6 - Prices and the Scottish economy, 1260–1540

Summary

a change in prices and wages as measured by money is capable of transferring wealth from one class to another, and redistributing fortune in a way which baffles anticipation and upsets design.

John Maynard Keynes, 1920

It is hoped that the information collected in this volume will advance our knowledge and understanding of medieval Scotland. Prices provide significant clues about the performance of the economy, and price movements can reflect or even bring about important social changes. The interpretation of this interplay of cause and effect is necessarily a much more subjective matter than the collection of data (and it has already been observed that even the collection of data is a good deal less objective than it might at first sight appear), but in this final chapter it seems appropriate to sketch out one such interpretation. Though other scholars will need to draw their own conclusions, this final chapter may serve as an example of the sort of contribution prices can make to history, as well as a record of how the medieval Scottish economy looked to us.

It is probably not pointed out often enough that prices presuppose markets, and the more efficiently flexible prices reflect the relationship between supply and demand the more successfully the market economy was working. Conversely, unmoving prices suggest a market which is limited in some way. Some limitation of this kind is very common in the middle ages. Custom, and the isolation of remote settlements, were the most important obstacles to the free market in medieval Scotland, and they have left their mark on Scottish price history in the form of the customary prices often put on renders in kind.