The social life of Scotland in the eighteenth century

Preface To Second Edition

The issue of a new edition of this work affords the opportunity for making some slight alterations, chiefly in the correction of a few almost inevitable slips of the pen, the eye, or the memory, — two or three of which have not escaped the notice of friendly critics and of critical friends. It is necessary to respect and to possess those qualities of a literary and historical conscience, which the choleric Sir Arthur Wardour dreaded and despised in his friend, the laird of Monkbarns, as " a pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact, and a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory." Occasional repetitions of facts in the course of this book are due to the desire to make each chapter describing special phases of social life as complete in itself as possible. Some reviewers have observed and regretted the omission of an account of the intellectual development of the country during the period. This want we may yet supply in a separate volume, treating of the literature and men of letters of Scotland in the eighteenth century.

HENEY GEEY GEAHAM.

February 1900.

Preface To First Edition

In Scotland during the eighteenth century there were only two outstanding events which, after the Union, specially belong to its history — the Eebellion of '15 and the Eebellion of '45. Besides these rebellions, we find as State affairs of Scotland chiefly obscure intrigues of factions, Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Jacobite ; measures managed by leaders of Scottish business, who were servile followers of English ministries ; manoeuvres of Scots nobles and placemen who travel southwards on horseback or in coach to win favour with great statesmen at Westminster or courtiers at St. James's — figures not very real to us to-day as they flit across the stage, " transient and embarrassed phantoms." To the end of the century — when Henry Dundas was " uncrowned King " of Scotland, pulling every political wire, and making local magnates and voters in town and country obsequiously move like puppets at his will — political life in North Britain was virtually non-existent.

This book, however, does not treat of stirring and striking episodes such as the Eebellions, with their elements of high romance not unalloyed with dingy intrigue : for these a sketch would be too little, and here a history would be too much. Still less does it concern itself with the ways of politicians, who often mistook state craftiness for statecraft, from the pettifogging schemers at the beginning of the century to the dictatorship and despotic party domination at the close : these

PREFACE ix interested the country a little at that time, but they interest us very little to-day. The following pages treat of the social condition of the country — chiefly in the Lowlands — and the internal changes through which it passed during a hundred years, with details which the historian dismisses with impatience as unconsidered trifles marring the dignity of his theme and disturbing the flow of his narrative. Yet, after all, it is in the inner life of a community that its real history is to be found — in the homes, and habits, and labours of the peasantry ; in the modes, and manners, and thoughts of society ; what the people believed and what they practised ; how they farmed and how they traded ; how the poor were relieved ; how their children were taught, how their bodies were nourished, and how their souls were tended. On this last subject it may be thought that too much has been said — that the religious and ecclesiastical state of Scotland has been dealt with on a scale too large and disproportionate. It must, however, be remembered that such a part — too large and disproportionate — it also formed in the existence and concerns of the people. No doubt many of the religious ways and habits, the old-world theology, have long ago vanished, leaving only memories, humorous, pathetic, or bitter, behind them ; curious convictions that once were charged with dangerous force in sectarian polemics are now cold and harmless, like exploded shells on an old battlefield. But it is impossible to understand the character and conduct of the Scottish people without knowing those bygone customs and beliefs which were once full of intense vitality. Nowhere were Church spirit so keen. Church influence so far-reaching, and Church affairs so intimate, as in Scotland.

Probably no period was so quietly eventful in shaping the fortunes and character of the country as the eighteenth century. Others are more distinguished by striking incidents, others are more full of the din and tumult and strife which arrest attention and are treated as crises, although they may neither stir the

X SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

depths nor affect the course of a people's life ; but in that century there was a continuous revolution going on — a gradual transformation in manners, customs, opinions, among every class ; the rise and progress of agricultural, commercial, and intellectual energy, that turned vt^aste and barren tracts to fertile fields — stagnant towns to centres of busy trade — a lethargic, slovenly populace to an active, enterprising race — an utterly impoverished country to a prosperous land. These facts constitute the real history of the Scots in the eighteenth century.

