Towards a general theory of land-assessment in Scotland

Towards a general theory of land-assessment in Scotland

The whole tenor of this blog is that such a theory should be empirical or evidence-based. The starting point therefore should be the evidence – not the work of previous researchers. There is room for a historiography of land-assessment in Scotland but I am not setting out to write that. As this study of land assessment progresses so I will refer to the particular contributions of other students. What insights have earlier researchers offered that we must accommodate, or cannot ignore? Accordingly, I preface this essay with a select bibliography of the most important primary sources. The secondary sources are largely given within the ‘Land-assessment section’ under the ‘Sources’ heading of the blog.

The recovery of land-assessment data has been a cumulative process in which many have contributed. For most scholars, land-assessment has not been their objective. Perhaps they have been studying family or local history, or charter diplomatic, but, since so many early documents include land-assessment data, they have helped illuminate the topic, incidentally.

This section is informed not just by documents in Scotland but by a number of 11^th, 12^th and 13^th century documents in England as well. The development of currencies, and currency-based land-assessment systems is so closely interlinked between the two countries that it makes perfect sense to reference both for the period between the Norman Conquest and the Wars of Independence. A major source is the series of documents published in the volumes of the Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum (RRAN).

 

Select Bibliography

(The following sources concentrate on the period from the twelfth century to the fourteenth century – as merklands became the established land-assessment system in Scotland).

Anderson, A.O., Early Sources of Scottish History, Vols 1-2, Stamford, 1990

 

Anderson, A.O., Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, A.D. 500 to 1286, Stamford, 1991

 

Annals of the Reigns of Malcolm and William, Kings of Scotland, 1153-1214, (ed.), Lawrie, A.C., Glasgow, 1910

 

Lawrie, A.C., Early Scottish Charters prior to AD 1153, Glasgow, 1905

 

Barrow, G.W.S., The Acts of Malcolm IV, Regesta Regum Scottorum I, Edinburgh, 1960

 

Barrow, G.W.S., The Acts of William I, Regesta Regum Scottorum II, Edinburgh, 1971

 

Regesta Regum Scottorum, Handlist of the Acts of Alexander II, 1214-1249, compiled by J.W. Scoular, Edinburgh, 1959

 

Regesta Regum Scottorum, Handlist of the Acts of Alexander III, The Guardians, John, 1249-1296, compiled by G.G. Simpson, Edinburgh, 1960

 

Neville, C.J., & Simpson, G.G., (eds.), The Acts of Alexander III, Regesta Regum Scottorum IV Pt 1, Edinburgh, 2013

 

Duncan, A.A.M., (ed.), The Acts of Robert  I, Regesta Regum Scottorum V,  Edinburgh, 1988

 

Barrow, G.W.S., The Charters of King David I, Woodbridge, 1999

 

Howlett, D., Caledonian Craftsmanship – The Scottish Latin Tradition, Dublin, 2000

 

Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scottorum, Thomson, J.M., (ed.), Vols 1-11, Edinburgh, (reprint), 1984. (Register of the Great Seal).

 

Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scottorum, Vols 1-8, Livingstone, M., et al. (eds.), Edinburgh, 1908-1982. (Register of the Privy Seal).

 

Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Stuart, J., Burnett, G., et al. (eds.), Vols 1-23, Edinburgh,1878-1908

 

Digital versions of The Registers of Sasines are available on the Virtual Volumes system within the National Records of Scotland. (In the digital catalogue look under ‘RS’ plus appropriate number). See:

NAS Catalogue – simple search screen (nrscotland.gov.uk)

 

The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland are available online at:

Records of the Parliaments of Scotland (rps.ac.uk)

 

Thomson, T., (ed.), Inquisitionum ad Capellam Domini Regis Retornatarum, Vols 1-3, London, 1811-1816. (Abbreviations of Retours),

 

Robertson, W., ‘Robertson’s Index’, Edinburgh, 1798

 

The Laing Charters 854-1837, (ed.) Anderson, J., Edinburgh, 1899

 

Bain, J. (ed.), Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol I, 1108-1272, Edinburgh, 1881

 

Bain, J. (ed.), Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol II, 1272-1307, Edinburgh, 1884

 

Bain, J. (ed.), Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol III, 1307-1357, Edinburgh, 1887

 

Bain, J. (ed.), Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol IV, 1357-1509, Addenda 1221-1435, Edinburgh, 1888

 

Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol V, Supplementary, 1108-1516, (eds.), Galbraith, J.D. & Simpson, G.G., Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, 1986

 

Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland, 1286-1306, Vols I & II, (ed.), Stevenson, J., Edinburgh, 1870

 

Purves, W., Revenue of the Scottish Crown, 1681, Murray Rose, D., (ed.), Edinburgh, 1897

 

 

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum Vol. I, 1066-1100, (ed.), Davis, H.W.C., Oxford, 1913

 

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum Vol. II, 1100-1135, (eds.), Johnson, C. & Cronne, H.A., Oxford, 1956

 

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum Vol. III, 1135-1154, (eds.), Cronne, H.A. & Davis, R.H.C., Oxford, 1968

 

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum Vol. IV, Facsimiles, 1135-1154, (eds.), Cronne, H.A. & Davis, R.H.C., Oxford, 1969

 

Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, The Acta of William I, 1066-1087, (ed.), Bates, D., Oxford, 1998

 

1. Barraclough, (ed.), Facsimiles of Early Cheshire Charters, Oxford, 1957

 

1. Barraclough, (ed.), The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester c. 1071-1237, The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1988

 

The Cartulary of the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, (ed.), Donington, 2006 (hereafter ‘Keats-Rohan’).

 

Boldon Buke, (ed.), Greenwell, W., Durham, 1852

 

Round, J.H., Feudal England, Historical Studies on the XI^th and XII^th centuries, London, 1909.

 

Williams, D.G.E., Land-Assessment and Military Organisation in the Norse Settlements in Scotland, c. 900-1266 AD. PhD thesis for University of St Andrews, 1996. (Hereafter ‘Williams(1996)’.

 

Coins of Scotland, Ireland and the Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Man & Lundy) and Anglo-Gallic coins, 4^th edition, London, 2020. (Hereafter ‘Coins of Scotland’).

 

The following sources are particularly relevant for the thorny issue of ‘Auld Extent’:

Decisions of the First and Second Divisions of the Court of Session, from November 1808 to November 1825. Second edition, Edinburgh 1815-28. Volume 5 No CLXIV, May 16, 1818, pp 511-525 Thomas Cranston against Archibald Gibson.

Thomas Thomson’s Memorial on Old Extent, Mackie J.D., (ed.), The Stair Society, Edinburgh, 1946.

Acts of Parliament of Scotland, Thomson, T., & Innes, C., (eds.), London, 1814-75

Milne, I.A., An Extent of Carrick in 1260, Scottish Historical Review (34), 1955

The Sheriff Court Book of Fife 1515-1522, (ed.), Croft Dickinson, W., Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1928

Bannatyne Miscellany, Volume III, Edinburgh, 1855, pp 427-431, ‘Extentus Vicecomitatus de Edinburgh. 26 Martii 1479’.

Registrum de Panmure, Volume II, Stuart J., (ed.), Edinburgh, 1874

The Chartulary of the Abbey of Lindores, 1195-1479, Dowden, J. (ed.), Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1903

 

The sources given above encompass many tens of thousands of documents. Not all of them give direct land-assessment data for Scotland, but many do. As with other types of evidence some sources are more reliable than others – in general the earlier the better. Most, and the most valuable, data will be found in the official documents of the Registers of the Great and Privy Seals, in the Parliamentary Records and Exchequer Rolls, in the Retours and Sasines. Supplementing these are the records and archives of the great families, for instance those published by Sir William Fraser in the late nineteenth century. Yet more remain unpublished and are to be found in the National Records of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, and a string of burgh or county archives. Then there are the church records, whether of bishoprics, monastic houses, synods or parishes. On top of this ‘institutional’ data there is a whole host of family and lesser archives including leases, marriage contracts, estate rentals, estate maps, geographical descriptions, traditional histories, family histories, district histories etc. Most of the earlier records are in Latin, some in French, some in Scots.

Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch. Since land-assessment data appears in so many of these sources it has long drawn the attention of historians. Types have been recognised, rough date-ranges have been assigned, patterns have been established, problems noted. Nevertheless land-assessment data is so diverse that it still appears fairly impenetrable. Of course it is not just Scotland where land-assessment data is important – similar mysteries and complexities occur in records from England, Wales and Ireland. However, although other such sources can give us helpful analogies, this study only concerns itself with Scotland.

In order to break the subject into more manageable chunks I am going to sort different types of land-assessment data into different categories. A simple and basic distinction is whether or not the land-assessment data is based on a currency.

 

Currency-based systems in Scotland

We can distinguish between two main types of land-assessment system in Scotland. The first is currency-based. That is, the terms used by the land-assessment system are borrowed from a currency used by that society. Within this general category we can then pick out two particular systems – that based on Scottish merklands and that based on Norse pennylands.

 

Scottish merklands

The first, most widespread, but youngest, is the merkland system where the units were merklands, shillinglands and pennylands. There was a fourth unit which appeared widely in mediaeval Scotland, but which sometimes appears more closely associated with England, called the poundland. (A pound was 20s or 240d, a merk was 13s 4d or 160d, so 1 merkland was two-thirds of 1 poundland). Since so much was shared by the great Norman families of Scotland and England between the reign of King David I and the Wars of Independence, much of the language and practice of land-assessment moved seamlessly between the two countries.

The units were as follows (Latin names first):

Libra – a pound (weight), usually abbreviated to £, consisted of 20s or 240d. Applied to land it becomes a ‘librata’ of land, or poundland. This might then be Englished back into ‘librates’. Perhaps more associated with England, but in widespread use in Scotland.

Merca – a merk (weight) consisted of 13s 4d or 160d which was two-thirds of a pound. Applied to land it becomes a ‘mercata’ of land, or merkland. Historically associated with Scotland but also found in England. (Also spelled marca and mark, but generally merk in Scotland). For definitions of a merk as 13s 4d see, for example, RRS IV Part I (135) 1281 or Stevenson, Volume I, No CCCXXIII 1294.

Solidus – a shilling (a unit of currency but also a coin), usually abbreviated to s, consisted of 12 pennies and was one-twentieth of a pound. Applied to land it becomes a ‘solidata’ of land, or shillingland.

Denarius – a penny coin, usually abbreviated to d, was one-twelfth of a shilling, one-160^th of a merk and one-240^th of a pound. Applied to land it becomes a ‘denariata’ of land, or pennyland. Because a pennyland within the merkland system would be a very small piece of land we almost never come across land described just as so many ‘denariatas’. Usually these are detailed as part of a currency unit such as a merk (13s 4d), half-merk (6s 8d), quarter-merk (3s 4d) etc.

(It is important to distinguish between pennylands within the Scottish system of merklands and pennylands within the Norse system based on Hiberno-Norse pennies. See below).

Merklands, shillinglands and pennylands from this system all found their way into Scottish place-names.

Here follow some brief references to early occurrences of these terms in the documents. They were widely used in England before travelling north to Scotland. Quotations from RRAN or the Shropshire religious houses refer to English lands. (This essay grew out a study of Renfrewshire, where the great monastery of Paisley was founded from Shropshire. Accordingly I have used evidence from Shropshire religious houses and place-names). References to Scottish lands, or items that have particular relevance to Scotland, are in bold.

 

Denariatas in merklands and poundlands

Because these were very small units (1/160^th of a merk) we hardly ever find these by themselves. The normal context is so-many-shillings-and-pence e.g. 6s 8d or half-a-merk.

RRAN III (406) 1140 x 1143 gives ‘ix denariatas terre’

RRAN II (1196) 1107-1118 gives ‘lx et xii solidatas et iiii^or nummatas terre’ (60 + 12 shillings and 4 pennylands, i.e. 72s 4d or £3 -12s 4d), in Norfolk. This is an unusual case of nummatas being used in the context of merklands and poundlands, as opposed to Norse pennylands. It is this sort of anomaly that adds to the challenges of land-assessment.

There is a hill called Ten-pence in Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, which was probably just used for grazing. It is a merkland assessment, not a Norse. Lands of such low value are not met often in the documents. In Paisley, RMS V (1297) 1587, on original of 1557, refers to ‘the Schilling-hill or Mylne-hill’ where ‘Schilling’ is quite possibly a shilling (12 pence) of Auld Extent.

 

Solidatas in merklands and poundlands

RRAN (Bates) No 69, 1072 x 1073, ‘lx solidatas de pastura in Grean’ (i.e. 60 shillinglands of pasture in [Isle of] Grain)

RRAN II (630) 1103 x 1106, 20 ‘solidates of land’ (i.e. 20 shillinglands)

RRAN II (1151) 1107-1116, ‘xxx solidatas terre‘ (i.e. 30 shillinglands)

RRAN II (1196) 1107 x 1118‚ ‘tres solidatas terre’

RRAN II (1225) 1107 x 1120, ‘quinque solidatas terre’

RRAN II (1284) 1121 ‘c solidatas terre’ (i.e. 100 shillinglands or £5 land)

RRAN II (1446) 1123-6 ‘xxx solidatas terre‘ (i.e. 30 shillinglands)

RRAN II (1586) 1129  38 solidates beyond Durham Bridge

RRAN III (827) 1137 ‘x solidatas prati & xx solidatas terre’ (i.e. 10 shillinglands of meadow and 20 shillinglands [of arable])

Cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey (285) 1155 x 1160 gives ‘centum solidatas de terre’ in Cambridgeshire. The charter is from William FitzAlan, brother of Walter who founded Paisley Abbey. Witnesses included the Abbots of Haughmond and Lilleshall, as well as Unibaldus, prior of Wenlock (i.e. representatives of 3 religious houses in Shropshire). Unibaldus is probably the prior Humbald mentioned in RMP pp 2-3 where he exchanged a house in Renfru (Renfrew), granted by Walter. for property at Menewde. The connection of the Fitzalans to both Wenlock and Paisley shows how natural it would be for them to transplant the land-assessment system they were used to in Shropshire to their new lands in Renfrewshire.

RRS V (131) 1318 ‘centum solidatis terre’ (Dundee)

 

Mercatas in merklands and poundlands

RRAN III (243) 1136 x 1147 ‘x marcatas terre’ (Cambridgeshire)

RRAN III (366) 1139 ‘x marcatas’ (unspecified but probably Oxfordshire)

RRAN III (85) 1140 x 1154 ‘ii marcatis terre in Dentona’ (Lincolnshire)

RRS V (223) 1323 ‘sex mercatas terre’ (Aberdeenshire)

RRS V (268) 1325 ‘centum marcatarum et decem solidatarum terre’ (Fife)

RRS V (293) 1326 ‘tres marcatas terre’ (Forfar)

 

Libratas in merklands and poundlands

RRAN II (1012) 1112 x 1113 ‘vii libratas’

RRAN II (1208) 1117 x 1119, 6 librates

RRAN (1418) 1123 ‘xii libratis terre’

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (108) 1123 ‘duodecim libratas terre’ (Devonshire)

RRAN (1586) 1129, 4 librates

Earls of Chester (19) c. 1135 ‘xxx liberate terre’ (Lincolnshire)

Barrow: David I (70) 1138 x 1147, ‘decem libratarum terre’ (England) (i.e. a Scottish king for his English lands)

Barrow: David I (183) 1147 x 1152, (= RRS II (62)) ‘x libratarum terre’ (England) (i.e. a Scottish king for his English lands)

RRS I (131) 1159 x 1160 ‘decem libratarum terre’ (England) (i.e. a Scottish king for his English lands)

RRS II (48) 1166 x 1171 ‘quatuor libratas terre’ (Bedfordshire)

RRS II (152) 1173 x 1178 ‘x libratis terre’ (Perthshire)

RRS II (554) c. 1175 (=APS I p 116) 100 librates. See also RRS II (486) ‘Comment’.

RRS IV Part I (17) 1253 ‘quindecim libratis terre’ (£15 land) (Kirkcudbrightshire)

RRS V (133) 1318 ‘quadraginta libratas terre’ (£40 land) (Moray)

RRS V (342) 1328 ‘deux mille liuereez de terre’ (£2000 of land) (Scotland)

RRS V (346) 1328 quotes charter of Alexander II (obit. 1249) for ‘quadraginta libratas terre’, £40 of Callendar, Stirlingshire

RRS V (462) 1318 x 1329 ‘quinque libratis terrarum … antiqui extentus’ (Perthshire). The editor, A.A.M. Duncan reckons the phrase ‘antiqui extentus’ is a later addition.

RMS I (602) or RRS V (474) 1308 x 1329 ‘centum librata[s] terre’ or 100 librates (Aberdeenshire).

 

What should be clear from the above examples is that a land-assessment system using pounds, merks, shillings and pennies of land must have been established in England before the end of the eleventh century. That this travelled north with David I and was presumably combined with his new currency after c. 1136 to forge a new system of land-assessment in Scotland. It probably just overlay existing system(s) and the old was converted to the new by some sort of agreed exchange rate mechanism.

The above gives us a nice, clean, methodology, by which to process the thousands of Scottish mediaeval documents which deal with poundlands, merklands and their subdivisions. But, as with anything human, the theory is simple and unequivocal; the practice has always been less so. So let us flag up the inconsistencies, the ambiguities, the anomalies which complicate any general analysis.

It is very unlikely the process was abrupt, clear-cut and ubiquitous. It is much more likely that it was messy and proceeded by fits and starts. There are some caveats we should enter to temper any enthusiasm for a quick revolutionary change.

Firstly, it took time for the new scribal terms mercata, librata, carucata etc to establish themselves. When giving the above examples I have omitted all those where there is anomaly, ambiguity, or where the evidence is not crystal clear. It is also the case that these units might be abbreviated in the original documents. If a document writes ‘s.’ or ‘sol.’, should it be expanded to ‘solidus’ (a shilling) or ‘solidata’ (a shillingworth of land)? Sometimes the context will make this clear, but not always. Below I gave some examples where there is ambiguity and it is simply not practical to check back with every original document. We have to rely on the work of earlier researchers and transcribers. The process of using terms such as mercatas (merklands) and libratas (poundlands) rather than currency units such as mercas (merks) and libras (pounds) may have taken time and evolved unevenly – as the following references suggest.

RRAN II (712) 1105? gives ‘xxx lib[rat]as terrae’. The extension may be valid but RRAN II (1012) 1112 x 1113 has land which is described both as ‘libratas’ and ‘librarum’.

RRAN III (312) 1137 gives ‘xx libras terre’.

RRAN III (474) c. 1139 gives ‘xviii libras terre’ whereas the grant it enforces (No 473) had ‘xviii libratas terre’

RRAN III (320) 1149 is a grant in Shropshire of lands ‘ad valenciam 20 libras’ (to the value of £20). This is not necessarily the same as 20 ‘libratas’ because the property might include items like a mill.

RMS I Appendix I (Robert I) (6) Banffshire, gives ‘in extentu viginti marcarum terre’.

RMS I Appendix I (Robert I) (7) or RRS V p 511, 1323, Aberdeenshire, gives ‘in extentam quadraginta librarum terre et reditus’ and Scottish service such as pertains to ‘quadraginta libras terre’. Does the term ‘reditus’ (income, revenue) mean that we should not necessarily conclude 40 poundlands, and yet the military service implies we may.

RRS VI (428) 1369 gives land in Perth described as ‘in extentam viginti librarum’. Again this might not be £20 land because other forms of income may be included in the extent.

