of Scotland to Ulster during the famine. Furthermore, the migration was not exclusively one way; movement between the two countries remained fluid, in spite of, as well as resulting from, the crisis in Scotland. The cost of this famine to Scotland was high in financial as well as demographic terms. The provision of famine relief is an expense that cannot be fully quantified, but it put further strain on an already weak and vulnerable economy. Grain import bounties totalled approximately £50,000 Scots, but this does not include the much larger amount of specie which left the country to actually pay for the grain, as simultaneously cash was tied up in the Company of Scotland and left the country to pay for the Darien scheme. This massive import expenditure by the government and extra expenditure on poor relief by local authorities must be weighed against a reduction in exports and disruption of trade. Landowners were also forced to accept reduced rentals as tenant debts were written off during the famine, and cheaper leases offered at least into the middle of the next decade both to avoid the desertion of tenants and to attract new tenants to take up empty landholdings.5 These costs, however, must be contrasted with the profits made on high prices when grain was sold. To what extent did landowners suffer as a result of the crisis? For some, the financial impact was significant.6 The famine highlighted real weaknesses in the Scottish economy and a mistaken over-confidence in the country’s agricultural sector. The privy council was completely unprepared for the crisis which developed, and lacked both the structural means and the finances to provide more than a limited level of relief to the starving sections of the population. The coincidence of the famine with the other ‘crises’ and political and religious problems of the late 1690s certainly exacerbated the crisis and restricted the ability of central and local government, the church and even landowners to protect the population. More research will be necessary to determine the level of significance of these other factors to the outcome of the famine. 5 6

Macinnes believed that this did not extend beyond 1702, Union and Empire, 218. Whatley, The Scots and the Union, Chapter 5.

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What has been shown is that the famine was of longer duration, was wider ranging geographically and had a greater demographic, economic and social impact than has been previously imagined. The longer-term implications of this may therefore have been underestimated and throughout many parts of the country economic and demographic stagnation must have been key features of the first decade of the eighteenth century. Population decline resulting from the famine would, of course, have had important longer-term economic implications. Land that had been abandoned and unfarmed during the famine crisis would have required a number of years of cultivation before crop yields returned to normal levels. A reduced population, however, also meant that some land in cultivation prior to the famine remained untilled in the years, and in some cases decades, after it. Similarly, reduction in animal stocks in pastoral, and to some extent in arable, regions would have taken significantly longer to be rebuilt and required a number of years of investment before any return was realised. Although population loss in these regions meant that there were fewer people to feed, equally there were fewer people to till the land and invest in new stock. In regions of marginal agriculture, therefore, in the Highlands, the north-east, the Borders and the Northern Isles, the famine appears to have been followed by a period of economic stagnation, or certainly reduced financial income. These regions may have been particularly vulnerable to the climatic problems which resulted in famine and dearth in many European countries in 1709–11 and 1740–1. That the famine was worse than some historians have previously suggested may strengthen the argument that, despite improvement in the second half of the seventeenth century, the Scottish economy remained vulnerable at the end of it, and that the country lacked the financial reserves, the agricultural strength and the political power to protect the population from demographic and social crisis. The particularly severe climatic problems of the 1690s highlighted weaknesses in the Scottish economy and agriculture that, other than during the minor dearth of 1674–5, had not been apparent since the 1620s. Agricultural improvement, particularly in the second half of the seventeenth century, may have lessened the impact of the adverse weather conditions, but even on some of the most progressively farmed land, tenants accrued large debts and went bankrupt. From parishes across the whole country reports of countless numbers of destitute people dying from epidemic disease, serious malnutrition and starvation meant that no region was immune from the effects of the crisis. The secondary aim of this book has been to place research on the famine within the wider context of famine in northern and western Europe in the 1690s. The links in terms of timing, causes of and relief from harvest failure between the Scottish famine and those occurring elsewhere in Europe during the 1690s have received limited acknowledgement in the current historiography and these themes have not previously been explored. The famine in Scotland coincided most closely with the years of crisis in