The literature of the period, which developed so marvellously after the middle of the century, is only slightly indicated in this study of the time. It is a subject full of interest and importance ; but, though it came within the scope of this work, it could not be put within the bounds of its space.

CHAPTER I CHAPTER n

CHAPTER m

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V The Land and the People, 1700-1750

CHAPTER VI The Land and the People, 1750-1800

CHAPTER VII

CONTENTS

CHAPTER YIII

PAGE

Religious and Ecclesiastical Life — Part I. , .267

CHAPTER IX Religious and Ecclesiastical Life — Part H. . . 348

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI Education in Scotland — Schools and Schoolmasters . 417

CHAPTER XII

Education in Scotland — The Universities — Their Life and

CHAPTER XIII Education — Medical Art and Medical Practice . .473

CHAPTER XIV Crimes and Punishments ..... 484

CHAPTER XV Progress of Industry and Trade .... 506

SOCIAL LIFE OF SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY

CHAPTEE I

COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTRY LIFE 1700-1750 I

Scotland, although geographically separated from England hj only an invisible march here and a narrow river there, was socially far separated by immemorial antagonism, by bitter historical traditions, by strength of inveterate prejudice, by diversity of laws, by opposition of Church creed and polity,; by hostile interests in trade, by contrast in ways of living, tone of thought, and mode of speech.

Feelings and usages had become part of life and character which were peculiarly Scottish, forming the undefinable quality of nationality ; and these had become intensified and confirmed by political jealousy, and maintained with patriotic animosity — all which had the effect of giving a striking individuality to the people. This contrast and this separation continued very long after the Union of 1707, which united the governments, but could not unite the two peoples. Intercourse between them was slight, always intermittent, and seldom pleasant even in the highest classes. Dislike of everything English was keen in the North ; a contempt of everything Scottish was bitter in the South. Communication with England was rare even among people of quality ; for distances were great, roads were execrable, and the cost of travelling and lodging was appalling to people who, in all ranks, high and low, were miserably poor.

All these barriers kept Scotland in a state of isolation. The country could modify little and learn little, even if inclined to change, by contact with another state of civilisation ; and so it happened that half of the eighteenth century elapsed with few peculiar habits and national customs having passed away.

The few Englishmen who journeyed to North Britain, from spirit of adventurous curiosity or from stress of business, entered upon the expedition with the air of heroic courage with which a modern traveller sets forth to explore the wild region of a savage land. If the tourist entered Scotland by way of Berwick and the Lothians, he did not at first meet much to shock him by ugly contrast. If he entered by Dumfriesshire and the moors of Galloway, he was at once filled with dismay by the dismal change from his own country — the landscape a bleak and bare solitude, destitute of trees, abounding in heather and morass and barren hills ; soil where cultivation was found only in dirty patches of crops, on ground surrounded by heather and bog; regions where the inhabitants spoke an uncouth dialect, were dressed in rags, lived in hovels, and fed on grain, with which he fed his horses ; and when night fell, and he reached a town of dirty thatched huts, and gained refuge in a miserable abode that passed for an inn, only to get a bed he could not sleep in, and fare he could not eat, his disgust was inexpressible. After he had departed, and finally reached his English home in safety, he wrote down his adventures as a modern explorer pens his experiences in Darkest Africa ; and then he uttered frankly to the world his vehement emotions. It is thus one English gentleman, escaping to his native soil, summed up his impressions of the North : " I passed to English ground, and hope I may never go to such a country again. I thank God I never saw such another, and must conclude with poet Cleveland —

Had Cain been Scot, God had ne'er changed his doom., Not made him wander, but confined him home." ^