There are examples of conflation (or confusion?) between currency and land-assessment units. RRAN II (1587) 1129 gives ‘x libratas sterlingorum per annum’ (£10(?) sterling per year) and goes on to detail it as 100s + 4 ‘libratas’ (i.e. 4 x 20s lands) + 20s cash from a mill. (100s + 80s + 20s = 200s or £10. The implication here is that each ‘librata’ or poundland returned 20s or £1).

We also have examples where two different forms of land-assessment could be covered in the same grant:

RRS V (223) 1323 gives ‘sex mercatas terre’ in Aberdeenshire but also refers to the half davach of Skene and Westercardeny.

RRS VI (486) 1343 gives ‘octo davatas et quinque denariatas terre’ in Glenelg, (i.e. 5 Pictish davachs + 5 Norse pennylands). These two systems had distinct origins but were geared together by a ratio (in this part of the NW) of 1 davach = 20 pennylands.

Laing Charters (74) 1387 gives two pennylands (Norse) and a 20 shillingland (Scots) in Carrick, Ayrshire.

The best example of the ability to work in multiple land-assessment systems at the same time comes from Lochiel in Lochaber:

RMS I (520), Robertson’s Index p 136 No 18, RW Munro, ALI No 7 pp 10-11 dated 1346 x 1372-3:

sexaginta marcatis terre in partibus de Lochabre videlicet de decem et septem denariatis terre de Loche de dimidia davata terre de Kylmalde et de una davata cum dimidia de Locharkage

(60 merklands in Lochaber viz. 17 pennylands of Loche [Lochiel], half a davach (10d) of Kilmallie and 1½ davachs (30d) of Loch Arkaig)

Here we have Norse pennylands and Pictish davachs given a merkland assessment total.

 

The point of giving the above examples is to establish that land-assessment is full of anomalies and puzzles. Some can be explained or resolved; others can mislead or misdirect. We are dealing with a body of evidence which permeates tens of thousands of documents, written in many different places, in many styles of handwriting, over many centuries, and in at least three languages. It is often the case that these documents are themselves copies of now lost originals. We have to allow for mistranscriptions, misreadings, misinterpretations and plain simple mistakes. But what ties this body of evidence together, what allows us to believe that one day we will offer correct interpretations, is arithmetic.

Land-assessment systems were not random. They were mathematical solutions to the problem of how to assess the value of land. What may have started out as random subjective judgement, settled into an arithmetic system which allowed division and comparison. Arithmetic order established land-assessment practices which all users could take confidence in, wherever or whenever they settled. This formed the basis for taxation and the render of services. In origin it was probably top-down, and possibly as old as settled agriculture.

These assessments, of whatever type, embedded themselves in the rural landscape. They established boundaries, they allocated shares, they carried grazing rights, they organised fermtouns and social groups, they underwrote rentals. Over the centuries a myriad other features attached to them. They became the basis for levying arrangements and hunting obligations. They underlay the territorial organisation of ecclesiastical units such as parishes, deaneries, bishoprics. Another theme, so far unexplored, is their relationship with lay units of organisation such as mairdoms, thanedoms, baronies, lordships and sheriffdoms. They were important and ubiquitous. Even the remotest parts of Highland Scotland had land-assessment valuations attached to them. Sometimes these came late; we may come across a phrase to the effect that such-and-such a remote glen was ‘never before in the king’s rental’. But, in general terms, land-assessment covered all of Scotland, from fertile fields in East Lothian to remote St Kilda.

If arithmetic is the key to unlocking land-assessment, then consistency is our everyday guide as to whether or not we have correctly interpreted the data for any particular location. Inconsistency in the evidence is a sure indication that something has gone wrong with our analysis. Sometimes this boils down to a simple mistake. A total of 13s 3d is far more likely to be 13s 4d or 1 merk, with ‘iijd’ mistakenly written (or mistakenly read) instead of ‘iiijd’. Figures like 6s 8d or 33s 4d or £26 13s 4d may not seem to make much sense until we see them as ½ a merk, 2½ merks and 40 merks respectively.

It might be the case we are only dealing with a fraction of an estate. Perhaps it has been divided between 7 heiresses (as happened with Auchinbothy in Lochwinnoch parish, Renfrewshire). Pennies divide into halves and quarters, not one-sevenths. When we reach that sort of detail what tends to happen is that the tiny fractions of a penny drop from the records which means our numbers no longer add correctly. All these are examples of how and where we can go wrong. And then there are the issues of farms being absorbed by other farms; or marginal farms being abandoned and their valuations lost. But all of these are qualifications to a system of arithmetic consistency. Occasionally, as with Badenoch, we have a clean, early, top-level assessment to guide us, (60 davachs in RMS I (382, 530, 558) 1371). Occasionally, as in Eigg, all the figures add up perfectly (5 Pictish davachs = 5 Norse ouncelands or 100 pennylands = 30 Scottish merklands). But, for the most part, our evidence is partial, incomplete and indicative rather than assured.

Descriptions of land were not always exactly as the above units might imply. So, we have numerous valuations of 100s or 50s or 40s or 33s 4d or 40d etc. These were just contemporary shorthand and we can, if it clarifies things, think of them in other terms. So 100s is also a £5 land, 50s is half that or 3¾m, 40s is £2 or 3 merks, 33s 4d is 2½ merks, 40d is 3s 4d or ¼ merk. It is always worth being aware of the common fractions when dealing with merklands. A three-quarter merk is 10s, ⅝ merk is 8s 4d, ½ merk is 6s 8d, ⅜ merk is 5s, ¼ merk is 3s 4d, ⅛ merk is 1s 8d, 1/16^th merk is 10d, 1/32^nd merk is 5d. When we meet denominations in shillings and pence they may appear puzzling or random, but they are often just subdivisions of larger units.

It is probably fair to characterise the merk as the more basic unit in the Scottish currency system. Amongst the coins we meet are the merk, half-merk etc. However, it would be misleading to think of the merk and pound as distinguishing two different currency systems, pounds more in England, merks more in Scotland. Yes, that may be true in later centuries. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the two terms were used concurrently in both countries.  In England in the twelfth century we find references to merks and pounds of land – a process followed in Scotland. It is only through the long passage of time that one denomination, the merk becomes more favoured in Scotland. They did not belong to different systems, they were both units within the same system. At the time scribes, notaries and exchequer clerks could move easily from one method of reckoning to another.

Although libras (pounds) and mercas (merks) were originally weights it is probably true that libras became the term most commonly used in the documents to indicate a weight of pepper, cumin, wax etc. These were often shown as renders and the weight specified was libras not mercas of these products. For example:

Fraser, Annandale Volume I (1) c. 1190 ‘unam libram piperis’ (a pound of pepper) or 6d.

Charters, Earl of Chester (324) c. 1200 ‘unam libram piperis’ (a pound of pepper) or 6d.

Charters, Earl of Chester (254) c. 1200 ‘unam libram thuris’ (a pound of incense)

Scottish History Society, Miscellany Vol IV (15) 1270-1280 ‘unam libram piperis’

RRS IV Part I (153) 1284 ‘unam libram piperis’

However, merca may have continued to indicate weight in relation to bullion or coin. Perhaps the most common example we have is the use of the word merca in the phrase mercas argenti (marks of silver), which occurs in many early documents. It is not always the case that we can distinguish whether this is a weight or a number of coins.

There is a detailed discussion of this system below but it was probably introduced to Scotland during the reign of David I (1124-1153). It would have already been familiar to many Scottish families who had connections to England. It became the national assessment system of mediaeval Scotland. Here follow a few examples from the records which prove the familiarity of Scottish kings with practices elsewhere in Britain.

RRAN II (601) c. 3/9/1101, Edgar ‘rex Scotiae’ (King of Scotland) is a witness to a charter concerning Dorset.

RRAN II (1451) 1126?, David, King of Scotland is a witness to a document concerning Bedfordshire.

RRAN III (377) 1141, at Oxford, re Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire, 3 carucates. Witnesses include David, King of Scots, William FitzAlan and his brother Walter Fitzalan (later founder of Paisley Abbey). (For the two Fitzalans see also No 378). Compare Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey (1250-1251).

RRAN III (629) 1141, David, King of Scots (rege Scottorum), is a witness to a grant concerning Oxfordshire.

RRAN III (899) 1141, David, King of Scots (reg[e] Scott[orum]), is a witness to a grant of cash from England to the Abbey of Tiron, France.

Lawrie, Annals p 40 1159, present at the Scottish Court in Roxburgh was Godred, King of the Isles (i.e. Man and the Hebrides).

The Kings of Scotland were also significant landowners in England and numerous examples of their knowledge of English landholding practice can be found in G.W.S. Barrow’s ‘The Charters of David I’, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1999.

 

Norse pennylands

The second currency-based system we come across is the Norse system of pennylands. This system is older than the merkland system and probably dates to the period after the introduction of a Hiberno-Norse currency c. 995 AD. At this time the Norse colony in Dublin, as well as the authorities in various Scandinavian centres, were looking to emulate the monetary authority of the Anglo-Saxon penny. In particular the coinage of Aethelred II was copied by the Norse in Dublin and widely in Scandinavia. A detailed analysis of this coinage will be undertaken at a later date but the data already contained in this blog will give a sense of the power and reach of this currency amongst the Scandinavian colonies in Scotland. A pennyland fiscal system, where land is denominated in pennylands for taxation purposes, can be found starting at the Kyle of Sutherland, working anti-clockwise round virtually the whole north and west coasts of Scotland, down to Kintyre, Cowal, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and Galloway.

There may have been two sub-types of this system of pennylands. The earliest, and more extensive of the two, based on the Hiberno-Norse penny, covers SW Scotland, mainland Argyll, much of Western Inverness-shire, and most of the Hebrides from Mull northwards. The second subset includes Orkney, Caithness and Sutherland. There are anomalies. Shetland seems to be different. Parts of Wester Ross are bereft of data, either because there were no pennylands there, or because they did not survive the attrition of time. Some Hebridean islands such as Islay and Raasay have no pennylands; others such as Mull, are full of them. The first system (founded on the coinage of Dublin) seems to have included tirungs (literally ‘land-ounces’) or ouncelands, composed of 20 pennylands each. The system in Caithness and Sutherland had ouncelands of 18 pennylands each.

In the documents these units were Latinised in a similar fashion to those of the merkland system described above.

Uncia – was an ounce (weight) – in this context referring to silver, although gold was also weighed in ounces. Applied to land it becomes an ‘unciata’ of land, or ounceland. There was a Gaelic equivalent which was ‘tirung’ (literally land-ounce) which was sometimes abbreviated simply to ‘ung’ or ‘ungs’. Ounces were not always subdivided into 20 pennies but ouncelands within this particular system were so reckoned, and consistently. Early records contain a number of references to ounces of gold and silver but complications quickly emerge so I will defer discussion of this issue until a more detailed analysis of Norse pennylands.

The reasons for adopting the 20-pennyland ounceland are still unclear. Because an ounceland might be a significant area of land we do not necessarily find them in place-names except in a description such as ‘Ungnakille’ (ounceland of the church), which was an estate name in Northern Skye. In Orkney an ounceland was named an eyrisland or urisland and although we frequently come across what must have been ouncelands in Caithness, and, to a lesser extent, Sutherland, we lack the expected terms.

Denarius – generally a penny coin. Applied to land it becomes a ‘denariata’ of land, or pennyland. The Hiberno-Norse currency consisted of silver pennies, modelled on Anglo-Saxon originals. When we come across documents which refer to denariatas of land in areas that were once under Norse overlordship we can generally assume these were Norse rather than Scottish units.

Nummus is a small sum of money, a coin. Applied to land it becomes a ‘nummata’ of land. In the context of the Hiberno-Norse currency it means a pennyland. RRAN II (1196) uses it for lands in Norfolk. I have yet to see the word nummatas used in connexion with the Scottish system of merklands; it only seems to have been used to describe pennylands within the Norse system. An exception is the Book of Scone which talks of ‘nummatas savonis’ (literally pennies of soap). However, ‘nummata’ also has the sense of a ‘pennyworth’, here applied to a commodity other than land, which makes for a better understanding of the sense. (See file ‘Nummatas as pennylands in Scotland’ within the ‘General Summaries’ section of this blog).

The use of ‘nummus’ to represent a penny coin is found in English and French records:

RRAN (Bates) (62) 1066 x 1083 (France) ‘decimam de nummis’ as well as ‘decimam denariorum’ (tithe of pennies, using two different words for penny)

RRAN (Bates) (158) 1082 x 1083 (England) ‘per annum quindecim libras Anglorum nummorum’ (£15 of English pence per year)

RRAN (Bates) (164) 1079 x late 11^th century) seven ‘libras nummorum’ (pounds of pennies)

RRAN (Bates) (212) 1068 x 1076 (France) ‘decimam nummorum’ (tithe of pence) and ‘quindecim libris denariorum’ (£15 of pennies)

RRAN III (449) 1148-1153 (England) ‘de nummis’ (of pence)

The reason why nummata is used in some Scottish records to indicate some Norse pennylands remains an enigma. Scribal tradition may have something to do with it.

When it comes to subdivisions of a Norse pennyland things become more complicated. Although the pennyland assessment system was created by Norse overlords along the west coast of Scotland their language was progressively overwhelmed by Gaelic. We have Gaelic terms for pennyland, half-pennyland and farthingland. These are found in the records, but also in the place-names of the area.

peighinn – penny, pennyland. Peighinn occurs in place-names as Pen-, Pean- and is even corrupted into Beinn.

leth-pheighinn – half-penny; into place-names as Lephen, Leffen etc

feòirling, also feòirlinn – farthing; into place-names as Feorlin etc.

We also have a word which finds its way into place-names in SW Scotland but which comes from English rather than Gaelic:

farden – farthing or farthingland occurs in place-names in Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire.

Halfpenny was usually Latinised into obolus/obulus but fractions of a penny in documents always have to be treated with caution, and with deference to context.

Farthinglands were generally Latinised as ‘quadrantem’ (or similar) in both England and Scotland. For example:

St Peter’s Gloucester (296) c. 1240 x c. 1265 ‘quadrantem’

RMS I (83) or RRS V (136) 1318 Robert I grants Duncan: ‘duas quadrantas terre … in extentum septem marcatarum terre’ (two farthinglands … seven merklands in extent) in Rosneath, Dunbartonshire

RRS V (235) 1323 Ayrshire, ‘quadrantatam terre’

For other examples of this term see under Rosneath Table (Lennox) in the blog.

 

What is interesting about Norse pennylands in Scotland is that they lasted for so long after they were nominally replaced by merklands. They were still active units in the agrarian and mental landscape of many parts of the Highlands, Hebrides and far north until the late eighteenth century. Even in SW Scotland they were used in documents fully two hundred years after merklands were introduced. Here follow some early examples:

RRS IV Part I (19) 1253, Carrick, Ayrshire, ‘duabus denariatis terre’

RRS IV Part I (27) 1260, Ayrshire, ‘quinque denariatis terre’

Munimenta Fratrum Predicatorum de Glasgu, 1314, Cowal, ‘denariata terre’

RRS V (152) 1319, Dumfries ‘duas denariatas terre’

RRS V (393) 1306 x 1322, Lorn, ‘denariatas terre’

It is tempting to try and offer an exchange rate between Norse pennylands and Scottish merklands. I have no doubt such existed but it may not have been consistent. In other words the exchange rate may have varied between areas, and over time. The Norse pennylands in SW Scotland were ‘accommodated’ to the Scottish system long before the Norse pennylands in the Hebrides, which were only officially absorbed after 1266. In the Register of Glasgow (Shead & Cunningham No 187, 1244) we have reference to a pennyland valued at 4 merklands. Welcome though this document is, the question of conversion between the two systems is complicated by time and space, and will be elaborated in a future essay.

Also deferred is a fuller discussion of the differences between pennylands on the west coast and those in Sutherland, Caithness and Orkney. The latter were organised in groups of 18d, not 20d, and there was also a different relationship with the earlier system of davachs. In Sutherland and Caithness we are safe to say that 1 davach was worth 6d. In the Northern Hebrides and facing mainland coast it was 1 davach to 20d. As we come south to Argyllshire things become a lot more complicated so I will defer discussion of that issue as well.

Why were the pennylands in the North organised differently? The question was tackled by DGE Williams in his 1996 thesis (see Bibliography) where he suggested it was because the standard was set by the Cologne penny. (See especially Chapter 6, pp 215-218, and further p 270). This is a subject I will return to but is beyond the scope of this particular essay.

 

Confusion between the two currency-based systems.

Merklands and Norse pennylands often overlapped. We have little merkland evidence for the far north but there is plenty for the west coast, the Hebrides and SW Scotland. Contemporaries were able to move with ease between the two systems but it is possible that we, at the distance of many centuries, can become muddled. For example we might confuse a 10 pennyland unit (Scots) with a 10 pennyland unit (Norse). So, in Arran we find a block of lands called the Ten Pennylands, whilst in Kilpatrick (Dunbartonshire) we meet a hill called Tenpence. The former is a Norse unit, large and significant; the latter is a single hill-top, valued at 1/16^th of a merk, and probably only ever used for grazing. The contexts usually help us avoid confusion. Arran has pennylands, Kilpatrick doesn’t – since in this part of Scotland they stretch no further east than Rosneath.

 

Land-assessment systems NOT based on currencies

A further class of land-assessment systems in Scotland would be those NOT based on currency systems. The currency-based systems can be roughly dated to post c. 995 for Norse pennylands and post c. 1136 for Scottish merklands. It is likely that non currency-based systems are older. Unfortunately, we lack documentary evidence to date these precisely so we are reliant on place-names and other forms of evidence. What were these systems?

Carucates and Bovates (or Ploughgates and Oxgates)

In SE Scotland there was a system of carucates and bovates (Englished as ploughgates and oxgates) which are probably associated with the Northern Anglian kingdoms. The system of carucates and bovates cannot be studied in depth without also looking at the evidence for Northern England. That in turn must lead on to the division between those parts of England where reckonings were in carucates as opposed to those other provinces where reckonings were in hides. That would be to open up a huge field of study, way beyond the ambitions of this blog. Accordingly I am just going to take carucates and bovates in SE Scotland as a ‘given’, without worrying at present as to how this system developed.

A study of the sources shows how the familiar terminology came about:

Caruca/carruca is Latin for a plough and gives carucatas/carrucatas (carucates or ploughgates).

However we come across all the same anomalies with the evolution from caruca (plough, the farm instrument) to carucata (the measure of land ploughed) as we did with merca to mercata above. The scribes felt their way forwards to the new term with various circumlocutions. We always have to be aware of some of the ambiguities we may meet. A caruca might be the simple implement, the plough. Or it might mean the area ploughed by one plough, what we might call a ploughland or ploughgate. But as the word carucate developed from caruca so it might just come to be the term used for an assessment unit. (See comments by Round below).

The other factor we have to take into account is how these documents were transmitted. A great many documents from the eleventh and twelfth centuries only exist in copies. Old documents faced all sorts of storage issues which helped degrade the quality of the original. Sometimes they could be accidentally, or deliberately destroyed. Since these documents were of great value to the individuals or institutions which owned them, they might copy themselves, or have them copied by others.

They were of value because they proved ownership or right, and might have to be produced in legal process. Ecclesiastical institutions could copy them in-house and we have numerous examples of Paisley Abbey defending its rights by reference to earlier documents. The Paisley Cartulary itself only survives by virtue of a sixteenth-century copy. The burgh records of Ayr offers good examples of the town worthies ensuring that their charters were officially copied when they suffered with age. Human, and institutional nature being what it is, sometimes these copies ‘improved’ on the original. In the examples I have given I have tried to avoid everything tainted with suspicion. But the experts do not always agree about which documents are fraudulent.

