Annals of Pittenweem

ANNALS OF PITTENWEEM: NOTES AND EXTRACTS FBOM %\yt Snmttt UtcorXm OF THAT BURGH. 1526—1793. ANSTRUTHER: LEWIS RUSSELL. 1867. LEWIS EUSSBLLf FRTJfTIR, ANSTRUTHBR, PREFACE. Having had occasion to look into the old Records of the Burgh of Pittenweem, I was agreeably surprised to find that they contained much curious and interesting matter. The history of the Town for two centuries and a half has been preserved in them ; and it turns out to have been more eventful than the inhabitants of the present day had been led, by the traditions of the place, to suppose. It appeared to be matter for regret that the memory of so much life and energy, principle and suffering therefor, should be lost ; and, believing thab some of my fellow- townsmen would feel an interest in the deeds of their predecessors, Notes and Extracts were made, which, with the sanction of the Town Council, were inserted in the East of Fife Record, and are now published in a form better adapted for preservation and reference. The obsolete language and spelling of the earlier minutes make them less readable than they would have been if written in the modern style, but no alteration in that respect could have been made without depriving them of much of their force and quaintness. Generally, therefore, though not invariably, the Extracts are verba- tim et literatim. In some instances, notes of the substance of minutes and papers are given in place of Extracts. These Extracts connect Pittenweem with the general history of the country ; and as some of those who read IV. PREFACE. them may not have a very distinct recollection of the pub- lic events to which they relate, several explanatory quo- tations from books of history have been made as foot notes, for the sake of convenient reference. It will also be observed that a few Excerpts referring to Pittenweem from the Records of Privy Council and Convention of Hoyal Burghs have been placed amongst the Extracts from the Burgh Records. Selections from the Minutes of Council of several of the Royal Burghs of Scotland have been published, but it is believed that in comparatively few places have the Municipal Records been so carefully preserved as, to the credit of the Town Clerks, they have been in Pitten- weem. I have to express my obligations to the present worthy occupant of that office for the facilities he has afforded me in examining the books and papers under his charge. It is obvious that Pittenweem had been a place of some trade and wealth at the end of the 16th and during the first half of the 17th centuries. In the Tax Roll of 1575, it ranks with Crail in the twelfth place among the towns of Scotland. No record of the population at that early date has been preserved, but in their first application for a minister (1583) the inhabitants describe themselves as "ane great congregation and mony people." From the facts that the stent rolls between 1640 and 1660 contained the names of from 80 to 110 persons ; and that the mus- ter-roll of men fit to carry arms amounted to about 180, it may be inferred that the population was not under, although it probably did not greatly exceed, 1000. The transactions of that stirring time shew that the Burghers of those days were not behind their contemporaries in intelligence, nor inferior to them in strength of principle and manly courage. That many of them possessed edu- PREFACE. V. cation and business habits is indicated by the style of the signatures at the National Covenants of 1590 and 1638, as well as by the fact that ordinary members of Council regularly took part in the deliberations of the Convention of Burghs, the General Assembly, and the Scottish Par- liament. Then as now, fishing was the staple trade, but the salt and coal works also gave employment to a number of people. The salters and colliers were in a manner slaves, being by law bound for life to the works at which they were employed, and sold and bought with them ; and the personal freedom of the fishermen seems also to have been much restricted. The owners of the boats were landsmen, or shipmasters, who personally did not fish, but to whom the magistrates assigned a certain number of fishermen, who were "ordainit" to serve in the differ- ent boats for a specified time, during which any other person hiring them incurred a heavy penalty. Each in- habitant was entitled to a share of the fish caught, cor- responding to the amount of taxes paid by him, at a price fixed by the magistrates. It was the practice to fish at Orkney and the Western,. Islands, as well as in the seas nearer home. The summer and winter draves of those days were as uncertain and fluctuating as they are still. A good many ships of considerable tonnage and value, engaged in the foreign trade, and owned and manned by town's people, hailed from this place. Some of them appear to have occasionally brought their cargoes to Pitten- weem, but the greater number sailed to and from the larger ports. Many of those whose names appear in the Records as leaders in the management of the town's affairs were shipmasters. A sad blow was given to the prosperity of the town by the events of the civil war and the subsequent exactions of VI. PREFA.OH. Cromwell. First of all, large sums of money, freely given, were expended during the reign of Charles I. in fortifying the town, and sending soldiers to the Covenanting army. Then, several town's vessels laden with valuable cargoes were captured and robbed by the King's ships, and de- tained for considerable periods in English ports. After- wards, forty-nine married men, with probably twice that number of unmarried, fell on the battle field of Kilsyth, whereby, in the simple language of the interesting record of these losses, the town was "left destitut of men, whilk were their onlie subsistance ;" and six vessels, whose mas- ters and whole crews had been slain, were sold and re- moved to other places. Finally, during the whole protec- torate of Cromwell, the town had to send very large sums monthly towards the maintenance of his army ; and the creditors of the town becoming alarmed at the daily in- creasing poverty of the place, pressed their claims, so that at length its whole wealth was wrung out of it. One of the duties of the Magistrates being to levy the assess- ments, it happened that no one would accept the unen- viable office, and thus for nineteen months prior to the Restoration there was no Town Council. From this time down to a period within the memory of the present generation, the town was in continual poverty and difficulties. Most of the men of spirit and enterprise left it ; many houses became ruinous, and were sold by the Magistrates because the proprietors were unknown ; and on more than one occasion, the Bailies were impri- soned for the debts of the town. Most fortunately, although frequently tempted to sell the common lands, they never did so ; and these, with the progress of agri- culture, having increased enormously in value, and a more judicious and self-denying system of managing the town's affairs than had prevailed in last century having PREFACE. Vll. been introduced, the debts were at length completely liquidated, and many improvements effected. It is interesting to note the progress of the annual revenue : —In 1639, it was £16, 13s. 4d. ; in 1690, £28 ; in 1746, £69 ; in 1788, £175 ; in 1833, £558 ; in i860, £970 ; and in 1866, £817. To the straits of the burgh during the greater portion of the period to which these Extracts relate, may be in part attributed the irritability of the Magistrates and their excessive jealousy of their dignity, of which many amusing instances are to be found in their Records. The witch qases of 1704-5 form a notable chapter in the history of Pittenweem. Many modern writers have re- ferred to them, and it is the fashion to do so in a strain of mingled contempt and indignation at the superstition and severity of the " sapient Bailies of this benighted burgh •" but it is easy to prove that in that matter they were neither in their creed nor their actions worse than their neighbours. ' The minister for the time, Mr Couper, who seems to have lacked prudence and moderation, was more culpable than they. In this as well as in other matters, it is necessary, in judging of the conduct of these civic rulers, to take into account the state of the times in which they lived, for many of their acts, which, if performed now, would de- serve and receive censure, were then in perfect accordance with the spirit and practice, perhaps also with the require- ments of the age. They had, if not in law at least in fact, an absolute and exclusive jurisdiction, and being virtually irresponsible, they acted as men similarly un- controlled always have done, and always will do. They had " a giant's strength," and sometimes they "tyran- nously used it like a giant." But while that was the case, we cannot fail to admire Vlll. PREFACE. the generally bold, honest, straightforward character of their transactions. They seem to have spoken as they thought and felt, and to have acted as they saw to be right ; and if in many cases they were narrow-minded and illiberal, it was because they fancied such a policy to be most conducive to the interests of the corporation they governed ; and if in their judicial acts they were sometimes harsh, they were at least as ready to punish their own equals and colleagues, as any of the more ob- scure inhabitants.

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