New Aberdour without entering upon the disputed question of the status of the occupants of such lands in earlier times. They may or may not originally have been "free" tenants. Judging from the history of land tenure on the continent of Europe, it seems not improbable that the status of the tenant was subject to frequent fluctuations, and that as well there were variations in the customary law and in the practice in different places at the same period.1 Wide generalisations about the prevalence of any one type of landholding at a particular time are therefore to be distrusted. The characteristic of the New Aberdour villager was his occupancy of (a) a village lot sufficient for a house and its appurtenances and a garden, all held on a ninetynine years' lease; (b) four "riggs" or unenclosed fields divided from one another and from the neighbouring "riggs" by unploughed spaces of the width of two ploughshares, the "riggs" being each one-half of the width of the village lot; two "riggs" were situated behind the garden and separated from it by a lane which ran parallel to the village street, while the remaining two "riggs" were situated behind the others and usually separated from them by a transverse uncultivated strip, the "riggs" being held on the same tenure as the village lot and being inseparable from it; (c) pastures usually in more than one place in the village lands and consisting altogether of about seven acres in the hands of each tenant, these lands being held on a nineteen years' renewable lease and being redistributed on the expiry of a term. In addition, the villager had rights of cutting peat in the "moss," a lot in the moss being allocated to each tenant. The most important of these features are the "open field" (the "riggs" or infield not being fenced), the long lease of the "riggs" and the village lot, which gave great stability to the community, and the periodical redistribution of the outfields which in time gave every tenant family an equal opportunity in respect to the quality of the pasture land. The plan of the village showed the perfect regularity of the "riggs," and the somewhat wide distribution of the pastures occupied by the same tenant. The "riggs" were usually cultivated in the following

'I have given an account of such fluctuations and variations in the case of Russia in my Economic History of Russia (London, 1914), vol. i. passim.

'Comparison may be made between the case of New Aberdour as briefly described above and that of the village of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, described by Mr. Seebohm in his English Village Community (London, 1884). The advantage of studying the system in New Aberdour is that in its essential features it was in full operation within the memory of living persons. I am informed by the factor of the Brucklay Estate that the system has been altogether changed. He is not aware of the date at which the change took place. Probably the system altered gradually as tenants' leases expired.

rotation: oats, barley, fallow or clover. Potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables were sometimes grown upon the whole or a portion of a "rigg." Young stock was tethered on the stubble, or allowed under the care of a herd to graze over the whole of the village field.

The village is situated on the Brucklay Estate belonging to the Dingwall Fordyce family. With the exception of the two inns, the village houses in the fifties were all built of turf and thatched. About 1863 the first two-storied slated stone house was built. The houses consisted of a "but " and a "ben." The "but" was the kitchen and general living-room. There was a large open fireplace with a "crane." Opposite the fireplace was a recess containing a bed. The "ben" sometimes contained a similar recess with a bed; but otherwise it was furnished as a parlour into which distinguished guests might be brought. The "shop" where the occupant practised his craft, if he had one, was usually alongside the kitchen and was entered from it. Each village house had behind it a yard in which were the byre, sometimes a pen for pigs, a small dairy, a shed or tool-house for the implements of the farm and garden, and the peat stack. Peat is a rapidly burning fuel and a supply of it occupies approximately four times as much space as would be required by coal sufficient for the same heating service.

The village was highly self-contained. All the primitive industries were represented. Carpenter, smith, saddler, weaver, and shoemaker supplied everything that was necessary. None of these made for stock. They only made to order. Each of these craftsmen had his land and he worked at his craft when occasion demanded. Wool was spun in nearly every house, and the weaver wove the wool so spun into the wincey from which the clothes of the women were made by themselves. There was no tailor, and the clothing of the men was either obtained at Fraserburgh, which is the nearest town or was made by the women. Ready-made clothing was unknown. On Sundays and at funerals the older men wore frock-coats, a single coat lasting a lifetime. For such goods as were imported into the village-tea, sugar, salt and the finer cloths 1-there were two "merchants." They also managed such exportation as there was. They took a calf, a "stirk" (a year old) or a pig in exchange for the goods they supplied and sold these in the Fraserburgh market. About 1895 a branch bank was established in the village; but in the sixties, to which period the above description applies, there was little need for such an institution.

1 Linen was not spun in Aberdour, so far as I am aware. In New Deer, flax was grown and linen was spun at an early period.

Very little actual coin changed hands. The "merchants" had running accounts with everybody, and the produce they obtained from their customers balanced accounts periodically. The people exchanged commodities, especially meat, with one another, for it was not economical for a small household to kill animals for merely domestic consumption. They usually arranged beforehand for the distribution of a carcass, and they shared with others when they killed. There was a village mill of early date. I am not aware whether or not in recent times there was any obligation upon the tenants of the village lands to have their grain ground at the village mill. Probably such an obligation existed at an earlier period. I have seen in the yards of several of the houses, the "quorn" or hollowed stone for grinding grain in small quantities, although I do not recollect having ever seen it in use. There were baking ovens in more than one house; but owing to the skill of one woman who had learned to bake in Fraserburgh, the villagers in general purchased their bread from her for cash or exchanged it for flour or other commodities.