1 Journey through North of England and Scotland in 1704, p. 65, privately piinted, Edin. 1818.

It was in such a way that travellers up to the middle of the century — and, indeed, for a long while after — were accustomed to speak of North Britain. Meanwhile, to the stay-at-home Englishman, Scotland remained a terra incognita. Rumour exaggerated all its terrors, and prejudice believed in them long after they had passed away.^ Not even in the wild scenery did the traveller see anything of beauty or sublimity, but rather forms of ugliness and gloom which deepened his dislike of the land. In vain did Nature present its finest and grandest aspects to his gaze — the roaring torrent, the towering mountain height, the boundless moor rich in purple glory. Mr. Edward Burt, travelling in the service of Marshal Wade, was quite disposed to speak fair of the country and its people; but a Highland landscape only awakened abhorrence in the cultivated Englishman, who preferred Rosamond's Pond to any loch, and Primrose Hill to every mountain. " The huge naked rocks, being just above the heath, produce the disagreeable appearance of a scabbed head." That is his ruthless comment. He concludes what he calls "the disagreeable subject " of the appearance of the mountains by saying, "There is not much variety in it, but gloomy spaces, different rocks, and heath high and low. To cast one's eye from an eminence towards a group of them, they appear still one above the other, fainter and fainter according to aerial perspective, and the whole of a dismal brown drawing upon a dirty purple, and most of all disagreeable when the heath is in bloom." ^ The love of nature in its wild aspects did not inspire the clever agent of Marshal Wade, who liked better to level the heights and make rough places smooth than to look on them. Not yet did such scenery attract travellers and kindle enthusiasm. They described the Dumfriesshire hills as " presenting a most hideous aspect " ; mountains as " black and frightful"; and Goldsmith, in 1753, had nothing to say of the characteristic features of Scottish scenery except that " hills and rocks intercept every prospect." ^

^ Burt, i. 5. Much later in the century it was true that "English ministers did not know much more of Scotland than they did of Tartary." — Ramsay's Scotlaiid and Scotsmen, i. 48. ^ Burt, i. 285,

2 " Drumlanrig is like a fine picture in a dirty grotto. It is environed with mountains which have the wildest and most hideous aspect of any in all the south

Leaving the habits and modes of life of the peasantry to be described elsewhere, we turn to the manners of country society at a time when the number of modest estates was great, and smaller gentry abounded. Their tastes were frugal, and their notions, like their incomes, narrow. A gentleman might have a property wide in range of land, but producing rents miserably mean, derived from some small " mailings " or crofts more fertile in weeds than in grain, which formed little oases in vast expanses of unreclaimed moor, hill, and bog, and were let at a rental from Is. to 3s. an acre. A Scots landowner in the early part of the century was wealthy with a rent-roll of £500, rich with an income of from £300 to £200, well off with £100 or £80 ; and many gentlemen of good degree and long pedigree had to preserve their station with £50 to £20 a year.^ I^or was this rental paid in money. Half of it or two-thirds was paid in kind ^ — so many sheep, eggs, poultry ; so many bolls of barley, oats, or pease. When the term of Whitsunday or Martinmas came round, the half-starved horses of the tenants were to be seen, in unsteady cavalcade, stumbling slowly along the bridle-paths, one man guiding every two emaciated beasts, which laboured under their burdens of one boll each. The grain was deposited in the girnal or granary attached to the house, and there it remained till it was consumed by the household, or sold in the market to produce the money which was sorely needed for home expenditure ; though

part of Scotland." — Tour in Great Britain, iv. 124. "From Kilsyth we mounted the hills, black and frightful as they are, to find the roads over the moors and mountains to Stirling." — Ibid., p. 152. Forster's Life of Goldsmith, i. 438.

1 "There are a great many [estates] in Scotland from £100 to £20, and some less, possessed by gentlemen of very good families. " " The laird retains half of his land in his hand, and lets the rest, of which 400 acres may produce £50 value." — Essay on Ways and Means of Enclosing, etc., p. 117 : Edin. 1729.

^ In Edinburgh Evening Courant of March 15, 1742, among advertisements of roups of land, is that land and barony of Kerco and Ballathie, in Perthshire, which gives fair sample of the forms of rental : " £1785 Scots in money, 33 bolls bear, 48 bolls meal, 7 bolls malt, 14 salmon fishes, a mill-swine, 32 poultry fowls, 12 capons, and 48 dargues " (days' work). Among the forfeited estates of 1715, ranging from Lords Winton, Southesk, and Panmure, with rental of over £3000 a year, to lairds with a rental from £80 to £50, from a half to two-thirds was paid in kind. Sir John Preston of Prestonhall had an income of £230, only £68 being in coin, the rest in grain, straw, and poultry. Sir David Threipland of Fingask had an income of £537, all but £147 being paid in grain, yarn, geese, hens, and chickens. — Murray's York Buildings Company, p. 121.

too often it was spoilt by long keeping in the hope of getting a better price, or half eaten by the rats.

