The Local Historian Volume 17 Number 1 February 1986

By Ian D. Whyte and Kathleen A. Whyte

Commissary court testaments are the Scottish equivalent of the English probate inventories. The commissary courts were established in 1563 during the Scottish Reformation and acted as courts of record. Very large numbers of testaments survive, from all parts of Scotland except the northern and western Highlands, and they are sufficiently numerous to allow detailed research on small burghs and groups of rural parishes. As in England, they are inevitably skewed towards the wealthier members of society - merchants, tradesmen, professional people, landowners and larger farmers. They are often less detailed then their English equivalents, although the recording of crops and livestock may be more precise. Farming equipment is rarely given in detail, and only a relatively small proportion give a precise breakdown of household and personal possessions. The article uses examples from a study of 200 17th century testaments in the Brechin Commissary Court relating to the Panmure estate in Forfarshire. These are analysed to reveal: i) levels of debt and credit, including the variations in these patterns between different social groups; ii) the origins of money owed by tenants and cottars; and iii) the destination of loans made by individuals in different social groups. It is suggested that this source may be particularly helpful if cross-referenced with, for example, the evidence of parish registers and estate papers.

[Hide]

By R.T.D. Glaister

Beginning with a brief account of the general view of Scottish education in the 18th century, the article identifies a series of questions which still need to be answered: i) how widespread was provision in 1696, the year of legislation which attempted to produce a national system of schools in each parish; ii) what were the results of that Act; iii) did it initiate or improve provision; and iv) what kinds of schools, masters and curriculum resulted from it? To answer these questions, it is suggested, research is needed using major types of documentary source: i) church records, including minutes of kirk sessions and the presbytery, the documentation of disputes which were passed to the synod or general assembly of the kirk, financial records including kirk sessional accounts and the miscellaneous papers which deal with a diversity of social and economic matters; ii) local government records, including burgh council papers, registers of sasines, stent rolls and minutes of burgh assemblies; iii) estate and private records, including accounts and other records kept by local estate managers; and iv) autobiographies, biographical material and the published evidence of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. In addition, sources such as the national records of organisations such as SPCK, court and legal records, and central government records, may provide invaluable source material.

[Hide]

By Charles W.J. Withers

The article notes that the provision of poor relief in Scotland differed very significantly from provision south of the border. Only in 1845 was a Poor Law (Amendment) Act passed for Scotland, and the previous system had been based essentially on parochial responsibility (from 1535) codified under legislation in 1672. This system had come under severe and increasing strain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries but the changes of 1845 owed much to the wholesale disruption of parochial administration which followed the Free Church secession of 1843. A detailed questionnaire was sent to every parish in 1843-1844 and the 1845 system was based on a central Board of Supervision with parochial boards implementing policy and managing the poor locally. These boards were required to maintain General Registers of the Poor, in which on printed forms a wide variety of detailed information about each individual was entered. Many do not survive for larger urban areas, though their coverage of rural communities is good. The article shows how this source can be used to investigate, for example, migration patterns, illegitimacy, the structure of the pauper class, household composition, the experiences of the poor, and family relationships.

[Hide]

By C. Peter Aitken

Research on the Stirling Homesteads development began in May 1984. The housing development was the brainchild of Robert McLaurin, a chemist, inventor, artist and social reformer, who was a disciple of Ebenezer Howard and a leading figure in the Scottish equivalent of the garden cities movement. The Stirling scheme, one of several in Scotland before 1914, was planned in 1907-1908 and completed in the spring of 1910, after which it was managed by the Homesteads Association. It comprised ten properties with associated smallholdings and although the farming ideals of the original plan soon proved to be abortive, the Association has continued. The article discusses the long and complex process whereby this small development was planned and built, and considers it in the context of the wider garden cities movement and the social reforming ideals of the founder.

[Hide]

By Philip Morgan

Bibliographical review article on published works on Domesday Book, in the year of its 900th anniversary. The article begins with the suggestion that Domesday Book is the fundamental source for English local history, and then considers the merits and advantages of using recent editions of the text, including the Victoria County Histories and the Phillimore edition edited by John Morris. This is followed by discussion of the approaches and theoretical perspectives of a selection of works on the nature of the Domesday Survey, its historical context and its relevance to wider studies of medieval society and administration. The second half of the article discusses a range of analyses of the content of Domesday Book, looking at demography, the early medieval economy, estate structures, settlement patterns, the evidence for urban life and place-names. There is a comprehensive bibliography of the works which are referred to in the article.