Another sort of copy could be created by a charter of confirmation, where the evidence supplied by one or more earlier documents is confirmed by later authority. When doing so either the original document(s) might be quoted more or less verbatim, or we could be served with a synopsis. We have, for example, numerous confirmations by later Scottish monarchs, as well as a number by the Pope. In the latter case it is unlikely the scribes of the papal chancery had originals of the Scottish documents before them. In such cases the transmission of information may have been part oral, part written.

Charters of confirmation which quoted directly from previous documents meant that linguistic terms and turns of phrase from much earlier times can turn up where we don’t expect them. The word caruca is a good example.

RRAN I (269) 1070 x 1087 rehearses a confirmation by William I (of England) to the Hospital of St Leonard at York, of the ancient alms on which the hospital is founded; namely from each plough that ploughs in Yorkshire one trava (thrave) of corn. (In RRAN II p 397 it is suggested this may date to c. 1090-1098 in the reign of William II). (A thrave is a number of sheaves, and, unsurprisingly, that number could vary from one area to another).

RRS V (266) 1325 is an inspection of charters or letters of William I and Alexander III to the hospital of Soutra, The second document to feature in this inspection is from Alexander III and is also given as RRS IV Part I (43) 1263. The hospital is given, annually, from the king’s own lands on the south side of the Forth, ‘de qualibet caruca unam travam bladi’ (out of each plough one thrave of corn). It is stated that had been the custom in Alexander II and William I’s time, following a charter of William’s. The word caruca is repeated twice more in the form carucis. RRS V p 529 ‘Comment’ casts some doubt on the authenticity of this act. RRS II (400) 1195 x 1199 discusses the first document in the inspection.

RRS IV Part I (85) 1273, Alexander III sends the bishop of Glasgow a copy of an inquisition regarding a dispute between the Hospital of Soutra and Sir Walter de Moravia. At issue was this claim to a thrave of corn. Fifteen suitors or jurors had to decide whether the ancestors of Sir Walter, namely the late Walter Olifard and David Olifard:

de singulis carucis infra terram de Cralyng’ et de Smalham tam de propriis carucis quam de carucis bondorum unam thravam bladi domui de Soltr’ singulis annis dare solebant

(from each caruca within the land of Crailing and Smailholm [Roxburghshire], both their own carucis, and the carucis of their bondsmen, used to give one thrave of corn to the house of Soutra annually)

The jurors declared for Soutra and said the custom had been going on for a long time.

The reason for quoting these sources is that the word caruca (plough), rather than carucata (ploughland), might seem a little out of place in documents from the latter part of the thirteenth century. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a phrase from King William’s time, fossilised in later transcripts. But perhaps, even in William’s time it was already old-fashioned. The eleventh-century example from Yorkshire given above under RRAN I (269) might argue that a thrave of corn per ploughland was once a standard endowment for a hospital in these old Anglian territories.

Another example can be found in RMS V (340) 1328. This is an inspection by Robert Bruce of 5 earlier charters to Durham regarding the possessions of Coldingham, Berwickshire. Three of the charters are by King Edgar, one by David I and one by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar. The third charter of Edgar’s grants an annual payment of half a merk of silver ‘de unaquaque caruca’ (from each caruca) in Coldinghamshire. (This charter by Edgar appears as No 20 in Lawrie’s Early Scottish Charters, granted c. 1100. In his notes Lawrie comments that the owners of each plough ‘presumably held a carucate’). Just as with the grants to the hospital at Soutra it may be that we have the old word ‘caruca’ fossilised into later transcripts at a time when it had usually been replaced by the new word ‘carucata’. There is a further confirmation from Robert III’s time under RMS I (839) 1391-2, which still retains caruca).

So we should not imagine there was necessarily a smooth and progressive transition from one set of terms to another, still less our ability to track it. RMS I (27), or RRS V (291) 1326, gives an inspection of an earlier charter by King Malcolm IV (1153-1165) to Scone. In turn this refers back to previous documents by King Alexander (giving multiple carucatis) and King David (referring to aratris). Malcolm’s charter is at RRS I (243) 1163 x 1164. In another of Malcolm’s charters, RRS I (251) 1162 x 1164, we come across a ‘dimidia caruca terre’ by the church at Invergowrie, Perthshire. In another still, RRS I (254) c. 1163 x 1165, we meet ‘duabus carucatis terre’ by Paisley, Renfrewshire; as well as a ‘carrucam terre’ in Hassendean, Roxburghshire. This last comes from the Paisley Register which is a sixteenth-century transcript of the Abbey’s cartulary, and, as Barrow points out, the transcript actually has ‘carrutam’ for the Roxburgh example. A quite different problem emerges in that Renfrewshire almost certainly never had carucates. The only references to them are early, and intrusive, and associated with new owners. They may have existed, briefly, in the documents, but they did not take root on the ground. Our evidence, so far, is of the nature of a patchwork quilt, composed of reworked older materials.

We also have to take into account the fact that the authors of these documents were working in an Anglo-Norman world. Norman or French scribes might end up working in England and passing on their habits and turns of phrase in that new post-Conquest environment. The Normans did not conquer Scotland but the influence of all the new men brought in by David I is apparent at every turn. The linguistic province of Anglo-Norman scribes, writing in Latin, stretched from Normandy to Renfrewshire. That is the background to our documentary record of the developing merkland system; and how the technical terms of land-assessment (denariata, mercata, davata, carucata etc) wormed their way into the contemporary lexicon.

The upshot of all this is that we have to proceed with caution when looking at the language of land-assessment during this early period of Scottish documents. Firstly the terminology was fluid. Two different words were used for ploughs and a new word for a ploughland was emerging. A proportion of these early documents only survive in later confirmations or transcripts. It is not always clear when something is transcribed word for word or when it is ‘updated’ or ‘improved’ to reflect new terminology. New owners, and their scribes, sometimes did not recognise, or were not prepared to give linguistic room for, old native forms. A davach might just be termed a ‘Scottish’ carucate.

What happened in Scotland by fits and starts had previously been experienced in the Norman-French world:

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (8) 1037-47 gives ‘terram trium carrucarum in insula Gersoi’ (the land of 3 ploughs in the isle of Jersey). In her abstract, the editor gives ‘three carucates’, which they were, but the word was not there yet in the Latin.

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (25) 1040 gives ‘terram quantum sufficit ad unam carrucam’ (land sufficient for a plough). You can almost feel the scribe yearning for a word like ‘carucata’ to come within reach of his pen.

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (79) 1058-1085 gives ‘terram unius carruce in insula Greneroi’ (land of one plough in the isle of Guernsey)

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (38) 1098-1100 gives ‘duarum carrucarum terram’ (land of two ploughs – i.e. what would soon be known as two carucates).

Carucas did eventually become carucates though:

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (102) 1097 gives ‘unam carrucatam terre’ (one carucate of land), to the priory of  Gohory, south of Chartres.

RRAN II (623) 1100 x 1102 (confirming grant of 1098), Wales, gives ‘viginti carucatas terrae’ (20 carucates).

ESC (20) c. 1100, Berwickshire, grants half a merk of silver, yearly, ‘de unaquaque carruca’ (from each plough). It is difficult to believe that carruca here means a physical plough. It is much more likely to refer to a ploughgate, an abstract concept that was increasingly taking a lexical form. It is worth noting that this render of half a merk of silver predates the first Scottish currency. It may have been paid in bullion, or in English coin.

RRAN II (793) 1102-6, Leicestershire, gives ‘carrucatas’ and ‘carrucatas terre’

ESC (24) c. 1105, Howlett pp 10-12, Roxburghshire, ‘una carrucata terrae’

ESC (33) 1107 x 1117, Howlett pp 12-13, Roxburghshire, ‘una carrucata terrae’

ESC (34) 1117-1124, Howlett pp 13-14, Barrow, David I (12), Roxburghshire, ‘unam carucatam terrae’

RRAN II (833) 1107, Northamptonshire, has ‘terram trium carucarum’ (land of 3 ploughs) and ‘terram ad unam carucam’ (land to/of 1 plough); although there are variants to these readings which give carucates.

RRAN II (1196) 1107-1118 gives ‘duas carrucatas terre’ (two carucates)

RRAN III (373) (precise date unknown) has ‘terram duarum carucarum’ (land of two ploughs) (Wiltshire) but also ‘unam carucatam terre’ (one ploughland).

RRAN III (942) 1136 has lots of ‘carucatas terre’ (carucates or ploughlands) but also has ‘decimas carucarum’ (tithes of ploughs) and ‘ii quadrucatas terre’ (2 ploughlands). This is a general confirmation so possibly what is happening here is that the scribe is drawing from several sources written over a period of time, each with its own type of phrasing and terminology.

ESC (251) 1152-1153 defines ‘unam carrucatam terre’ by Roxburgh as 104 acres.

RRS II (129) 1170 x 1171, Aberdeenshire, ‘una carucata terre’

RRS II (131) c. 1171 x 1174, Fife, ‘dimidia carrucata terre Scotica’. The last word has led to the suggestion this might be a reference to a half-davach.

RRS II (142) 1172 x 1174, Inverness-shire, ‘dimidiam carucatam terre in Duldauach’. The last word is a place name which incorporates davach, the main unit of an earlier Pictish land-assessment system.

Howlett pp 153-155, 1172 x 1199, (see also RRS II (348)), Aberdeenshire, gives ‘duas carucatas terre’. One of these gives 1 merk of silver, which should be compared to ESC (20) c. 1100 (above).

RRS II (240) 1175 x 1190 Roxburghshire, gives ‘dimidiam carrucatam terre in terra et prato’ (half carucate in arable land and meadow). This is an interesting example of meadow being specified in a Scottish land-assessment context. See under ‘solidatas’ above for an example in England. Generally land-assessment only dealt with arable land.

RRS II (469) probably 1205, Fife, service pertaining to ‘dimidiam Carrucatam terre scotticam’. Compare to RRS II (131) above – this may also reference a half-davach.

RMS III (1237) 1532, Aberdeenshire, tells us exactly what a carucate meant to contemporaries: ‘4 carrucatas, vulgariter four plewis … 2 carrucatas (twa plewis)’, (4 carucates, commonly 4 ploughs … 2 ploughs).

RMS III (3267) 1546, Aberdeenshire, likewise has: ‘terras dualitatis unius carucate, vulgariter the twa pairt of ane pleuch’ (the lands of two-thirds of a carucate, commonly [known as] two-thirds of a plough[land])

 

Just as with our table of cash transactions in Scotland in the twelfth century, (see file ‘Evidence for a cash economy’) our evidence of carucates is skewed. If we did a bar graph of carucates in the various counties of Scotland the results would show a marked contrast between the south-east and the north-west. Many of the earliest Scottish documents come from the Treasury of Durham Cathedral. Naturally these are concerned with Durham possessions, particularly in Coldingham and Lothian. The bar graph would suggest plenty of carucates in the south-east of Scotland, none in the north-west. But again, although the evidence is unbalanced, it is not necessarily untrue. Carucates do seem most closely associated with the former Anglian lands in SE Scotland. As they appear to spread northwards into other counties so we should ask ourselves if they were really carucates, or were they something else, such as davachs; which contemporary scribes simply called carucates when they had to translate local terms into Latin. There is a reasonable suspicion that the arachors of Lennox were really davachs. Was it the case that the davachs in Lennox were rendered as aratra in Latin, which were then promptly Gaelicised as arachors when they first appear in written record?

 

Finally, a word about the size of carucates. It is the only form of land-assessment which, theoretically at least, permits measurement. Of the other main types, merklands, pennylands and davachs; if we ask the question ‘How big is it?’; the proper answer is: ‘As big as it needs to be in order to be classed as a merkland or pennyland or davach’. These latter categories are based, ultimately, on a judgement of the arable capacity of a piece of land, not on a measurement of area. In a merkland or pennyland’s case we can surmise that they were regarded as capable of returning 1 mark or 1 silver penny as rent, after produce had been converted into cash. Davachs are older than any currencies in Scotland but perhaps they were reckoned on the basis of producing a specific measure of victual as rent.

We have an early definition of the size of a carucate in a Roxburghshire charter given in ESC (251) p 202. This is a grant to Kelso Abbey and dates to 1152 x 1153. The carucate is defined as ‘quinquies viginta acris et quatuor’ (i.e. 5 score acres and 4 = 104 acres). Since a carucate consisted of 8 bovates this meant a bovate was 13 acres (8 x 13 = 104). This definition seems to have become that generally accepted in Scotland. In APS I, Appendix V, p 387, we read, among the ‘collected fragments’, a short paragraph on ‘The mesuring of landis’:

at the mesuring of landis the plew land thai ordanit to contene viii oxingang the oxgang sall contene xiii akeris

(at the measuring of lands the ploughland they ordained to contain 8 oxgates, the oxgate shall contain 13 acres)

You could be forgiven for thinking that standard measures in mediaeval Scotland were honoured more in the breach than in the observance. However, things probably varied greatly in different parts of the country. Laing Charters (22) c. 1318, concerns two oxgates (bovates) in East Lothian. In fact 19 holdings of acres and roods are given, the smallest being 1 rood, the largest being 4 acres. Collectively these total 26⅝ acres which is only ⅝ acre more than we would expect for 2 oxgates. It appears that, in East Lothian at least, their agricultural measurements were commendable, as early as c. 1318.

In 1681, John Skene, ‘De verborum significatione’, p 21, defines ‘Bovata Terrae, ane oxen-gate of land’ as follows:

The Lordes of the Session, be their decreete, 18 Julii 1541, esteemed and modified an Oxen-gate of land to twenty shillings in all dewties zeirly. Bot in this I finde na certaine rule; for some land is mair fertill, and uther mair barren; Alwaies ane Oxen-gate of land suld conteine threttene acker; and four Oxen-gate extendis to ane pound land of auld extent, conform to the decreetes given be the Lordes of the Checker 11 Mar. 1585.

(The Lords of Session, by their decree, 18 July 1541, esteemed and modified an oxengate of land to twenty shillings in all duties yearly. But in this I find no certain rule; for some land is more fertile, and other more barren; Always an oxengate of land should contain thirteen acres; and four oxengate extend to one pound land of auld extent, conform to the decrees given by the Lords of the Exchequer 11 March 1585).

In 1798, John Smith, one of the ministers of Campbelton, published a ‘General View of the Agriculture of the County of Argyll’. On p 31 he has a footnote which reads:

The old division of land in this county, and that by which public burdens were regulated before the valuation took place, was by mark-lands, of which some farms contained more, and some fewer, according to their value or extent. The division appears to have been done in general with great judgment, the relative value of these mark-lands being in most places pretty equal. It is probable, however, that when this division took place, much regard was had to the quantity of arable land which every farm then contained. By a decree of the Exchequer (March 11 1585), a 40 shilling (or 3 markland) of old extent (or 8 oxgangs) should contain 104 acres.

Cosmo Innes, Lectures on Scotch Legal Antiquities, 1872, pp 282-3, went back to the source, a case argued before the Court of Exchequer on 11 May (?) 1585, and quotes from the judgement:

13 acres … extendis and sall extend to ane oxgait of land, and that four oxgait of the saids lands extendis and sall extend to ane pund land of auld extent in all tyme to cum

From which Innes deduced that eight oxgates (or a carucate or ploughland of 104 acres) was 40s (£2) Auld Extent.

This appears to offer us a neat gearing mechanism between two land-assessment systems, carucates and merklands (i.e. 1 carucate = 40s ‘auld extent’ or 3 merklands). However, what took place in 1585 was merely a legal decision which linked together two systems of land-assessment. Merklands developed in Scotland from perhaps the 1130s. Carucates were in SE Scotland long before that. We need to weigh this ratio, established in 1585, against any others we find in the intervening centuries. (See, for example, Mackie’s caveat on pp 316-317 of Thomas Thomson’s ‘Memorial’). That is a huge task and will be tackled separately at a later date.

There is one other problem with dealing with carucates which is an issue raised by Round in his essays in ‘Feudal England’. Round distinguishes between carucates as a fiscal concept and carucates as a measure of area. On p 78 he mentions ‘carucatae terrae’ and then says:

“These are carefully contrasted throughout with the ‘terra carucae’ or areal measure”.

On p 85 he writes:

“After careful study of the Domesday Survey of Leicestershire, I definitely hold that in that county ‘carucata terrae’ was the geld-carucate and ‘terra x car[ucis]’ the actual ploughlands”.

On p 90 he takes this a stage further with a table showing the disjunction between the number of carucates and the number of ploughlands in a single page of the Leicestershire Survey.

We do not need to get bogged down in the detail here. What Round was establishing was a distinction between the ‘carucatae ad geldum’ and ploughlands as a measure of area. In the former the term carucate was an assessment used as a basis for taxation. The latter was a measurement of area which eventually formalised, in Scotland, to a carucate of 104 acres, broken down into 8 bovates of 13 acres each.

This distinction between using the same term, ‘carucate’, for two different purposes undoubtedly makes things more complex. But do we need to worry about that in Scotland? The short answer is I don’t think so. Since carucates undoubtedly migrated north with the Anglians we should be aware of the extra complications. But although the term found its way into the Scottish fiscal lexicon I am not (yet) aware of the sort of distinctions which Round found in Leicestershire, being embedded in Scotland. We are really only talking about SE Scotland and although documentation is sparse I do not know of an obvious distinction between fiscal and areal carucates. Perhaps we can proceed on the basis that carucates in Scotland represent areas of 8 bovates, however big those might be. These carucates were then simply treated as fiscal units. Having said that we always need to go with the evidence and if it emerges that the term carucate was used fiscally and did not match a carucate by area then we must accommodate those awkward extra facts. Awareness of this dilemma has been around for a long time and was touched on by Mackie in footnote 5 p 142 of his edition of Thomas Thomson’s Memorial on Old Extent.

 

Aratrum is another word for a plough and may lie behind the Gaelic word arachor which signified a land-assessment unit in Lennox. There are some very slight signs that this term may also have been in use on the east coast of Scotland. Although the word aratrum does occur in some documents it was never used as frequently as carucata.

An early example occurs in RRAN (Bates) (61) 1066 x 1083, France, which refers to ‘terram ad tria aratra’ (land to/of 3 ploughs) which we might regard as a sort of half-way house to ‘3 ploughlands’. RRAN (Bates) (95) 1066 x 1087, France, gives ‘terram unius aratri’ (land of 1 plough) which has a similar feel.

Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (41) 1082-1100 gives ‘terram ad duo aratra’ (land to/of two ploughs).

A Scottish example is found in RMS IV (987) 1554-5 (Inverness-shire) which includes the phrase ‘ad 4 aratra alias unum dawaich’ (4 ploughlands also known as one davach).

I leave aside, for the moment, all discussion about the number of ploughs in a davach. See also:

RMS V (2068) 1591-2 on an original of 1589 ‘2 aratra … unum aratrum’

RMS VIII (590) 1624 refers to the teinds of ‘3 aratrorum terrarum (unoquoque aratro extenden, ad 8 bovatas)’ (3 ploughlands [each ploughland extending to 8 bovates])

RMS IX (2189) 1650 specifies ‘3 carrucatas sive aratra’ (i.e. 3 carucates or aratra)

Another word for a plough is quadruga but, as yet, I have not come across this in the Scottish records. RRAN (Bates) (61) 1066 x 1083, France, gives an example with ‘terram ad unam quadrucam’ (land to/of one plough) which is directly comparable to the examples given of aratrum/aratra above.

 

Bos is an ox and gives bovatas (bovates or oxgates). It is perhaps important to state that, although we come across lots of bovates in the records, carucates are the more basic unit. A plough-team of 8 oxen ploughed a carucate or ploughland. One ox did not pull a plough by itself so a bovate must be, fundamentally, an abstract unit of convenience, arrived at by dividing a carucate into 8 sub-units, or halving the unit 3 times. We should not think of bovates multiplying up to make carucates, but of carucates dividing down into bovates.

