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Poverty or Prosperity? The Economic Fortunes of Ministers in Post-Reformation Fife, 1560–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2011

JOHN McCALLUM
JOHN McCALLUM
Affiliation:
School of History, University of St Andrews, KY16 9AR; e-mail: jdmccallum0@hotmail.com
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Abstract

One of the many areas in which there is a lack of knowledge of the post-Reformation Scottish clergy is their economic status. This article uses the county of Fife as a case study to examine the finances of post-Reformation ministers. Stipends improved gradually during the decades after the Reformation, especially for ministers paid in kind, but there were still serious problems in many parishes well into the seventeenth century. Ministers' testaments show few signs of real poverty, however, and it appears that most ministers lived modestly and within their means, rather than acting as major economic actors in the parish.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 472 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 W. R. Foster, The Church before the covenants: the Church of Scotland, 1596–1638, Edinburgh 1975, 133–55; Margo Todd, The culture of Protestantism in early modern Scotland, New Haven 2002, 361–401; Sanderson, Margaret, ‘Service and survival: the clergy in late sixteenth-century Scotland’, RSCHS xxxvi (2006), 73–96Google Scholar; Mitchison, Rosalind, ‘The social impact of the clergy of the reformed Kirk of Scotland’, Scotia vi (1982Google Scholar); McCallum, John, ‘The Reformation of the ministry in Fife, 1560–1640’, History xciv (2009), 310–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Reforming the Scottish parish: the Reformation in Fife, 1560–1640, Ashgate 2010, 121–51. For a recent call for further research see Ian Whyte, ‘Ministers and society in Scotland, 1560–1800’, in C. Maclean and K. Veitch (eds), A compendium of Scottish ethnology, XII: Religion, Edinburgh 2006.

2 On preaching, theology and spirituality see Todd, Culture of Protestantism, 48–56, 362–400, and David Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590–1638, Oxford 2000. For an important exception to the overview pattern see the detailed and careful analysis in Walter Makey, The Church of the covenant, 1637–1651: revolution and social change in Scotland, Edinburgh 1979.

3 Rosemary O'Day, The English clergy: the emergence and consolidation of a profession, 1558–1642, Leicester 1979, and The professions in early modern England, 1450–1800: servants of the commonweal, Harlow 2000, chs i–v. A. N. Burnett notes a similar neglect of the parish clergy in the literature on the continental reformations: Teaching the Reformation: ministers and their message in Basel, 1529–1629, Oxford 2006, 5.

4 C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schütte (eds), The Protestant clergy of early modern Europe, Basingstoke 2003, 1.

5 Foster, Church before the covenants, 156–67; Makey, Church of the covenant, 109–15.

6 For the most broad-brush approach of all see James Kirk, Patterns of reform: continuity and change in the post-Reformation Church, Edinburgh 1989, 135–6, which uses the total sums available for stipends in each region, rather than individual stipends.

7 A. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland, 1550–1780, Cambridge 1995, 6.

8 Foster, Church before the covenants, 157–18, gives some stipends from 1601, but seems to leave out the victual payments.

9 Ibid. 160–1; Sanderson; ‘Service and survival’, 80–1.

10 For varying estimates see Margaret Sanderson, Ayrshire and the Reformation: people and change, 1490–1600, East Linton 1997, 118; Frank Bardgett, Scotland reformed: the Reformation in Angus and the Mearns, Edinburgh 1989, 108–9; and Kirk, Patterns of reform, 136.

11 The first book of discipline, ed. J. K. Cameron, Edinburgh 1972, 108–9. 1 chalder, the largest measure of grain, was equivalent to 16 bolls, which in turn were made up of 4 firlots. In the interests of clarity, all grain figures have been rounded to the nearest boll.

12 Foster, Church before the covenants, 157. All sums of money quoted in this article are either in pounds Scots, or merks, the latter being equivalent to 13s. 4d. Scots.

13 Whyte, ‘Ministers and society’, 436; Allan Macinnes, Charles I and the making of the covenanting movement, 1625–1641, Edinburgh, 1991, 65. For a very useful concise summary of official policies on stipends see Makey, Church of the covenant, 107–8.