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Scandinavia and the Baltic which made vital emergency grain supplies from these areas both more expensive and more difficult to secure. The crisis was of longer duration in Scotland than in any other European country, but the population loss was probably more similar to that experienced in France than in Finland or Estonia. Demographic recovery, however, was significantly slower than in parts of France. Across the whole of the country slow recovery meant that the Scottish population had only just regained its pre-famine level more than half a century after the end of the famine. By extending the analysis of the demographic impact of the famine, new hypotheses have been proposed, and existing ones reviewed and challenged. Even so, some questions remain unanswered and the conclusions drawn are clearly subject to the quality of the registers available. What is evident is that by comparison with the population loss experienced in France during the famine of 1693–4 it would not seem unrealistic to estimate that somewhere in the region of at least 6 to 10 per cent of the Scottish population died as a result of the famine of the late 1690s. There are indications that faminerelated mortality in the far north and the Highlands was much higher than the national average. In Banffshire it seems plausible to argue that mortality rates were at least as high as in Aberdeenshire. Notwithstanding the new findings covered by this book, many questions remain unanswered, and several themes are yet to be explored. The most obvious gaps are local studies. Factors which at local level contributed to the suffering of the population have not been thoroughly investigated, but should be in future. Fuller examination of the longer-term impact of the crisis upon the Scottish population would provide more conclusive evidence about the severity of the crisis. Why was this the last national famine to occur in Scotland? Why did the Scots not starve in 1709–11 or 1739–41 when much of Europe was once again gripped by famine?7 This book has, however, broadened and deepened the study of the famine, challenging and expanding the knowledge and understanding of previously researched themes and exploring those which have often only been the subject of impressionistic comment. What can now be confirmed is that the ill years of the 1690s were exceptional in Scotland, even by early modern standards. Across the country the levels of suffering, misery and fear experienced by the majority of the population combined with famine-induced population loss would never be seen in the country again, even during the Highland potato famine.

7

Smout, ‘Famine and Famine-relief in Scotland’; Flinn, Scottish Population History, 209–40.

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Appendix: Poor Assessment These tables list the parishes which are known to have assessed heritors and/or inhabitants for a maintenance stent for their poor. The majority of references were obtained from two of Rosalind Mitchison’s main works on the Scottish Poor Law: The Old Poor Law in Scotland and ‘North and South: The Development of the Gulf in Poor Law Practice’ and these have been listed in table A.1. She concluded that out of the 229 Scottish parishes for which kirk session records survive, only forty-six detailed any attempt to enforce an assessment on landowners during the famine.1 Kettins (Angus) and Currie (Midlothian) did not actually carry out assessments despite planning to and have not been included in this list, although they were included by Mitchison. Chapter four detailed further examples of parishes which took a similar course of action to Kettins and Currie; in addition many more parishes actually discussed assessment, and planned and held meetings to organise it, but have not left a record of whether it was actually carried out. These latter examples have not been included and the dates provided for the listed parishes, therefore, are the earliest references found to assessment actually being carried out during the famine period. Mitchison listed very few of these dates for the parishes which she identified and an attempt has been made to identify the dates of the beginning of assessment in those parishes.2 Table A.2 displays a list of twenty-four additional parishes not identified by Mitchison which were also found to have enforced a stent for their poor. Mitchison excluded Edinburgh and Glasgow from her list of parishes and therefore the entry for Glasgow in table A.2 may be presumed to have been acknowledged by her. It was deemed useful, nevertheless, to include this since a start date for assessment was known. The records found in the Kinross House Papers for Kinross (Kinross-shire) and the Gordon Estate Papers for the Barony of Craigton (Aberdeenshire) identified them as the parishes which implemented the earliest continuous stent which operated throughout the famine period, which is why a start date of 1692 has been given in both instances.3 Other parishes are known to have started assess1

2 3

Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 36. As explained in Chapter four, Mitchison acknowledged that the actual number of parishes which introduced assessment could have been higher since she only examined kirk session registers for such evidence. In most parishes there are no clear references to an end of an assessment period. Further research may identify other parishes which stented for a similar or longer period.

