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Proletarianization? The transition to full-time labour on a Scottish estate, 1723–1787

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Alex Gibson
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Continuity and Change , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , December 1990 , pp. 357 - 389
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Hasbach, W., History of the English agricultural labourer (London, 1968).Google Scholar Having discussed the development of an agricultural proletariat, Hasbach titles his subsequent chapter ‘The demoralisation of the labourer’.

2 Hasbach, , The English agricultural labourer, 180–92Google Scholar; Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the labouring poor; social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), 104–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kussmaul, A., Servants in husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge, 1981), 120–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Orr, A., ‘Farm servants and farm labour in the Forth Valley and the south-east lowlands’ in Devine, T. M. ed., Farm servants and labour in lowland Scotland, 1770–1914 (Edinburgh, 1984), 29.Google Scholar

4 Devine, T. M.‘Social stability and agrarian change in the eastern lowlands of Scotland, 1810–1840’, Social History 3 (1978), 337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid. 332–4.

6 Horn, B. L. H., Letters of John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scottish History Society, 4th series, vol. 3 (1966); 121.Google Scholar

7 These estates have been identified and their records examined as part of an ESRC funded project on ‘Scottish wages, prices and living standards, 1580–1780’ under the direction of Professor T. C. Smout. I am indebted to Professor Smout for his many valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

8 Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh (hereafter SRO), GD 150/2394/1–3, ‘Books of workmen's days, Aberdour, 1742–1744; GD 150/2436/1–3, ‘Workmen's books, Dalmahoy, 1747–1749’; GD 28/2081, ‘Workmens’ ledger, Yester 1671–1672; GD 28/2095/1–3, ‘Workmen's ledgers, Yester, 1672–1675; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter NLS), MSS 14667/67–118, ‘Labourers at Yester, 1743–1752’.

9 Details on wage-rates and days worked at Buchanan are to be found in: SRO, GD 220/6/782–829, ‘Buchanan factors' accounts, 1720–1740’; GD 220/6/89, ‘Wage book, 1740–1750’; GD 220/6/1416–1448, ‘Accounts of workmen at Buchanan, 1751–1764’; GD 220/6/91, ‘Workmen's ledger, 1764–1771’; GD 220/6/1547–1574 ‘Accounts of work and workmen at Buchanan, 1772–1783’.

10 Throughout this discussion the contemporary practice of describing the accounting year, for example, Martinmas 1728 to Martinmas 1729, as 1729 is followed.

11 SRO, GD 220/6/89; ‘Wage book, 1740–1750’.

12 SRO, GD 220/6/91; ‘Workmen's ledger, 1764–1771’.

13 Buchanan Rentals for 1703 (SRO, GD 220/6/1606/2), 1733 (SRO, GD 220/6/74), 1752 and 1761 (SRO, GD 220/6/70).

14 SRO, GD 220/6/76, ‘Tenants' ledger, 1764–1785’.

15 SRO, GD 220/6/1598, ‘A list of fencible men within the Barronie of Buchanan, 1705’. This is a muster roll of the tenants and subtenants whom the Duke of Montrose could call to arms. This feudal power was not to be abolished in Scotland until 1747 (Whyte, I., Agriculture and society in seventeenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), 14Google Scholar).

16 The detailed accounts available for 1712 and 1713 describe day-labourers as being ‘at the sand’, ‘at the ditch’, working in the quarry, in the house or with the carts. (SRO, GD 220/6/1306/23, ‘Buchanan workmen's book, 28 July 1712 to 13 June 1713’.)

17 SRO, GD 220/6/1606/2; ‘Buchanan rental of 1703’.

18 Orr, , ‘Farm servants and farm labour’, 30.Google Scholar

19 Firth, C. H. ed., Scotland and the Protectorate, Scottish History Society, First Series, 31 (1899), 405–11.Google Scholar

20 Levit, I. and Smout, T. C., ‘Farm workers incomes in 1843’, in Devine, T. M. ed., Farm servants and labour, 159–60.Google Scholar

21 Sinclair, J. ed., The statistical account of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1791–1799), vol. 10, 266.Google Scholar

22 Ibid, vol. 4, 234.

23 SRO, RHP 6151, ‘A plan of the house, gardens and parks of Buchanan with the lower part ofthat Barony’; SRO, RHP 42670, ‘A plan of the Barony of Buchanan below the pass’.

24 On many Scottish estates in earlier times it was not unusual to find tenants who were obliged to labour on the Mains farm as a condition of their tenancies, and at Buchanan some vestiges of this system remained as late as 1752 with the ‘carriage’ duties required of many tenants.

25 Orr, , ‘Farm servants and farm labour’, 32.Google Scholar

26 There is some difficulty in accurately determining the number of different men employed by the estate; there was, unfortunately, a very restricted variety of names used in the area. There were innumerable McFarlanes and Buchanans. Most seem to have been called John, James, or Alexander.