Itinerant vendors of fish and of ribbons and the like made periodical visits, carrying the gossip of the country. In general little was bought, the individual household production, supplemented as described, sufficed for the simple wants of the people. The soil was fertile, enriched by animal manure, well cultivated, and there was a due rotation of crops. Vegetables and fruit were grown in the garden. Like the people of early England, the village folk were fond of spice; but that was easily obtained from mustard which grew in every garden, the seeds being ground in a bowl by means of a solid iron ball about three and a half inches in diameter. Mineral oil was not in use. Light was obtained either from tallow candles or from rush lights in the "cruisie.”1 The universal fuel was peat. The peat was cut, piled at the "moss,' and left there until it parted with some of its moisture, and then drawn either by peat barrow or by cart to the village where it was piled in a stack at the back of the house. The moss was about two miles from the village. My acquaintance with the village began before 1860, and such were the conditions at that date as they had been from time immemorial and as they continued to be for many years afterwards. I have not visited the village since 1880, when I went to attend the funeral of my grandmother.

In the early sixties, society in the village was divided into two well-marked groups-these were the members and adherents of the

1 An iron lamp of a pattern prevalent in the north of Scotland and in Orkney and Shetlands.

Church of Scotland "as by law established," and those of the Free Church. There was a solitary Baptist, a woman who was not a native of the village. No other sect was represented. The controversies of the Disruption of 1843 were still warm. To my mind these ecclesiastical disputes at once arose out of and contributed to the growth and wide distribution of intellectual activity among the common people of Scotland. The series of controversies culminating in the Disruption disseminated widely a serious habit of thought upon fundamental ideas of the character and functions of the State as well as of the limits of governmental authority and those of the liberty of communities within the nation. The arguments for and against interference in spiritual affairs by the "civil magistrate" (by which phrase was meant the total of magisterial power exercised by executive government and judiciary) were presented in every pulpit and discussed at every fireside. The Moderates defended the State and the Frees defended the Church. It was the old quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope. Two irreconcilable rights divine crossed one another. The Ghibellines and the Guelphs had come to life again in the Scots villages. Recondite and difficult aspects of Erastianism were threshed out in their own way by artisans in the towns and by labourers in the rural districts. The women became ardent partisans. The evangelical point of view fell into the background although there were evangelicals like MacCheyne and the Bonars in the Free Church who expressed that point of view fully. In the Established Church, moderatism or doctrinal toleration was predominant, if not universal. The marrow of the dispute was not religious, it was essentially political. It was a question of the government of the Church in its relation to the government of the State. The question was in the field of political science rather than in that of theology. Such a subject cannot be discussed without some knowledge of fundamental things in the history and theory of politics, and the people, under the influence of the ecclesiastical crisis, threw themselves into the study of these, perhaps without adequate educational preparation, but with an ardour which largely compensated for that absence.1

2

Lord Morley quotes what he well describes as a "deep saying" from a passage by Mark Pattison to the effect that what is important

1 Dr. Figgis was, I believe, the first to detect in the ecclesiastical disputes of Scotland an important contribution to those perennial controversies. Cf. his instructive Studies in Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414-1625 (Cambridge, 1907). He was followed by H. J. Laski in his Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (Newhaven, Conn., U.S.A., 1917).

Recollections (London, 1917), vol. i. p. 72.

to know, in any age, our own included, is not its peculiar opinions, but the complex elements of that moral feeling and character in which, as in their congenial soil, opinions grow. In the case in question, the really important matter was not the controversy, nor its consequences in the narrow sense, but the quality of the mind and character of the people among whom the controversy arose, and only in so far as the controversy throws light upon these is it of substantial importance. Not merely an enthusiasm for dialectics, quite properly regarded as a characteristic of the Scot, but more importantly a passion for liberty, and in especial, in this case, for the liberty of the religious group, and a determination to resist the domination of the State was at the foundation of the Scots revolt against Erastianism. This revolt was the outcome of a deeply-rooted habit of mind which rejects smoothing over difficulties by the specious plan often suggested in America of "getting together." To the Scots mind, not "getting together," but getting decisively separate on fundamental contradictions, is the right plan. It is the Scots habit to meet difficulties, not to gloze them over.1 Brougham, who understood nothing of the Scots point of view,2 told the Scots ministers, "If you wear the collar of the State, you must bark as the State bids you." He made the Scotsmen furious. Their bark, at least, was their own. If statesmen chose to direct it, they knew neither their business nor the limits of the power of the State. Individual liberty was not directly at issue in the Disruption controversy. This issue was delimitation of jurisdictions of two authorities, not delimitation of jurisdiction of either authority in respect to individual liberty.

Chalmers puts the case with precision in two sentences:

"The great battle with us is for the privileges of the Church, as a self-acting and self-regulating body in all things ecclesiastical."

"In things ecclesiastical, the Church should be the uncontrolled mistress of her own doings.'

While individual liberty was thus not the point at issue in the Disruption controversy, limitation of the authority of the State aimed at by the Disruption was nevertheless in the interests of individual liberty, and therefore the passion for liberty was aroused and was the source of the driving power of the people behind the ecclesiastics.

1 This accounts, e.g., for the failure of Arminianism and Methodism to effect any serious lodgment in Scotland, and for the enthusiasm for Calvinism.

. Brougham was born and educated in Edinburgh; but he went to London in 1803 and remained there.

'Chalmers, Thomas, Remarks on the Present Position of the Church of Scotland (Glasgow, 1839), p. 47.