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ment in 1692, but as yet no evidence has been uncovered that this continued into the famine period.4 Table A.1: Parishes which enforced a stent, identified by Mitchison. Parish

County

Date

Source

Colinton Corstorphine Cramond Crichton Lasswade Stow Temple Garvald Haddington North Berwick Ormiston Prestonkirk Whitekirk Yester Carriden Uphall Forgan Kennoway Kilconquhar

Midlothian Midlothian Midlothian Midlothian Midlothian Midlothian Midlothian East Lothian East Lothian East Lothian East Lothian East Lothian East Lothian East Lothian West Lothian West Lothian Fife Fife Fife

December 1698 March 1699 November 1697 October 1699 May 1698 March 1699 26 October 1699 May 1698 October 1699 December 1699 October 1699 May 1698 17 May 1698 [March] 1698 December 1699 June 1698 September 1698 December 1698 May 1699

KSR KSR Other5 KSR Other6 Other7 KSR Other8 KSR KSR9 Other10 KSR KSR Other11 KSR KSR KSR Other12 KSR13

4

5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12

See, for example, ML, T-PM108/2/52, List of the poor in the parish of Eastwood with a description of their condition and in some cases the decision of the Heritors as to their allowance, 5 Oct. 1692. Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 211–12. NAS, GD18/3026, Letters and papers (8) relating to the support of the poor in the parish of Lasswade. See particularly ‘Letter from Jo Temt to Sir John Clark of Pennycook, Lasswade 24 May 1698’. See also Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 40, and Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 211. She suggests, based on the kirk session register, that assessment was only introduced in October 1699 and that it lasted for only three months. It is clear from the Clerk of Penicuik material, however, that a stent was introduced earlier, although was either of only short duration or was revised in 1699. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 44. Mitchison, ‘Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, 79. On 5 December 1700 North Berwick kirk session and Heritors set a new stent, the previous one having run from December 1699 to June 1700. The accounts do not record the distribution of money by the session to ‘monthly poor’ during this period as they had done previously. Between June and October 1698, no monthly poor were given money by the session either; could this indicate an earlier period of assessment which made unnecessary the distribution of monthly pensions? Mitchison, ‘East Lothian as Innovator in the Old Poor Law’, 20. Mitchison, ‘East Lothian as Innovator in the Old Poor Law’. See also Mitchison, ‘A Parish and its Poor’, 25–7. Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 211–12.

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Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s

Table A.1: (continued) Parish

County

Kingsbarns Fife Logie Stirlingshire Longforgan Perthshire Blackford Perthshire Monzie Perthshire Perth Perthshire Tibbermuir Perthshire Kilmaurs Ayrshire Killwinning Ayrshire Galashiels Selkirkshire Drainie Morayshire Eddleston Peeblesshire Manor Peeblesshire Greenock Renfrewshire Longside Aberdeenshire Chirnside Berwickshire Mitchison, ‘North and South’ Tyninghame East Lothian Spott East Lothian Bara East Lothian Saltoun East Lothian Ashkirk Roxburghshire Kilspindie Perthshire Pettinain Lanarkshire Carstairs Lanarkshire Douglas Lanarkshire 13

14 15

16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

Date

Source

[At least from] May 1699 November 1699 February 1699 November 1698 December 1698 December 1698 December 1698 November 1699 December 1697 May 1698 October 1699 May 1698 March 1697 June 1699 12 May 1698 July 1699

KSR KSR KSR KSR Other14 Other15 KSR Other16 KSR17 KSR Other18 KSR KSR Other19 KSR Other20

December 1700 May 1698 May 1698 January 1699 June 1699 May 1699 May 1698 November 1699 January 1700

