Scots and Cracow Civic Rights

chapter 2 Scots and Cracow Civic Rights

2.1 The Beginnings of Settlement in a Multinational Agglomeration

Migrants from the British Isles who settled at the end of the Middle Ages and who obtained civic rights for the city of Cracow are known to us, though their country of origin was England.1 From those times only a very few Scots stud- ied at Cracow University.2 Although the presence of Scottish immigrants is noted for the entire course of the sixteenth century, a larger number is only shown by sources from the 1560s. Only scattered references exist for the previ- ous decades. In 1544, a will was left by an otherwise unknown “Anna, Fabiani Ruszel [i.e., Russell] relicta vidua.”3 In 1559, a town hall criminal judge (hut- man) sentenced a thief who “had stolen a thaler from a Scotsman.”4 In 1564, there lived a certain Christopher Schott on Grodzka Street.5 Three years later, Ian Bademston, a Cracow burgher, gave evidence that he had sold his house in Aberdeen, inherited from his parents, for a hundred thalers to a certain William, the son of Robert Helicen (Helieson?).6 Cracow Scots were subject to a collection of tax ratified at the Piotrków Diet in 1563.7

1 Johannes Katthalm (May 15, 1413) as well as an otherwise unknown John, no surname given (August 27, 1414); K. Kaczmarczyk, ed., Księgi przyjęć do prawa miejskiego w Krakowie, 1392– 1506 (Cracow, 1913), Archiwum Akt Dawnych Miasta Krakowa 5, no. 2459, 2693. 2 For the winter term of 1468–69, Thomas, the son of Robert, arrived in Cracow, having trav- eled there from Cologne; A. Gąsiorowski, T. Jurek, and I. Skierska, eds., Metryka Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego z lat 1400–1508: Biblioteka Jagiellońska, rkp. 258 (Cracow, 2004), 1:331. See also Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe, 235–36. In 1590, “Caspar Joannis Scoti Petricoviensis” was registered; A. Chmiel, ed., Album Studiosorum Universitatis Cracoviensis, vol. 3, fasciculus 2 (Ab anno 1589 ad annum 1606) (Cracow, 1904), 167. 3 AN Cracow, AmKr, Testamentalia, MS 772, p. 358. 4 AN Cracow, AmKr, Acta damnorum seu maleficorum alias smola, 1554–1625, MS 864, p. 77. 5 AN Cracow, AmKr, Księgi szosu, MS 2513, p. 16. 6 AmKr, Consularia, MS 445, p. 892; entry from May 21, 1567; an absence of such a surname in the registers of admittance to Cracow civic rights. 7 They paid 19/18 fl. Another ethnic group mentioned on this occasion are Italians, for whom there is an absence of information regarding the rate of tax paid; AGAD, ASK. Division I, MS 93, pp. 407–8; ibid., MS 1, p. 899. In 1577, tax collectors noted the presence of Scots who had managed to avoid collection. Cracow Italians had contributed seventy fl. to the treasury; AGAD, ASK. Division I, MS 117, fol. 250. Little is known of Scots residing at the time in other

The famous opinion of the lawyer John Skene of Curriehill, incorporated into his De verborum significatione, aptly defines the occupation of the major- ity of Scottish settlers in Poland:

Ane peddler is called a merchand or creamer, quha bearis ane pack or creame upon his back, quha are called beirares of the huddill be the Scottesmen of the realme of Polonia, qua hair of I saw ane great multitu- dine in the town of Cracovia anno Domini 1569.8

The registers of admittance to city rights show, upon further analysis, the follow- ing definite vocational structure—Cracow Scots were chiefly merchants, with the occasional craftsman, predominantly goldsmiths.9 In Cracow, expertise in this craft was obtained by William, the son of Alexander Mag of Aberdeen, from 1565, and Thomas, the son of George(?) Steynson of St. Andrews, from 1574.10 At the turn of the seventeenth century, the entire urban agglomeration, that being Cracow, its satellite towns of Kazimierz, Kleparz, the castle complex at Wawel as well as the suburbs, contained a population of between thirty-four thousand and thirty-seven thousand people. In Central Eastern Europe only Prague had a larger number of inhabitants.11 Before the decade of natural disasters that hit the discussed urban area in the 1650s, the population may have numbered a little over thirty-thousand at most. Even if the great flood of

towns of the Cracow province; see A. Dunin-Wąsowicz, Kapitał mieszczański Nowego Sącza na przełomie XVI/XVII wieku: Wpływ na ekonomikę miasta i zaplecza (Warsaw, 1967), 194. 8 J. Skene, De verborum significatione: The Exposition of the Termes and Difficill Wordes (London, 1641), page unnumbered. Print first announced in 1597. About the author see A. Murray, “Skene, Sir John, of Curriehill,” ODNB. See also T.C. Smout et al., “Scottish Emigration,” 77, 80. 9 A. Ciechanowiecki mentions them in his “Złotnicy czynni w Krakowie w latach 1600– 1700,” in Materiały do biografii, genealogii i heraldyki polskiej, ed. S. Konarski (Buenos Aires, 1974), 6: passim. See also Appendix 2 in this volume. 10 J. Pietrusiński, Złotnicy krakowscy XIV–XVI wieku i ich cech, Złotnicy krakowscy XIV–XVI wieku i ich księga cechowa (Warsaw, 2000), 1:150, 445; B. Dybaś and J. Tandecki, eds., Księga cechowa złotników krakowskich 1462–1566, Złotnicy krakowscy XIV–XVI wieku, vol. 2, no. 733 (Warsaw, 2000); F. Kiryk, Cechowe rzemiosło metalowe: Zarys dziejów do 1939 r. (Warsaw, 1973), 89. 11 L. Belzyt, Kraków i Praga około 1600 roku: Porównanie topograficznych i demograficznych aspektów struktury społecznej i etnicznej dwóch metropolii Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej (Toruń, 1999), 118–33.