the ruin of the country. Once more, viz., in 1355-6, Edward came down upon poor Scotland with an army of more than 30,000 men, and "every town, village, or hamlet within the reach of his soldiers, was given to the flames." He had to retreat speedily, lest they should perish of famine. Still more calamities followed, namely, a great flood in 1359, and a return of the pestilence in 1360. Disorder, confusion, disregard of law, and general demoralisation, were the not unnatural results. The principal landlords and their families were fain to seek refuge in England, France, and elsewhere. Even the King had to retire repeatedly, almost as a pauper, to England, because his people could not bear the taxation necessary for the support of his establishment. Highlanders from the isles and west coast flocked down into Clydesdale and other parts of the lowlands, and, in desperation for food, seized upon whatever they could find. Lowlanders, in turn, implored leave to beg in England, which Edward, in commiseration, allowed for a time. By and by the crisis passed; the Highlanders were sent home and punished; and people gradually resumed their usual labours in the farming districts. Before the close of the century agriculture had made its way of new into a moderately respectable condition. Increasing trade with Holland, and political relations with France, gradually introduced a little capital, and raised the value of land. But the English government was jealous of French influence in the island, and began a pernicious system of debauching the Scottish gentry by presents and pensions, employment and promises. In our district the Douglas family were pampered in this way so much as to regard themselves superior to the rest of the nobility, and sometimes to disregard the authority of King and Parliament. They meanly assisted James I. to destroy some of his unoffending relatives in order to seize and appropriate their estates. They suffered in turn from the meaner violence of James II., but they were again borne up by England. The extraordinary number of mounted yeomen. which the Douglas Earls paraded in their state journeys, leave little room to doubt that their vassals and free tenants were then prosperous agriculturists.

Once more, however, pestilence and famine stalked over the land, and decimated the population. The dreadful season of 1439, the irruption of starving Highlanders, the cholera, and the famine prices, arrested for a time the labours of the husbandman. The price of oatmeal had risen in 1439-1440 from 2s. to 30s. per boll, wheat

from 3s. to 40s. In 1424, oats, being an abundant crop, brought only 6d. per boll and wheat 2s. In 1478 and 1482 oats sold at 2s. 6d. and 2s.; wheat had risen greatly in proportion. These prices are in Scotch money, which was to English money in 1450 as 1 to 2, in 1455 as 1 to 3, and in 1500 as 1 to 4. The depressing effects of the calamities in 1439, passed sooner off than those of 1336 and 1360. At the end of the century some proofs of plenty appear in the current prices, for in 1500 oats sold for 1s. per boll, and wheat for 2s. 10d. per boll Scotch money. A sheep brought about 4s., a cow about 20s., and a horse about 60s.

The rivalry of England and France for influence in Scotland tended to demoralise and unsettle the minds of the larger landowners. Their resources from their estates at home were too scanty for enabling them to compete with their equals in rank in other countries. Poverty and strict honesty are ungenial companions. Instead of patiently seeking to increase their rentals by improved cultivation of their own lands, they began to covet the better managed possessions of the church. Under the pretext of removing from the clergy the odium of collecting the teinds, they got themselves appointed lay titulars, and did not always deal fairly by the priests. The advancing tide of reformation in religious doctrine on the continent and in England showed them how they might acquire church lands as well as teinds. Conscientious scruples soon yielded to covetousness, and such of the great landlords as saw a prospect of ultimate success became early and zealous, though, for a time, generally secret reformers. Without the aid of a majority of the tenantry and the servile classes, success in such a struggle was of course impossible. A Baron might hang a dependant for refusing to be a reformer, but if he ventured to do much in that line he must expect assassination; he therefore preferred to convince, and to enforce conviction by promising a share in the plunder. Fully half a century passed before a majority of the peasantry could be persuaded to resolve on a revolution in order to expel the catholic clergy and let the Barons peaceably seize the church lands.