Other21 Other22 Other23 KSR KSR KSR24 KSR KSR KSR

A stent was first arranged to distribute meal to the poor on 9 July 1697; however, the heritors failed to deliver the meal and a much more limited stent was arranged and enforced on 8 May 1699, but was to be continued only until the next harvest. StASC, CH2/210/4, Kilconquhar KSR 1689–1700. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 40. Mitchison, ‘North and South’, 211–12, although the start date is given as January 1700 in Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 40. However, in 1697, the town council minutes referred to listing the poor which were to be maintained by the kirk session and the hospital which may also be a reference to a form of assessment, PKCA, B59/16/11, Perth Town Council Minutes 1693–1713, 22 Feb. 1697. D. McNaught, Kilmaurs Parish & Burgh (Paisley, 1912), 179. See also W. L. Ker, Kilwinning (Kilwinning, 1900), 190–5. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 38. See also A. Keith, The Parish of Drainie and Lossiemouth (1975), 42–3. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 44. Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 40–1, and Mitchison, ‘Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, 78–9. Paul, ‘The Diary of the Rev. George Turnbull’, 397. Mitchison, ‘North and South, 211–12. Mitchison, ‘Making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, 79. GROS, OPR 363/2, Kilspindie Kirk Session Minutes, 1 May 1699.

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Table A.2: Parishes which enforced a stent, not identified by Mitchison. Parish

County

Date

Source

Wandell and Lamington Lanark Lesmahagow Hamilton Glasgow Ayr Irvine Kinross Orwell Stirling Montrose Balmerino Kells Kinnoull Fetteresso Traquair Peebles Kiltearn Aberdeen Barony of Craigton [Kinnethmont parish]

Lanarkshire Lanarkshire Lanarkshire Lanarkshire Lanarkshire Ayrshire Ayrshire Kinross-shire Kinross-shire Stirlingshire Angus Fife Kircudbrightshire Perthshire Kincardineshire Peeblesshire Peeblesshire Ross and Cromarty Aberdeenshire Aberdeenshire

April 1698/May 1699 June 1699 May 1698 June 1699 March 1696 October 1699 November 1699 [from at least] 1692 November 1695 January 1698 February 1699 June 1697 March 1700 December 1698 May 1698 January 1700 February 1700 August 1697 December 1696 [from at least crop year] 1692

KSR25 Other26 KSR Other27 Other28 Other29 Other30 Other31 Other32 Other33 Other34 KSR KSR KSR Other35 KSR KSR KSR Other36 Other37

25

26

27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34 35

36 37

The two dates relate to the dates at which the individual parish areas introduced stents, GROS, OPR 659/1, Wandell and Lamington Kirk Session Minutes. Church of Scotland, Presbytery of Lanark, Selections from the registers of the Presbytery of Lanark, 1623–1709, Abbotsford Club, 16 (Edinburgh, 1839). Lanark parish enforced a stent for the poor on 14 June 1699. See also R. Renwick (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Royal Burgh of Lanark (Glasgow, 1843), 263. NAS, GD406/1/4402, David Crawford to the Duke of Hamilton, Edinburgh, 8 Jun. 1699. Sir J. D. Marwick and R. Renwick (eds), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow 1691–1717 Vol. 3 (Glasgow, 1908), 196. AyrA, B6/18/7, Ayr Town Council Minutes 1694–1702, 26 Oct. 1699. AL, Gr1/1/5, Irvine Burgh Town Council Minutes, 1687–1700, 4 Nov. 1699. See NAS, GD29/65, /68/1, /69-/71, /72/2, /74, /79, /81 and /84. NAS, GD29/76, Note anent the poore of Orwell paroish as is informed by David Coventrey late Beddell, 30 Nov. 1695. 6 Jan. 1698. Renwick, Records of the Burgh of Stirling, p. 86. AngA, M/1/1/4, Montrose Town Council Book, 1673–1702, 8 Feb. 1699. 23 May 1698. Rev. D. G. Barron (ed.), ‘The Court Book of The Barony of Urie in Kincardineshire 1604–1747’ in Scottish Historical Society Vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1892), 102. DesBrisay, ‘Authority and Discipline in Aberdeen’, 316. NAS, GD44/51/75/2, Miscellaneous Accounts, ‘Charge of the Intromission of the victuall and money rent Customs att the Converted prices of the Barronie of Craigton for the year 1692, 93, 94, 95, 96, and 97 Intrometted wt by me Jo: Gordon of Myretoun Conforme as they were sett att my Entrey’, and ‘Charge of Intramision of the victuall and mony rent of Craigstone at the Converted pryces of the Barronie of Craigstone For the year 1698 Intromitted wt me Jo: Gordon of Coyni[ripped] [ripped] as they are presents possessed’.

