Taxt Rolls

Taxt Rolls

There are two methods of calculating ‘Auld Extent’ within the Scottish system of merklands. One, which I have largely followed in this blog, is to build the evidence from the bottom up, by accumulating all the individual assessments of ‘Auld Extent’. This could be done by district, barony, lordship, county, sheriffdom but I have chosen the parish as the unit of organisation. Of course, parishes themselves have a history, so we also have to deal with the complexities of parish organisation. But parishes are inextricably linked with land-assessment units such as davachs, so investigating one helps illumine the other. Because the evidence is collected at the most basic level, and is often found in a wide variety of sources, this appears the most secure way to obtain solid data. Consistency is the test of veracity at this level.

The other way is to work from the top down. If we have some large-scale figures of ‘Auld Extent’, by parish, county, island or lordship, can we use these to test and validate the picture obtained by our bottom-up approach? The answer is yes, but the evidence is much scarcer and there are more caveats. For example, the peninsula of Trotternish in Skye was said to be 20 ouncelands which, at 20 pennylands per ounceland, would make it 400 pennylands. I have seen this figure dismissed as untenable. And yet it can be proven. A (slightly damaged) rental of 1733 reveals most of them and, with the help of other data, we can account for over 385 of these pennylands. Similarly with Islay we have a total merkland valuation of 360m where each ‘unit’ was reckoned at 10 merklands. Unfortunately these units are never named although we have plenty examples of their quarterland and eighthland subdivisions. The island must have been composed of 36 such units (probably davachs or tirungs) and about 33 of them are still visible in the eighteenth century when they appear in the Stent Book of Islay.

If we take a pan-Scotland view then undoubtedly the most valuable piece of evidence is the twofold record of valuations placed before the Scottish Parliament in 1366. One is by ‘Auld Extent’, the other by ‘True Value’. Unfortunately, the areas so far covered in this blog are amongst those least well recorded in 1366. The figure for Inverness is given as one figure, with no indication as to what it comprised (Caithness, Sutherland, Ross?), and it probably did not include any of the Hebrides. Nevertheless, if we can accumulate the ground-up figures for other, better-attested sheriffdoms, then we will be able to compare the local totals with those given in 1366.

The same sheriffdom officers, who presumably supplied the data for 1366, must have continued to maintain local records of valuations by ‘Auld Extent’. We see them in the ‘Taxt Rolls’ which survive. These were usually arranged by sheriffdom. We have one for Fife in 1294, printed by Stevenson, Volume I pp 415-8; another for Edinburgh in 1479, printed in Bannatyne Miscellany III. We have a Taxt Roll for Fife, 1517, printed as Appendix G in the Sheriff Court Book of Fife by W.C. Dickinson. We have Retours for the sheriffdoms of Edinburgh and Kincardine in 1554, printed amongst the ‘Inquisitiones Valorum’ in Volume II of the Retours, (1811). (See also Thomas Thomson’s ‘Memorial’ pp 164-165 and, pp 182-184 for fictitious extents).

These ‘Taxt Rolls’ are discussed by J.D. Mackie in his edition of Thomas Thomson’s Memorial on Old Extent (e.g. p 156 and fn 27, p 189 fn 50, p 196 fn 54). In particular Mackie draws attention to the manuscript collections of Sir Lewis Stewart of Kirkhill which are found in National Library of Scotland Adv.MS.22.1.14. These include Taxt Rolls (from folio 41), purportedly of ‘all the shires of Scotland’, although here, as so often, information regarding the north-west Highlands is patchy.

We also have ‘Taxt Rolls’ which were printed alongside William Purves’s work ‘Revenue of the Scottish Crown, 1681’ by D. Murray Rose in 1897. They appear as ‘The Retoured Dewties of the Haill Shyres’ in Appendix I, pp 131-182. They are discussed by Murray Rose in his Introduction, pp l-li. He writes:

To most of the copies of Purves’s work there is added a manuscript entitled ‘The Retoured duties of the Haill Shyres,’ which is given in Appendix I, and forms an interesting addition as showing the old extent and value of lands throughout Scotland. The value of the lands in the sheriffdom of Inverness and Ross was the subject of a special inquiry at Inverness in 1555 by the lairds of the district, while the rolls of the other Shires seem to have been made up at later periods – Aberdeenshire for instance in 1579. … In Appendix II will be found the ‘General Tax Roll of 1633’.