We should also be aware that units were sometimes otherwise divided. They didn’t have to break into eighths. There is some evidence in the old Lennox for division of farms into twelfths. But I do not think the main unit was, or was called, a carucate.

Carucates and bovates introduce us to the world of measurement and standardisation. As we have seen above there was a definition of a carucate as 104 acres by the middle of the twelfth century. But it is important to remember it took many hundreds of years for measures to become completely standardised. The Boldon Buke is like a miniature Domesday Book for some of the parts of Northern England which the Domesday Survey did not reach – i.e. those parts nearer to Scotland. It contains lots of references to bovates, of 8 acres, 9 acres, 12 acres, 13½ acres, 15 acres, 16 acres etc. I have no doubt there was similar variation in Scotland. All bovates were equal, but some were more equal than others. The only factor we can rely on is that there were 8 bovates to a carucate.

Vacca is a cow and gives vaccatas (cowlands – only occurring in Islay). This last belongs to a completely separate system and is listed purely to show how the Latin terms were coined.

Since they were in use for centuries there were a great many variations on these names. Ploughgates could be ploughgaits, ploughgangs, ploughs, plows etc. Oxgates could be oxgaits, oxingangs, and, when two were paired together, husbandlands – a term found in Northern England and SE Scotland.

We are also fortunate that the relationship between ploughgates and oxgates was always 1:8. For the present I am going to sidestep the question of what relationship ploughgates had to other units like davachs since this quickly becomes complicated.

 

Culturas etc

There are other terms we come across in land-assessment, some of which have relevance to Scotland. In The Paisley Register we come across the term cultura once, in the context of Lothian. It leaps off the page as intrusive and we should recognise that some terms were imported by the Normans but did not take root. The precise meaning of cultura is hard to pin down. In its most general sense it probably just referred to a piece of cultivated ground, However, depending on the context, it could also have a specific meaning. In England we might find culturas composed of so many selions (cultivation strips or rigs). There is another example called ‘Thirteenacre’ which almost suggests a bovate.

Although we do find carucates in areas like Renfrewshire I am sure they only ever existed on paper. We find them in early records of land grants, not in later documents such as rentals. It seems likely that the donors, and their scribes, took terms they were familiar with elsewhere and applied them to new estates in Renfrewshire. There they became fossilised into the manuscript record. But we don’t meet them on the ground.

There is perhaps a parallel to this in a document which appears in RRAN I (271) 1071 x 1087, marked as spurious. However, the document is considered further by Bates in RRAN (Bates) No 21, pp 158-160, where he supports the existence of an authentic William I writ of 1080 x 1086. The document specifies:

triginta arpennos pratorum mensuratos mensura Normannie

(30 arpents of meadow [in Sussex] measured by the measure of Normandy)

And that’s the last we hear of Norman measures in Sussex from RRAN. Fresh from conquest, William, or his scribes, wished to define newly acquired English lands in Norman terms. But those new terms did not take root; they simply disappeared. They were outlasted by Anglo-Saxon hides. We can suggest something very similar in Scotland. When David I’s Norman entourage imprinted themselves on their huge new estates in southern Scotland, they may have thought in terms of carucates and bovates and culturas etc. In parts of Scotland, such as the SE, that just meant a continuation of the existing system. But in other parts, such as Renfrewshire, it represented a novelty. Novelties do not always flourish in conservative rural environments. The reason we find merklands taking root in Renfrewshire, but not carucates, is possibly because merklands just represented a new set of labels on an existing system. If davachs, or pennylands, was how land was parcelled out in Renfrewshire, then all that was required to convert these into merklands, was some sort of exchange rate mechanism. The owners, monks and scribes could then describe these lands in merkland terms when they wrote up the documents. The rural population could continue to use the old land-assessment terms in their everyday speech. Over the centuries, and with the primacy of written record, the former withered and the latter flourished. Pennylands and davachs eventually disappeared, except for the odd fossil in the landscape of place-names.

 

Davachs

The other main land-assessment unit in Scotland that was not currency-based is the davach. Much of Scotland was formerly made up of davachs. They are found throughout north-eastern Scotland, the Northern counties (save a few parishes in Caithness) and the northern Hebrides. They are not found as an active unit in SW Scotland but there are a number of place-names which suggest that davachs were once prevalent here. The only areas from which they seem to be absent are SE Scotland and Argyllshire. In the latter case there are grounds for thinking the area once had davachs which were wiped clean by invading Dalriadic Scots. If this was the case then we are perhaps talking about a land-assessment system that goes back to at least the fifth century AD.

In terms of their presence in mediaeval documents the term was Latinized in much the same way as others already described. Davachs were not necessarily associated with the Gaelic-speaking Scots but the word in Gaelic is dabhach which became Latinised as davata. (We should bear in mind that it may originally have been a Pictish term – i.e. coined in a language more akin to Welsh than Gaelic). The word is Englished as davach with numerous permutations as dach, daugh, dauch etc. (Not to be confused with doach which is a name for a fish-trap in SW Scotland).

It is reflected in numerous place-names such as Dochfour, Dochmaluag etc. A half-davach was prefixed with Gaelic leth (half) and this also found its way into place-names as Lettoch (or similar). In the NE of Scotland the prefix was Englished before attachment so we have place-names such as Haddoch or Haddo (half-davach). Interestingly, quarter-davachs and eighth-davachs did not have their names turned into Latin. They remained as ceathramh (quarter) or ochdamh (eighth), which are Gaelic terms. Quarterlands often feature as place-names; eighthlands sometimes do.

Here follow some early references to davachs in the documentary record. What is interesting is that, exactly as was the case for carucas becoming carucatas, it was some time before the term ‘davata’ became the norm in documents. Some of the earliest records give readings which are not Latinised.

Kenneth Jackson, The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, pp 19-20, 22, 31-2, 34-5, 116-117, discusses the Gaelic-language references to davachs in the Book of Deer. On p 152 he suggests a date in the earlier part of the twelfth century. Text II (p 19) gives ‘da dabeg’ (two davachs). Text VI (p 22 gives ‘cetri dabach’ (four davachs).

Anderson, Early Sources, Volume II, p 493, 1172 x 1199, to canons of St Andrews, ‘dauach icthar hathyn’

RRS II (346) 1189 x 1195, Mearns, ‘septem dauahs’ (seven davachs). The rubric has ‘dawathis‘.

RRS II (423) 1195 x 1203, Mearns, ‘uno dauach’ (one davach).

RRS II (466) 1203 x 1206, Angus, ‘illo dauach’ (that davach)

Miscellany Volume IV, Scottish History Society (12) c. 1239 ‘unam dauocam terre’ (one davach of land)

RRS V (240) 1323, Banff, ‘illam dauatam terre‘ (that davach of land)

RRS V (261) 1324, Aberdeenshire, ‘quatuor dauatas terre’ (4 davachs of land)

RRS V (270) 1325, Banffshire, ‘terciam partem dauate’ (one third part of a davach)

RRS V (292) 1326, Angus, ‘seruicium Scoticum quantum pertinet ad dimidiam dauatam terre’ (as much Scottish service as pertains to a half davach of land). Also RRS V (294) 1326.

RRS V (316) 1327, Angus, service owed by ‘dimidiam dauatam terre’ (a half davach of land).

RRS V (339) 1328, Banffshire, ‘dauata terre‘ (davach of land)

RRS V (389) 1325, Moray, Scottish service and aid ‘de singulis dauatis’ (from each davach).

 

Arachors

Arachors are (almost) unique to Lennox (Dunbartonshire and West Stirlingshire) and are discussed in the Lennox files of this blog. It has been suggested that the Gaelic word arachor is just an adaptation of the Latin word aratrum or ploughland. The word aratrum is sometimes used instead of the word carucata in early documents – but much less commonly. The occurrence of arachors is provincial rather than national and their absence from Renfrewshire, once also part of the old Lennox, suggests that arachors were possibly something of a late scribal invention; perhaps using a Gaelic translation of the Latin name given to some local unit that may have been a davach. Our references are from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries so the term may have been created around that time.

There are some slight indications of arachors in NE Scotland. RH9/15/30 1597 has a reference to an ‘arrachor’ called ‘Middill Third’, extending to 8 oxgangs, in the parish of Logie-Buchan, Aberdeenshire. (8 oxgangs would be a carucate or ploughgate, which would be an aratrum in Latin).

At present I am ignoring all other non currency-based systems and terms such as vaccatas (in Islay), horsegangs (in several counties), cowsworths (Orkney), jugera, virgates, yokings, husbandlands, rooms, sheds, wards, butts etc. I will also be ignoring ‘soums’ and ‘souming’ which are, arguably, not so much a land-assessment system as a farming practice. Souming was an assessment, but of the carrying capacity of grazing land in terms of how much stock it could be support. It was not an assessment of arable land. In some parts of Scotland, such as the Highlands, souming could be widespread and deeply embedded. But the most fundamental land-assessment systems were always in terms of arable capacity.

 

Summary

So, in very general terms we can paint the following picture of land-assessment in Scotland. The newest system, the one associated with the mediaeval kingdom and, theoretically, prevalent throughout Scotland, is that of merklands. References to merklands and poundlands (a merk was two-thirds of a pound) occur in many thousands of mediaeval documents in Scotland.

Merklands are thicker in some parts of the country than others. The distribution pattern alone can tell us something of the history and spread of these units. Merklands sit on top of earlier systems in the various provinces of Scotland. They may overlie Norse pennylands, or Pictish davachs, or both. How they map to these earlier systems can tell us something about both new and old. We may also be able to work out a conversion or exchange rate between the old system(s) and the new.

The subject is huge so, for the present, I shall concentrate on a description of the merkland system. Separate essays on pennylands, ploughgates and davachs will follow at a later date. Further discussion of arachors is available within the Lennox section of this blog.

 

Merklands

The first Scottish coinage starts with the silver pennies of David I, minted from c. 1136. No doubt coins may have circulated in a few areas of Scotland before this, in trading ports and nascent burghs. They will have been imported from England or the Continent. Left to one side is the issue of whether coins were ever minted in Scotland when areas such as Lothian were under Anglian control. Coins such as sceattas and stycas were being minted in York during the eighth century, in association with the Northumbrian kings and archbishops. They may have circulated in parts of SE Scotland but we can do no more than conjure the possibility. (It is also worth remembering the connections between York and Whithorn).

David’s issue of silver pennies is closely associated with his control of the silver mines of Alston near Carlisle. Barrow pointed out a passage in the continuation of Symeon of Durham which must date from the period immediately preceding David’s death in 1153.

Querelam etiam fecit apud Karleol regi David super forestam suam, quam vastaverunt homines regis qui operabantur in argentaria.

(Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, Vol II, ed. T. Arnold, London, 1885, p 328. Raine adds a footnote that argentaria probably refers to a lead mine, rich in silver, which was discovered near Carlisle in 1133. The working of the mine evidently caused disruption and a complaint).

We also have some scraps of evidence that moneyers migrated from England to Scotland during this period. CDS I (92) 1163 tells us that Richard the moneyer owed £10, but fled into Scotland. CDS I (100) 1165 tells us that Thomas the moneyer owed 2 marks, but fled into Scotland. Perhaps there is a pattern here. Did the Scottish authorities encourage such men to flee their debts in England and start afresh in Scotland? To mint coins you need moneyers and die-cutters.

Carlisle is not the only place where David’s coins were minted. They are thought to have also been minted in Edinburgh, Berwick and Roxburgh (at least). King Malcolm’s coins (1153-1165) were minted in Roxburgh and Berwick; King William’s (1165-1214) in Roxburgh, Berwick, Edinburgh, Perth and possibly Dunfermline. By the time of King Alexander III (1249-1286) there were at least 17 mints operating throughout Scotland. (Coins of Scotland pp 9, 12, 13, 18).

RRS II (523) 1212 x 1214, refers to a man called Serlo ‘incisoris’ (the die-cutter) in Perth.

The process may have started relatively modestly c. 1136 but within 150 years Scotland’s economy was completely monetised. The creation of the merkland-assessment system is unlikely to have awaited the end of that process of monetisation. It is much more likely to have been developed in tandem from day one. Besides, it is not as if David was creating anything completely novel. He was merely transplanting two practices, with which he was already familiar, from England to Scotland, viz.: a national currency, and a land-assessment system all his Norman adherents were brought up with. Merklands may have been new to Scotland, but then so were French, feudalism and motte-and-bailey castles.

How can we support this notion that land-assessment, in the shape of merklands, flourished alongside the development of a currency, in the period between 1136 and 1286? It is much easier to point to the development of the currency because numismatists have long since established a sequence of coin-types, mints and moneyers from surviving coins. To add to this we can add documentary evidence for renders and payments in coin. We have cross-border payments, ransoms, fines, payments from burghs, sheriffdoms etc and cumulatively these demonstrate an economy which, if not at first fully monetised, was gradually becoming so. Payments in foodstuff and services carried on for hundreds of years, particularly in the remoter and rural areas, and survived as late the eighteenth century. But the direction of travel was established c. 1136.

It is much more difficult to establish the precise antiquity of merklands simply because we do not have many surviving twelfth century documents. Nowhere is there a source which says ‘And this year the king introduced merklands as a system of land-valuation’. However, the documentary evidence given above; the existence of poundlands, marklands etc in England, by the beginning of the twelfth century; the start of a new currency post c. 1136; and the increased monetisation of the economy consequent upon that (see table ‘Evidence for a cash economy’); all combine to give a probable start-date of around 1136.

To corroborate this theory there are two more pieces of evidence to bring forward: a class of document which I shall call ‘promissory notes’, and inferences we may draw from the landholdings of Paisley Abbey.

It is worth digressing to explore the background to merklands. David I had spent many years at the English court and was entirely familiar with the English system of allocating and valuing land. He was a substantial landowner in England himself. Many of his entourage would also have held land both in England and Scotland. Those Anglo-Norman adventurers whom he brought north when he gained the Scottish throne, were entirely familiar with the feudal legal procedures they had been brought up with in England. This could also be said of the scribes and monks they brought with them, whether from England or France.

It is against this background of a freewheeling cohort of Anglo-Norman cavaliers, seeking to maximise their landholding positions in both Scotland and England, that we should set David’s innovations. Language, donor, recipient, scribe, all reflected the Anglo-Norman milieu from which they sprang. Until the Wars of Independence this new military aristocracy moved freely between the two kingdoms, held lands in both, tried to maintain their positions in both despite national politics; used scribes, monks, clerks, who were familiar with practices in England and the Continent. Many of the great Scottish abbeys were founded with immigrants from England and France. All of Paisley monastery’s first intake were imported from Shropshire.

In order to provide empirical evidence for these two strands of data (circulation of money and land-assessment terms) I have trawled through some of the relevant documentary evidence from the 11^th-14^th centuries. (See select Bibliography above). The first thing to point out is that it is not comprehensive, but it does attempt to be representative of the approach taken in the two mediaeval states of Scotland and England. There are some gaps. Regesta Regum Scottorum Volume III, covering the reign of Alexander II, has yet to be published. Regesta Regum Scottorum Volume IV Part I covers the reign of Alexander III, but the second part has yet to be published. The intervening periods are covered by two handlists printed many years ago which made a first stab at pointing out all the relevant material. The limitation of the above Scottish sources is that they are primarily concerned with royal grants and confirmations. Although it is sometimes possible to research the original grant referred to in a royal confirmation that is not always the case. Fortunately, Lawrie provides some non-royal documents. In addition we have surviving cartularies from some of the great religious houses.

Another significant source is the Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, edited, initially, by Joseph Bain. (See above). This Calendar was an astonishing achievement. Bain set himself the task of researching all early texts where Scottish subjects, or people having business in Scotland, were noticed by record-keepers in England. The breadth and scale of his research is remarkable. There were four volumes in the original series and a fifth volume has been published more recently. This last volume contains substantial additions and corrections to the earlier volumes plus extra material located since then.

Bain drew his net widely so it is often the case that the material discussed actually relates to England but is given by him because the family concerned also did business in Scotland. The prominent Anglo-Norman families who came north with David I after 1124 often had extensive interests in England; both in terms of relatives and land. As a result cross-border family interests are a regular feature in twelfth and thirteenth century records.

It was not just the great Anglo-Norman families. The new religious houses also had cross-border interests. Scottish abbeys might well have endowments and properties in England, and vice-versa. People from both countries migrated back and forth in pursuit of these interests. We have to sieve through this wealth of material quite carefully. We might be able to offer many insights into the situation in Scotland by analogy with circumstances in England. Unfortunately, it is much less often that we can prove a situation in Scotland by direct evidence within Scotland.

My focus has been primarily on the twelfth-century evidence; which is generally less full and less frequent than that for the thirteenth century. However it is important to maintain the focus on the twelfth century. David I became king in 1124. It is from his reign that we date the revolutionary changes brought about by the new Anglo-Norman settlers. It was in this century that many of the great religious houses were founded. The evidence is exasperatingly patchy, but it is to this period that we look for the germination of the Scottish currency and a new land-assessment system based on it. We have more data for the thirteenth-century, by which time the system had evolved to something more mature and wide-reaching. But it was twelfth-century in origin. Thirteenth-century evidence, particularly that assembled during the Wars of Independence, is welcome, and useful in suggesting how we should look back to the twelfth century; but it is later.

We should see the emergence of these documentary scraps of evidence as going hand-in-hand with the development of feudalism. When a member of a great family died, the feudal superior, ultimately the king, had an interest in the estate and what happened to it. For an heir to succeed there was a formal process which gradually developed over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If succession was uncertain, or much wealth was involved, there might be competing claims and these had to be resolved. A legal process developed and an integral part of that was what was known as ‘taking an extent’. An extent was a listing of the wealth involved, which, in a society based on agriculture, was primarily arable land. However, depending on the circumstances of the estate, there might also be wealth derived from fishings, or mines, or a burgh.

Bain gives us numerous examples of early extents, where the value of an estate was formally assessed, usually after a death. The difficulty is that almost always they refer to properties in England. Whilst these are valuable in showing the general pattern, and offering numerous opportunities for analogy with Scotland, the fact that they do not deal directly with Scotland means I have largely ignored them. I am quite prepared to believe that practice was similar, even the same, but since we cannot prove that I have not followed through. For example English inquests (often called ‘inquisitions’, from the Latin) generally tried to establish the value of an estate ‘in all issues’; i.e. in all forms of income, not just land. In Scotland all forms of income were just as important but there seems to have been something of a divorce between the value derived from land, and the values derived from everything else. So, as the concept of an ‘Auld Extent’ (or first land valuation) emerged, I would argue that it became primarily an index of land-values, not an index of all the forms of income on an estate. Unfortunately such a contention is really difficult to measure and verify. Other early forms of income which may have been included in twelfth-century extents could have been salmon-fishings and mills.

Nevertheless, much of Scotland’s merkland assessment system must have originally been copied from England’s. The personnel travelled north; they brought with them concepts of land-valuation that were familiar to them. They applied these to their new estates in Scotland and the two systems were always closely related. As the years passed so they each evolved their own distinctive features, but they were based on the same concept of adapting a form of currency to a method of valuing land. The Scottish currency was closely linked to sterling and did not depart from it until the latter half of the fourteenth century.

 

Auld Extent

In Scotland, from about 1326 we come across the concept of an ‘Auld Extent’ which represents an abstract definition of Extent, supposedly defined long before, but which apparently only applied to land. It appears in the records of the Scottish parliament for 1328. There had been an indenture in 1326 which allowed King Robert Bruce 10% of all rents towards rebuilding a supposedly eroded royal estate. The text refers back to the ‘Auld Extent’ of the time of King Alexander III – ‘of worthy memory’. On the back of this there later emerged a theory which, coupled with the common use of the phrase ‘in tempore pacis’ (in time of peace), harked back to a supposed golden age in the time of Alexander III when Scotland had enjoyed peace and when a national land-valuation system had been first established.