Very important social changes, as well as ecclesiastical, religious, and civil ones, resulted from this reformation. The struggle was long and bitter, and the worst passions of human nature were evolved in the process. Before it commenced, feudal rights were in full vigour; the property and person of a farmer were at the mercy of the landlord; the farm servant could have no property, he was but

a slave who might be sold and bought, or, at all events, he could not leave the farm he had been reared upon. At its close, the meanest farm servant was a free labourer, and many of the class had acquired some capital and begun to cultivate on their own account. The rental value and the selling value of land had fallen very low in the interval. Heavy public expenses had been incurred, and government being without credit, the smaller landowners, sometimes unable to raise money to pay the necessary taxation, had to abandon their property or sell it at a very low figure. A multitude of still smaller owners took their places. English and foreign writers, and a few native ones also, have described in a startling manner the miserable condition of farming in the Scottish Lowlands during the 17th century. The farm houses small, poor, and dirty; the cot houses of only one apartment without a chimney, and having a little hole for a window, unglazed; the farm people living on porridge or brose and kail, with bread and cheese both of bad quality; the men lazy, conceited, ignorant, and unwilling to learn; the possessions small and ill-cultivated; yet the land in the valleys and plains yielding good crops of oats and barley. That this is a true picture, in a general view, there is no reason to doubt. Extreme poverty and high farming cannot co-exist. The people's minds and energies had been directed for a long time to matters which they thought more important than farming, and they were content to live on the brink of starvation.

Still, there are not awanting in charters, leases, and remaining buildings, some evidence of large corn farms with respectable steadings and good farming, here and there, even in the 17th century. The upper classes had taken to reading and study in a moderate way, and many good books on agriculture had by this time been printed in Holland, France, and England, which were accessible to such as had learning enough and money enough. A few of the gentry, and even of the clergy, had been occasionally out of Scotland and seen better farming than at home. In 1685 the law of entail was passed, which had beneficial effects. The act of 1695 allowing owners to get their interrupted or runrig lands separated, and their commonties divided, was also of advantage.

In the first half of the 18th century, the Clydesdale farmers were still poor, and the rents of land had declined. When Lord Belhaven wrote his book called "The Countryman's Rudiments," 1723, rents were paid in corn, not its converted value. He recommended that leases of more than only a few years be entered into, that farms be

no larger than would employ two ploughs, and that the tenants sow turnips and potatoes in their gardens. In 1724 a society for the improvement of agriculture in Scotland was instituted, and enterprising farmers began to cultivate turnips in their fields. The thrashing machine was soon afterwards introduced. About 1750 people strove to have better roads, and obtained from Parliament acts for power to make and maintain them by levying toll. By this time manufactures and trade were advancing rapidly. Banks were lending to respectable landowners and tenants, and the spirit of industry and improvement was springing up. In 1784 the Highland Society started on its useful career, and in 1793 the Board of Agriculture brought into full public view what had been done, and what might be done for the good of the agricultural community, and, through it, of the country at large.

The present century tells its own story. We have only to open our eyes, and compare what we see with what we know has been.

In so far as we can trace the history of the past, the fair inference from it seems to be that the arable lands of Clydesdale were cultivated during the Roman period, and have been continuously cultivated down to the present day; that during what is called the dark period, after the Romans withdrew, these lands were not occupied by wild Irish or weak-handed Welsh, but by the descendants of the previous occupiers, together with such continental northmen as followed the Romans and mixed with the natives; that the farmers had here, as everywhere, alternating periods of prosperity and depression; that intestine quarrels and civil wars have invariably been followed by many years of disorder and wretchedness; and that our present high farming is a natural consequence of increasing population and manufacturing and commercial industry.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

NO. XXIX.

SKETCHES OF A GLASGOW INCORPORATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY:

BY

ROBERT MITCHELL, Esq.

[Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 9th January, 1865.]

Ir is well known that, on 6th February 1605, the Letter of Guildry determined and fixed the privileges and prerogatives of the Merchant and Craft ranks, the latter being then comprehended under fourteen denominations. There existed another incorporation in Glasgow before then, and the fact that no mention is made of it in the Letter of Guildry raises a strong presumption that it had declined some time previous to the date of that important document. M'Ure, referring to this body, says, "There was an Incorporation of Fishers above an hundred years ago." His "History" was published for the first time in 1736, and the preparation of it took many years; so that, coupling these considerations, it is pretty evident that before the beginning of the seventeenth century this fifteenth incorporation "was quite away," in name at least; but was it so in reality? Did it not finally resolve into the Merchant rank? There are many circumstances which concur in pointing to such a conclusion. On all hands it is admitted that the river Clyde, its firth and larger tributaries, were famed for the abundance of salmon and herrings which they yielded. These two commodities, even from such a distant time as the reign of James I., formed chief articles of export, not only from Glasgow, but from all parts of Scotland which had access by water, or a short land route to the seaboard. In the first parliament of that monarch, 1424, it is enacted that "salmond should not be slain in forbidden time, under the pain of fourty shillings; and for the third time the slayer to tine his life, or then buy it." Other Acts relating to the customs on salmon and whitefish caught in the Western firths and isles might also be quoted, particu