14 John Galt, Annals of the parish, or the chronicle of Dalmailing during the ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, London 1967, 32, 41. It should also be remembered that the quality of grain could vary greatly. Part of the stipend at Collessie in 1631 was ‘not good victuall’, and it was to be replaced with ‘twelf bolls of the best meill’: NAS, TE5/187.

15 NAS, E47/1–10. The years sampled were 1576, 1578 (E47/1), 1580 (E47/2), 1585 (E47/3), 1588 (E47/4), 1591 (E47/5), 1594 (E47/6), 1597 (E47/7), 1601 (E47/8), 1607, 1615 (E47/9–10). These manuscripts are irregularly paginated, and since they are arranged by region and parish within each year, are here always referred to by the parish and year given in the main text. The unusually long intervals in the sampling between 1580 and 1585, 1601 and 1607 and 1607 and 1615 occur because of lacunae in the manuscripts. There is also some limited data available for the late 1560s and 1570s in Register of ministers, exhorters and readers, and their stipends, after the period of the Reformation, Edinburgh 1830, 23–6.

16 For example, in 1576 part of the stipend for Strathmiglo came from the thirds of the bishopric of Dunkeld, and the town of Edinburgh contributed to the stipend for Wemyss in 1599. On the thirds of benefices see Gordon Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation, Cambridge 1960, 68–71, 90–4, and Accounts of the collectors of the thirds of benefices, ed. G. Donaldson, Edinburgh 1949.

17 For example, if three parishes shared a minister, who was paid £120 in one year, but after a few years each parish had acquired their own minister, each minister being paid £100, pay has only worsened in a very limited sense. Even from the point of view of the minister, he would have taken a small pay-cut in return for a large decrease in his workload.

18 1567 figure taken from Register of ministers, exhorters and readers, 25.

19 For this, and all other calculations of cash value which follow, the food prices used are those in in Gibson and Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland, 54–5, 58, 84. For each year, prices of at least one foodstuff were available, and from these, the prices of other foodstuffs were derived at a ratio suggested by the Forfar fiars prices, 84. Thus, where cash values are given for victual payments, they are based on food prices from the relevant year. The sources of price information were Fife fiars (1585); Forfar fiars (1615); Aberdeen (1588, 1594); Edinburgh (1591, 1594, 1597, 1601, 1607); Stirling (1601, 1607, 1615). The figures are rough, and consequently have been rounded to the nearest £10 throughout, in order to avoid giving a false impression of precision. Quantities of foodstuff are rounded to the nearest boll throughout. The approach has been conservative, favouring the lower prices where there is a choice of figures.

20 This simply records the stipend of the minister serving the parish, regardless of how many other charges he held concurrently.

21 TE1/1, p. 174. The method for calculating the value of grain payments in 1631 is essentially the same as that used above, and remains a rough guide with a fair margin of error. The prices used were wheat at 180s. per boll; bear at 100s. per boll; meal at 90s. per boll, and oats at roughly half the value of meal. These were derived from Gibson and Smout, Prices, food and wages, 54, 64, 94, 102, 109. There was some variation between prices in different areas, so where applicable averages were used, with an eye to the Fife prices where available. Sums have all been rounded to the nearest £10.

22 TE1/1, p. 209.

23 TE5/179.

24 TE1/1, p. 236.

25 TE1/1, p. 315.

26 TE1/1, p. 379.

27 TE5/191.

28 TE5/198.

29 TE5/199.

30 TE5/183.

31 These improvements were to continue. For the middle section of the seventeenth century see Makey, Church of the covenant, 109–15.

32 O'Day, Professions, 64.

33 NAS, CH2/154/1, pp. 52, 65–7, 115, 130.

34 CH8/60. For the funding of the new church see Andrew Spicer, Calvinist churches in early modern Europe, Manchester 2007, 57.

35 For Burntisland's ministers and kirk session see McCallum, Reforming the Scottish parish, 56–9, 192–6.

36 Mark Smith, ‘The presbytery of St Andrews, 1586–1605: a study and annotated edition of the register of the minutes of the presbytery of St Andrews’, unpubl. PhD diss. St Andrews 1985, 444–5.

