ScS. SHS.ISl SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FOURTH SERIES VOLUME 15 Papers on Peter May Land Surveyor PAPERS ON PETER MAY LAND SURVEYOR 1749-1793 edited by Ian H. Adams, ph.d. ★ ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by T. AND A. CONSTABLE LTD © Scottish History Society 1979 « n V >9^ ^ ISBN 0 906245 05 2 / Printed in Great Britain PREFACE When I started editing the Descriptive List of Plans in the Scottish Record Office in August 1964, it was clear even then that I was privileged to be close to a major historical source. At the time, however, supporting documentary evidence appeared to be sparse indeed. The turning point came with the deposit of the Seafield papers, one of the truly remarkable archives in the Scottish Record Office. The handlisting of this collection was in the hands of Mr Andrew Anderson, then assistant keeper and now curator, and without his kindness in bringing my attention to many of the docu- ments now reproduced in this volume, this work could never have been envisaged. Work on Peter May’s papers was made even more pleasurable by sharing a common interest with Dr Ian Grant, and together we have created indexes which not only have given us both wider access to information, but which we have also been able to share with a growing band of scholars studying eighteenth- century change. Over the years there has not been a single member of the staff of the Scottish Record Office who has not afforded me some assistance; thus I dedicate my thanks to all the staff of the Scottish Record Office, 1964-79. In these times of economic stringency considerable cuts have been made. About twenty-five per cent of the material collected has not been used, and many footnotes have been curtailed; much of the guidance in this came from Dr T. I. Rae, to whom I give my thanks. Miss Catherine Armet, archivist at Mount Stuart, transcribed several of the documents from the Bute collection, and Mrs Mere- dyth Somerville and Mr George Fortune both gave assistance at a critical time in transcribing and checking material. The two dia- grams in the introduction were drawn by Miss Grace Foster, carto- grapher in the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh. I am indebted to the Earl of Seafield and the Seafield Trustees for their permission to publish extensive extracts from the Seafield muniments now housed in the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh. The Marquis of Bute has given his gracious permission to quote from his family papers at Mount Stuart, Rothesay. To the Trustees Vi PAPERS ON PETER MAY - LAND SURVEYOR of the National Library of Scotland I give my thanks for permis- sion to quote from the Brown papers. Extracts from the Exchequer records appear by permission of the Controller of H.M. Station- ery Office. Finally, items appear from the records of the British Fishery Society, Crown Commissioners, Court of Session, Register of Deeds, Register of Sasines, Gordon Castle muniments and Rose of Kilravoch papers with the approval of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. Edinburgh IA n A D A m s January, 1979 A generous contribution from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland towards the cost of producing this volume is gratefully acknowledged by the Council of the Society CONTENTS Preface v Introduction xi PETER may’s PAPERS 1749-1767 I 1768-1778 86 1778-1794 200 Appendices Carto-bibliography 267 Biographical index 271 Index 285 THE DAWN OF SCOTTISH LAND SURVEYING petermayIs not the kind of person you find in the Dictionary of National Biography: neither an Oxford cleric, nor a minor poet, he was a land surveyor and estate factor, whose life spanned nearly the whole of the second half of the eighteenth century, an important participant in the Agricultural Revolution in Scotland. Some scho- lars might wince at the term Agricultural Revolution, but I am convinced that an economic event of such a description did occur in Scotland. It is what W. W. Rostow has called ‘take-off’; the period in which the concept of economic growth is not only seen to be normal, but indeed becomes instilled in the minds of the leaders of society.1 As Peter May saw it in 1779, ‘Every branch of business, whether commerce, agriculture or manufacture that is once estab- lished on a proper foundation, is not only of consequence to the adventurers, but the whole community derive benefit from it’.2 Although the letters and papers of Peter May represent strong evidence for revolutionary changes, it is possible to measure these changes in an even more objective manner. My own researches have included quantitative analysis of division of commonties, building of planned villages and the activity of land surveyors.3 Other scholars have been developing similar methods: in the fields of agricultural change, land management, forest exploitation, planned villages, the statistical basis of agrarian change, changes in the culti- 1 W. W. Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth, Cambridge University Press, i960. The oneRostovian of five model categories: identifies the societiestraditional in society,their economic the pre-conditions dimensions foras lyingtake-off, within the take-off,2 the drive to maturity, and the age of high mass-consumption. 8 See below, p. 209. I. H. Adams, Economic process and the Scottish land surveyor, Imago Mundi, vol. 27, 1975. PP- 13-18. Xll PAPERS ON PETER MAY - LAND SURVEYOR vation fringe, landownership and agrarian society in the seventeenth century.1 These have given a firm foundation to our understanding of change in the eighteenth century. Now the concept of agricultural revolution has undergone considerable revision in England, but it would be foolish to take the revised positions as applying to Scot- land for all the parameters of change - historical, social, political, legal, economic, cultural and one could even say geographical - were totally different in Scotland and even more markedly so as the Union in many ways had not yet made its mark.2 There is no question that the adoption of innovations, such as liming and clover, was widespread in the old agrarian system, but what was missing was the overwhelming conviction that the land was a productive machine to be harnessed for profit, attainable only by increasing output per capita. When that became the social as well as the econo- mic goal, and the fruits of Newtonian science applied to the same objective, then society was ready for rapid transformation: that is what we now call the Agricultural Revolution. Nearly all the 1 Respectively: R. A. Dodgshon, Agricultural change in Roxburghshire and Berwick- shire, 1700-1815, unpubl. ph.d., University of Liverpool, 1969; Ian D. Grant, Land- lords and land management in North-Eastern Scotland 1750-1850, unpubl. ph.d., University of Edinburgh, 1979; James Lindsay, Forest land use in Argyllshire and Perthshire, unpubl. ph.d., University of Edinburgh, 1974; Douglas Lockhart, Planned villages of North-east Scotland, unpubl. ph.d., University of Dundee, 1975; Valeriegeography Morgan, of late The eighteenth-century First Statistical Scotland,Account asunpubl. a basis ph.d., for studying University the ofagrarian Cam- bridge, 1969; Martin Parry, The fluctuating cultivation fringe of the Lammermuirs, 1580-1900, unpubl. ph.d.. University of Edinburgh, 1972; Lorretta Timperley, Landownership in Scotland, c. 1770, unpubl. ph.d., University of Edinburgh, 1978; I. D. Whyte, Agrarian change in Lowland Scotland in the seventeenth century, unpubl.2 ph.d., University of Edinburgh, 1974. The traditional English view, enunciated by Lord Ernie and still held by some scholars for example Mingay, places it firmly in the period 1760 to 1843. Another view betweenput forward 1560 by and Kerridge 1767 and is thatthat its the main Agricultural achievements Revolution occurred dominated before 1720, the most period of them before 1673, and many of them earlier still. Finally, there is a body of scholarly opinion, the gradualist school, that sees the spread of agricultural change over such a wide time span that the concept of revolution is not really tenable. The same debate has been taken up in Scotland where it remains an open question until more work can be produced. See G. Whittington, Was there a Scottish Agricultural Revolution, Area,and M. vol. Parry, 7, 1975, ibid., No. vol. 3, 8,pp. 1976, 204-6; No. and 3, correspondencepp. 237-9. And relatingin reply, thereto I. H. Adams, by D. Mills The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland, a contribution to the debate, ibid., vol. 10, No. 3, 1978, pp. 198-203 ; and I. D. Whyte ibid., pp. 203-5. INTRODUCTION xiii methods they applied were already well known, but the revolution lay in their simultaneous use across almost the entire face of the country. Considerable influence could be exercised by the great landowners of Scotland to forward or thwart agricultural improvement. Very few participated in any large-scale enclosure before the 1760s and those who did often found themselves bankrupt. ‘This was an age of fast-rising rents, but it was also an age of insolvent landlords. ^ The landowner could control the pace of enclosure through the system of leases or tacks, and it has even been suggested that the annual lease was a symptom of backwardness prior to enclosure.2 However, this is not entirely the case, for the annual lease could be the mark of a progressive estate. From the seventeenth century farmers had been accustomed to leases of seven or nine years;3 but when major rearrangement of an estate was envisaged, each lease as it ran out was continued on an annual basis until all leases had come in. At this point the estate could be remodelled and all the farmers would be put on long leases simultaneously; these could of course expire together, enabling the landlord to carry out any future remodelling without the problems entailed by varying lengths of lease.