The 1326 indenture is not the only evidence of a former extent.

CDS II (1457) details an inquisition before the sheriff of Stirling in February 1303/4. Two large estates are mentioned. ‘Calentir’ (Callendar) was worth £40 (60 merks) per annum in time of peace, now £8 6s 8d (12½ merks); Kelynsithe (Kilsyth) was worth £60 (90 merks) per annum in time of peace, now £12 (18 merks). In both cases the ‘new’ extent is set at about one-fifth of the ‘old’. ‘Extent’ here might mean more than just land; perhaps mills and other forms of income were included.

RRS V (557) 1308 x 1316, is a brieve of inquisition to make a partition and extent of the earldom of Buchan. Essentially it is an instruction to the sheriff to extend the land and return the findings. Towards the end occurs the clause ‘quantum valuit dicta terra tempore bone memorie A predecessoris nostri’ (how much the said land was worth in the time of [King] A[lexander III], our predecessor, of worthy memory).

CDS IV (1840) 1338 is a petition to Edward III of England concerning land in Berwickshire. It was ‘worth 10 marks by old extent, and now only 6½ marks’.

RRS VI (420) 1369, Inverbervie, Kincardineshire, refers to lands, rent, revenue (from a mill), and annual returns, which ‘valuerunt secundum antiquam extentam decem marcas sterlingorum’ (were worth, according to ‘Auld Extent’, ten merks sterling). This certainly refers to ‘Auld Extent’ but it is not just the land that was worth 10 merks, also included were annual returns and income from a mill. The land is not referred to in ‘mercatas’ or merklands. Instead we just have a cash valuation. (Also in RMS I (234) and Appendix 2 No 1584).

Blithe assumptions about ‘Auld Extent’ originating in the days of Alexander III were challenged by a Scottish historian, Thomas Thomson, in the early nineteenth century. He wrote a memorial (i.e. made a submission) on behalf of the complainer in a court case which had to do with voting rights. Thomson’s Memorial was based on an astonishing amount of research and drew favourable attention then and since. (The whole memorial was edited and commented on by Mackie in 1946. See Bibliography above).

Since Thomson’s ‘Memorial’ serves as a useful introduction to the thorny topic of ‘Auld Extent’ (Old Extent) I have incorporated some quotes from the printed summary of the Court Case between Thomas Cranston and Archibald Gibson which came before the Court of Session in May 1818. These contain some trenchant observations which bear repeating, even two centuries later. It was printed in the ‘Decisions of the First and Second Divisions of the Court of Session’, and p 523 reads:

Pleaded for the complainer. – It is necessary to take a historical review of the law and practice in Scotland, on three different points.

1. The first of those is the imposition of taxes on land. It is unnecessary to go back farther than the accession of Robert Bruce. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, various taxes of this nature were imposed by legislative authority as aids to the Crown, and many similar grants had been made before that time. There must have been some general valuation or extent of the particular lands liable to such impositions, according to which they were levied; and there are very early indications of such a valuation, in the denominations ploughgate and oxgate, merk land and pound land.

 

The valuation still called ‘the old extent’ is supposed by Lord Kames to have been framed in the reign of Alexander III, but on grounds perhaps inconclusive. Lord Hailes (Annals of Scotland, i. 184) thinks that there existed a more ancient valuation, even then called ‘the old extent’. There must have been extents coeval with the imposition of territorial taxes, long before the reign of Alexander III. But there is no indication that, at this early period, there was a double valuation, contradistinguished as old and new. It is certain, however, that in the reign of Alexander III and after his demise, there existed records of an extent of lands, according to which territorial aids had been levied by the Crown; and these records were appealed to in subsequent reigns as the ground-work of territorial impost.

 

It is not certainly known how these early extents were framed; but it is probable, from the customs of the times, that they were framed by assizes held by the sheriffs, or other officers of the Crown, in different districts.

 

But, while the temporal lands were assessed in the counties, and the assessment levied by the local officers of the crown, the spiritual lands were assessed according to certain extents framed, it should seem, by ecclesiastical authority, and which must have been coeval with the payment of taxes to the supreme head of the church. The commencement of these papal exactions has not been ascertained. But, in 1275, Pope Gregory X sent Bagimont to levy from the Scottish clergy one-tenth of their ecclesiastical revenues for six years; who, in consequence of the improvement in the value of the ecclesiastical benefices, framed a new ecclesiastical extent, ever since called Bagimont’s roll, which, with occasional alterations, continued to be the rule not only of papal exactions, but of all ecclesiastical contributions to the state, down to the establishment of the present system of valued rent in the reign of Charles II. The ecclesiastical extents did not consist of valuations of particular lands, but of a total value for each benefice, whether land or teinds.

The memorialist (Thomson) then goes on to describe various ‘new’ extents which seem to have taken place at periodic intervals. There is nothing surprising in this. Land, like every other commodity for which there is a market, changed value at different times. He refers to the Parliament of 1366 which produced two sets of valuations for the sheriffdoms and bishoprics of Scotland. (See separate file). But, although he casts the revised valuations as a ‘new extent’, at the time they were just described as the ‘verus valor’ (true value) of the properties.

Thomson (pp 151-161) gives details of various attempts at ‘new extents’ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. (Mackie, in his ‘Observations’ on Thomson’s Memorial, discusses these on page 304, but see also pp 92-93). As Thomson realised, all these later efforts were aimed at discovering the ‘true value’ of the lands in question, a value that was not a constant, but variable. The reason for sticking with ‘Auld Extent’ was precisely that constancy. From our point of view these ‘new extents’ are of interest because they are referred to in the documents; because they tell us of changing value; and because they tell us of the relationships between ‘old’ and ‘new’ valuations. But none ever established themselves as new benchmarks. As a result they are nowhere near as illuminating as ‘Auld Extent’.

We need not worry about any of the details here. All that needs to be established is that the abstract values established as ‘Auld Extent’ had long since ceased to be any reflection of current value. They had been fossilised into the legal and agrarian institutions. ‘Auld Extent’ was still probably useful as an index of relative value in the sense that it was a (nearly) national scale on which most properties had once been allocated a place, regardless of advance or decline in the years since. What it was not, was an index of market value.

In his lengthy disquisition on the subject Thomson gives examples from Edinburgh in the period 1303-5 which use the phrases ‘tempore pacis’ (time of peace) and ‘verum valorem’ (true value). His point was to establish that, long before the parliamentary return of 1366 there was already a clear distinction, accepted by contemporaries, between what land used to be worth in peacetime and what it was now worth in the troubled state of Scotland during the Wars of Independence. He writes further:

There have been various conjectures on the import of the phrase ‘tempore pacis’. That of Lord Kames (Law Tracts, No 14), which has of late been most relied on, viz. that it refers specifically to the reign of Alexander III is connected with his theory of the formation of the old extent in that reign, and the introduction of a new extent in 1326, and of the values or extents mentioned in special retours, being merely portions of the general extents of the kingdom. It must be evident, from the preceding observations, that this theory is erroneous in its date, in the occasion assigned for the introduction of the phrase, and in its supposed reference to two specific general extents of the kingdom. And the chief defect of the theory in other respects has arisen from supposing that the phrase is entirely peculiar to the practice of Scotland, and unique in its application; whereas it is a technical phrase well known in the law of England, and of an application closely analogous to that which is here in question.

There is much more on the subject throughout the memorial but the pieces quoted above pinpoint the issues:

That ‘Auld Extent’ may have long preceded the time of Alexander III.

That the situation with regard to church lands may have been different.

That there may have been multiple new extents – each time there was an assessment of market value.

That the phrase ‘in tempore pacis’ is not uniquely Scottish.

 

As far as the 1818 case goes it was:

Observed on the Bench. – The argument for the complainer is a very learned treatise on old extent.

Unfortunately it did no good. The complaint was dismissed.

 

What is given above comes from the contemporary report where the memorialist was unnamed. In 1946 J.D. Mackie edited and wrote an introduction to, and notes on, a full printing of Thomas Thomson’s Memorial on Old Extent, which stretched to 164 pages, It is still essential reading for anyone who wishes to study old extent in Scotland. The issue at law was to do with the franchise, the property qualification that entitled someone to vote. The relationship between voting rights and property developed centuries after ‘Auld Extent’ was first established. Today, that aspect of the case seems like a historical red herring so I shall not add to that discussion. My self-imposed remit in this essay is simply to look for the origins of ‘Auld Extent’, not to follow its several-hundred-year history as part of the Scottish legal and agrarian landscape.

Thomson’s research was extraordinary but, in the two centuries since, more data has come to light and other researchers have chipped away at the same issues. Mackie highlights some of Thomson’s shortcomings in his excellent edition of the Memorial. Of the issues highlighted by Thomson we might today say the following:

Yes, Auld Extent does long predate the reign of Alexander III but it is difficult to prove that. There is evidence, derived from a new Scottish currency, from monastic estates like Paisley’s, and from charters which give cash payments until properties are granted, that Auld Extent probably dates to c. 1136 in Scotland and originally meant that 1 merkland gave 1 merk of rent.

(In the section of this blog which covers the Hebrides there is a text file for the island of Islay. There, I have gone into some detail as to how the Scottish monarchs attempted to raise extra rent from Islay during the first half of the sixteenth century. They failed completely, and by 1562 the Crown had abandoned its increased fiscal demands and reverted to a 1 merk per merkland rental which had probably been the basis of the original merkland assessment system when imposed on the Hebrides after 1266).

Yes, the situation regarding church lands was different but Thomson had not perhaps grasped the complexity of the church’s estate. Fundamentally he was not prepared to accept that the church operated to ‘Auld Extent’. The difficulty is that some church estates were rated in terms of ‘Auld Extent’ before they were mortified for religious purposes. Christianity existed in Britain from before the end of the Roman period. Some lands were given to churches long before the Normans arrived in Scotland. The Anglo-Saxons endowed churches and monasteries. Early Britons, Picts and Scots did the same. So, eventually, did the Norse. Equally, some of the oldest churches may have rested on even earlier pagan ritual sites, which may already have had lands attached to them. One of the most significant churches in North Skye is at Ungnacille (the ounceland of the church), right beside a prominent Pictish stone at Tote.

In the Renfrewshire section of this blog, under Paisley parish, I have discussed the extensive estate of Paisley monastery. The gifting of the various properties is described in the Paisley Register. The leasing and operation of these farms is revealed by the Paisley Rental. Between these two sources we can demonstrate that the Abbey’s properties probably had ‘Auld Extent’ valuations before they were given. Secondly, that those valuations became preserved and frozen in the Paisley Rental Book. Thirdly that each merkland of ‘Auld Extent’ paid 1 merk of silver rent.

However, whilst we can show Auld Extent valuations for properties which passed to the church after about 1136 we cannot do the same for church property made over before that date. (Although for some of these we may show pennyland, carucate or davach valuations). Thomson also has a point in that, whereas for laymen, land was the prime determinant of wealth, that was not necessarily so for the church. Yes, land could be as valuable to clerics as to any laymen. But the church always had multiple other forms of income. They had teinds (tithes) of all produce in the parish that showed increase. They had a variety of ‘oblations’ and ‘obventions’ where offerings were made to the altar in return for some religious action or service. In the case of baptisms, weddings and funerals there would be a donation in cash or kind. Churches provided places where contracts could be made and honoured. The great Christian festivals provided fitting occasions for generosity. In all these cases some income would accrue to the church.

Unfortunately, we do not have the data to separate out the different levels of ecclesiastical income from land, teinds and offerings. Equally, we do not know much about the church’s wealth before Bagimont’s visit in 1275, or the precise articulation between the ‘old’ rate of taxation and the ‘new’ one insisted upon by the Pope. Since the church derived much of its income from sources other than land it is difficult to believe that this point of contention was just a distinction between an ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Extent of property. Given these extra difficulties I have sidestepped the issue of ‘Auld Extent’ on church lands. Since the church controlled a huge portion of the national wealth, (almost a quarter in 1366), this is a significant omission.

On the basis of the Parliamentary Record of 1366 (see folder for 1366 under ‘General Summaries’) we can comment on the total value of lay estates across Scotland. To pin down the total value of all land across Scotland is more difficult when any assessment of the church estate is more opaque. However, since much of the church’s wealth, particularly that of the great monastic houses, accrued after the introduction of the merkland system, we may eventually be able to pin that down with some accuracy. Any valuation of lands given before the twelfth century is always going to be more elusive.

On the last two points raised by Thomson, we have to grapple with the fact that there may have been a new extent every time there was an inquisition. Bearing that in mind, it is striking that the abstract concept of ‘Auld Extent’ took root as it did. Instead of adopting a market-led approach that land was worth whatever the contemporary marketplace reckoned, Scotland in the twelfth century established a sort of permanent index of value which served as a benchmark at other times. The concept of ‘Auld Extent’, a fixed merkland valuation established from about 1136, became a sort of fiscal totem pole, a beacon, an abstract idea, to which all subsequent valuations referred back. It did not evolve, although Thomson makes some disparaging comments about later attempts to retrospectively manufacture ‘Auld Extent’ valuations. He called these ‘factitious’ or artificial and in some cases he may have been correct. But in the broad context ‘Auld Extent’ maintained its integrity, particularly for lay properties. When changes were too obvious to be ignored they were recorded. ER XVII p 557, 1542, notes 2 merklands of North Uist lost to the sea. This is also a striking feature of other land-assessment systems. The number of times that pennyland valuations changed is minute, relative to the whole. And there are usually special circumstances; natural causes such as erosion or sand-blow. A similar picture probably holds true for davachs.

 

In one respect Thomas Thomson was right. There were as many ‘new extents’ as there were new extents taken by inquisition. But instead of former extents being remembered they were simply discarded as relics of a previous ‘current value’. The only former valuation that was ever remembered was the very first one of all, the original, first, or ‘Auld Extent’. It is likely that this directed a 1m return from 1 merkland of value. We should also distinguish between local ‘new extents’, which happened continuously at an estate level, with the occasional pan-Scotland attempts to collect these ‘new extents’ into some sort of national register.

It is easy to see that any attempt at the latter would be fraught with complexity and tangle. From the point of view of the Exchequer it was always going to be simpler to gear taxation to a generally-accepted, widely-known, single index of value, however out of date. The business of keeping it up-to-date could always be accommodated arithmetically by varying the tax rate. Since the index remained the same there could be no disputes about fairness. All that changed was the level of fiscal exaction. We can even see a sort of half-way-house position when New Extent was artificially fixed at four times Old Extent.

There is also some specific Scottish evidence which points to the need to establish ‘true value’ long before either the subsidy to Robert Bruce or the Parliamentary Return of 1366. One of the earliest ‘Extents’ we have for a particular area of Scotland, was the ‘Extent of the Earldom of Fife’ which was delivered to Walter de Cambo at the Parliament held at Lanark in February 1294. This is printed in Stevenson Volume I, No CCCXX, pp 415-418. Items No’s CCCXVII (pp 407-412), CCCXIX (pp 412-415) and CCCXXX (pp 428-430) all concern the same Walter de Cambo’s accounts for the lands of the earl of Fife. Item No CCCXXIX (pp 427-428) deals with King Edward I of England’s grant of Mid-Calder in Fife to the Bishop of Glasgow. It is in the form of an instruction to Walter de Cambo.

In No CCCXVII (p 411), 20 November 1293, one of the expenses listed is to Walter himself for ‘making extents’ in the earldom. Further down the same page are expenses incurred in letting the lands of Calder, Fife, to the bishop of Glasgow. Walter specifically says ‘reddendo inde regi per annum verum valorem earumdem terrarum’ (returning thence to the king, yearly, the true value of those lands). Here, a generation before the subsidy to Bruce, we have official recognition of the difference between a nominal extent and current market value. Edward was not going to be fobbed off with the former. The king’s preference is endorsed, this time in French, in No CCCXXIX, October 1294, where Edward tells Walter de Cambo to deliver the land ‘a la verraie value’ (at the true value). In November 1294 Walter submits another account of his expenses (No CCCXXX). One of his tasks had been ‘ad terras extendendas et assedandas’ (extending and leasing lands).

These relics from the English records provide a welcome insight into the ongoing process of land-assessment. But taking extents was expensive. In the context of Edward’s ambitions it is easy to see how he thought it worthwhile. But in subsequent centuries it is also easy to see how settling on a one-time definition called ‘Auld Extent’ had its own attractions. With a single point of reference there was less need to be faffing about with paperwork, juries and procedure. If ‘Auld Extent’ provided a perennial index then the rate could always be adjusted depending on the urgency of current requirements. That change could be made centrally, and at far lower cost.

But Auld Extent did not just serve a national function. It was also very useful at a local level, as the following brief introduction to ‘Stents’ should demonstrate.

 

Stents

 

In the days before local government certain public burdens were shared out between those who had the resources to defray them. So heritors (landowners) might take on certain duties and expenses; parishioners might do likewise. We have an excellent record of this process in ‘The Stent Book and Acts of the Balliary of Islay, 1718-1843’ which was privately printed in 1890. The premise here is that the total public burden is shared between the ‘Quarterlands’ of the island of Islay. The minutes of the meetings show exactly what the money was spent on. To ‘stent’ was to set a tax upon; the unit on which the tax was set was the ‘Quarterland’. But the unit depended upon the land-assessment system which prevailed in that area. In Islay it was the ‘Quarterland’; elsewhere it might be a davach, plough, pennyland, merkland or poundland.

 

However, the shortcoming of treating all units of a land-assessment system in the same way is that the passage of time may see some of them fare better or worse. A good example of the inability of land-assessment systems to reflect changing economic circumstances is supplied by Fraser-Mackintosh, in Invernessiana, Inverness, 1875, pp 144-147. His subject is a document of 1634 concerning the united parish of Inverness and Bona. The requirement was to repair the kirk of Inverness ‘in the side walls, gables, thatch-roof, doors, windows, slates, pillars, steeple, and aisles thereof’. From the assembled parishioners certain members were elected ‘to be stenters, for setting down a stent roll’. The estimated cost was 3000 merks and the stenters then decided that each plough of land should pay 25 merks, which would raise 2000 merks, whilst the balance of 1000 merks would be paid by the burgh.

 

This did not go down well. Those opposed raised a raft of objections under the heading: ‘Reasons proving that the forewritten stent (being most unequally proportioned, and in law reducible), cannot be a rule for future stents within the Parish of Inverness’. The document goes on to catalogue these reasons, perhaps the most telling of which was that the representatives of the burgh had been very good to themselves, at the expense of the rural areas!

 

For our purposes, though, there is one objection which summarises the inadequacy of using ancient forms of land-assessment as the basis for taxation, regardless of economic change. The unit of levy was the ‘plough’, i.e. ploughland. (The ‘plough’ may have originally been one-quarter of a davach, five of which are named in this document, but it rather looks as if the plough was now the active unit of assessment rather than the davach). The objectors argued:

 

‘Thirdly, the pretended stent roll is reducible because by it the stent is equally proportioned on every plough of the parish, and it cannot be denied but several ploughs in that parish are twice better than others, and in all equity every plough should be stented according to the just value thereof, as well as every burgh is taxed according to its value’.

 

Here we come to the crux of the matter. In 1634 the rural parishioners of Inverness, (or at least the heritors amongst them), knew full well that some ploughs were more equal than others and they wanted the stent (i.e. taxation) to reflect value, not nominal equality. This was always the weakness of land-assessment systems. Did they reflect changing economic circumstances? Depending upon a multitude of factors, farmland could become worth more, or less. When sharing common burdens each proprietor, or tenant, had to feel that the burden did not weigh unduly on them.

