The valuations of 1366
In summer 1366 there was much activity in connection with the raising of taxes to pay for the king’s ransom. A Parliament was held at Scone in July. The proceedings are available to us in the printed Acts of Parliament of Scotland Volume I pp 140-143; or online at The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland, under David II, [1366/7]. Essentially there had been an assessment of the whole of Scotland and this was laid before parliament. The assessment was divided into two sections, one for the sheriffdoms, one for the bishoprics. This record is of enormous value as being the first data that gives us any sort of national picture. (See accompanying table of 1366 assessment).
There are some qualifications. Firstly there were some notable absentees; some for good reason, others not so. Among the latter were the Earl of Ross, John of the Isles and John of Lorne. In another section of the proceedings we learn of rebels in Atholl, Badenoch, Lochaber and Ross. Reading between the lines it is clear that any taxation was going to be difficult to visit upon the men of the North and West. It is also less likely that information held about these areas was wholly reliable.
In general terms the sheriffdoms, (i.e. the lay part of Scotland) accounted for just over three-quarters (76.28%) of the total revenue; the bishoprics were responsible for just under one-quarter (23.78%).
We immediately run into difficulty with the Bishopric income because within each bishopric (except Sodor, or the Isles, which does not appear at all), there are two entries: one ‘per antiquam taxationem’ (by the old assessment or rating) and one ‘per verum valorem’ (by true value). It is not absolutely clear what the ‘old assessment’ refers to. In 1275 Bagimont had been in dispute with the Scottish clergy over raising money for the papacy. The Scottish clergy of 1275 had wanted to make their then ‘old assessment’ the basis for any taxation. The Pope had flatly refused this and insisted that it be raised on the basis of true value in 1275. Bagimont’s rating was undoubtedly higher; which, of course, was the reason it was so stoutly objected to by Scottish clerics.
Less than a century later we have this reference to a clerical ‘old assessment’. Is this the same as the ‘old assessment’ that the clergy reckoned to before Bagimont, or is it Bagimont’s new assessment? True value is also complicated because we would normally take this to mean the current market value of the church’s properties. For some church properties we may know their old extent if they were mortified after the introduction of the merkland system. But the church owned lands for centuries before the Normans arrived. We won’t have valuations for all of these. Moreover, the church had multiple income streams apart from property. Making any sort of reckoning of the relative value of teinds (tithes), annual returns, altarage dues etc. over the course of nearly a century is nigh impossible. It is doubful if we will ever have enough data about monetisation, inflation or prices to support any sort of conclusion here. (We do however have a good deal of information about Bagimont’s Roll, but since that is a large subject in itself I have deferred dicussion of that). What we can do is compare the wealth of different bishoprics in 1366, but, unless we can establish precisely the different forms of income within each bishopric, there is a limit to what we can say about ‘Auld Extent’, or even the antiquam taxationem.
As far as the sheriffdoms are concerned we are on firmer ground. There is a subtle change of phrasing because the two categories for the shires are ‘per antiquam extentam’ (by old/auld extent) and ‘per verum valorem’ (by true value). This means we can compare the totals given, with the sum, within each shire, of all the properties for which we have record of an ‘Auld Extent’ valuation. There are some immediate caveats.
When extents were taken they are are often described as including all issues, i.e. all forms of income, not just the rent from land. We have a surviving extent of Fife in 1294 (Stevenson Volume I pp 415-418). This included rents from mills, alehouses, smithies and a number of individuals. Is it the case that some, or all, of the sheriffdom entries for 1366 included similar items? Furthermore, the proportions of such types of income may have varied. This is an unknown.
Secondly the data is unlikely to be complete. The entry for Inverness gives one of the larger sheriffdom totals, as we might expect. But does it include all of Ross, Sutherland and Caithness? Are these missing?. If we include them in Inverness then we might expect that total to be bigger. And what of Moray – which is not mentioned?
The figures for the Isles and Argyll are suspiciously round. Since John of Lorne and John of the Isles were recalcitrant absentees it is likely the Exchequer did not have full knowledge of the extent of their lands. When it comes to their true value, it is only that for Gillespic (Archibald Campbell, Lochawe) and other barons of Argyll, which appears, again with a suspiciously round figure of £133 6s 8d (i.e. 200 merks). The true value of John of Lorne’s lands are said to be unknown (de vero valore … ignoratur).
