NQ Scottish History
Society and Culture
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There were no playwrights in Scotland on a par with those in England, such as William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson. In fact only one Scots play survives from the period between the 1560s and 1603. Courtiers rather than priests and monks were responsible for producing poetry and verse and many of these poets followed James VI to his new court in England. Prose writers tended to follow the lead of John Knox and wrote in English rather than Latin or Scots. A similar trend towards English forms of expression can be observed in sermons that survive from the period.
A range of issues, including Kirk attendance, behaviour at communion and other church services, the poverty of individual parishes, and poor standards of preaching, suggest that the Kirk shared many problems with the Catholic Church of the 1550s.
However, Scotland’s parish school network had been placed on a more secure foundation than before the Reformation and more than half of the 800 schools recorded in Scotland were sited in or next to kirks. The pre-Reformation provincial council in 1549 had reminded Scots of the need for a school in every parish, at a time when there were only 100 schools in Scotland.
There had been a shortage of trained ministers and schoolmasters (in 1580 the General Assembly had considered reducing the number of parishes from more than 900 to 600 due to the shortage of ministers). The poverty of ministers in the immediate post-Reformation period is one of the most striking features of the Kirk.
However, not all ministers were poverty-stricken and by 1603 most ministers were reasonably well off. Also, a minister’s means could not be measured in terms of money alone, and the produce of the glebe ensured that the minister and his family would not go hungry. Parish schoolmasters were paid from parish collections, teinds, or annual rents, and they were expected to take on extra duties as readers, session clerks or precentors (to lead psalm-singing). They were often able to teach only children up to the age of seven.
The only Protestant bibles available to lowland Scots were in English, a similar but nonetheless foreign language, and cheap bibles would not be available until the 1630s. However, the catechism could be used by ministers, schoolmasters and elders to teach the basic principles of Protestantism to young Scots.
Provision for the Poor
The provision of poor relief had been largely neglected by the pre-Reformation Church. One element in the growth of reformed or Protestant opinions had been the apparent wealth of many of the clergy and religious in contrast to the relative neglect of the poor by the pre-Reformation Church.
In 1559 the ‘Beggars’ Summons’ had threatened to dispossess the friars, who appeared to be prospering at the expense of the poor, and this proved to be a decisive event in the course of the Scottish Reformation. The Protestant reformers’ ambitious plans to provide for the poor, as set out in the First Book of Discipline, had been thwarted by vested interests and available sources of revenue had proved to be inadequate to meet the needs of the poor. Individual burghs were forced to make their own piecemeal arrangements to provide some poor relief.
The Kirk distinguished between the deserving and the undeserving poor. The able-bodied or undeserving poor were not to be helped and neither were vagrants and unlicensed beggars In fact, they were often punished by whipping and branding. Poor relief was to be provided in the parish where you were born or lived in for some time. The destitute were only allowed to beg in their own parish after being issued with a beggar’s badge and becoming a licensed beggar or ‘gaberlunzie’.
Church collections and payments for use of parish mort cloth as well, as fines from those disciplined by the Church, were used for poor relief. An Act of 1587 allowed magistrates to assess the inhabitants of the parish to provide for poor relief. Unfortunately, income for poor relief was always short of what was needed.
In times of crisis, parish poor relief was probably a small proportion of total income of the poor, who were aided by multiple inputs from formal and informal charity, including friends, neighbours, landlords, relatives, begging and private charities. Few Scots stayed on poor relief for very long since it was regarded as a temporary measure rather than a permanent support as it became increasingly in England.
Extract from The Works of John Knox,II (The First Book of Discipline): "Provision for the Poor"
This was a declaration charging churches to care for the genuine poor. Kirks are reminded that although some individuals do take advantage of charity (stubborn and idle beggars) and these should be punished; the widows, the fatherless, the aged, the impotent and the lamed still deserve sympathy and the parishes were charged by God with their tending and care.
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Treatment of Catholics
The Reformation in Scotland did not lead to any significant transfer of wealth from the Church (or Kirk) to nobles and other individuals as in England. Much of the wealth of the Catholic Church had either been looted by English invaders and their supporters, or was in the hands of nobles and their extended families before the Reformation.
After 1560 the Kirk demonstrated considerable tolerance in their treatment of Catholic clergy. Isolated cases of ill-treatment can be found, but the evidence of cruelty is often more apparent than real. It proved impracticable to dispossess the Catholic clergy of their benefices so they were allowed to retain two-thirds of their revenues for life, while the Kirk was to be maintained from some portion of the remaining one-third.
Monks and friars were equally well treated, being granted pensions and allowed to make use of their quarters for rest of their lives. Concessions made to Catholic clergy, on the grounds of old age or ill-health, were frequently recorded in contemporary records.
Economy and Trade
In 1603 Scotland’s foreign trade remained firmly rooted in tried and tested trade routes and markets. Scots merchants continued to trade with England and the trading ports across the North Sea as they had done before the Reformation. The chief exception was in the Low Countries, where the Catholic Spanish Netherlands (basically present-day Belgium) were divided from the Protestant United Provinces (the present-day Netherlands) and the Scots focused on trading with the Protestant Dutch.
The Scots exported farm produce, fish, lead and coal, as well a limited range of manufactured goods. They imported raw materials such as iron and timber, as well as a wide range of manufactured and luxury goods. It was the relative peace and political stability established during the minority of James VI that was the Protestant monarch’s greatest contribution to the Scottish economy.
When James VI moved south to his English kingdom the Scottish burghs, especially Edinburgh, were able to enjoy a short-lived economic boom that lasted until the 1630s. From the 1640s, political instability and civil war led to a dramatic decline in the economic prosperity of the Scottish nation.
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