Mansion-houses, of course, varied greatly in style and dimensions, according to the rank and income of their owners — from the massive castellated buildings of nobles and chiefs, many dating from the sixteenth century, with their turrets and battlements, big courtyards, half-dried moats and iron gateways, down to the more homely dwelling of two storeys, devoid of dignity from the floor to the corbel-stepped gable roof. The great proportion of the homes of the gentry were of the latter class. Love of natural scenery was then an unborn emotion, and therefore they were usually erected in situations where they were sheltered from the blasts that swept across the unprotected land, in a hollow or by the side of a hill, which, looking south, got all the sunshine ; for, the owners being utterly heedless of any beauty of position, and quite indifferent to the picturesque, the backs of the houses might be turned deliberately to a lovely river, or the house built within a stone-throw of a fine prospect, which occupants could not see, quite content with gazing upon some bare and ugly moor.^ Though the land was generally barren of woods, without hedge or tree far as the eye could reach, round many country houses in the lowlands, especially in the Lothians, clumps of trees planted for shelter — ash, elm, sycamore — clustered so close to the walls that they blocked out light and air from the small narrow windows, with their tiny three-cornered panes of glass. Yet, though it had been an old practice in counties which were better cultivated to rear bands of trees for protection from the storm, most country houses were still entirely exposed, because the practice of planting round the houses set in after the Eevolution, and only became common after the Union, when the eyes of Scots gentlemen were opened to English ways.^ Beside the house was the inevitable dovecot — a tower of masonry, from which

^ Ramsay's Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 100.

It is a common mistake to date the practice of planting round mansions from the Union, for it Avas of much older period in the Lothians and more cultivated counties. Sheriffdom of RenfrewsMre and Lanxtrkshire compiled in 1710, by W. Hamilton of Wishaw, 1731 ; Crawford's Description of RenfrewsMre, 1720 ; Kirke's Account of Tour in Scotland in 1677. After the Revolution it became came the devastating clouds of pigeons to fill themselves on the meagre crops of the tenant, and afterwards to fill the larder of the laird.^ In few places were there lawns or avenues to add amenity, and the fields were ploughed up to the front door or gate of the little court. The courtyard at the homes of smaller lairds was usually formed by the house having a projecting granary and byre on one side, a projecting stable and barn on the other, while in the open space stood the midden, in which the midden -fowls feasted and nursed their broods among nettles and docks growing all around. Behind or beside each house, in the ill -kept and neglected garden, grew a great variety of shrubs and flowers, partly for pleasure, but mainly for use. Many flowers were there, once familiar and loved, which have long been uprooted from our borders and our memories, whose very names are forgotten save the few enshrined in old songs.^ Beside the familiar hollyhock, pink, columbine, and primrose, were the virgin's-bower, campion, throat-wort, bear's-ears, wall-pellitory, and spider-wort — these for show, for scent and colour. Others were there as " sweet herbs," used for cooking or for physic — the pennyroyal, clary, rosemary, sweet -basil, fennel, beside the sage, mint, and wildmarjoram. But no country garden was complete without its plentiful stock of " physick herbs," which were always used for simples, gargarisms, confections, and vomitories, in the primitive pharmacopoeia of the age. There were found the hyssop, camomile, and hore-hound, cat-mint, elacampine, " blessed thissell," " stinking arag," rue and celandine, which were in constant request in time of sickness.^ Among vegetables many of our commonest were not found, as they only came into use or cultivation later in the century. Turnips — or " neeps," as

more common. " Noblemen have of late run into planting, parking, and gardening.*"— '^io.ck.y's Jaurney through Scotland, 1729, p. 272 ; Ramsay, ii. 100 ; Spalding Miscellany, ii. 97.