We have, therefore, tax rolls for most of Scotland, which claim to show ‘Auld Extent’. They date to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but there is little reason to doubt that they contained information that may have been considerably older.  By comparing these tax rolls with each other, and with the cumulative data for each county, we may achieve a much more robust dataset. There are, of course, caveats. How reliable are these later ‘Taxt Rolls’? Should we, like Thomas Thomson, discard ‘Auld Extent’ valuations of churchlands as ‘factitious’ or artificial. Some churchlands had ‘Auld Extent’ valuations before they were handed to the church. In fact, some churchlands belonged to the church long before merklands ever existed in Scotland. For such reasons I would divide the lands of Scotland into two camps, lay and spiritual. The former is much easier to discuss and assess. The latter will take a lot longer to process. For these reasons I have put to one side a detailed analysis of ecclesiastical lands. For those we also need the help of Bagimont.

I cannot pretend to have done a comprehensive analysis of the data found in Appendix I of Purves, or in Sir Lewis Stewart’s manuscript. What I have done is look closely at the data for Renfrewshire, and rather less closely, at that for Inverness, Ross, and the Lordship of the Isles. The first thing to point out is that both sets of data (Purves & Stewart) are collections or composites. They incorporate valuations from different sheriffdoms, drawn up at different times. The various sheriffdoms may have had slightly different ways of doing things. Religious estates, temple-lands, and the King’s own private property, may be classed separately. From internal evidence we can deduce certain extra information about the process of composition, and when it was done.

It is clear that the documents given by both Purves and Sir Lewis Stewart are derived from a common source. The Stewart MS gives the same counties as those in Purves (save a couple in the Borders) – but in a different order. The section covering Inverness and Ross in Stewart is dated March 1554. This would match with Purves’s reference to 1555 if we reckon the latter year is given New Style. Purves suggests Aberdeenshire was composed in 1579. In Stewart this county is clearly dated 1534.

Each source has references to the monarch as ‘king’ or ‘queen’. Those which refer to ‘queen’ should be dated to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was technically queen from 1542 but whose personal reign we would associate with the period 1561-1567. ‘King’ must refer to the time of James VI who became king in 1567 but whose personal rule was from 1585-1625. In the case of Aberdeenshire in the Stewart MS ‘king’ must refer to James V who ruled, after his minority, from 1528-1542.

The returns concerning the Isles may actually be among the earliest. References to the Lord of the Isles are as if in the present. The MacDonald lords lost the earldom of Ross in 1476 and forfeited the Lordship of the Isles in 1493. There are two ways of looking at this. Either this section of evidence is from a good deal earlier, when the Lordship was still an active political unit; or it derives from someone Highland who was disinclined to accept the Lordship had gone. (The last great Rising in favour of the Lordship took place in 1545). The latter possibility might be supported by the heading on folio 53v of Stewart: ‘Ane hieland manis informatione’ (A Highland man’s information).

In the returns for Renfrewshire, Inverness, Ross, and the Lordship of the Isles, the data is almost exactly the same in both Purves and Stewart. In the case of Renfrew the order of properties is slightly different which probably just means each copyist had the pages in front of him in a different order. Murray Rose does not give us the precise source for Appendix I in his edition of Purves. Stewart’s MS is plainly a copy, but was it a copy of original documents, or just of another copy? We do not know the answers to such questions but we can still make comparisons between the two sets of data. As far as Renfrewshire is concerned the consistency is remarkable. The farms are given in the same sets, singly or in groups, in each document. Overwhelmingly, the language and figures are the same.

We can also use each source to validate the other. I have generally preferred Stewart’s manuscript as the more accurate. It also contains rather more information but this may be misleading because we do not know what was edited out prior to Murray Rose’s publication. In one Renfrewshire example we have a value of £50 (correct) from Stewart, against a figure of 50s (incorrect) from Purves. In another instance we have a mysterious place called Donermuir in Purves which is much more likely to be a form of Drums, as implied by Stewart.