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Table A.2: (continued) Parish

County

Date

Source

Dumfries Westerkirk Kilmartin Inveraray

Dumfriesshire Dumfriesshire Argyllshire Argyllshire

[winter] 1698 July 1698 March 1700 January 1700

Other38 KSR KSR39 KSR

38 39

W. McDowall, History of the Burgh of Dumfries (Edinburgh, 1867), p. 489. NAS, CH2/793/1, Kilmartin KSR 1691–1706. On 23 December 1697 the listed poor were to be maintained by the session, no mention was made of provision by the heritors and it is unclear whether this was actually enacted. However, on 28 March 1700 the session ordered that the listed poor were to be provided with charity by the tenants and tradesmen of the parish at least once every month.

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Youngson, Alexander J., ‘Alexander Webster and his “Account of the Number of People in Scotland in the Year 1755”’, Population Studies, 15, 2 (November, 1961), 198–200. Unpublished secondary sources Alston, David J., ‘Social and Economic Change in the old shire of Cromarty, 1650–1850’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Dundee, 1999). Cullen, Karen J., ‘Famine in Scotland in the 1690s: causes and consequences’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Dundee 2004). ‘King William’s Ill Years: the Social, Economic and Demographic Effects of Famine in Angus, 1695–1700’, unpublished MA Hons dissertation (University of Dundee, 2001). DesBrisay, Gordon R., ‘Authority and Discipline in Aberdeen: 1650–1700’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of St Andrews, 1989). Fitzgerald, Patrick D., ‘Poverty and Vagrancy in Early Modern Ireland 1540–1770’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Queen’s University Belfast, 1994). Ó Gráda, Cormac, ‘Two Encyclopaedia Entries on Famine’, Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series (Jan. 2002). Young, Mary, ‘Rural Society in Scotland from the Restoration to the Union: Challenge and Response in the Carse of Gowrie, circa 1660–1707’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Dundee, 2004).

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Index

Aberdeen, 42, 46, 59, 73, 82–4, 86, 119–20, 125n, 195 Aberdeenshire, 4, 17, 51, 58, 63n, 64, 68n, 105–6, 123, 133, 137, 140, 155, 186, 191 Aberdour, 136, 168 Aberlady, 120 Abernethy, 113, 142 Alloa, 40, 42–3 Alston, 155–6 Angus, 4, 56, 63n, 64–5, 79–81, 84, 86, 105–6, 118, 166–8, 169, 186 Arbroath, 110 Ardclach, 48, 143, 147–8 Ardmaddy, 170 Argyll, Duke of, 185 Argyllshire, 106, 171–2, 181, 186 Ashkirk, 120, 194 Ayr, 13, 40n, 42, 43n, 59, 87, 159, 165, 173n, 175, 180–5, 195 Ayrshire, 60–1, 87, 186 Baker, T. H., 24 Ballingray, 131, 152 Balmerino, 112, 195 Banff, 104–5, 120n, 136, 162 Banffshire, 105, 135, 137, 140, 143, 155, 161–2, 186, 191 Bangladesh, famine in, 88 baptisms, 107, 125–7, 134–40, 141, 142, 148, 149–50, 152n, 155, 184 beggars, 94, 96–7, 100, 103, 109n, 121, 154, 157–8, 160–1, 165, 167, 168, 180, 183 badges, 116, 161, 183 Bellie, 136–7 Bernera, 39 Bernstill, 49

