A Kindly Place? Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

Margaret H. B. Sanderson. A Kindly Place? Living in Sixteenth Century Scotland.

East Lothian: Tuckwell Press Ltd., 2002. xiii + 244 pp. index. illus. tbls. gloss. bibl. [pounds sterling]26.95. ISBN: 1-86232-169-8.

The author, Margaret Sanderson, was formerly the head of publications and education at the Scottish Record Office, now the National Archives of Scotland. Her extensive experience with public and legal records, private archives, and other primary material, provides the historical background for the consideration of the private life of people in sixteenth-century Scotland. She looked at individuals--the lairds, tenants, merchants, craftsmen, rural laborers, urban dwellers in service jobs, wives, widows, and unmarried women, families, and communities. She sought to discover how people survived in an age of private wars, foreign invasion, political uncertainty, economic hardship, how the Reformation in Scotland affected religious practices among both Catholics and Protestants, and what Scottish culture was like.

The reader is aided by Sanderson's inclusion of five pages of Scottish technical works and legal terms such as faill, feu-ferm, meit, mutchtin, nolt, sheiling, skaith, spens, steikit, wadset, etc. as such terminology is used throughout this work. Sanderson also provides nineteen pages of reference notes. I was most impressed with her use of forty-one private archives used in her research--such as the Carnock and Plean muniments, the Curle collection, Pitreavie papers, Pittenweem writs, Sinclair of Mey muniments, and Swinton muniments. Her research is sound and extensive.

There is discussion of inheritance, the feuars, what family dwellings were like, women's handwriting, research into what type of women could read and write, the use of wills as evidence of religious belief, and oral history in legal records.

The stability of rural society in sixteenth-century Scotland was enforced by unchanging methods of agriculture and by the attitude of the nobility and gentry to their lands. Both ecclesiastical and lay landlords had an increasing desire for money, which resulted in rents in kind and labor services into cash payments. There was a mixture of single-tenant and multiple-tenancy farms. Church lands at times consisted of large tracts of some of the best agricultural land in Scotland and often small units of land were taken over by owners of larger landholdings. This resulted in small landowners moving away and loss of status and opportunity in the countryside. Written leases for a term of years as well as for life existed on both church and secular lands. And these leases were used in courts of law. Slowly changes were being made in society. Scottish records show that tenant inheritance and continuous family possession of land was of primary importance. Records reflect not only how the tenant held the land but why he held it (as kin or heir to the previous possessor). Kindly tenancy was the customary method of inheritance. Legal records also reflect financial problems, particularly debt, with borrowing and lending of money among neighbors, and debts incurred through failure to repay borrowing in kind. One method of raising money in order to borrow was by the practice of wadsetting, which pledged the land or an annual rent from it annually to the creditor until the money was repaid.

Labor in the countryside was supplied by four groups of people--(1) the tenant who owed labor services to the master of the ground; (2) the cottars who were settled on the fermions, each with a cothouse and yard; (3) the unmarried laborers, of then the relatives of tenants and cottars; and (4) a group of skilled workers such as ploughmen, barnmen or threshers, shepherds, sawyers, and limeburners; and some of these needed alternative work out of season. The cottars were farm workers with a tied house, whose labor was considered rent. At times they were fined for every day they did not do work for their master, their immediate masters being the husbandmen. The shepherd was the most substantial skilled rural worker, and was paid a fee, mainly in grain. He also had a house, yard, and enough ground on which to sow oats and peas, and he was allowed a few animals such as sheep to add to his family's food supply and income. Some means of livelihood were often found for dependent relatives. Wills often provided that money and goods be left to loved ones. One of the biggest outlays which the head of a family faced during his working life was the marriage settlement of his children.

The inhabitants of early Scottish towns were called burgesses and they consisted of merchants and craftsmen. It is estimated that only thirty percent of the population of sixteenth-century Edinburgh consisted of burgesses. Many provided services for the burgesses or were poor.

Sanderson attempted to ascertain what types of women could read and write in this time period and looked at records of the nobility and nuns. Often one woman in a family could sign her name but it was rare that nuns could. There were different styles of handwriting. The signature of Elizabeth Dunbar, countess of Moray, in 1454, is believed to be the earliest signature of a Scottish woman. Early examples of handwriting by women is seen in legal documents, financial records, and personal letters.

RICHARD D. CULBERTSON

Tarrant County College, Northeast Campus, Hurst, TX