Scottish Life in the 17TH Century. 293 



if they could procure the services of an officer. The Town 

 Council added to its other onerous duties the charge of the 

 burgh school, taught, I think, in the Tolbooth, and they re- 

 quired all burgesses who were able to pay the fees to send their 

 children there. But here again that spirit of monopoly pre- 

 vailed, for they imposed a heavy fine upon all "pettie dominies'" 

 who should teach children in other schools ; a power this which 

 in the hands of a School Board might be fatal to adventure 

 schools. As showing the state of education at the time, and 

 also affording some indication of the qualifications of the 

 councillors for the many duties they assumed, it is interesting 

 to note that at the date of the first minute of Council, 1623, 

 thirteen members out of twenty-four, or a majority of the whole, 

 were unable to sign their names. 



The members of the Council, Avith all their zeal for 

 temperance, by no means set an example of abstinence ; and, as 

 I have said, they were not restrained by any punctilious scruples 

 about the propriety of spending public money on their own 

 entertainment. Their drink bill, at least on all occasions which 

 could be called public, was paid out of the public purse. They 

 had wine or ale before going to the court, the council, or the 

 kirk. They must have relaxed in their own favour the 

 stringency of the infant Forbes Mackenzie. They drank when 

 they had business of any kind to transact with outsiders, and 

 when any distinguished person was made a burgess ; and on 

 such other occasions as the anniversary of the King's birthday 

 or the annual election. Their drink and feasting bill from 

 March, 1670, to October, 1673, amounted in Scots money to 

 ;^797. Reduced to sterling coin, of which Scots was only one- 

 twelfth the value, this amounted to the less extravagant sum of 

 ^66 ; but even that was a very large figure when we remember 

 the low wages of the time and the high purchasing power of 

 money. It was equal to a labourer's wages for five years. A 

 labourer then received between 5s and 6s sterling weekly. A 

 leg of mutton could be bought for 8d or lod, and a dozen 

 eggs for i^d. By expenses such as these the town's patrimony 

 was consumed, until it had to become in our own days a suitor 

 to the Crown for a gift of Kingholm and Hannahfield, which 

 W'ere once but a small portion of its own estate. 



The Kirk Session, like the more secular body, showed a 

 strong disposition to interfere in private affairs. It could im- 

 pose civil penalties, and it sometimes offered to support the 

 action of the secular authorities with ecclesiastical censures, as 

 in the case of enforcing the licensing laws. This would be no 

 light matter at a time when ecclesiastical censures might involve 

 the shame of a public rebuke from the pulpit and exposure in 

 sackcloth before the whole congregation. The duties of the 

 Session were so many and so onerous that meetings were held 