 

Currency depreciation

An extra complication is introduced by currency depreciation. ‘Auld Extent’ was introduced when the Scottish merk was tied to sterling. Time after time in the pages of the Paisley Register we come across monetary values expressed in sterling terms, e.g. :

RMP p 140 (1268) dimidiam marcam argenti bonorum et legalium sterlingorum (half a merk silver of good and legal sterlings)

RMP pp 65-6 (1284) sex solidos et octo denarios bonorum et legalium sterlingorum (6s 8d of good and legal sterlings)

However, during the latter part of the fourteenth century the value of the Scots pound was depreciated. The term ‘sterling’ started to disappear from the documents and we meet instead phrases such as ‘usualis monete regni Scotiae’ (usual money of the kingdom of Scotland) – RMP p 57, 1409. When discussing extent and valuation we must factor in currency depreciation. Unfortunately currency is another huge subject, and something we can only touch on at present. The meaning of ‘sterling’ and its application to Scotland, is itself a subject for further research. And again, in order to measure its influence in Scotland we would have to cast our eye over the whole Norman world. The Cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (86) 1131-1135 refers to ‘quadraginta solidos esterllingos’ (40s sterling).

There is evidence from contemporary records that Scots then were as much exercised by the fairness of the fiscal burden as we are today. The Records of the Parliament of Scotland record an entry for February 1370 which shows how they were concerned that taxation should reflect ‘true value’ or, as we might say, ability to pay. The entry specifically states that taxation should not be on the basis of the number of davachs, which of course, would have been the basis for taxation in pre-merkland Scotland. The ideal was that everyone should be treated equally – except for those lands which had always been exempt.

‘Et quod rex vivat et domum suam disponi faciat secundum exigenciam suarum facultatum; et sic etiam quod ministri regis non taxent neque capiant in serviciis quibuscumque regiis seu expensis secundum numerum davatarum seu baroniarum, sed secundum verum valorem bonorum patrie, tam scilicet firmarum in hiis que concernere poterunt dominos quam catellorum et bladorum quo ad husbandos, scilicet quod unaqueque libra adequetur libre ubilibet per totum regnum. Et de terris illis dumtaxat que ad providendum regem tenentur et sunt solvere consuete’. [Manuscript – RPS, 1370/2/7. Date accessed: 18 September 2024]

‘And that the king should live and arrange for his household according to the extent of his means; and thus also that the king’s ministers should not assess nor take in whatsoever services or expenses of the king according to the number of davachs or baronies, but according to the true value of the goods of the country, thus either of fermes in those which pertain to lords, or of cattle and wheat concerning husbandmen, thus that each pound equals a pound everywhere through the whole kingdom. And from those lands only which are held to make provision for the king and are accustomed to pay’. [Translation – RPS, 1370/2/7. Date accessed: 18 September 2024].

For anyone old enough to remember a more recent devaluation of the pound sterling, and the famous political affirmation that the pound in your pocket was still a pound – this will strike a chord!

In a way the whole issue of comparing ‘old’ and ‘new’ extents is a distraction. New extents were, by their very nature, only ever going to be temporary; their permanence as fleeting as market value. Understanding this is perhaps the reason ‘auld extent’ was clung to for so many centuries. It was, conceptually at least, a single, timeless, fixed index of value. It was apparently fair, or at least accepted as such. That made it a benchmark for taxation processes for 400-500 years after inception.

A good example of such use appears in GD124/10/3 of 1491-2 which are letters to the sheriff of Stirling. They required a valuation of the lands of Stirlingshire by old extent, a roll of these valuations, and a tax of 2s from every poundland of old extent. It was not until the seventeenth century that such a function was finally abandoned. The fact that it couldn’t reflect the processes of economic change was also its fatal weakness. It reflected ancient valuations of agricultural land, not the new wealth of burghs and commerce and manufacture. Its inability to cope with new economic realities would eventually lead to its abandonment for fiscal purposes. But, as we have seen, its historic legacy lingered on in areas such as the franchise.

How can we be sure of the integrity of ‘Auld Extent’ over time? The answer lies in consistency. Amongst the many tens of thousands of mediaeval documents which mention merklands there are only a very small number which specifically refer to New Extent. The overwhelming majority either make no reference to the type of extent, or state Auld Extent. This allows us to compare the references to Auld Extent over time and between different sources. There is a striking degree of consistency. Over hundreds of years, and a variety of different sources, any particular property can be shown to enjoy the same Auld Extent valuation.

Tracking this may involve numerous difficulties. One of these is when a large property is split between multiple heirs or heiresses. Another is when part of a property assumes a new name, perhaps under a new owner. Some properties are very poorly documented; some farms were new creations, others were abandoned, particularly in Highland areas. Nevertheless, the consistency of Auld Extent valuations, over many centuries, is something of an argument for the quality and longevity of this form of evidence.

We may also, after further research, be able to point to arithmetic consistency at scale. Land-assessment systems are geared to taxation requirements. They are fiscal systems, designed to assess the value of land for the purposes of taxation. Auld Extent was probably established from c. 1136. Records were kept at a local level, within the sheriffdoms, and also at a national level, by royal officers. Over the years there will have crept in many anomalies, between older and newer records; between what was kept locally and what was kept centrally. But we do have some glimpses of these records, and they can be compared with each other.

We have the national picture given us by the Parliamentary Records of 1366. For lay properties that national picture is broken down into sheriffdoms. And then we have other later records which give us tax rolls (or ‘Taxt Rolls’) for particular areas or sheriffdoms at specific times. Even when no type of extent is specified these may well have been in ‘Auld Extent’. Some of these have been published, as for instance by Purves or Stevenson or the Bannatyne Club (see Bibliography above). By comparing these ‘Taxt Rolls’ with the Parliamentary Records we can begin to pin down the total valuations by sheriffdom over periods of time, not just a single year. This is the top-down approach. Equally, we can build our data from bottom-up by adding up the known Auld Extent valuations within each sheriffdom. We can them compare the various sets of data to arrive at yet more probable figures.

Unfortunately, the areas I have so far covered in my blog are largely in the far north, the Highlands and Islands, and Argyll. These are precisely the areas which are less well covered in 1366 and the extant Tax Rolls. For these areas, the comparisons I have described become more challenging. But that doesn’t detract from the prospect of being able to make those comparisons, in the future, for those counties which are better documented. (See separate file called ‘Taxt Rolls’ under the blog heading ‘General Summaries’).

As a way of making ‘Auld Extent’ more comprehensible the closest modern analogy I can think of is the idea of ‘rateable value’, which still applies to commercial property. An assessor establishes a fixed rateable value and the property is then taxed, alongside all other properties, at a fixed proportion of that, known as the ‘poundage’. (That is, so many pence per pound of rateable value). Both the rateable value and the poundage are subject to revision over time. ‘Auld Extent’ was rather like rateable value, except that nobody ever changed it. It was abstract, but settled; a reference point.

 

‘In tempore pacis’ (in time of peace)

With regard to the commonly-used phrase ‘in tempore pacis’ it is easy to imagine that this just became a formula to represent the concept of ‘in normal times’. It is found well before the thirteenth century and is certainly not unique to Scotland.

RRS II (97) 1165 x 1174, is a grant of a house in Berwick to Melrose Abbey. Nothing is expected of the Abbey, beyond prayers and alms, ‘temporibus pacis vel guerrarum’ (in times of peace or of wars).

Fraser, Annandale Volume I No 2, 1194-1214, Charter by William Bruce with a warranty clause ‘in tempore pacis’.

Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey (242), 1272 x 1283, ‘in time of peace’; (346) 1289, (354) 1292, ‘in time of war’.

Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey (1333), 1203 x 1210, ‘in time of peace’

I cannot pretend to have done more than scratch the surface of twelfth and thirteenth century English records but, as the above quotations demonstrate, we do come across the phrase ‘in tempore pacis’ (in time of peace); usually in the context of trying to establish a value in time of peace as opposed to during a time of war. The concept here is one of normality. War was abnormal and upended all procedures for establishing value. The value of a farm, or an estate, was overwhelmingly to do with its annual produce in terms of crops and livestock. In time of war these might be devastated by men-at-arms. So, the phrase ‘in time of peace’ is essentially a stock phrase to indicate ‘in normal circumstances’.

It is perfectly comprehensible that this phrase was an essential qualification to any process of valuation. War or political unrest would hopefully pass; what landowners and authorities wanted to know was:- what was the ‘normal’ value of such and such a piece of land. We have a good example of the allowances that had to be made in time of war in the subsidy to Bruce in 1326. There is a specific clause dealing with exceptions because of the destruction of war. (See Records of the Parliaments of Scotland, 28 February, 1328).

Inextricably linked with the concept of peacetime valuations was the idea of a property’s ‘true value’. This could only be established in peacetime conditions but there was also a tacit, underlying, recognition that ‘true value’ could change. A property might now be peaceful, but still devastated by past war or plague. Or it might have increased in value after a period of peace and prosperity. We come across ‘true value’ as one of the two types of valuation returned to the Scottish parliament in 1366. But, again, it is not unique to Scotland.

Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey (292), < 1340 ‘veri valoris’

Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey (380) 1336, ‘verum valorem’

 

Secondly, and this is where Bain’s extracts are so useful, it is clear that the English ‘extents’ he printed might include both an old (former) and a new extent. The taking of an extent was a formal process involving the issue of official documents, the summoning of a jury, establishing the facts and forms of income etc., and returning the results.

I have argued that an essential feature of the Scottish system of land-assessment was that the very first ‘extent’, what became known as ‘Auld Extent’, became a sort of anchor against change. It became a known index, an abstract measure, one that was endlessly referred back to. The shortcoming was obvious to contemporaries. It did not evolve with time; it did not reference current values; it did not reflect the marketplace. Either when land increased in value during prosperous times; or when it decreased in value during periods of economic depression, the Wars of Independence or after the Black Death. However, what appears to have happened in Scotland, was that this disjunction was tolerated. ‘Auld Extent’ was simply maintained as a onetime relative index of value; not as an index of what rent a landowner could ask or what price might be achieved in a sale.

That did not stop later attempts at working out land’s ‘verus valor’ (true value). We do have documents which stipulate value in ‘New Extent’, even if it is not always clear how that New Extent was established. In some Paisley Abbey properties we can see New Extent being applied when these first fell into lay ownership after the Reformation:

RMS V (264) 1581 gives 20s AE Mekil-Riggis, next or now 40s New Extent.

RMS V (300) 1581 gives 40s Mekle-Riggis AE, next or now £4 New Extent.

RMS V (346-7) 28 February 1581-2 refer to two halves of Richartisbar, extending to 10s AE and next or now 20s New Extent. (I don’t think these were halves of the whole property).

RSS VIII (1928) 1583-4 refers to 2 x 20s units of Ovir Gallowhillis, making a total of 40s (£2) old extent and £4 new extent.

 

We also have evidence of attempts to formalise that relationship by means of an arithmetic multiplier – for instance that New Extent was 4 x Old Extent. (In the above Paisley examples it was 2 x Old Extent). But none of these revaluations stuck. A book could be written charting the progress of these later bureaucratic processes which took place on many occasions, in multiple contexts, over many years. But none ever achieved the permanence of Auld Extent. That continued to be the benchmark for taxation assessments until the middle of the seventeenth century. And, as we have seen in the celebrated court case detailed above, it was still a benchmark for voting qualifications into the nineteenth century.

There is another complication that we should address here. It was not just merklands that were described as being ‘Auld Extent’. We also have ploughlands, pennylands and davachs which are termed as ‘Auld Extent’. At first glance this seems nonsensical and yet it is easy to see how it might come about. The phrase ‘Auld Extent’ became an abstract index of value, hallowed by antiquity. In some parts of Scotland, merklands were either superficially embedded or, in some cases, barely at all. They may have been used for summary totals in late ‘Taxt Rolls’ but they were not referred to at local level, nor did they find their way into charters, leases, rent-rolls or the landscape of place-names. Depending on where you lived the local units might still be in davachs, ploughs or pennylands. Where these units had been part of the fiscal landscape for centuries it is perfectly understandable that the units themselves might be conflated with the term ‘Auld Extent’ which had itself probably become a stock phrase referring to the oldest known form of land-assessment. If merklands weren’t the prevailing local unit then an earlier system would serve the same purpose. So we find pennylands of ‘Auld Extent’ in Caithness and Sutherland, davachs of ‘Auld Extent’ in Ross and Inverness-shire, ploughs of ‘Auld Extent’ in Badenoch.

We have an extent for Carrick in 1260 where units called pennylands were valued in terms of merks. Pennylands remained intact in parts of the Isles, the West Coast and Lochaber for centuries. They were still an active unit until the eighteenth century in some islands – eventually being replaced by areal measurements such as acres, rather than by merklands. Exactly the same could be said of davachs and ploughlands. Merklands are thicker in some parts of Scotland than others.

 

The formal measurement of Extent

How was Extent measured? This was not arbitrary. For the system to work all landholders and tenants had to have confidence in it. It was like a currency. If traders do not have confidence in the coins they are exchanging they will not use them. ‘Bad money’ has a long history, and does not just refer to the base coins disposed of in church collections. The notion of Extent was like establishing a currency for land. Under the feudal system there developed a formal process which left a documentary trail. In England we have a whole class of documents known as ‘Inquisitiones post mortem’ – i.e. inquests after the death of a subject. This a huge source for research and there is already a great deal of information posted online. Calendars are available in printed or digital format from the early thirteenth century. However, this does not help us directly with extent in Scotland in the twelfth century.

You could be forgiven for assuming that Joseph Bain was aware of this problem because he prints summaries of a great many such processes in England. Yes, they may have involved people who also had estates and connections in Scotland but you almost feel as if Bain is trying to give instances of what he thought were parallel processes south of the border. A good example is found in CDS I (1787) of September 1250. A writ had been issued in May ordering an extent of some land held, of the king (Henry III), in the environs of Carlisle. (Where, of course, David I of Scotland had died a century before). The question was whether or not it was to the king’s advantage to let it to others, or keep it in his own hand. Sixteen jurors stated that there were in total 43½ measured acres. John de Boleton held this as 37¼ acres and paid 12d per acre. John also held the King’s gardens for 20s. However, before John got hold of these acres, (by means of the King’s letters), they had been let out in small parcels both to John, and a number of other tenants.

The jurors calculated that, if the land reverted to the former tenants, current values suggested a rather higher rate of rental for many of them. Instead of 12d per acre some acres were worth up to 18d per annum, others 15d, others again 14d or 12d. But values were not always higher. One tenant’s lands were only valued at 10d per acre. The matter now was one of simple arithmetic. The king could continue to lease to John de Boleton, which would secure him a total of 57s 8d. (There is a slight arithmetic anomaly here). Or he could revert to the former way of doing things, with a number of smaller tenants, which would bring in 69s 3d – an increase of 11s 7d per annum. The jurors had consulted the former tenants who had all agreed to hold ‘by the new extent’ – if it pleased the king.

We are not told what the tenants paid before the land was set to John de Boleton but it looks as if they were now agreeing to a rent increase in order to get their plots back. Since it was to the king’s financial advantage this was the course of action the jurors recommended. But the decision was in the king’s hands. The jurors had also looked at the return from the king’s garden and had decided it ‘cannot be extended for more’. (In other words the king couldn’t make any more money from it). One of the former tenants, a knight, offered what looks like a ‘sweetener’ to revert to the old form of tenancy. What we cannot know are the motives of the various parties. Was John de Boleton an entrepreneur who had grasped a way of cutting himself a better deal. Or were Henry’s bailiffs adroitly playing off one tenant against others in order to win more rent? Of course it may have been to the king’s advantage if he only had to deal with one tenant. Perhaps John de Boleton had promised his own ‘sweetener’ to the king or the king’s officers. Such factors are hidden from us.

Here we have an example of a land-assessment being made in NW England in 1250 – in an area formerly held by a king of Scotland. It shows the process of establishing ‘extent’ – as a simple, workaday measure for valuing land. We can also see how every revaluation at every inquisition would throw up former and current valuations, ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Extents.

None of this is surprising. Land valuation has a long history in Britain. In Anglo-Saxon England the main land-assessment unit was the hide, although we do know of other local units such as the sulung in Kent. The process of taking an extent, or measuring the value of an estate, will be old as land-assessment itself. Every time a landholder died there would claims on the land, from children, widow, overlord, king. Agreeing the value of such land is probably a very ancient process, even if it became more formal over the centuries. We may not have the language and the process until historic times but there is good reason to think it is as old as settled agriculture. Formal and informal inquests probably took place everywhere, all the time. Only the inquests of the wealthy would be recorded. The greatest book of Anglo-Norman England is Domesday which is, as far as inquests are concerned, the father of them all. William wanted to know the extent of his new kingdom, and Domesday provided that. Not all of England was so covered and we are fortunate to have the twelfth-century Boldon Book to assess yet more of the North of England. During the Wars of Independence it is obvious, from the surviving lists of records, that the English Kings had similar plans for Scotland.

For example, APS Volume I p 8 (Black page numbers) or p 114 (Red page numbers), concerning 1292, refers to a bag or sack containing 93 small rolls, schedules, and memoranda of various inquisitions, perambulations and ‘extentis terrarum’ (extents of lands) etc. CDS II (1534) p 399 1304 tells us that ‘19 rolls of extents of the King’s demesne lands, and sheriffs’ accounts, north of the Forth, in the time of the Scottish kings’ were delivered to King Edward’s receiver in Scotland. (See also APS I p 118 (Red) & CDS II (1646) which adds extents in Galloway).

Unfortunately, despite these notices, and Bain’s examples, we have precious little surviving evidence for Scotland, even during the thirteenth century. We have a document given in the Chartulary of the Abbey of Lindores No VIII (1198 x 1219) which refers to ‘centum solidatis terre’ (one hundred shilling lands) or a £5 land. In the Register of Panmure, pp 137-8, we have a letter of Alexander II directing an extent to be made of some pasture. (Handlist of the Acts of Alexander II (48) dates this to 1219). CDS I (808) 1221 gives a charter by Alexander II granting his wife, Johanna, revenues, ‘as £1000 of land’ in various named places in the Borders and Fife. For such a huge grant to be reckoned in poundlands, in 1221, suggests that the merkland system was already well entrenched across wide swathes of the Scottish landscape. We have an extent of lands in Carrick in 1260 which is printed by I.A. Milne in the Scottish Historical Review (34) of 1955. We also have a few examples which are referred to in Mackie’s edition of Thomson and printed in Volume I of the Acts of Parliament of Scotland (see pages 97-102, Red numbers, or 87-92, Black numbers). These include brieves and inquisitions from c. 1259-1270 and shed light on how extent was established.

(The Extent of Carrick is particularly interesting because it combines two currency-based land-assessment systems. The land-valuations are recorded as pennylands, thereby demonstrating that the Scottish system of merklands had not yet established itself in Carrick by 1260. But these pennylands are then said to be worth so many merks per annum – so the currency was in use. What we are seeing here is a hybrid. A former currency had maintained a land-assessment system which was still used to express abstract land-valuations. But when asked to express the worth of these lands in market-place terms the twelve jurors gave the result as ‘X pennylands worth Y merks per annum’. What adds to the complications is that the ratio between the number of pennylands and their annual value in merks is not consistent).

If the thirteenth-century in Scotland is bad, the twelfth century is virtually a desert. Almost our only concrete evidence is a brief reference in APS Volume I p 10 (Black page numbers) or p 116 (Red page numbers) which runs ‘Item, charter of William, King of Scotland, by which he gave Margaret, Countess of Brittany, his sister, 100 poundlands and 20 enfeoffed knights’. This also appears in RRS II (554) with a date c. 1175. This takes us to within about 40 years of a presumptive origin of the merkland system in Scotland, c. 1136.