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Berwickshire, 58, 60–1, 64–5 biers, 118, 120, 154, 163 Blackford, 106, 163n, 194 Bolton, 113–14 Borders, 6, 15, 36, 38, 41, 47, 49, 50, 127, 139, 190 Bo’ness, 47 Braemar, 52 Brand, Sir Alexander, 36–7 Breadalbane, Earl of, 13–14, 51–2, 90–1, 170–1 Breadalbane estate, 46, 51–2, 170–1 Brechin, 166–7 Bremen, 37, 74 Buccleuch estate, 35–6, 46, 39, 44–5, 169 burials, 101, 108n, 123, 125–6, 127n, 129–33, 135, 139, 143, 150–1, 152n, 163–5, 186 of children, 144–51, 154 of the poor, 93, 95, 101, 117–22, 188 of strangers, 154, 163–5, 186, 188 Burntisland, 74 Caithness, 86, 106, 125 Campbeltown, 135 Carmyllie, 96 Carriden, 120–1, 193 cattle, 1, 14, 23–4, 36, 42, 46–9, 99, 170 Chirnside, 106, 194 Church of Scotland General Assembly, 44, 105–6, 109n, 111 vacant parishes, 105–10, 125, 138n, 166 Clackmannanshire, 41, 64 Clydesdale, 42–3, 118

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Index Coldingham, 131, 139, 145, 149–50, 164–5, 173 Comlongan estate, 36 Commissioners of Supply, 69–70, 78–81, 86, 88, 112, 115, 121, 143, 168 Company of Scotland, 27, 29, 175, 180, 189; see also Darien colony Convention of Royal Burghs, 135–6 Corgarff, 51 Corn Bounty Act, 31, 35, 65 Cortachy and Clova, 116 Coupar Angus, 106 Creich, 104 Crieff, 81 crime, during famine, 81, 95, 161–2 Cromarty estate, 88 Culbin estate, 39 Cullen, 143 Currie, 101, 113, 192 Dalmellington, 184 Dalry, 42, 182 Darien colony, 27–9, 103, 175–6, 180; see also Company of Scotland dearth (1674–5), 10–11, 36, 55, 190 (1739–41), 11, 55 (1780s), 11, 17 Denmark, 21, 23 Devine, Tom, 2, 6, 187 Dingwall, 138, 140 disease famine-related, 1, 8, 13, 19, 22–3, 25–6, 99–100, 104, 123, 128, 133, 142–4, 145–51, 154, 157, 162–4, 189, 190 smallpox, 19, 143–4, 151–4 Dodgshon, Bob, 49–50 donor fatigue, 103, 162 Douglas, 120, 194 Drumoak, 162 Duddingston, 132, 145, 149–50 Duirinish, 38 Dumfries, 36, 139, 150–1, 196 Dunbarney, 103, 113–14 Dunblane, 98, 101 Dundee, 69, 73, 79n, 82–5, 86, 89, 109–10, 116, 163, 167

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East Lothian, 49, 63, 118 Edinburgh, 6, 10, 41, 42–3, 56, 60, 73, 77, 78–81, 82–3, 97, 103–4, 106–7, 131, 152, 160–1, 181, 192 Elgin, 105 England demography, 133, 144 famine in, 17, 85 grain prices in, 46n, 61–2, grain shortage in, 24–6, 53, 75 importation of grain from, 67, 76–7, 78 migration to, 173 Poor Law, 26, 100 riots in, 24, 71, 85 smallpox in, 151–4 weather in, 17–18, 24–5, 40, 42, 53 Episcopalian meeting houses, 106–8, 125 ministers, 105–7, 125, 158, 174n Estonia, famine in, 21, 22–3, 26, 191 excise, tacksmen of the, 31, 66, 117 Falkland, 120, 163n famine (1590s), 10 (1621–3), 10–11, 97, 190 (1649–53), 10–11 fasts, 13, 28, 39, 40–4, 47, 150, 179 Fenwick, 184 Ferguson, William, 15 fiars, 34, 58–61, 63, 66 Findlater, Earl of, 162 Finland, famine in, 22–3, 26, 72–3, 191 fishing, 23–4, 37–8 Fitzgerald, Patrick, 9, 187 Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 1, 14, 158, 172n Flinn, Michael, 3, 14, 15, 124, 130, 132, 151 Flisk, 104 food riots, 20, 22, 24–5, 53, 68, 69, 71, 75, 81–5 Fordun, John of, 99 Fordyce, 39, 137–8, 140 Forfar, 84, 116, 167 Forfar, Earl of, 114 Forglen, 137–8, 140 Foundlings see orphans

