Scottish society in the Middle Ages

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three estates, a cleric, a knight and a worker, which were adopted in the fourteenth century to describe the membership of the Parliament of Scotland

Scottish society in the Middle Ages is the social organisation of what is now Scotland between the departure of the Romans from Britain in the fifth century and the establishment of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. Social structure is obscure in the early part of the period, for which there are few documentary sources. Kinship groups probably provided the primary system of organisation and society was probably divided between a small aristocracy, whose rationale was based around warfare, a wider group of freemen, who had the right to bear arms and were represented in law codes, above a relatively large body of slaves, who may have lived beside and become clients of their owners.

From the twelfth century there are sources that allow the stratification in society to be seen in detail, with layers including the king and a small elite of

three estates to describe its society and English terminology to differentiate ranks. Serfdom disappeared from the records in the fourteenth century and new social groups of labourers, craftsmen and merchants, became important in the developing burghs
. This led to increasing social tensions in urban society, but, in contrast to England and France, there was a lack of major unrest in Scottish rural society, where there was relatively little economic change.

Early Middle Ages

See also:
Scotland in the Early Middle Ages

Kinship

Detail of the Class II Hilton of Cadboll Stone, showing mounted members of the aristocracy

The primary unit of social organisation in

agnatic system of descent, typical of Celtic societies and common throughout North Britain.[2][3]

Social structure

Scattered evidence, including the records in

Forfarshire and Hilton of Cadboll, in Easter Ross, suggest that in Northern Britain, as in Anglo-Saxon England, the upper ranks of society formed a military aristocracy, whose status was largely dependent on their ability and willingness to fight.[1] Below the level of the aristocracy it is assumed that there were non-noble freemen, working their own small farms or holding them as free tenants.[4] There are no surviving law codes from Scotland in this period,[5] but such codes in Ireland and Wales indicate that freemen had the right to bear arms, represent themselves in law and to receive compensation for murdered kinsmen.[6]

Slavery

Indications are that society in North Britain contained relatively large numbers of slaves, often taken in war and raids, or bought, as

St. Patrick indicated the Picts were doing, from the Britons in Southern Scotland.[7] Slave owning probably reached relatively far down in society, with most rural households containing some slaves. Because they were taken relatively young, many slaves would have been more integrated into their societies of capture than their societies of origin, in terms of both culture and language. Living and working beside their owners in practice they may have become members of a household without the inconvenience of the partible inheritance rights that divided estates. Where there is better evidence from England and elsewhere, it was common for slaves who survived to middle age to gain their freedom, with such freedmen often remaining clients of the families of their former masters.[8]

Religious life

Main article: History of popular religion in Scotland
Remains of a chapel on Eileach an Naoimh

In the Early Medieval era most evidence of religious practice comes from monks and is heavily biased towards monastic life. From this can be seen the daily cycle of prayers and the celebration of the Mass. There was also the business of farming, fishing and in the islands, seal hunting. Literary life revolved around the contemplation of texts and the copying of manuscripts. Libraries were of great importance to monastic communities. The one at Iona may have been exceptional, but it demonstrates that the monks were part of the mainstream of European Christian culture. Less well recorded, but as significant, was the role of bishops and their clergy. Bishops dealt with the leaders of the tuath, ordained clergy and consecrated churches. They also had responsibilities for the poor, hungry, prisoners, widows and orphans. Priests carried out baptisms, masses and burials. They also prayed for the dead and offered sermons. They anointed the sick with oil, brought communion to the dying and administered penance to sinners. Early local churches were widespread, but since they were largely made of wood,[9] like that excavated at Whithorn,[10] the only evidence that survives for most is in place names that contain words for church, including cill, both, eccles and annat, but others are indicated by stone crosses and Christian burials.[9] Beginning on the west coast and islands and spreading south and east, these were replaced with basic masonry-built buildings.[11]

Education

Main article: Education in Medieval Scotland

In the Early Middle Ages, Scotland was overwhelmingly an oral society and education was verbal rather than literary. Fuller sources for Ireland of the same period suggest that there may have been

filidh, who acted as poets, musicians and historians, often attached to the court of a lord or king, and passed on their knowledge in Gaelic to the next generation.[12][13] After the "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court from the twelfth century, a less highly regarded order of bards took over these functions and they would continue to act in a similar role in the Highlands and Islands into the eighteenth century. They often trained in bardic schools, of which a few, like the one run by the MacMhuirich dynasty, who were bards to the Lord of the Isles,[14] existed in Scotland and a larger number in Ireland, until they were suppressed from the seventeenth century.[13] Much of their work was never written down and what survives was only recorded from the sixteenth century.[12] The establishment of Christianity brought Latin to Scotland as a scholarly and written language. Monasteries served as major repositories of knowledge and education, often running schools and providing a small educated elite, who were essential to create and read documents in a largely illiterate society.[15]