^ In Fifeshire at the end of the century there were 320 dovecots belonging to mansions, and these, containing 36,000 pairs of breeding pigeons, were estimated to consume 4000 or 5000 bolls of grain every year. Besides these there were the ruins of many disused other dovecots, which in the early part of the century had abounded. — Thomson's Agriculture of Fifeshire.

2 Reid's Scots Gardner, 1683, p. 109.

2 Moncrieff of Tippermalloch's Poor Man's Physician, 3rd edition, 1731.

COUNTRY SOCIETY AND COUNTI^Y LIFE they were always called — were only in a few gardens ; onions were in none, being all imported from Holland or Flanders ; and only at the residences of a few rich and enterprising gentlemen were potatoes grown. Round the gardens, with their orchards, grew the nursery of trees, which were carefully nourished and sheltered under the delusion that they were too delicate to bear exposure in the open fields.

Within the houses of the gentry, except those of high rank or fortune, arrangements were of the plainest and furniture was rude. The rooms were low-ceiled, the joists and beams often covered with deal boards, the walls with their dingy plaster often void of adornment — paper-hangings being as yet unknown, — though in large mansions the walls were covered with tapestry, arras, panels of wood, or gilt leather.^ The windows had no sash or pulley ; the rooms had no bell-pulls ; and though on the dining-table lay the hand-bell, it was seldom used, because a poker or a heel was quite sufficient to summon the domestics, with a knock audible through unlathed walls and undeafened floors. No carpets covered these floors, and, indeed, even after the middle of the century many houses of pretension remained without them, except in the public rooms.^ The bedrooms rarely had grates, the fuel of turf or peat being kindled on the wide open hearth ; and only some of the chambers were what were called " fire-rooms," for many were destitute of fireplaces. The beds were closed like a box in the wall, or in recesses with sliding doors, which imprisoned and stifled the sleeper ; others stood out in the room ^ with curtains of plaiding which the household had spun, as protection from the cold and draughts which came from illjointed windows and doors with ill-fitting " snecks." As houses were incommodious and hospitality was exuberant, it was usual for two gentlemen or two ladies, however unknown

^ Ramsay, ii. 98, etc.

2 **I have been told that 60 or 70 years ago {i.e. 1756) no more than two carpets existed in the whole town of Jedburgh." — Somerville's Own Life, p. 337. A friend told Ramsay of Ochtertyre that when a boy at Edinburgh he saw the first carpet at the house of Sir Thomas Nicholson, who had lived much abroad (Ramsay, ii. 98). At Cawdor House in 1716 only the "king's room" had a carpet {Thanes of Cawdor, 418).

2 In great houses the beds were not in the wall, but had these heavy hangings.

to each other they might be, to sleep together, lying overwhelmed with the burden of from six to ten pair of Scots blankets. Even in the drawing-room it was usual to have a closed bed, which was used by the guests.^ Excepting on state occasions the dining-room in average-sized country houses was unused, left dark, dull, and musty, unventilated by the sashless windows, while dingy ancestral portraits stared vacantly on the empty apartment from their black frames. It was in the bedroom the family lived chiefly. There they took their meals, there they saw their friends, there at night the family gathered round the hearth, with its high-polished brass grate, which stood detached from the back and sides of the fireplace ornamented with tiles. There the girls spun, and lads learned the rules of Despauter's Latin Grammar; and only after " family exercises " did the household disperse, and the heads of the family were left to rest and to sleep in the exhausted air.

People rose early in these old days in both town and country, for the temptation was small to sit up late at night when there were few and very dull books to read, and few mortals who cared to read them, even if the room had not been sombre in the dim gleam of tallow candles. By five or six o'clock the laird was up, having taken his " morning " — a glass of ale or brandy, over which he reverently said a grace which was brief when he was alone, and longer when he was in company — before he visited his " policy," and his stable and fields.^ When breakfast was served, at eight o'clock, he was ready for the substantial fare of " skink " or water gruel, supplemented by collops or mutton, aided with ale.^ The bread consisted of oatmeal cakes or barley bannocks : wheaten bread was scarce, and rarely used except as a dainty. At

^ Somerville, p. 333. "July 7, 1703, to James Gourlay for ye two snecks to ye bed in the drawing-room, 14s." — Account Book of Foulis of Bavelston, p. 329. In 1745, in Inverness, there was only one house which contained a room without a bed — that in which Prince Charles lodged. In 1716 the "inventar" of Cawdor Castle mentions the "mid-chamber or drawing-room" having an " arras hanging and a bed of brown cloath curtains " {Thanes of Cawdor, p. 418).

