�FOR HIS INTEREST’? WOMEN, DEBT AND COVERTURE IN EARLY MODERN SCOTLAND

Cathryn Spence

On 24 February 1629, George Reid and Isabel King, his wife, were ordered by the Burgh Court of Edinburgh to pay £6 10s. to James Graham and his wife, Agnes Johnston, for cloth.^[535] While this case is largely unremarkable - in that it is just one of hundreds of debt cases entered into the burgh’s Register of Decreets for 1629 - it does highlight an important aspect of the networks of debt and credit that existed in Edinburgh in the early modern period.

The presence of wives in debt litigation raises a number of questions. First, to what extent was the doctrine of coverture actively practised in early modern Scot­land? Second, how did it affect the role of wives in debt transactions? Third, what economic roles were available to wives in Scotland, as elucidated through debt cas­es? This essay will demonstrate, quantitatively and qualitatively, that wives were ac­tive participants in both household and business debt transactions.

Women and Debt Litigation in Early Modern Scottish Towns

Edinburgh was, in this period, the largest, busiest and most influential town in Scot­land, and its population grew from an estimated 12,000 people in 1560 to over 25,000 by 1640.^[536] Edinburgh was twice the size of Dundee or Aberdeen, the next largest towns in Scotland during this period, and slightly larger than the Irish capital, Dublin, and the major English provincial centres of Norwich and Bristol.^[537] Haddington and Lin­lithgow were smaller centres situated within reach of Edinburgh. Haddington lies thirty-two kilometres (twenty miles) to the east of Edinburgh, while Linlithgow is located thirty-two kilometres to the west of Edinburgh. While smaller than Edin­burgh, Haddington and Linlithgow were nevertheless significant market centres for the still smaller communities which surrounded them. Much as Edinburgh served as a draw for people from communities like Haddington and Linlithgow, Haddington and Linlithgow in turn attracted people from their own hinterlands.

In total, this essay draws upon over 50,000 court records including the Regis­ter of Decreets for Edinburgh, the Register of Deeds for Edinburgh and the Burgh Court Registers of Haddington and Linlithgow.^[538] All three courts were attended by members of the immediate community, who could use the court to sue their neigh­bours or those from other communities. These courts were mainly concerned with determining the legal responsibility of individuals for debts, but also dealt with cases of slander, relations between landlords and tenants, transactions involving property, and marriage contracts. The Register of Deeds for Edinburgh exists for the entire eighty years under study, 1560 to 1640. The Register of Decreets for Edinburgh is somewhat less continuous, surviving from 1581 to 1583 and 1589 to 1592, and then becoming continuous from 1598. Although a note in the first volume of the decreets

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

describes it as a �narrative of imprisonment', the court only ordered debtors to pay their creditors, with further actions, such as punishments, beyond the remit of the court. Similarly, the majority of entries in the burgh court records of Haddington and Linlithgow are debt-related, with some additional entries concerning matrimo­nial contracts and crime. Haddington's court records are extant from 1571, while Linlithgow's are extant from 1580. Debts recorded in all three communities ranged from only a few shillings to hundreds of pounds. Debts were most often incurred for the sale of drink and food, the rental of property, or the loan of money.

The recording of debt litigation in these records is both terse and fairly formu­laic. The majority of cases deal with successful actions (the debtor is ordered by the bailies, or officers, of the court to pay the creditor a certain amount of money), but some cases in which a defendant was absolved of a debt were also recorded.

Women, when considered as a whole, maintained a strong presence as both creditors and debtors in Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries (see Table 9.1). In fact, the percentage of cases that name married women in each of these three Scottish communities is higher than that found in any other study of Britain or northern Europe for the medieval and early modern periods.^[539] Within these communities, it was the women in Edinburgh who were most active - or recorded as being most active - as debt­ors and creditors. One reason for this is that Edinburgh women simply contracted debts more often. Edinburgh's position as Scotland's premier town offered greater opportunities to purchase, sell, or rent goods and services. Edinburgh's larger size and population, as well as its appeal to immigrants and frequent turnover of popu­lation, relative to Haddington and Linlithgow, might also have necessitated a more

stringent process for the recording of small debts, rather than a simple agreement between friends or neighbours, to ensure that those debts were repaid.

Table 9.1. Cases with Female Creditors and Debtors in Edinburgh, Haddington, and Linlithgow, 1560-1640

Source: ECA, SL234/1/2, 4-12, 14, 16, ECA, Register of Diets, 1606-22; NRS, B22/8/1-31; NRS, B30/10/3-13; NRS, B48/8/1-11.