High Middle Ages

Main article: Society of Scotland in the High Middle Ages
See also: Scotland in the High Middle Ages
Map of mormaer and other Lordships in Medieval Scotland, c. 1230

Ranks

The legal tract known as

bondmen, naviti, neyfs or serfs existed in various forms of service, under terms with their origins in Irish practice, including cumelache, cumherba and scoloc who were tied to a lord's estate and unable to leave it without permission, but who records indicate often absconded for better wages or work in other regions, or in the developing burghs.[17]

Feudalism

The feudalism introduced under David I, particularly in the east and south where the crown's authority was greatest, saw the placement of lordships, often based on castles, and the creation of administrative

manorial system, based on the English model, impracticable.[20] Obligations appear to have been limited to occasional labour service, seasonal renders of food, hospitality and money rents.[18]

Royal women

Main article: Women in Medieval Scotland
St Margaret of Scotland
, the first king's wife to be recorded as "queen", from a later genealogy

A large proportion of the women for who biographical details survive for the Middle Ages, were members of the royal houses of Scotland, either as princesses or queen consorts. Some of these became important figures in the history of Scotland or gained a significant posthumous reputation. There was only one reigning Scottish Queen in this period, the uncrowned and short-lived

William I acted as a mediator, judge in her husband's absence and is the first Scottish Queen known to have had her own seal.[23]

Monasticism

See also: List of monastic houses in Scotland

Some early Scottish monasteries had dynasties of abbots, who were often secular clergy with families, as at

Cistercian houses.[24] This period also saw the introduction of more sophisticated forms of church architecture that had become common on the Continent and in England, known collectively as Romanesque.[26][27]

Saints

See also: List of saints of Scotland
The Monymusk Reliquary, or Brecbennoch, said to house the bones of Columba

One of the main features of Medieval Catholicism was the

St. Andrews and it became increasingly associated with Scottish national identity and the royal family.[34] Its bishop would supplant that of Dunkeld as the most important in the kingdom and would begin to be referred to as Bishop of Alba.[35] The site was renewed as a focus for devotion with the patronage of Queen Margaret,[29] who also became important after her canonisation in 1250 and after the ceremonial transfer of her remains to Dunfermline Abbey, as one of the most revered national saints.[34]

Schools

Main article: Education in Medieval Scotland

In the High Middle Ages there were new sources of education, such as

song and grammar schools. These were usually attached to cathedrals or a collegiate church and were most common in the developing burghs. By the end of the Middle Ages grammar schools could be found in all the main burghs and some small towns. Early examples including the High School of Glasgow in 1124 and the High School of Dundee in 1239.[36] There were also petty schools, more common in rural areas and providing an elementary education.[37]

Late Middle Ages

See also:
Scotland in the Late Middle Ages

Kinship and clans

Main articles:
Scottish clans
Map showing Highland clans and lowland surnames

The agnatic kinship and descent of late Medieval Scottish society, with members of a group sharing a (sometimes fictional) common ancestor, was often reflected in a common surname in the south. Unlike in England, where kinship was predominantly

cognatic (derived through both males and females), women retained their original surname at marriage and marriages were intended to create friendship between kin groups, rather than a new bond of kinship.[38] As a result, a shared surname has been seen as a "test of kinship", providing large bodies of kin who could call on each other’s support. This could help intensify the idea of the feud, which was usually carried out as a form of revenge for the death or injury of a kinsman. Large bodies of kin could be counted on to support rival sides, although conflict between members of kin groups also occurred.[39]

The combination of agnatic kinship and a feudal system of obligation has been seen as creating the Highland

tacksmen (in Scots), who managed the clan lands and collected the rents.[44] In the Isles and along the adjacent western seaboard, there were also buannachann, who acted as a military elite, defending the clan lands from raids and taking part in attacks on clan enemies. Most of the followers of the clan were tenants, who supplied labour to the clan heads and sometimes act as soldiers. In the early modern era they would take the clan name as their surname, turning the clan into a massive, if often fictive, kin group.[42]

Structure

From 1357 onwards

sumptuary legislation, which set out the types of weapons and armour that should be maintained, and clothes that could be worn, by various ranks.[38]