^ Somerville, p. 330. Between 1680 and 1730 "no mention of wheaten bread in use except among the wealthy." — Hector's Judicial Records of Renfrewshire.

twelve or at one o'clock came dinner, at which the master of the house, hat on head, presided in his high-backed chair. Plain and monotonous was the fare at a meal which was illserved and worse cooked, and all put on table at once, except with persons of great rank and wealth, who had two courses. Each person was served with a wooden or a pewter plate; and only when the dinner hours were later and two courses were introduced did china or earthenware plates appear to suit the more fashionable habits.^

The food consisted incessantly of broth, or kail, of beef or mutton, the broth being made of " groats," which were oats stripped of their husks at the mill, or of bear or barley which had been beaten at the knocking -stone in the morning, and hence known as " knockit bear," for as yet barley mills were not introduced into Scotland.^ Only in summer or autumn could fresh meat be had ; for, as all the cattle were kept under cover during winter and spring, and fed on straw or mashed whins, the flesh of the half-starved emaciated brutes was utterly worthless as food.^ To obtain a supply for store at Martinmas, therefore, the " mart " was killed; each household had cows and sheep slaughtered and salted sufficient to last till next May; and on this salted

^ Among household accounts in the Roses of Kilravock in 1706 is one from the pewterer at Edinburgh for "broth trenchers, 2 dozen English trenchers, assets of English peuther " (p. 394). Somerville, p. 336. In the " Inventar " of Thunderton in 1708 there are only 6 broth plates, 12 flesh plates, 12 white and blue "leam" {i.e. loam or earthen) plates; the rest are "timber" or pewter (Dunbar's Social Life in Former Days in Morayshire, p. 205). Hist, of Carluke, p. 18.

2 Ramsay, ii. 70 ; Somerville, p. 332. Mrs. Calderwood of Polton, patriotic in her dishes, her sentiments, and her sense of smell, comments disparagingly on the fare in London in 1756 : "As for their victualls they make such a work about I cannot enter into the taste of them, or rather I think they have no taste to enter into. The meat is juicy enough, but has so little taste that if you shut your eyes you will not know by either taste or smell what you are eating. The lamb and veall are blanched in water. The smell of dinner will never intimate what it is on table. No such effluvia as beef or cabbadge was ever found in London " — the last sentence written evidently with a glow of national superiority, p. 33. The culinary art of Holland cannot make up to this excellent lady for the absence of Scots dishes : "I thought I had not got a dinner since I left home for want of broath," p. 52 (Journey).

^ ' ' For half the year in many towns of Scotland there is no beef or mutton to be seen in their shambles, and if any, it is like carrion meat, yet dearer than ever I saw in England." — Essays on IFays a.nd Means of Enclosing, p. 131.

lo SOCIAL LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y meat, with pitiless monotony, day by day and month after month, families patiently subsisted mitil the cattle, having returned to pasture, were restored to health, and they could get fresh beef again. Besides this stale diet there were the " kain " hens, which formed part of the laird's rent from his tenants — food which became not less intolerably tiresome to the palate. Some relief was found occasionally in muirfowl and other game, which abounded in the moors in days when poachers were unknown.^ Vegetables were not served on table, potatoes and turnips being almost unattainable ; and the " neeps " or parsnips and greens were only used as ingredients in the kail. Sweets there were none ; dessert was unknown. To accompany this simple but not attractive repast, there was strong ale in ample supply, and sometimes sack or claret, which was good and cheap at a shilling the chopin when it came duty-free from France. To serve for the family, there was in many a household only one glass or tankard, which was handed on to the next person in succession as each finished his draught.^