This is frail and meagre evidence so we need to turn to sources like the Paisley Register and the Paisley Rental for ways in which we can reconstruct a likely origin for ‘Auld Extent’.

(At this point it is probably useful to stress how careful we have to be before taking early land-assessment evidence at face value. ‘Illustrations of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff’, Vol IV, p 151, prints a Memorandum which appeared, in abbreviated form, in Palgrave’s ‘Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland’, p 21, in 1837. The Memorandum refers to ‘tres centum librate terre’ in the context of the Earldom of Mar during the time of King William (1165-1214). The Memorandum is discussed by Professor Barrow in his comments on RRS II (119) 1171 – which document he classes as ‘spurious’. Barrow suggested the handwriting of the memorandum is ‘an English chancery hand of c. 1290’. This is a salutary reminder of the dangers of taking for granted ‘early’ evidence of land-assessment. There may have been 300 poundlands in the Earldom of Mar in the time of King William, but to prove that we are going to have to work from the bottom up, not rely on a thirteenth-century forgery).

 

Evidence

In order to substantiate the claim of a Scottish economy progressively monetised after c. 1136, I have drawn up a table showing early records of cash payments in Scotland. (See file ‘Evidence for a cash economy’). It is not comprehensive but aims to give a fair picture of how the Scottish economy was being transformed. Coin became commonplace, and the records demonstrate that. It is likely that much of rural Scotland was slow to accommodate coinage. It is probably the case that many transactions in a rural setting still involved payments in kind. But trade drove currency and it was in the interests of merchants, landowners, monarchs, and the church to have payments in cash. During Alexander III’s reign (obit. 1286), coins were being minted as far afield as Inverness.

One caveat to repeat is that our earliest evidence in Scotland is skewed in favour of monastic houses and burghs, generally in the south of the country and up the east coast. These are the places the records survived, but they were also the drivers of change. So, we can admit that the data is skewed and unbalanced, but that does not necessarily make it untrue.

 

 

The evidence from Renfrewshire

 

Having consulted all the evidence from the twelfth century it has to be admitted it does not give a very solid base for any general theory as to how the merkland system developed. The other consideration is that at the time Scotland was still a hugely disparate country. The far North, the West, the Hebrides, and Galloway were often independent of the centre. The areas subject to royal decree were still largely confined to Lowland Scotland, and more specifically Lowland Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde line. Scotland was very provincial and that could even be said of parts of Lowland Scotland such as the Lennox and Galloway. Perhaps it might be useful to take one particular area and discuss how the merkland system may have evolved. To do this I have chosen Renfrewshire which is my first foray south of the Forth-Clyde line. At the time, of course, it was not yet a separate county. It was regarded as part of Lanarkshire until the early fifteenth century. The full detail, at parish level, can be found in the Renfrewshire section of this blog.

 

The question is: Is there evidence from Renfrewshire to support the theory about the merkland system being developed alongside a Scottish currency after c. 1136? That evidence can take two forms. There is good-quality written evidence for early Renfrewshire in the Paisley Register. It runs from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The records of Paisley Abbey, and its close association with the first Stewarts, allow us to draw inferences about the creation of a new land-assessment system in Scotland during the twelfth century. There is also some limited, but valuable, evidence from place-names.

Large parts of Renfrewshire were gifted to Walter FitzAlan from Shropshire. He then doled out lands to his military supporters. Professor Barrow has written extensively about this process (see Bibliography). Walter proceeded to found the monastery at Paisley c. 1163. The first site was actually near Renfrew but within a few years it had moved to Paisley. The monastery accrued substantial grants of land, primarily in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire. We have a surviving cartulary for Paisley Abbey as well as a Rental Book which runs from 1460 to the 1550s.

In terms of family history in the area we are fortunate that Sir William Fraser published the muniments of the Lennox family, the Montgomeries and the Maxwells. Crawfurd wrote a history of Renfrewshire in 1710 which was updated and extended by Semple in 1782 and Robertson in 1818. Alongside the usual public records, royal charters, retours, sasines etc. we can build a comprehensive picture of the landholding situation in Renfrewshire from c. 1163.

But what of earlier, pre-merkland systems? The foundation charter for Paisley gives four carucates in Renfrewshire, two of which were said to be measured. I am confident that these references are intrusive and that early Renfrewshire was not home to either carucates or oxgates. There is an argument for claiming that we can only really be sure a carucate is a carucate when it is measured. I can believe two carucates were created in Renfrewshire but suspect that most such references are to pre-existing local units.

 

We have very few references to bovates or oxgates. There is only one amongst all the hundreds and hundreds of leases in the Paisley Rental – and that is at Edinbernan in Kilpatrick. Since there are examples of subdivisions of farms into twelfths, as well as plenty of instances of a ‘long hundred’ of 120, it seems fair to doubt that bovates were ever a feature of the agrarian landscape of Renfrewshire. A glance at later evidence for some of the parishes around Glasgow suggests they too were not divided into bovates, whereas a parish like Stobo in Peebles-shire certainly was. (For further discussion of this issue see file: ‘Were there carucates and bovates in Renfrewshire?’).

 

If carucates were intrusive – what was there before merklands? The Norse system of pennylands was once embedded in Renfrewshire. We have clear documentary evidence for one pennyland in particular – the kirk pennyland of Inverkip. This occurs first in the twelfth century, but was still referred to as such in the early sixteenth century. Although this is the only one to survive in the documentary record, others survive as place-names. One of these pennyland names look to have been given, or modified, by Gaelic-speakers – Dippany in Kilmacolm parish.

What of davachs? We know that there were davach place-names in other parts of SW Scotland. In Renfrewshire we have 4 likely davach-names, (Gleddoch, Haddockstane, Cornhaddock, Goldenhaddock), but almost nothing in the documentary record. Three of these names contain the word Haddock. If these occurred in the NE of Scotland we would have no hesitation in saying that they represented half-davachs. Why should we not do the same in Renfrewshire, where there was also a mix between groups who spoke Gaelic and English? (See file called ‘Davachs in Renfrewshire?’ for further discussion).

 

Can we date these names? Pennyland references will probably date to c. 995 – c. 1065 and will not have been given after c. 1136 when the first Scottish coins were minted. Davach names will predate pennyland names but it is difficult to know where they were in active use in Renfrewshire and for how long. If they prevailed before the arrival of the Norse then they must have been set aside in any area that fell subject to Norse political control. Once merklands became established after c. 1136, davachs lacked any form of administrative rationale or support and would have faded from use, except in those few cases where a davach name was remembered for some particular reason. A remarkable half-davach stone, such as Haddockstane, might be such a reason.

 

 

The spread of merklands

One strand of evidence we must acknowledge is that for the continued use of pennylands in parts of Scotland until well into the thirteenth-century. So, although we can suggest an origin for merklands in the reign of David I and the creation of a distinctive Scottish currency, we must also admit that this was not acknowledged everywhere, all at once. It was a process, spreading out from centre of royal control in southern Scotland, as new provinces were gradually brought within the new Scottish fiscal system. An extent in Carrick in 1260 (see above) clearly shows that units, still called pennylands, were given values in terms of merks. There are plenty of other examples from Ayrshire, e.g. Ayr and Crossraguel.

Where else we do meet pennylands still employed as active units of assessment as opposed to mere fiscal relics, now deposited into the place-name landscape? In Argyll, we have thirteenth-century examples, from the Register of the Great Seal, in Kintyre and Lismore, as well as ecclesiastical instances referred to in the Paisley Register. In Cowal, according to a document in the Exchequer Rolls, they were still in use until the sixteenth century. In Lochaber they were still part of the mental landscape of assessment into the eighteenth century, as also in a number of Hebridean islands.

We also have early examples from the far north, for instance Invernaver in Sutherland. But perhaps we should treat the provinces of the far north, the north-west and the Hebrides rather differently. Royal influence was ever a hazy concept here, central power always mediated through local chiefs. Seldom, in later mediaeval times, did Scottish sovereigns venture to the furthest corners of their dominions, with the exception of James V in 1540.

We simply do not have sufficient information to tell us how the process evolved, but it surely went hand-in-hand with the extension of power. There were several military campaigns into Galloway, Moray and Kintyre. Perhaps we should see these military shows of force as an essential part of the process. Once local magnates realised they were answerable, and reachable, perhaps there was an acceptance that lip-service, at least, was required. The payment of tribute was not new in the Hebrides, for example; it was not a big step to acknowledging a national system of assessment for the purposes of taxation. Especially since the concept was not new, merely the terminology. All that was really required was a conversion ratio between the old system and the new. As davachs could be converted into pennylands and ouncelands so these latter could be converted into merklands. What is especially interesting is when the older system of davachs is still visible despite the intervening layer of pennylands. This appears to be the case with Mull. And, of course, as the Exchequer learned through the years, getting the Highlands and Hebrides to acknowledge assessment was one thing. Getting them to pay it was quite another.

We should remember the basic function of land-assessment. It purported to measure the value of land so that land-holders then became answerable for taxation, based on that measure. (It could also be the basis for levying arrangements for military and naval service). Furthermore the new system was certainly based on earlier systems. Pennylands, carucates and davachs were part of earlier fiscal frameworks. They weren’t all immediately expunged. They were just adapted to the new merkland system by gearing mechanisms which involved a system of exchange rates between old systems and new. People were quite capable of mentally accommodating more than one system of assessment. They could continue to use the old system on a local basis as they wished, as long as they rendered unto Caesar using the new system. These slow accretions give us the complexity we relish today. But, at the time, arithmetic doubtless cleared up the anomalies and directed the tax bills.

It is probable that in the more civilised, i.e. accessible, parts of Scotland the clerks in the Treasury had a fairly clear idea of the liabilities of most estates down to the level of the individual farms. We have, for example, a detailed extent of Fife from 1294 which gives us not just fermtouns but smithies and alehouses (Stevenson Volume I pp 415-418; also CDS II (684)). The parliamentary synopsis of 1366 just gives nice round ‘total’ figures for John of the Isles, John of Lorn etc. That was probably a realistic assessment of all the detail they could get for properties in untouchable parts of Jura or Appin. At the beginning of the sixteenth century they were beginning to get that detailed local information for Kintyre and Islay etc. By 1541 it was coming in from places like Ardnamurchan and Sunart. (See rentals in the Exchequer Rolls under the relevant areas of this blog). But it was a process, and it took centuries to progress. It is probably fair to say that it was never actually completed. Parts of the far north appear bereft of merklands and from the latter half of the seventeenth century the merkland benchmark of ‘Auld Extent’ was abandoned as the basis for a national system of taxation.

But, let’s stand this approach on its head, The concept of a national taxation is clearly on view in 1366. The subsidy of one-tenth of rents to Bruce in 1326, harking back to a supposed ‘auld extent’ of Alexander III, shows that we can push this concept back to 1286. Bagimont’s Roll of 1275, and the taxation of the Scottish ecclesiastical establishment pushes us back a decade further. It may have been a nascent process, limited in reach, when the merkland system was set up alongside a new currency c. 1136. But within about 140 years it looks to have become fully established. In the Hebrides we can probably date it to the period following 1266 when these islands were formally returned to Scotland following the Treaty of Perth.

It is probable that the whole procedure was a long and elaborate process of fits and starts. Individual areas and landowners were likely brought into the fiscal fold on a piecemeal, area-by area basis, often by force of arms. The family of Somerled may have been temporarily brought to heel by the Kintyre campaign(s) of the 1220s. This was paralleled by various military excursions into Galloway, Moray and the far north. We hear of the expeditions, and occasionally of the cruelties, but expanding the fiscal net probably did not feature, in the view of monastic and other annalists, as worthy of record. So, precisely how Scotland moved, from starting a new merkland system post c. 1136, to having a pan-Scotland view of taxation by 1275, remains largely hidden from us.

 

Place-Names

Place-names can help us pin down the prevalence of land-assessment systems, particularly when they incorporate currency units.

The youngest system, merklands, often finds its way into place-names. The word merkland occurs as a place-name, even in a Gaelic context such as Margmonagach (Kintyre) or Margareoch and Marganish (Arran), or Druimnamarg (Easter Ross). In Kilbarchan parish, Renfrewshire, there is still a farm called Shillingworth, once called Forty-shillingworth (i.e. 3 merklands). In Kilpatrick parish, Dunbartonshire, there is still a hill called Tenpence, once plainly a grazing-area assessed as one-sixteenth of a merkland. The fact that merklands feature in place-names in Bute, Arran and Kintyre makes one wonder if we can date these names to Stewart presence or influence in the period 1136-1266.

Along much of the west coast, and through the Hebrides from Mull northwards, we have large numbers of pennylands, half-pennylands and farthing-lands embedded in the landscape. The precise terminology depends upon whether the local population were speakers of English or Gaelic. So we find Dippany (Kilmacolm parish, Renfrewshire), Dippen (Saddell parish, Kintyre), Pennymore, (Kilmalew parish, Argyll), Lephincorrach (Saddell parish, Kintyre) Feorlindubh (Arisaig parish, Inverness-shire) all coined by Gaelic speakers. But in Ayrshire we find names in Farden (farthing) which suggests they were coined by people who were not Gaelic speakers. (In SW Scotland we also find a couple of names deriving from ‘feoirlinn’ –  Gaelic for farthing – which suggests that Gaelic and English speakers shared the same landscape until the latter predominated). If these names were introduced after c. 995 and were a function of the Hiberno-Norse currency system than we can put their likely date-range to that period when this currency was at its most robust, roughly c. 995-c. 1065.

It is worth pointing out that both pennyland and merkland names often combine with a second element; as Peinduin (the pennyland of the dun or fort – Trotternish, Skye), Pennygowan (Smith’s penny – Mull), Pennymore (Big pennyland – Kilmaliew, Argyll). In some cases it may be that the second element was part of an earlier name for the same place, under a previous assessment system. So is this because the first element replaced some earlier first element? The answer to that is, in some instances, probably yes.

We sometimes find land-units attached to institutions such as churches or monasteries as part of their endowment. Some of these may be very ancient. An area of ground might be allocated to support and maintain a church or chapel, perhaps even a hospital. For example we find examples of Margnaheglish as a place-name in Bute and Arran, Pennykill and Lephinchapel in Cowal. (Margnaheglish denotes ‘the merkland of the church’, Pennykill means the pennyland of the church, Lephinchapel indicates a half-pennyland set aside to maintain a chapel). In Northern Skye we even come across the place-name Ungnacille to describe an ounceland (tirung) that was set aside to maintain the church, next to the important ancient church and burial-ground on St Columba’s Isle, Skeabost.

These are all examples of specific units within the land-assessment system of the day, being allocated to endow religious or ritual sites. But what if the unit descriptor, ‘marg-’ (merk) or ‘pen-’ (penny) itself just replaced some earlier descriptor from an older land-assessment system. The various land-assessment systems of Scotland sat on top of each other like the layers of a sandwich. Merklands could sit on top of pennylands which, in turn, might sit on top of davachs, or parts of davachs. But this process was not random. It followed the rates of exchange set between these two land-assessment currencies. A conversion ratio kept this process in order and arithmetically coherent.

There are two or three places in Scotland where we can surmise this process may have been at work. In Mull we have merklands and pennylands and not, apparently, any davachs. But the way the merklands are organised to sit on top of pennylands suggests the subliminal presence of an earlier system where one unit was worth 10 merklands. I have argued that this ghost-unit, unseen, unnamed, but with a definitive shadow, was actually the davach. (See blog under Mull). In Islay we have no pennylands. But the island is full of quarterlands and eighthlands. Not once are we given the name of the bigger unit of which they were quarters or eighths. Was it an ounceland, or was it a davach? Or was it a davach that became known as an ounceland?

Argyllshire is notionally free of davachs but there are faint traces of davach names and in Kintyre there is one clear and incontrovertible example in Dachnaachlysk from 1502-6. This is probably now Dalmore in NR 6910. In this case both place-name elements have changed. Dach- (from davach) became Dal- (field) and the rest of the name changed from ‘of the church’ to ‘big’. Effectively the name became ‘Big field’ whereas before it had signified a piece of land granted towards a church endowment. We have the functional equivalent of this name in Margnaheglish (both Bute and Arran) where it literally means the merkland of the church. RMS I App I No 105 (Robert I) gives ‘senemargis’ or ‘old merklands’ in Kintyre and quite possibly this was an euphemism for either pennylands or davachs.

The standard unit was the basis for each system. The davach was usually divided into halves, quarters and eighths. Pennylands were divided into halves and quarters but fractions of a penny caused problems. It was some time before halfpennies and farthings were minted. Before this pennies might be physically cut into halves and quarters. Any subdivision beyond this could be accommodated as a concept, but there was no coin to match it. These subdivisions seem to have reached their extreme in Harris in 1685 where a cionag was 1/64 of a penny. Merklands were also subdivided in all sorts of ways, limited only by the fact that pennies should really only subdivide into halves and quarters. Where that didn’t happen we soon meet with documentary and arithmetic confusion. When Auchinbothy-Langmure (Lochwinnoch parish, Renfrewshire) was divided between seven heiresses there was a legacy of muddle when dealing with the fractions in terms of sevenths.

 

Poundlands

Poundlands never seem to have been such a prominent unit in Scotland. In Renfrewshire we have no indications from early documents just quite what the Stewart estate was valued at. It was a significant part of the county (not then separate from Lanarkshire) but we are not given any total figures. Estates within it were then parcelled out by the Stewarts to their own supporters. The Montgomery family had followed the Stewarts northwards and had been given an estate based on Eaglesham parish. In later times this is described as a 100m land. In the late eighteenth century we have Ainslie’s survey and maps of this estate. What we see in the eighteenth century may reflect quite closely what was given to the family in the twelfth century. It was almost all still owned by the same family. No documentary evidence from the period survives but if, as seems likely, the Montgomery family were given a single-parish unit of Eaglesham in c. 1165, then perhaps it was reckoned as a 100m land at the time, according to the brand new merkland system of reckoning. Maybe this helps confirm a likely date for the creation of merklands in Renfrewshire.

We also have a close idea of some of the dates connected with early gifts to Paisley monastery. In the hundreds of leases given in the Paisley Rental there are quite a number where there is a clear statement of the extent of the property. Almost always these properties are described in terms of merklands and shillinglands. Only twice amongst all these entries is there mention of the phrase ‘auld extent’. One is of the kirkland of Largs (Ayrshire); the other is of the 40s land of Moniabrocht (Lochwinnoch parish, Renfrewshire). Now Moniabroch was given to Paisley in the period 1177 x 1199 – within about 40 years of Scotland’s first coinage. It seems unlikely that Moniabroch would have had its valuation given, or changed, after it had been acquired by Paisley and become an ecclesiastical property. It seems more likely that it had a valuation given it prior to about 1177 and that valuation was effectively frozen as ‘auld extent’ for almost 400 years whilst it remained a monastic possession. It is difficult to see why properties would ever be ‘extended’ (i.e. have their extent calculated) after they became monastic possessions. There was no requirement for it since the monastery did not ‘die’ and the property did not change hands. Yet they were thought to have extent because that is often stated in the Paisley Rental. The logical conclusion is that their extent was calculated in the period between Scotland’s first coins c. 1136 and the date these properties were given to Paisley monastery – i.e. from the 1160s onwards.

Nowhere in the Paisley Rental is ‘New Extent’ mentioned at all. But it is mentioned in a number of documents concerning Paisley properties after they had been parcelled out amongst laymen in the period post-Reformation.