27 Gailey, R. A., ‘Agrarian improvement and the development of enclosure in the southwest Highlands of Scotland’, Scottish History Review 42 (1963), 105–25.Google Scholar

28 Lebon, J. H. G., ‘The process of enclosure in the western Lowlands’, Scottish Geographical Magazine 62 (1946), 100–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Turnock, D., ‘Stages of agricultural improvement in the uplands of Scotland's Grampian region’, Journal of Historical Geography 3 (1977), 327–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 A useful collection of articles on the landscape changes of the eighteenth century is provided by Parry, M. L. and Slater, T. R.'s eds., The making of the Scottish countryside (London, 1980).Google Scholar This includes: I. Whyte, ‘The emergence of the new estate structure’; I. H. Adams, ‘The agents of agricultural change’; M. L. Parry, ‘Changes in the extent of improved farmland’; J. B. Caird, ‘The reshaped agricultural landscape’; T. R. Slater, ‘The mansion and policy’; and D. G. Lockhart, ‘The planned villages’.

31 Shaw, J. P., ‘The new rural industries: water power and textiles’, in Parry, M. L. and Slater, T. R. eds., The making of the Scottish countryside, 291–317Google Scholar; Whatley, C. A., ‘The experience of work’, in Devine, T. M. and Mitchison, R. eds., People and society in Scotland; 1760–1830 (Ediburgh, 1988), 231–4.Google Scholar

32 Sinclair, , Statistical account, vol. 4, 571.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. vol. 7, 444.

34 Ibid. vol. 11, 459 and vol. 17, 433–4.

35 Ibid. vol. 13, 146–7.

36 Ibid. vol. 7, 368.

37 Ibid. vol. 4, 304.

38 Ibid. vol. 3, 80.

39 Ibid. vol. 17, 169.

40 SRO, GD 150/2394/1–3, ‘Books of workmen's days, Aberdour, 1742–1744’.

41 SRO, GD 28/2095/1–3, ‘Workmens's ledgers, Tester, 1762–1765’.

42 Dunbar, J. G., ‘The building of Yester House, 1670–1878’, Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists' Society, 13 (1972), 20–42.Google Scholar

43 Sinclair, , Statistical account, vol. 4, 163.Google Scholar

44 This is a difficult proportion to define accurately because of the limited variety of names used in this part of Scotland. Was, for instance, the Donald McQueen who worked for 37 days in 1723, thereafter never again to appear in the wage accounts, the same Donald McQueen who possessed Kittlewood and Gartluk in 1733 and who paid £80 Scots annually as rent? Possibly not, but sometimes the names are sufficiently uncommon to the area to permit greater confidence; John Fisher, tenant of the cottaries of Borland and part of Ledrish in 1733 for an annual rent of £133. 6s. 8d. was almost certainly the same John Fisher who obtained 27 days work in 1736; whilst Patrick Forrester, tenant of Burnside in 1733 for £66. 13s. 4d. Scots, was equally probably the man who worked for the estate for 6 days in 1726. These two men only appeared once in the wage accounts. Even here, however, the possibility must be borne in mind that it was the eldest sons (so commonly named after their fathers) of the tenants who were obtaining a few days employment on the estate.

45 This should be compared with the situation found in 1765–1785 when, of the 20 major farms (i.e. excluding the cottaries), the tenants of only two appear in the wage accounts for 1772–1783.

46 Such a pattern of employment has, of course, been observed elsewhere. A. Hassell Smith has recently described the majority of labourers in the village of Stiffkey on the north Norfolk coast as having ‘little prospect of employment and no concept of regular employment’ and emphasized the importance of access to a smallholding in order to furnish a living (Smith, A. Hassel, ‘Labourers in late sixteenth-century England: a case study from north Norfolk (Part I)’, Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), 31–2.Google Scholar

47 Devine, T. M., ‘Scottish farm service in the Agricultural Revolution’, in Devine, T. M. ed., Farm servants and labour, 6.Google Scholar

48 What happened to those tenants and subtenants who were no longer required by the new regime at Buchanan is, of course, a crucial question. Although the estate papers are unable to throw any light on the situation, a detailed analysis of contemporary Kirk Registers may repay the considerable effort that would be required to cross-match individuals in rent-books, wage-accounts and the registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.

49 Hobsbawn, E. J. and Rude, G., Captain Swing (London, 1973).Google Scholar

50 Orr, , ‘Farm servants and farm labour’, 29.Google Scholar

51 All figures are in Scots money. Throughout the eighteenth century the Scottish pound was valued at one twelfth of the English pound sterling.

52 From 1773 this estate price for oats was always £1 Scots less than the estate price for oatmeal. Whether this represents a fair difference, or whether the factor was taking advantage of the fact that the labourers paid their rents in oats and received much of their wages in meal, is impossible to determine.

53 Snell, , Annals, 147–66, 166–80Google Scholar; Kussmaul, , Servants in husbandry, 116–19.Google Scholar

54 Hasbach, , The English agricultural labourer, 192–204.Google Scholar

55 Devine, , ‘Social stability and agrarian change,’ 335.Google Scholar