When it comes to Renfrewshire there is no entry under ‘Auld Extent’ but there is an entry under true value. In one sense it is surprising to find any entry at all since Renfrewshire would then be regarded as still part of the shire of Lanark. But perhaps it, and the Steward’s, importance were such that it warranted a singular mention.
So far this blog has concentrated on the far North, the North-west, the Hebrides, Argyll, the Lennox and Renfrewshire. Much of the area covered is precisely where the 1366 data is weakest. There is, therfore, a limited amount to say when comparing the bottom-up data gathered for Caithness to Kintyre, with the top-down data assembled in the 1366 report. But it is possible to outline where further research can make the most fruitful returns.
Comprehensive bottom-up surveys for the other shires of Scotland will enable us to evaluate the figures given in 1366. If, on the basis of a full survey of shire A, we are able to say what its total Auld Extent valuation was likely to have been, or at least give a close range, then we will be able to compare it to the figures given in 1366, or elsewhere, to give a truer and more complete ‘Auld Extent’ valuation for all Scotland. This would give us a real index of wealth and resource, outlining the different values accorded to the different provinces back to the twelfth century. If we can then map these ‘Auld Extent’ figures to valuations made under previous land-assessment systems, whether in pennylands, carucates or davachs, then we can map land values for many centuries before that. It is a prize worth striving for.
There is another source that is useful for us here. Thomson, and others, took the view that the responsible officers within the various sheriffdoms must have kept records of the Auld Extent values within each shire. Also, that these notices would have been useful until the seventeenth century when the old method of taxation based upon ‘Auld Extent’ was eventually replaced. These records come under the general heading of ‘Taxt Rolls’ and a number have survived.
Some were printed along with Purves’s ‘Revenue of the Scottish Crown, 1681’; (see D. Murray Rose pp l-li and Appendix I). These appear to date from the sixteenth century (e.g. Inverness 1555 and Aberdeenshire 1579) although the Rental of the Isles given on p 82 may, in its original form, date from the late fifteenth century. We have an Extent for the Sheriffdom of Edinburgh from 26 March 1479 which is printed in the Bannatyne Miscellany Volume III, Edinburgh, 1855, pp 427-431. We have a Taxt Roll of Fife, 1517, printed as Appendix G (pp 394-401) in The Sheriff Court Book of Fife, (ed.) W Croft Dickinson, Edinburgh, 1928. We have two Retours dated 1554, of Edinburgh and Kincardine respectively, printed as No’s 1 & 2, among the Inquisitiones Valorum of Volume II of the Retours (see Bibliography). We also have a series of Taxt Rolls of sheriffdoms and kirklands which appear in the manuscript collections of Sir Lewis Stewart of Kirkhill (NLS Adv.MS.22.1.14). There will be others in local collections.
The study of these later ‘Taxt Rolls’ raises a number of issues. To what degree did they preserve authentic information about ‘Auld Extent’ and can we rely on this information to give a better picture of the situation in individual sheriffdoms? We are still a long way from being able to give confident answers to such questions; but we can outline some promising avenues.
In Appendix I of Purves is a probable sixteenth-century Taxt Roll for Renfrewshire. The lands are listed in a rather erratic fashion. Some are given just as lordships or parishes (Eaglesham, Mearns, Duchal, Erskine, Semple); others appear as individual properties, (Wester Hendrieston, Ellerslie); others still in combination (Auchinbothie Wallace and Nether Johnstone). In total some 57 individual entries are listed, ranging in size from £1 to £160. If we compare the values given here, with other ‘Auld Extent valuations we have for the same properties, we can show exact matches in about 30 cases. That doesn’t mean the other 27 entries don’t match. It just means we can’t make a valid comparison because we lack the details. For example the Lordship of Duchal is given as £47 or 70½m. We have other, comparable, valuations for this huge lordship but it is impossible to make an accurate comparison when we don’t have an exact list of all the farms that were included at the time of making the return. That applies to a number of other entries also. But this exercise demonstrates what might be done as our datasets fill out. We might end up with a reasonably robust Auld Extent for all of Scotland, based on ground-up valuations of individual properties, validated and verified by sheriffdom Taxt Rolls.
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