37 Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk and community, Edinburgh 1981, 126–7; Sanderson, ‘Service and survival’, 73.

38 Similarly, Bardgett emphasises those ministers paid more than £100, whose number and average income rose from 1560 to 1590: Scotland reformed, 108–9. But his figures also reveal that there was always a rump of at least 30% whose stipend remained below £100.

39 Sanderson, Margaret, ‘Manse and glebe in the sixteenth century’, RSCHS xix (1977), 89–92Google Scholar; CH2/154/1, pp. 52, 65–7, 115, 130.

40 Foster, Church before the covenants, 167–8. See also Sanderson, ‘Service and survival’, 77–8 (sample includes non-serving clergy), and Makey, Church of the covenant, 115–16 (1662 testaments only).

41 For the use of averages see Foster, Church before the covenants, 167–8, and Makey, Church of the covenant, 115.

42 For this analysis all sums were rounded to the nearest pound.

43 NAS, CC8/8/33, pp. 392–400; CC20/4/6, pp. 403–4, 820–1.

44 CC8/8/9, pp. 145–6; CC8/8/23, pp. 236–8; CC20/4/9, p. 697.

45 Foster, Church before the covenants, 167–8. Foster gives individual examples from both ends of the scale, but without offering a clear sense of the overall range of inventories. The figures here also compare unfavourably with Makey's findings on the mid-seventeenth century period: Church of the covenant, 116.

46 These were not necessarily the same as the ministers with large inventories: Robert Hamilton was owed £5,314, but only had an inventory worth £100: CC8/8/11, pp. 185–92.

47 Foster, Church before the covenants, 167, also cited in Wormald, Court, Kirk and community, 126; Makey, Church of the covenant, 116.

48 CC20/4/9, p. 120.

49 See however Sanderson, ‘Service and survival’, 93–4.

50 Alastair Mann, The Scottish book trade, 1500–1720: print commerce and print control in early modern Scotland, East Linton 2000, 202, 206.

51 CC20/4/6, pp. 403–4.

52 CC8/8/14, pp. 107–9.

53 CC20/4/3, pp. 648–9; CC20/4/5, pp. 134–5.

54 CC20/4/6, pp. 820–1; CC8/8/14, pp. 107–9.

55 CC/8/8/32, pp. 410–12; CC8/8/15, pp. 12–15; CC8/8/33, pp. 392–400.

56 CC20/4/7, pp. 313–15.

57 CH2/523/1, pp. 107, 169, 186, 211, 312.

58 CC20/4/8, p. 1025.

59 Foster, Church before the covenants, 169, suggests this, noting that in 1611–12 there were 350 people summoned by the privy council for charging excessive interest, although only eight of them were ministers. He also cites a 1641 case in the presbytery of Stranraer, but offers no other evidence that this was a widespread problem.

60 CC8/8/38, pp. 17–18.

61 CC20/4/8, p. 1025.

62 CC8/8/38, pp. 17–18.

63 CC8/8/15, pp. 12–15; CC/8/8/32, pp. 410–12. In the latter case, the debtor was presumably the widow of the man responsible for that portion of his stipend. For further examples see CC20/4/9, pp. 2, 52–3; CC8/8/4, pp. 59–61; CC8/8/14, pp. 107–9; CC8/8/15, pp. 226–31; CC8/8/23, pp. 236–8.

64 CC8/8/38, pp. 278–81. See also CC20/4/6, pp. 820–1.

65 Cf. Wormald, Court, Kirk and community, 126; Makey, Church of the covenant, 116.

66 CC8/8/24, pp. 519–20; CC8/8/14, pp. 107–9.

67 CC20/4/7, pp. 698–9; CC20/4/8, p. 1025; CC8/8/38, pp. 17–18; CC20/4/5, pp. 134–5; CC8/8/33, pp. 392–400.

68 CC8/8/38, pp. 278–81. See also CC8/8/43, pp. 740–2.

69 CC8/8/15, pp. 12–15.

70 This is also suggested in Makey, Church of the covenant, 116.