THE DEVELOPMENT AND ENTERPRISE OF GLASGOW 1556‐1707
| Author | T. C. Smout |
| Published date | 01 November 1959 |
| Date | 01 November 1959 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1959.tb00113.x |
THE DEVELOPMENT
THE story
of
how, between
AND ENTERPRISE
OF
GLASGOW
1556-1707
I
the Union
of
Parliaments in 1707 and the
American War of Independence in 1775, Glasgow rose to be the
largest tobacco entrep6t in Europe, a city
of
great wealth and immea-
surable commercial and industrial enterprise, is one that has been
told on many occasions since John Gibson published his
History
of
Glasgow
in 1777. Through the detailed studies
of
modem scholars,
it has now become one
of
the best known chapters in Scottish
economic history.
In the epic of Glasgow’s commercial development, however, it
is really chapter two, for the city had begun her spectacular rise
to
fame and wealth in the century and a half between the Reformation
and the Union of the Parliaments. In this period, it has been neglected
by economic historians, and only the most general and uncertain
outlines of its growth before 1707 have been given. This neglect is
the sadder, in that
it
was during this period that Glasgow became
the most interesting and progressive mercantile community in Scotland.
The period divides up into three sections-from the Reformation
to about 1600, when she was establishing herself as the main com-
mercial centre of the west; from about 1600 to about 1660, when she
crept up to become the second city of Scotland; and from
1660
to
1707, when she stood alone with Edinburgh, rightly famous for her
pioneering enterprise on the admittedly narrow stage of the Scottish
economy.
All this is conveniently outlined in the
tax
assessments of the
Convention of Royal Burghs, which provide the best possible index
to the relative prosperity of Scottish towns over a long period.’ The
roll of
1556
shows Glasgow low on the list, eleventh after Ayr and
nine east-coast burghs, and paying a mere
2
per cent. of the total
tax-the same proportion as she had done twenty years earlier.
Throughout the latter half
of
the sixteenth century, her position
gradually improved. By
1583,
she had overtaken Ayr. By 1594, she
was the undisputed leader in the west, and only Edinburgh, Aberdeen,
Dundee and Perth paid more than her
4-5
per cent. By
1649,
she
was paying
6-5
per cent., and had overtaken Perth.
188Cl),
Vols. I-IV,
passim.
1Records
of
the Convention
of
Royal
Burghs,
ed.
J.
D.
Marwick
(1866-
194
THE
DEVELOPMENT
AND
ENTERPRISE
OF
GLASGOW
195
Then came the spectacular break-through. There was no new
assessment between
1649
and
1670,
and in
1665
she had paid
according to the old scale. In
1670,
however, she was reassessed along
with the other Royal Burghs and found to be easily the second city
of the land, to pay
12
per
cent. while her nearest rival Aberdeen paid
7
per cent. By stages she increased her lead-to
15
per cent. in
1683,
and to
20
per cent. in
1705.
By that time, on the eve of the Union,
her nearest rival (still Aberdeen) was paying only
4.9
per cent. She
had established herself as one of the
two
great towns of Scotland.
That there was an absolute
as
well
as a
relative increase
is
clear
from all kinds of evidence, external and internal. Statistically,
it
is
not
so
easy to illustrate. The early population figures, for example,
though freely repeated by historians are all unreliable. The earliest,
stating that around the time of the Reformation the population was
about
4,500,
is
based
on a guess of James Cleland in
1820
that in
1581
there were as many people in the city who signed the Confession
of Faith as did not sign it! The rest, claiming that the population
was
7,644
in
1609, 14,670
in
1660, 12,298
in
1663, 11,948
in
1688,
12,766
in
1708,
etc., are ‘calculated’ from the parish registers by
early statisticians who multiplied the yearly entries of baptisms by
twenty-six to get the total population.s That there was a drop in the
average number of recorded baptisms from
564
in
1657-9
to
473
in
1660-3,
and that this decline continues until
1688,
is
basically what
has led to a modern commentator to the conclusion that ‘between
the Restoration and the Revolution Glasgow experienced a severe
set-back to its fortunes, and its population
by
1688
appears to have
fallen below
12,000.’“
The first man to use these figures, James
Denholm in
1797,
was altogether more cautious: ‘whether this
[apparent drop in population] is to be accounted for from any defect
in the parochial records or from some other cause which took place
about the Restoration, cannot now be ascertained
’.5
In view of other
evidence pointing to prosperity over most
of
this period, one must
suspect the registers. Perhaps, for instance, with the re-establishment
of episcopacy people stopped bringing their bairns to the
official
font.
‘
Glasgow
is
as factious as it
is
rich
’,
wrote Morer in
1689
after the
James Cleland,
Enumeration
of
the Znhabitants
of
the
City
of
Glusgow
(1820),
p.
3.
The Statistical Account
of
Scotland,
Vol. V,
Glasgow
(17971,
p.
506.
James Denholm,
An Historicul Account
of
the
City
of
Glmgow
(1793,
pp.
30.
80.
James Cleland, op.
tit..
ibid. Cleland states that
the
figures
for
1609 and
1708 are
‘
enumerations
,
but gives no details, and
his
figure
for
1609
is
the
same as the
Statistical Account’s
for 1611-17 calculated from baptisms.
4
J.
B.
S.
Gilfillan, in
The Third Statistical Account
of
Scotland,
Glasgow,
ed.
J.
Cunnison and
J.
B.
S.
Gilfillan (1958),
p.
93.
5
James Denholm,
op.
cit., p.
31.
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