A table of ranks in late Medieval Scottish society

Below the king were a small number of

courts baron landlords still exerted considerable control over their tenants.[51] Society in the burghs was headed by wealthier merchants who often held local office as a burgess, alderman, bailies or as a member of the council. A small number of these successful merchants were dubbed knights for their service by the king by the end of the era, although this seems to have been an exceptional form of civic knighthood that did not put them on a par with landed knights.[53] Below them were craftsmen and workers that made up the majority of the urban population.[54]

Social conflict

Historians have noted considerable political conflict in the burghs between the great merchants and craftsmen throughout the period. Merchants attempted to prevent lower crafts and

border society acquired reputations for lawless activity, particularly the feud. However, more recent interpretations have pointed to the feud as a means of preventing and speedily resolving disputes by forcing arbitration, compensation and resolution.[56]

Popular religion

See also: History of popular religion in Scotland
The fifteenth-century Trinity Altarpiece by Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes

Traditional Protestant historiography tended to stress the corruption and unpopularity of the late Medieval Scottish church, but more recent research has indicated the ways in which it met the spiritual needs of different social groups.

Observant Friars were organised as a Scottish province from 1467 and the older Franciscans and the Dominicans were recognised as separate provinces in the 1480s.[57]

In most Scottish

Mary of the Snows.[60][62]

Tower of St Salvator's College, St Andrews, one of the three universities founded in the fifteenth century

In the early fourteenth century the Papacy managed to minimise the problem of clerical

Sarum Use for services.[60]

Expansion of schools and universities

Main article: Education in Medieval Scotland

The number and size of schools seems to have expanded rapidly from the 1380s.[36][37] There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers.[36] The growing emphasis on education cumulated with the passing of the Education Act 1496, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, but which was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite,[36] with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the period.[65] Until the fifteenth century, those who wished to attend university had to travel to England or the continent, and just over a 1,000 have been identified as doing so between the twelfth century and 1410.[66] After the outbreak of the Wars of Independence, with occasional exceptions under safe conduct, English universities were closed to Scots and continental universities became more significant.[66] Some Scottish scholars became teachers in continental universities.[66] This situation was transformed by the founding of the University of St Andrews in 1413, the University of Glasgow in 1450 and the University of Aberdeen in 1495.[36] Initially these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen who would begin to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in the government and law. Those wanting to study for second degrees still needed to go elsewhere and Scottish scholars continued to visit the continent and English universities, which reopened to Scots in the late fifteenth century.[66]

Women

Main article: Women in Medieval Scotland
Margaret Tudor, praying before a vision of the Virgin and infant Christ, from Hours of James IV of Scotland, c. 1503

Medieval Scotland was a

nunneries, with 30 identified for the period to 1300, compared with 150 for England, and very few in the Highlands.[74][75] The Virgin Mary, as the epitome of a wife and mother was probably an important model for women.[76] There is evidence from late Medieval burghs like Perth, of women, usually wives, acting through relatives and husbands as benefactors or property owners connected with local altars and cults of devotion.[73] By the end of the fifteenth century, Edinburgh had schools for girls, sometimes described as "sewing schools", which were probably taught by lay women or nuns.[36][77] There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers, which may have extended to women.[36]

Children

Main article: Childhood in Scotland in the Middle Ages

Childhood mortality was high in Medieval Scotland.

whooping-cough, while parasites were also common.[78] In Lowland noble and wealthy society by the fifteenth century the practice of wet-nursing had become common.[79] In Highland society there was a system of fosterage among clan leaders, where boys and girls would leave their parents' house to be brought up in that of other chiefs, creating a fictive bond of kinship that helped cement alliances and mutual bonds of obligation.[81] The majority of children, even in urban centres where opportunities for formal education were greatest, did not attend school.[78] In the families of craftsmen children probably carried out simpler tasks. They might later become apprentices or journeymen.[82] In Lowland rural society, as in England, many young people, both male and female, probably left home to become domestic and agricultural servants, as they can be seen doing in large numbers from the sixteenth century.[83] By the late Medieval era, Lowland society was probably part of the north-west European marriage model, of life-cycle service and late marriage, usually in the mid-20s, delayed by the need to acquire the resources to be able to form a household.[84]

