A STUDY-OF THE EDINBURGH BURGESS COMMUNITY AND ITS ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES, 1600 - 1680 JOYCE K. MCMILLAN PH. D UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1984 W TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Declaration iii List of Abbreviations iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. The Burgess Community 11 2. The Apprentices 55 3. Merchant and Craft Wealth 87 4. Property Owners and Council Members 127 5. Trade and Traders 166 6. Exports and Imports 215 7. The Prosperity of Edinburgh 265 CONCLUSION 286 APPENDIX 289 BIBLIOGRAPHY 306 i ABSTRACT OF THESIS While many histories of Edinburgh have been written, dealing with the architecture, folklore, culture, religion and politics of the city in the last five hundred years, little attempt has been made to chart the economic progress or to investigate the social structure of Scotland's capital. This thesis aims to illustrate the economic history of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century and to depict the urban' society of the period, largely through the exploits of its freemen, the burgess community. Edinburgh suffered its own particular disasters in a century whose middle years saw unprecedented national conflict. The accession of James VI to the English throne in 1603 removed the' Scottish king and court to London. The last visitation of bubonic plague to Scotland in 1645 removed anything up to one-third of the population of Edinburgh, its port of Leith and outlying suburbs. In addition, the city's role as capital of a rebellious kingdom ensured her twenty years of both physical turmoil and financial hardship, firstly at the hands of the Covenanters and secondly under the occupation of Cromwell. One question which should be asked, but can only be partially answered from the available research material, is - what effect did these incidents and intervals have on the economy of the city? Edinburgh was not noted as a manufacturing centre; its economic importance rested on trade and commerce. It is therefore to the merchants of the city that we should look for an insight into the economic condition of the burgh, and to a lesser degree, to the craftsmen, their socially inferior partners in the burgess community. The numbers, origins, status and social mobility of both groups have been studied, together with the sources and distribution of their wealth, in terms of goods, money, shipping and property. The impact of Edinburgh and its traders on other regions of Scotland has also been examined, and comparisons have been made, where possible, between the Scottish capital and the larger English towns. Finally, by using a variety of economic indicators, an impression has been pieced together of the economic progress of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. ii. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the first place, I should like to thank the Social Science Research Council for the grant which I received towards my studies. I should particularly like to acknowledge the assistance given me by various people in the preparation of this thesis, but my greatest debt of gratitude is to my supervisor, Professor Rosalind Mitchison. There is no way I can adequately thank her for her time, encouragement and advice, given generously over a lengthy period of years, for without her support this thesis would never have been completed. Nor can I fail to mention Professor T. C. Smout who, as my joint supervisor for a number of years, first suggested the topic to me and took an active interest in my early work, or Dr. Wray Vamplew, now of Flinders University, Australia, who encouraged me to take up research in the first instance. In the course of my research, numerous people readily gave help and advice, notably Dr. Margaret Sanderson and the staff of the Scottish Record Office, Dr. Michael Lynch of the Scottish History Department at Edinburgh University, and Dr. Walter Makey, Edinburgh City Archivist whose interest and encouragement were much appreciated. I must also record my thanks to Isabel Roberts, secretary to the Economic History Department at Edinburgh University, for her advice and help with regard to the presentation of this thesis and to my typist, Pat McIntyre, for her tolerance of my early drafts, and her efficiency and cheerfulness throughout. iii. DECLARATION While acknowledging the advice of others, I declare that this thesis is my own work and accept that I must be held responsible for any errors contained in it. 6ý 4a6l"ý -A iv. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS B. O. E. C. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club E. C. A. Edinburgh City Archive E. H. R. Economic History Review (Second Series) E. R. B': E. Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh R.?. C. S. Register of the Privy Council of Scotland S. B. R. S. Scottish Burgh Records Society S. H. R. ' Scottish Historical Review S. J. P. E. Scottish Journal of Political Economy S. R. O. Scottish Record Office S. R. S. Scottish Record Society -1- INTRODUCTION Edinburgh is a unique city. Its geographical location, the castle and town perched upon a crag-and-tail formation, overlooked by an extinct volcanic hill, has seldom failed to impress the traveller. To those approaching from the west, the castle rock appeared "to rise from a plain- of cultivated ground....: - the impression.... was visionary". [1] From the palace of Holyroodhouse to the east, one visitor that the town seemed to be "built upon two observed , mountains", another that "the City still riseth higher. and higher towards the West". [2] Its growth circumscribed by the narrowness of its site, chosen for defensive reasons, Edinburgh continued to thrust upwards more or less within its medieval walls for much of the seventeenth century, the entire city "clinging to the spine of the Royal Mile"[3], the name given to the street which led downhill from castle to palace. Eventually, it began to sprawl southwards, a process which continued in tandem with the development of the New Town to the north, over a hundred years later. As an example of urban development, Edinburgh attracted comments both complimentary and critical from seventeenth-century visitors. The spaciousness of its main thoroughfare, accounted handsome by many people, contrasted starkly with the maze of narrow, squalid side streets, flanked by high stone tenements, which plummeted down the hillsides to north and south. The central area was thronged with 1. D. Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, A. D. 1803, ed. J. C. Shairp (Edinburgh 1974), p. 243-4. 2. P. Hume Brown (ed. ), Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh 1893), Voyage du Duc de Rohan, 1600, p. 93 and Fynes Morison's Itinerary, 1598, p. 83. 3. C. J. Smith, Historic South Edinburgh, Vol. 1, (Edinburgh 1978), p. 3. -2- people and the closes and lanes were so cramped that one traveller seriously believed that Edinburgh housed a population of 60,000 in the 1630s, instead of less than half that figure. [1] All seventeenth- century visitors had one over-riding criticism, the lack of space and sanitation and the consequent filth of parts of the town; some perceived another of its major disadvantages, the physical distance [2] and overt hostility between Edinburgh and its port of Leith. For a city whose prosperity was based increasingly on trade, its lack of direct access to the sea was unfortunate; and Edinburgh's dependence on Leith caused her to intervene continually in the affairs of the smaller burgh and to dominate it by means of a feudal superiority which held the port in perpetual subjugation. As one recent historian of Edinburgh has noted, "without Leith, it was nothing". [3] Edinburgh occupied a unique place among Scottish urban centres, dwarfing other burghs in both size and stature. It was the seat of Court and Kirk, of government and law; a centre of culture and learning, of society and fashion, of trade and commerce. It was the capital city; and while the differences in its character brought about in the eighteenth century by the building of the New Town appeared to signify that in many ways "it had become like London"[4], it could be argued that in some respects, it had always been like London, not in terms of size or wealth but in its relationship to the country it dominated. Edinburgh's place in the life of Scotland bore a 1. Hume Brown, op. cit., Travels of Sir William Brereton, 1636, p. 141. 2. Ibid, Taylor the Water-Poet, 1618, p. 111-2 and Report by Thomas Tucker, 1656, p. 164. 3. W. H. Makey, The Church of t; he Covenant : Revolution and Social Change in Scotland 1637-1651 Edinburgh 1979). p. 153. 4. T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, (1969), p. 348. -3- remarkable resemblance to that of London in England. It fulfilled similar functions, exerted the same magnetic pull, but on a much smaller scale, in the second-class context of poor, backward Scotland instead of wealthy, -Progressive England. Its economic hinterland was much more restricted than that of the English capital, - the impact of which reached as far north as Newcastle. The geography of- Scotland, however, was such that large parts of the north and west were almost inaccessible from the capital and therefore outside its sphere of influence. Viewed from a different standpoint, that of Great Britain rather than Scotland, Edinburgh ranked among the largest cities in the country, the equal of, and possibly larger than Norwich or Bristol for much of the seventeenth century, certainly more populous than Exeter, York or Newcastle. These cities have come to be known as provincial or regional their influence capitals, extending over their own geographical area in a similar way to London over the whole nation.