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Foveran, 109 France child abandonment in, 104 demography, 16, 142, 144, 191 famine in, 22–3, 26, 53, 54, 56, 60, 71, 72, 99–100, 132 grain prices in, 62 war-related economic problems in, 29, 54, 72–3 Fry, Michael, 4 Gdansk, 75–6 General Assembly see Church of Scotland, General Assembly Glasgow, 43, 66n, 68, 79n, 84, 87, 150, 152, 160–1, 166, 192, 195, Glen Dorchart, 170 Glencorse, 131, 150 Glenlivet, 135 Glenorchy, 50 Glenurquhart, laird of, 90 Glorious Revolution, 28, 30, 31, 39, 43, 61, 72n, 105–6, 107, 158, 174, 185 Gordon, Duchess of, 144 Gordon estate, 52 grain export of, 69 import bounties, 27, 29, 31, 57, 66–7, 70, 74, 76, 189 import of, 27, 31, 37, 41, 43–4, 56–8, 66–71, 75–8, 127, 139 speculation, 70, 84–5, 92 Grange, 108–9 Guthrie, 166–7 Haddington, 166, 193 Hamburg, 37, 74 Hamilton (parish), 42, 43, 145, 149, 150–1 Hamilton, Duchess of, 118 Hamilton, Duke of, 28, 76, 82–3, 117–18, 175–6 Hamilton estate, 47, 117–18, 171–2 Hamilton, Lord Basil, 171 Harray and Birsay, 91, 138, 140 Harris, 48–9 Hawick, 85, 161 Highlands, 2, 39, 41–2, 47, 49–50, 90–1, 132, 135, 155, 170, 190

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Highlands, famine of the 1840s in, 2–3, 187, 191 Holm, 104, 120, 162 Hoskins, W. G., 61–2 Iceland, 18, 23–4, 46–7 India, famine in, 187 Insch, 50 Inverness, 47, 49, 58, 89–90, 101 Inverness-shire, 87, 89 Ireland emigration to, 158, 159, 171–2, 173n, 176–82, 189 famine of the 1840s in, 15, 16, 88, 145, 187–8 immigrants from, 180–3 importation of grain from, 66, 68, 76–8, 127, 139 war in, 177–8, 180–2, 183, 185 James VII and II, King, 28, 177 Kaliningrad, 111 Kenmore, 135–6 Kettins, 113, 118–20, 167, 192 Kildrummy, 41 Kilmartin, 166, 182, 196 Kilmorack, 135, 146–8, 150 Kilmuir, 38 Kilspindie, 71, 116, 194 Kiltearn, 42, 48, 96, 101, 120, 195 Kincardine, Laird of, 82, 85 Kincardineshire, 58, 64, 81, 106, 161, 186 Kingsbarns, 103, 145, 149, 150, 194 Kinnell, 167 Kinnethmont, 97, 195 Kinross, 97, 192, 195 Kinross-shire, 169n Kirkhill, 135, 145–8, 150, 152, 165 Kirkwall, 120, 160, 162, 166 Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, 12, 33 Lady, 103 Laggan, 47 Lambholm, 74 Lamington, laird of, 114 Lanark, 161, 195

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Index Lanarkshire, 68 Lasswade, 115, 193 Lawers, 170–1 Leith, 56, 76, 85, 88 Leneman, Leah, 158 Linlithgow, 131, 145, 149–50, 165, 181 Little Ice Age, 1, 5, 17, 32, 34, 49 Lochgoilhead, 48 Logierait, 135–6 Longside, 131, 140–1, 150, 194 Lunan, 167 Mar, Earl of, 41 Mar, estate, 51–2 marriage, 8, 19, 107, 125–7, 133, 140–2, 155–6 irregular, 173 Martin, Martin, 49, 52 Methlick, 118–20, 145, 149, 150 Midlothian, 62–3, 80–1, 115 Mitchison, Rosalind, 3, 7, 12, 158, 192 Mokyr, Joel, 187 Monifieth, 145, 149, 150, 163–4, 167, 186 Monikie, 94, 166, 167 Montquhitter, 50–1 Montrose, 43, 73, 79, 82–4, 86, 103, 108n, 152, 164, 167, 174n, 195 Moray, 87, 105–6, 167–8 Netherlands, 75, 77 Newtyle, 107, 120, 167 Nine Years War, 22, 27, 29–30, 38, 54, 72, 74, 172 Norway, famine in, 20–1, 22–3, 26 Ó Gráda, Cormac, 16 Oath of Allegiance, 107, 125, 166 Ogilvie, Sir James, 73–4 Old Machar, 98, 118–20, 150 Old Parish Registers, 8, 93, 124–8, 130–1, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141n, 142–4, 152, 186, 188, 191 Orkney, 6, 18, 36–8, 46, 49n, 50, 56, 74, 77, 89, 91, 138, 162 orphans, 94, 100, 104–5 Orwell, 111–12, 195 Outhwaite, R. B., 24