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0521395526
    , pp. 82–4.
  2. ISBN 0748601007
    , pp. 57–8.
  3. ISBN 1851094407
    , p. 1447.
  4. ISBN 1851094407
    , p. 369.
  5. ISBN 140510628X
    , pp. 98.
  6. ISBN 0874368855
    , p. 136.
  7. ISBN 0521547407
    , pp. 21–2.
  8. ISBN 0748612343
    , pp. 17–20.
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-19-211696-7
    , pp. 509–10.
  10. ISBN 0-7486-2179-2
    , p. 1.
  11. ISBN 1-904320-02-3
    , pp. 22–3.
  12. ^
    ISBN 0-19-538623-X
    .
  13. ^
    ISBN 0-521-89088-8
    , p. 76.
  14. ISBN 0-7486-1299-8
    , p. 220.
  15. ISBN 0-7509-2977-4
    , p. 128.
  16. ^
    ISBN 074861110X
    , p. 42.
  17. ^
    ISBN 074860104X
    , pp. 15–18.
  18. ^
    ISBN 0521414113
    , p. 586.
  19. ^
    ISBN 0415122317
    , p. 97.
  20. ^
    ISBN 052158602X
    , pp. 16–19.
  21. ISBN 0415291828
    , p. 9.
  22. ISBN 1843832852
    , pp. 63–4.
  23. ISBN 1843832852
    , pp. 66–7.
  24. ^
    ISBN 0-7509-2977-4
    , pp. 117–128.
  25. ISBN 0333567617
    , p. 58.
  26. ISBN 1111831688
    , p. 270.
  27. ISBN 0-85263-748-9
    , p. 10.
  28. ISBN 074860104X
    , p. 64.
  29. ^
    ISBN 1446475638
    , p. 76.
  30. ISBN 0333567617
    , pp. 52–3.
  31. ISBN 0-7509-2977-4
    , p. 46.
  32. ISBN 0859917657
    , p. 137.
  33. ISBN 9004155805
    .
  34. ^
    ISBN 0748620222
    , p. 11.
  35. ^
    ISBN 0333567617
    , p. 55.
  36. ^
    ISBN 1-84384-096-0
    , pp. 29–30.
  37. ^
    ISBN 1-4464-7563-8
    , pp. 104–7.
  38. ^
    ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 29–35.
  39. ISBN 075466421X
    , p. 71.
  40. ^ G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce (Berkeley CA.: University of California Press, 1965), p. 7.
  41. ISBN 0879723394
    , p. 98, n.
  42. ^
    ISBN 0748613935
    , p. 13.
  43. ISBN 0415146275
    , pp. 667.
  44. ISBN 0806312688
    , pp. 99–104.
  45. ISBN 074861110X
    , p. 152.
  46. ISBN 0824044444
    , p. 324.
  47. ISBN 1843840960
    , pp. 22.
  48. ISBN 0199243549
    , p. 42.
  49. ^
    ISBN 0851158145
    , pp. 145–65.
  50. ISBN 1843831929
    , pp. 13–15.
  51. ^
    ISBN 019820762X
    , pp. 57–60.
  52. ISBN 0415130417
    , p. 99.
  53. ISBN 1843832704
    , p. 38.
  54. ^
    ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 48–9.
  55. ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 50–1.
  56. ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 28 and 35-9.
  57. ^
    ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 76–87.
  58. ISBN 0521444616
    , pp. 349–50.
  59. ISBN 052158602X
    , p. 246.
  60. ^
    ISBN 1843840960
    , pp. 26–9.
  61. ISBN 052158602X
    , p. 254.
  62. ^
    ISBN 033363358X
    , p. 147.
  63. ISBN 052158602X
    , pp. 244–5.
  64. ISBN 052158602X
    , p. 257.
  65. ISBN 0-7486-0276-3
    , pp. 68–72.
  66. ^
    ISBN 0-333-56761-7
    , pp. 124–5.
  67. ^
    ISBN 0199563691
    , p. 273.
  68. ISBN 0199563691
    , p. 274.
  69. ISBN 0199563691
    , p. 271.
  70. ISBN 0748614559
    , pp. 62–3.
  71. ^ E. Ewen, "An Urban Community: The Crafts in Thirteenth Century Aberdeen" in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer, Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community: Essays Presented to G.W.S Barrow (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 164.
  72. ^ E. Ewen, "An Urban Community: The Crafts in Thirteenth Century Aberdeen" in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer, Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community: Essays Presented to G. W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 171.
  73. ^
    ISBN 1843835622
    , p. 110.
  74. ISBN 0521377978
    , p. 86.
  75. ISBN 074860104X
    , p. 80.
  76. ISBN 1843835622
    , p. 109.
  77. ISBN 1-4464-7-563-8
    , pp. 104–7.
  78. ^
    ISBN 0748621571
    , p. 126.
  79. ^
    ISBN 0748621571
    , p. 6.
  80. ISBN 0199563691
    , p. 278.
  81. ISBN 9004150455
    , pp. 81–2.
  82. ISBN 074861110X
    , p. 157.
  83. ISBN 0521891671
    , p. 52.
  84. ISBN 0199563691
    , p. 277.
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