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For ordinary Scots who were living in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the basic conditions of everyday life
were much the same as they had been for hundreds of years. The great majority lived in the countryside and off the land. The "Husbandmen" lived in small houses about 20 to 30ft long by 10 to 15ft wide with two rooms;
one room often sheltered livestock as well. The 'cottars' had even smaller huts with only one room. Wood, wattle, clay and turf were the normal building materials. Holdings were often rented for only a year or so at a
time - which enabled lords to exact high rents when harvests were good. As in the 13th century, agriculture was usually mixed. Oats and barley were still the main crops (wheat was rarer), sheep and cattle still tile
main livestock. These gave the common people of Scotland an adequate if monotonous diet, based Oil oatmeal and ale, supplemented by fish, kail, dairy produce, as well as offal (hence haggis). Wheat, salted animal
carcasses, wool and hides were often sold for a cash profit. To modern eyes, it is hardly impressive agriculture. Fields were badly drained, poorly fertilised, inefficiently ploughed and infested with weeds; crop yields
were only about a fifth of what they are nowadays. But it was the same everywhere else in medieval Europe. More importantly, Scotland's population was sheltered and fed well enough for it to grow steadily during most of
the Middle Ages. Moreover, although both sheep and cattle were much smaller than their modern counterparts, the scale of livestock farming was immense Customs records show that, at their peak during the
late 14th century, Scottish exports each year averaged around 1200 tons of wool - the clip of some 2 million sheep - and about the same weight of hides from over 50,000 cattle. Scotland, after England, was the second
largest wool exporter in medieval Europe. Leather and wool exports were worth huge amounts: at their peak, over £40($) a year from leather and almost £40,000 a year from wool. Since £5 was then a fairly comfortable
annual income, these sums call he multiplied by something like 2000 to give an idea of their modern value. These exports, in turn, financed imports of all kinds of manufactured goods. Scotland's trading partners were
Flanders and the rest of tile Low Countries, France, Scandinavia, north Germany and England and Ireland. Trade was channeled through the burghs, which had a monopoly on all Scottish goods. Most burghs - there were
around 60-70 in all - were simply small towns established by the crown or by great landowners to provide markets for the surrounding countryside, but the main royal burghs also handled the international trade. Most
prominent (after the loss of Berwick to England) were Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, Linlithgow and Haddington. These, especially Edinburgh, were substantial towns (though each contained only a few thousand
people), and their leading merchants were usually extremely wealthy. Yet while the basic conditions of life remained the same, winds of change were blowing strongly. To begin with, plague had devastated
tile Scottish people. When the Black Death reached Scotland in 1349, the countrys population was probably somewhere near a million. We do not know exactly how sharply it fell afterwards, but it must have been by
hundreds of thousands. During the following hundred years there were, quite simply, far fewer Scots alive. The population slump, however, was probably not as dramatic as in England, where population levels were still no
higher in the 1520s than they had been in the 1370s. In Scotland, there is some evidence to suggest that the population was expanding significantly again by the second half of the 15th century sufficiently, indeed, for
a poem from that era to call Scotland 'a barren laud, fertile in folk'. One explanation for this quicker recovery may be that Scotland was not affected quite so badly by plague as England. Differences in tenant
landholding may also be a factor. In England holdings were normally farmed by individual tenants who employed landless wage labourers, but the proportion of landless labourers was probably much lower in Scotland. Since
landless labourers tended to marry later in life than those with enough land to support a family, it seems likely that the average age of marriage in 15th-century Scotland was lower than in England. This suggests that
there would have been a higher birth rate in Scotland and therefore a more rapid return towards previous population levels. Plague may have killed a significant proportion of Scotland's population but it
did bring benefits, albeit indirectly. When the population was low, tenants were probably able to negotiate lower rents from lords who did not want land to be left untenanted. That was happening soon after the Black
Death, judging by a revision of the tax assessments made in 1366 on lords' incomes from land. Whereas the old (13th century) assessment of lay lords' incomes totalled £45,575, the 1366 revision was only £23,826
indicating a dramatic fall in rents. Also, with fewer people and lower rents, tenant's holdings were likely to become bigger. This is demonstrated in the one surviving rent roll from the period (in 1376-7), which
belonged to Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith. It lists 88 separate holdings or 'touns', which were rented by 229 husbandmen for an average rent of just under £2 (nowadays, perhaps some £4000). Some of the entries show that
rents for an 'oxgang' (about 13 acres) varied from 3s 6d to 12s. That suggests that most of the husbandmen had well over 50 acres plus their shares of the local grazing - more than twice as much as their counterparts
seem to have had in the late 13th century.  |