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Paisley, 120 Panmure, Earl of, 175 Panmure estate, 169, 171 Parry, Martin, 49 Paterson, William, 31 Peebles, 109, 145, 150, 151–4, 161, 168, 195 Penicuik, 41 Penicuik, Sir John Clerk of, 33 Perth, 47, 110, 160–1, 194 Perthshire, 79–81, 86, 105, 135, 142 Pettinain, 150 piracy see privateers plantations emigration to, 173–5 transportation to, 81, 174, 176 see also Darien colony poor law acts, 96, 98, 111–12 poor relief assessment, 110–17, 192–6 Portmoack, 111–12 Preston, laird of, 115 Prestonpans, 74 privateers, 29, 38, 73–4, 138 Pyper, Alexander, of Newgrange, 75–8, 84, 174 Rathven, 107 Rescobie, 167 Revolution see Glorious Revolution riots see food riots Ross and Cromarty, 87–9, 106, 125 Rothesay, 63, 109 Rothiemay, 137–8 Roxburghshire, 41, 60–1 Ruglen, Earl of, 82–3 Scrymgeour, David, of Cartmore, 33 Seafield see Ogilvie Sen, Amartya, 12 sheep, 14, 23–4, 35–6, 46–8, 50–1 Shetland, 6, 36, 37–8, 39, 40, 49n, 50, 74, 89, 91, 125, 138, 152n Sibbald, Sir Robert, 1, 14, 98–9, 100, 102–4 Skye, 38, 49, 50 smallpox see disease Smith, Adam, 71 Smith, Brian, 37 Smout, Chris, 3–4, 6, 14, 28

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soldiers, 68, 158, 172–3, 175, 182, 189 Sorn, 13 South Leith, 101, 107, 109, 116, 120, 163n Southesk, Earl of, 79 Spain, 20 Spott, 118, 132, 150, 194 St Andrews, 56–7, 69, 82–3 Stair, Earl of, 97 starvation, 1–2, 8, 9, 12, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25–6, 45, 47, 54, 71, 79, 81, 91, 95, 99, 100, 104, 109, 116–17, 120, 123, 128, 129, 133, 136–7, 142–4, 145–6, 148–9, 154, 163–4, 181, 186, 189 Statistical Accounts, 38, 50–1, 167 Stirling, 161, 195 Strathfillan, 170 Strathmore, estate, 55–6 Sutherland, 106, 125 Sweden, famine in, 17, 20, 22–3, 26, 71, 72–3 Switzerland, famine in, 46 Tannadice, 166 Tarbat, 39 Teviotdalehead, 44–5

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Thomson, William, 37 Thurso, 42, 101, 143 Tilly, Louise, 6 Torryburn, 150 Traquair, 150, 195 Tyninghame, 44 Tyson, Robert, 4, 133, Ulster see Ireland Union of the Parliaments (1707), 3, 14, 26–30, 76, 176, 187 Unthank, 45 Urquhart, 167 vagrancy see beggars Walker, Patrick, 123–4 Wandell and Lamington, 114, 195 Webster’s census, 124 West Kilbride, 184 West Lothian, 62–3 Westerkirk, 103, 196 Whatley, Chris, 4, 28 Whitsome, 47–8 Whyte, Ian, 3, 13, 169, 171, 187 William II and III, King, 29, 172, 187 Yester, 118, 193

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