Offences and their Punishment in the Sixteenth Century.
The century which included the Reformation, and the long minorities of three sovereigns,—James V., his daughter Mary, and her son, James VI.,—all periods of strife and unsettledness, was for Scotland, governmentally and politically, a turbulent one. The state was often in confusion; but the burghs were little states, acting by their own laws, under properly constituted magistrates.
The oldest records of the Burgh Court of Dundee which have been preserved commence in 1550, and extend to 1568. These, with other old records, have recently been carefully examined, and many portions transcribed, by Mr. Alexander Maxwell, F.S.A. Scot., and they form the ground-work for his two interesting volumes on Old Dundee. With the author’s kind permission, we make several extracts, illustrative of the social history of the period, so far as this is brought into view by the matters which came before the Burgh Court. These records may be fairly taken as a sample of the then condition, as respects crime, of the whole of Scotland.
And three things will be in evidence from these records:—
1. That this was really a Court of Justice; patient consideration given, as a rule, to the cases which came before it; and although some of the punishments may seem severe, and others rather ridiculous, yet on the whole the spirit was paternal, corrective, and peace-making. The penalties inflicted were all on the supposition that the offenders had still a sense of shame left, and that to have the good opinion of their fellows was an incentive to well doing.
2. That considering the unsettled condition of the country, there was not an abnormal amount of disorder and crime. Whisky, that curse of Scotland in later years, had not come into use, and there was no excessive ale and wine drinking. Theft was not common.
3. That a main point with the burgh authorities was to get locally rid of their incorrigibles; leaving neighbouring towns and the country districts to take care of themselves.
That ever unruly member, the tongue, gave a good deal of trouble:—
Reche Crag, baker, being warned that his bread was under weight, charged the officer with using false weights to weigh his bread with, for which insult “he is ordainit to come to the church on Sunday next in the time of high mass to there offer a candle of a pound of wax, to ask the officer’s forgiveness, and say, That the word was false he said.” James Denman, having “blasphemed” a notary, has to ask his forgiveness, and to pay to the master of the Hospital twenty shillings to be given to the poor,—“and gif he be again apprehendit with the like, to be banishit the burgh a year and a day.”
John Robertson and his wife had slandered Katrine Butcher. John sung very small in Court,—“revokit his allegance as nocht of veritie, and he knows nocht of Katrine but honour.” John’s wife appears to have first uttered the slander in “flyting,” and she and he were “adjudgit to come instantly to the Mercat Cross, and there ask Katrine’s forgiveness upon their knees: and gif the wife be funden by day or nicht blasphemin any man or woman, she will be banishit the burgh.”