Stewart’s manuscript also makes it crystal clear that the valuations were ‘Auld Extent’. This phrase is repeated on a number of occasions. The Stewart manuscript also gives a good example of how ‘in tempore pacis’ (in time of peace) had come to carry the meaning of ‘Auld Extent’. This was not some conflation arrived at by later jurists – it was present in March 1554/5. The Latin summary of the inquisition held in Inverness uses a phrase which can be simply Englished as ‘in time of peace or old extent’. The two were evidently regarded as synonymous by 1554/5.

Stewart’s MS also gives us a clear idea of where the source documents came from. The entry for Inverness and Ross is attested as a copy. The return for Kyle-Stewart (Ayrshire) on folio 54 is attested as a copy of the retour of the bailliary of Kyle-Stewart, extracted by Johne Masoun, clerk of the bailliary. We do know of a John Masoun who was a notary in Ayrshire because three of his notarial protocol books survive in the National Records of Scotland. They are NP1/35A (1576-1586), NP1/37 (1576-1593) and NP1/42 (1584-1612). He is also mentioned in a footnote on p 128 of the ‘Records of the Burgh of Prestwick’, 1834. It is probably thanks to men like him that these local sheriffdom records were copied and recopied until they fell into the hands of antiquarians.

(For further details on John Mason, and his dates, see ‘Archaeological and Historical Collections relating to Ayrshire and Galloway’, Volume VI, Edinburgh, 1889. Item XI, by J Shedden-Dobie, gives abstracts from two protocol books of John Mason. Item XII, also by Shedden-Dobie, gives details of the Notarial Note-book of John Mason).

We can then give some summary figures for Renfrewshire:

The total in Purves is £1239 – 0s – 6d or £1190 – 0s – 6d if we exclude properties that are not now in Renfrewshire.

The total for Stewart is £1284 – 13s 10d or £1235 – 13s – 10d. This last figure is the same as 1853 merks 7s 2d.

How accurate are the individual returns for Renfrew in the Taxt Roll? There are about 62 property-headings mentioned, but these range in size from small farms to whole parishes and lordships. There are a number of these where we cannot make a direct comparison. If the subject is a large estate like Duchal or the Lordship of Semple then we cannot be sure of the precise components which made up that estate at that particular time. But for the rest we can compare the ’Auld Extent’ valuation given by Stewart with those that we know of from other sources. Of 62 property-headings there are 38 where the given AE valuation clearly matches that revealed by other sources. In almost all other cases we cannot make a direct comparison. There only appears to be one case where there is a mismatch. This establishes that Taxt Rolls are a useful extra source of information about ‘Auld Extent’. We should be hesitant about using them if they are the sole source of information. But where they can used to validate or confirm data established from elsewhere then they are a useful additional tool in the historian’s armoury.

 

By way of a postscript, here is an entry from Bain’s Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol II, No 1984, dated to before 1 March 1306-7:

Huwe de Champane petitions the King and Council for ‘mitigacioun’ of his relief for his lands in Galloway, according to their present value, not the old valuation before the Scottish war, as they have been so wasted thereby, that otherwise he must sell them.

(Endorsed) The Chamberlain and sheriff of Wygeton to receive the relief as customary in these parts, either by a new extent or by the old register.

This extract points up several issues regarding the establishment of ‘auld extent’ in Scotland. It shows there was an old valuation before the Wars of Independence. That the present value of the lands was considerably reduced from that. That there was a mechanism for taking a new valuation or ‘new extent’. That the ‘normal’ feudal relief (a form of tax on inheriting a property) would be unreasonably high for Hugh de Champane because his lands in Galloway had been devastated by war – which reduced the income he could draw from them. That he pleaded with King and Council to recognise this.

The response was that the relief had still to be paid, either by taking a new extent which would establish and recognise the current value of the lands, or according to the old register. Taking a new extent was a formal process involving an inquest by local jurors who would give an impartial assessment of the value of the lands. The reference to an old register indicates that there was, in 1307, in the sheriffdom of Wigtown, a maintained register of ‘extent’.

In the paragraphs above I have been talking of ‘Taxt Rolls’ from two and three centuries later. It is clear that these sheriffdom records of extent were actually maintained from before the Wars of Independence; quite possibly from when the merkland system was first established in the twelfth century.