The Paisley Rental gives us an opportunity to establish the relationship between merklands as units of valuation and the number of merks silver rent that they each paid. The rental includes all sorts of income to the Abbey over a period of about 90 years from 1460 to the 1550s. Most of the income was from farms the Abbey owned, but there was also income from mills, fisheries, annual returns etc. Over 150 properties and places are mentioned.

The rental, which could also be described as a schedule of leases, was divided into different geographical areas. For the purposes of this study I have excluded all properties in the Lennox, or in Ayrshire, and those few from other counties. I have also excluded all very small properties within the town of Paisley, as well as mills, fisheries and annual returns.

What is left is a set of farms in Renfrewshire, primarily in the parishes of Paisley and Lochwinnoch. To make comparisons I have given these properties in a table with three other columns. (See under Renfrewshire section of this blog, within Paisley parish). The first gives the cash or silver rent where stated. The second is a land-valuation, where given. The third is a column showing if these first two columns match – e.g. where 1 merkland returns 1 merk silver rent. There are some properties which did not return a silver rent at all. They are given in the rental with headings such as ‘Terre pro avenis’ (lands for oats). Some of these may be amongst the earliest properties acquired by Paisley monastery. But here too it is obvious that there was a ratio. Each merkland returned 1 chalder of oats. The results are clear. In the context of Paisley’s properties 1 merkland returned 1 merk of silver rent, or, in a few cases, 1 chalder of oats.

Were these merklands of ‘Auld Extent’? Auld Extent is only mentioned twice in the Rental, once in connection with the kirkland of Largs, Ayrshire; once with reference to Moniabroch in Lochwinnoch parish, Renfrewshire. (We have another reference to Auld Extent in connection with a Paisley Abbey property in 5m AE Rouchbank in RSS III (873) 1544). New Extent is not mentioned at all. Merkland valuations of land are given fairly consistently from about 1522. What is striking is the consistency of the later silver rents and valuations with the earlier data. In 1460, for example, we might only be given a silver rent. However, if that is consistent, as it often is, with a silver rent given later, and a merkland valuation given later, it seems reasonable to conclude that this reflects its valuation in 1460 as well.

Unfortunately the next step in this argument is not capable of proof. Nowhere are we going to find a twelfth-century document which says ‘when we set up the merkland system we designed it to reflect the fact that 1 merkland should return 1 merk of silver rent’.

But Scotland’s first currency was established c. 1136. Paisley monastery was established and endowed with its first properties in the 1160s. In the single intervening generation a conversion exercise had taken place whereby the existing land-assessment in Renfrewshire, in davachs or pennylands, had been revalued as merklands. It is perfectly understandable that the first Paisley monks (from Shropshire) made no references to extent or ‘Auld Extent’. To them a merkland valuation would have been just the sort of thing they would have been used to back in Wenlock. This was evidently a first valuation which became embedded into the monastic economy.

Lay properties would be subject to another extent when the old owner died and the lands were ‘extended’ afresh before a new owner was installed. But Paisley’s property portfolio was ecclesiastical; the owner didn’t die; nor were they subject to the same feudal procedures. Accordingly that first valuation or extent was the one they were left with. A century or so later, still unchanged, it was now hallowed enough to earn the name of ‘Auld Extent’ – particularly if lay properties around it were being subjected to newer or more recent extents. The monastery itself had little use for reckonings of extent, but they appear to have been remembered and they probably had some importance as an index of the value of the various monastic properties, and perhaps as setting a benchmark for what levels of rent could be expected.

Another thing becomes clear in the rental. The land was not measured in carucates or bovates. There are no carucates mentioned in the rental and the word bovate is only used once, in connection with Edinbernan in Kilpatrick parish, Lennox. How, then do we explain the carucates and bovates or oxgates that we meet in the Paisley Register? They are intrusive. They represent language and units which the new owners in Renfrewshire were attempting to transpose to their new properties. They did not take root. Carucates and bovates would have been widely known in England and SE Scotland. They arrived with the FitzAlans, but they didn’t last. Another good example is the word cultura. It leaps off the pages of the Paisley Register (RMP p 116) in a document of Nicholas de Costentin dealing with Innerwick in East Lothian. Yes, it occurs in England and appears to have been introduced to Scotland. Yet it appears not once in Renfrewshire.

So, it seems a fair assumption that the Paisley Rental preserved a shadowy record of the merkland valuations ascribed by the incoming FitzAlan family to their new properties in Paisley and Lochwinnoch parishes. That when these properties were made over to the new monastery after the 1160s the valuations were remembered and used to guide expected rentals. That measurements in bovates and carucates were not embedded because there was already a well-established system of land-division. This had not been affected by bovates and carucates from SE Scotland. In fact the land was often divided in twelfths, not eighths. Accordingly the unit-names ‘bovate’ and ‘carucate’ did not successfully transplant. Neither do we find them in other parishes in neighbouring areas.

Before we move on to the next strand of evidence it may be that we can use the records of other monasteries in the southwest of Scotland to support the evidence from Paisley Abbey. I have not yet attempted to do this on a comprehensive basis but we can glance at the data from Kilwinning, which lay in Cunninghame, Ayrshire. The monastic cartulary has been lost but we have a few surviving documents which show us what happened to some of the Abbey properties after the Reformation.

Amongst the Yule collection of charters in the National Records of Scotland are some which record the dispersal of Kilwinning Abbey’s properties.

GD90/1/130 1548 deals with 20s old extent of Dowray.

GD90/1/147 1552-3 deals with 20s old extent of Brigend Wester.

GD90/1/162 1559-1560 deals with 4 properties given as new extent, 1 of old extent, and 1 where the type of extent is not stated.

GD90/1/166 1563 deals with 36s 8d old extent of Dubbis and Dawgaw.

 

Archaeological and Historical Collections relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton, Volume I No 32,1551-2, deals with 6m old extent of Wodesyde and Turnorlande.

Archaeological and Historical Collections relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton, Volume I No 35, 1579, deals with several properties set in feu in 1559, 1563 and 1566. (The source for this can be seen at the online Records of the Parliaments of Scotland.

(RPS, 1579/10/78). Nine holdings are specified. Three are given as new extent, three as old extent, and the other three have no extent specified.

 

What conclusions can we draw from these sources? One is that a number of Kilwinning’s properties were known to have valuations in ‘Auld Extent’. Just as with Paisley Abbey these are likely to have been given them before they became churchlands. The foundation date for Kilwinning remains unknown but the second half of the twelfth century seems likely. In which case their ‘Auld Extent’ valuations may have been given some time between about 1136 and the foundation date of the monastery. This chimes with the evidence from Paisley.

 

After the Reformation some of Paisley’s properties were assigned New Extent valuations. Exactly the same appears to have happened with Kilwinning. This is perfectly comprehensible. Auld Extent dated from the first half of the twelfth century. The valuations of these properties had not changed in the 400-odd years they had been in monastic ownership. Now that they were becoming lay properties a New Extent was required.

 

We still have this troubling silence from the twelfth century where documents are so scarce. Is there any other evidence we can summon up to support the idea that a merkland of ‘auld extent’ determined one merk of rent.

 

Merks until merklands/Promissory notes

There is one class of document which will help here. Kings had to reward their supporters, particularly those families whose members were risking their lives on the monarch’s behalf. Reward could take many forms: loot, cash, goods. But the reward many military adventurers wanted was land. The problem was the king did not always have a ready farm or estate which he could immediately bestow. Instead he might give some cash and issue what we would call a promissory note. In course of time a farm might become available. Someone might die without an heir; somebody might be forfeited for a crime or treachery. Until then the pleader had to be kept at bay.

In the file called ‘Promissory Notes’ (within the ‘General Summaries’ section of this blog) there is a table of documents of this type. They are remarkably similar. The king gives a cash gift of X, until he can give an estate worth X. The interesting thing here is that the cash gift usually equates to an ‘Auld Extent’ valuation, and not that farm’s annual value.

 

Military service

Land-assessment systems were closely related to levying for military service. This is a huge topic in itself so, at present, I shall do little more than draw attention to it. A large number of early charters refer to ‘Scottish service’ and ‘forinsec service’. There has been much discussion as to quite what these involved and, unfortunately, the precise details of this service are generally left unspecified. There is frequent use of an exasperating phrase to the effect that the service shall be as much as pertains to that amount of land. It is plain that there was a standard form of military service, probably from very early times, but the practical details will have varied from place to place and accorded with the exigencies of the moment. Coastal and island territories might be expected to perform naval service and there is also frequent charter reference to this, for instance in Robert Bruce’s time. (See Rixson, D., The West Highland Galley, Edinburgh, 1998, Chapter 4 and Figure 2, for more detail on ship-service).

The following brief extracts will give a flavour of just how extensive this topic is:

Inventory of Lamont papers No 10 (pp 7-8), gives a charter from c. 1295 which refers to 2 pennylands of Argyllshire providing 2 men, with their victuals.

Some of Paisley Abbey’s properties in Kilpatrick had long-standing obligations to provide ‘watch meal’ (i.e. provisions of oatmeal) to the soldiers maintaining Dumbarton Castle.

RMS II (3390) 1509, dealing with the Lordship of Urquhart (west bank of Loch Ness), sets out levy requirements for each £10 land (in this case probably New Extent).

Thomas Thomson’s Memorial on Old Extent offers several examples of levying arrangements (e.g. footnote on p 155). On pp 158-9 he gives an ordinance from 1547 which refers to ‘raising and lifting of ane furnest man of every seven merk land of auld extent’. (‘Furnest’ here means furnished or provided for in terms of equipment and maintenance for a fixed period of time). On pp 161-163 he offers an example from 1552 of 1 footman for every 40 merkland of ‘Auld Extent’. (A footnote on p 162 gives details of what was expected). See also Mackie’s note on p 322.

Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis No X, pp 161- 179, prints a Privy Seal precept from 1587-8 along with editorial notes. (See also RMS V (1491)). On page 172, Note 1, the editor draws attention to an old duty called quowart. Dwelly (p 284) offers ‘expedition, journey’ among the meanings of the Gaelic word cuairt.

Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, London, 1877, No 230, 1625, deals with pursuing Highland rebels. It had been resolved ‘that one man with a month’s leǔn should be sent out of every eight merk land in Argyll, Cowall, and Lorne, for this service’. The leǔn referred to here is the same as the ‘loan’ described in 1685 (below) and refers to the recruit’s victuals. If an army marches on its stomach the built-in advantage of the Highland soldier was that he carried his stomach with him, in the form of oatmeal.

GD16/27/157 is a 17^th century roll of 3 ploughlands in Forfar (Angus) which were ‘liable for maintenance of the soldiers of the watch’.

Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, London, 1877, No 133, 1685, refers to the Marquis of Atholl writing to the Laird of Weem, looking for 1 man out of every 40 shilling land (i.e. 3 merkland) of his, with four days ‘loan’ (provisions).

Fraser Mackintosh Collection, Inverness Library, (FM 267) Papers by D. Murray Rose from ‘The Court Books of the Regality of Grant’ p 22 for 19 January 1716, deals with ‘the outrigging of four men out of each daugh [davach] of the Lordship of Abernethie for the present expedition’. The obligations of those who did not go, to maintain those who did, are clearly laid out.

These military obligations were still keenly felt in the eighteenth century. Tenants of Jacobite lairds will have had little choice about whether to take up arms in 1745. That was equally the case with Government supporters. In the following extract an anti-Jacobite laird was taxed by the rebels, according to the ancient land-assessment system, because he prevented recruitment to the rebel cause.

Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, London, 1877, No 176, 1750 is a memorial from Sir Robert Menzies of Menzies which states that ‘in the rebellion of 1745 his country was assessed by the rebels in five pound ten shillings sterling upon the plough of land, as he had oppenly declared against them and did all in his power to keep his tennants from joining’.

A book could be written about levying arrangements in Scotland. They were inextricably bound up with the prevailing systems of land-assessment. Military service was another form of taxation so it was entirely understandable that it was linked to the existing fiscal units.

There is no doubt other forms of service were attached to the framework of land-assessment. Some of these duties mixed entertainment with obligation. Large-scale deer-hunts were great social occasions which entailed a good deal of organisation. In the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Volume 23, 1898-9 (published 1902), Mr C. Fergusson discussed the ‘tinchels’ or deer-hunts of Atholl. In 1711 (p 178), orders were issued to about a dozen parishes ‘desiring the vassals and fencible men out of every merkland to parade at Blair Castle on August 21^st, in the evening’. The unit for recruitment was the merkland. Over the next three days 57 deer were killed.

 

Boundaries

This is another issue intimately entwined with all systems of land-assessment; and again a book could be written on this subject alone. Here, it is sufficient to say that the boundaries of smaller fiscal units, such as pennylands and davachs, often formed part of the boundaries of other types of unit too: estates, parishes, baronies, lordships. In some respects the latter can be seen as aggregates of the former.

Marking such units was a very ancient concern which takes us back centuries earlier than merklands. We have some indications of early boundary markers such as Clach nam Breatann in Glen Falloch or Carndrum by Tyndrum. (For more on this topic see file ‘Cowal Summary Text’ in the Cowal section of this blog). The earliest, and largest-scale, boundary markers probably always involved watersheds and drainage basins. We meet this in a saying beloved of eighteenth-century land-surveyors ‘as wind and weather shear’, which nicely defines the mountain ridge-lines separating drainage basins. This concept can be traced back to Early Christian times with the description of Drum Alban (the Ridge of Scotland) which is the line, stretching north-south through much of the Highlands, separating the waters that flow west from those which flow east. However, it is likely that these basic geographic descriptors stretch back far earlier than Christianity.

Here are a few examples of this definition at use in the records:

RMS IV (1104) 1556 (Kincardineshire) ‘as wynd and wodder scheris’

RSS VI (1127) 1570/1 (Ross-shire) ‘ut ventus et aer serviunt … ut aer et ventus serviunt’. The context here is how ventus (wind) and aer (air, weather) cross mountain tops. Perhaps the English saying is just being translated into Latin.

RMS V (2001) 1591-2 (Inverness) ‘as wind and wether scheris’

RMS VI (1045) 1600 (on original of 1598, lordship of Dingwall) ‘as the wynd and wedder scheris’

Calendar of Writs of Munro of Foulis No 143, 1605 (= NRS GD93/143, Ross/Sutherland) ‘wind and wedder scheiris’

Laing Charters (1551) 1609, dealing with lands in Kincardineshire, describes some boundaries ‘as wind and wedder scheiris’.

Calendar of Writs of Munro of Foulis No 180, 1625 (= NRS GD93/180, Ross) ‘as wind and wether scheaviris on the headis of the mountanes and hillis’

GD112/27/51/18 1737 fears that there will be an attempt ‘to get some alteration made in the map to show more distinctly where wind and weather shears’

1. Macgill, Old Ross-shire and Scotland as seen in the Tain and Balnagown documents, Inverness, 1909, No 768, 1740 ‘as wind and weather shears’

National Library of Scotland, Digital Map Library (online), Ross-shire, Estate Maps, (NOSAS CL.4), J. Turnbull, A Survey of the Hill of Weaves, 1762, marks the western boundary as follows: ‘The boundings on this side goes along the summit of these rocky hills where wind and weather shears’.

RHP 4154 1766 marks wind and water shear (Strathavon/Strathspey)

RHP 4006 1806 marks wind and weather shear (Fern, Angus)

RHP 3131 1819 ‘water shear (or the dividing of the water) is the march’ (Cowal, Argyll)

Although the earliest record given above dates from 1556 I have no doubt the phrase was in use long before this.

 

Watersheds and drainage basins would be used to define the holdings of the greatest lords, those districts or estates of many ouncelands or davachs. At a lower level, boundaries would be marked by burns, ditches, trees and stones. These we meet on a great many occasions. Not only do we come across them in the written record, they have also embedded themselves in the landscape. We have plenty of examples of marker cairns or single stones which now appear on the map as ‘Carn’ or ‘Clach’ or ‘Cloch’. Sometimes the stones have gone or fallen. Sometimes they are still clearly recognisable. Of course it wasn’t only stones. It could be trees or bushes, sometimes ditches, often burns or rivers. Crosses were a frequent form of boundary marker. They could be free standing, or carved on stones or trees. Needless to say, it is not always possible to trace these outlines. Trees and bushes die. Ditches collapse if not maintained. Stones become buried or broken up. Burns and rivers change course. Tracking old boundaries in a modern landscape is not without its challenges.

The following quotations do not try to portray any sort of comprehensive picture; they merely indicate the scale and depth of the issues surrounding boundary definitions.

Kenneth Jackson, The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, pp 30 & 31 gives two rocks (‘Cloch’) as boundary stones. Another boundary stone is described as a ‘great pillar-stone’ (standing-stone?) on p 35. These boundary stones must have partially demarcated the lands of the monastery of Deer.

Gordon Donaldson wrote a supplementary essay on ‘Early Scottish Conveyancing’ to accompany Peter Gouldesbrough’s ‘Formulary of Old Scots Legal Documents’, The Stair Society, Edinburgh, 1985. In it he quotes some lines associated with the foundation of an ecclesiastical centre at Abernethy (see pp 154 & 158). The lines may have been written 1150-1200 but deal with an event supposedly centuries earlier. The lands of Abernethy are described as bounded by two stones.

RRS II (145) 1173 x 1174 (Selkirkshire) has a standing stone as a boundary marker – ‘a petra stante’ (from the standing stone). Here the word used for stone was petra, it was often a form of lapis.

RRS II (215) 1179 (Selkirkshire) gives a cross, a big alder tree, burns, a hunting-station and a sike (small stream) among its boundary marks.

RRS II (236) 1180 (between the Gala and Leader Waters, Borders) includes the phrase ‘ad standande stan’ (to the standing stone) in its bounding clauses.

Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey (122) 1189 ‘per quercus antiquitus’ (by the old oak)

Muniments of the Royal Burgh of Irvine, Volume I, Edinburgh, 1890, No 1 1205, is an agreement granting 20 acres in feu ferme. Part of the description of boundaries reads ‘ad quendam dicum spineum qui dicitur Hawthorne’ (to a certain thorn-dike which is called Hawthorne).

Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey (71) (dated early Henry III, who began his reign in 1216) ‘ad mediam spinam cum quadam cruce’ (to the middle thorn bush [marked] with a cross)

Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey (76) (dated early 13^th century) boundary marked by crosses

Cartulary of Haughmond Abbey (886) c. 1190 – c. 1225 oak marked with a cross

Laing Charters (81) c. 1390, Berwickshire, ‘as the march stones are placed by the perambulators’.

RMS III (347) 1525-6 on original of 1514, sheriffdom of Elgin, refers to the evocatively-named ‘Ten-riggis-of-the-Feld-of-the-Nyne-stanis’.

Sikes, burns, rivers, in fact water-courses of any description, were often used to define boundaries. One problem was that rivers could change direction, particularly in heavy rain, carving out new channels for themselves. A piece of land might now find itself on the opposite side of a river. There are plenty examples of this in Scotland, sometimes even with major rivers. The channel of the Clyde has been modified over the centuries, sometimes by nature, sometimes by man. Laing Charters (2507) 1657 deals with some 19 acres which had been moved from the west bank of the Clyde to the east ‘by the impetuosity of the water’. The ground was now to be marked out by march-stones.

Our land-assessment systems started out as abstract concepts which served fiscal purposes. Over the many centuries of use so these abstract concepts became realised in the landscape. A davach, or ploughgate, or pennyland, or merkland, could be defined as from that burn, to that tree, to that stone, to that ditch, and so back to the burn again. They took shape, meaning, and names. The stones, the trees, the ditch, the hedge, the dyke, marked our landscape just as surely as the plough. They mark it yet.