While the percentages in Table 9.1 clearly show that women were participating in these economies, more information can be gleaned by breaking down these per­centages into different classifications of women. This allows the differing legal sta­tuses of wives, widows and servants to be taken into consideration. A fourth cat­egory, designated as �Other’, acts as a catch-all category for those women featured in the records who were identified by another designation or by no designation at all. It is possible, and even likely, that some women entered into this category were wives, widows or servants, but this cannot be proven. Table 9.2 thus illustrates that wives were, on average, the most common group of women to appear as creditors and debtors in court in Edinburgh and Haddington. (In Linlithgow, women in the �Other’ category were the most common, highlighting what was likely a difference in the record keeping for Linlithgow, whereby clerks were less likely to record the marital or occupational status of those who appeared in court.) The presence of so many wives acting as litigants in Edinburgh and Haddington is striking because, as we will see, the doctrine of coverture made the recording of wives theoretically unnecessary in litigation cases.

Table 9.2. Number and Percentage of Cases Featuring Female Creditors or Debtors in Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow, 1560-1640

Source: ECA, SL234/1/2, 4-12, 14, 16; ECA, Register of Diets, 1606-22; NRS, B22/8/1-31; NRS, B30/10/3-13; NRS, B48/8/1-11.

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

The Application of Coverture in Early Modern Scotland

To date, no studies have focused upon coverture in pre-modern Scotland and relatively few works have discussed women's roles in Scottish debt and credit networks.

The reason that the numbers from both Aberdeen and this study are surpris­ing is that upon her marriage in early modern Scotland, a woman gave up her independent legal persona.^[542] Due to this loss of persona, wives could not act legally without their husband's consent, whether contracting or pursuing a debt, acting as a cautioner, or making a testament (although married women were allowed to retain control of their personal items, typically identified in a testament as a woman's �ornaments and abulzements').^[543] The ability of a woman to engage freely in debt litigation was thus theoretically dependent upon her stage in the lifecycle, and specifically whether or not she was married. Sir James Balfour, a sixteenth­century Scottish judge and politician, noted in his Practicks under �Materis con­cerning the husband and the wife':

Ane woman beand cled with ane husband may not be callit, nor persewit in judgment, in ony civil action or cause, except hir hus­band in likewayis be callit and persewit to fortifie, assist and au­thorize hir... In like maner scho may not persew in ony action or cause without hir husbandis consent.^[544]

Wives could thus not pursue actions without the consent of their husbands, and were required to appear in court (if an obligation reached the point where it re­quired legal intervention) with their husbands. Further, Balfour notes that �Gif di­vers and sindrie persounis persew conjunctlie ony summondis or cause, and ane of thame be a woman cled with ane husband, and the summondis be not intendit and persewit at his instance, for his interes, scho may not persew the samin with­out avise of hir husband' (my italics).^[545] It was thus imperative that a wife either had the consent of her husband, or that he stand up in court with her.

While coverture curtailed certain legal freedoms, it did arguably benefit wives in some ways. A husband was responsible for his wife's debts, even those that had been contracted prior to the marriage, and for any misdemeanours committed by her.^[546] A wife was also entitled to be supported by her husband until death or divorce.^[547] Sir James Dalrymple, a seventeenth-century Scottish lawyer and judge, noted that �the aliment or furnishing of the wife is a debt of her husband's (not only for what is given by merchants and others hoc homine in the husband's life, but even her mournings after his death)’.^[548]

Although Scottish law in this period did not allow wives to sue or be sued in­dependently of their husbands, Scottish legal custom did allow wives to be named in debt cases. As was the case in England, particular Scottish burghs had distinct customary laws that governed a number of issues raised in their courts in matters such as debt litigation. These customary laws could recognize the necessity that wives be able to make certain transactions without the explicit permission of their husbands. Unlike England, there is no evidence that customary law in Scotland went so far as bestowing a designation similar to femme sole to denote married women who had received special permission to trade under their own names, rather than under the cover of their husbands.^[549] Still, Scottish wives were not completely prevented from engaging with networks of debt and credit. Instead, a wife, �in her domestic role as the person in charge of her master's establishment, was said to be praepositura negottus domesticis', which allowed her to pledge her

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Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

husband's credit for â€?household necessities suitable to his station'.^[550] However, this designation is only infrequently invoked in the records. One such rare occasion was on 13 April 1616, when Elizabeth Nicolson, the widow of John Aslowane, a merchant, was ordered to pay to David Junkin, a merchant, £47 7s. 4d. in com­plete payment of merchandise bought by Elizabeth from David as â€?praesposita negottus mariti sui'.^[551] This indicates that John was still alive when the merchandise was bought, but Elizabeth was permitted to make the purchase. In this, a Scottish wife's access to her husband's credit seems to have functioned in a similar manner to the so-called â€?law of necessaries' in England. This â€?law of necessaries' or â€?law of agency’, as it is variously known, has been used by Margot Finn and Joanne Bailey in their studies of women in England c.1660-1860 to argue that wives were not to­tally constrained by coverture and could (and did) engage in a range of economic activities.^[552] For example, Finn argues that the small claim courts that form the basis for her study â€?traditionally recognized and accepted the evidence of married women as their husband's agents'.^[553]

In the Scottish burgh courts examined for this essay, husbands were invariably named alongside their wives in debt cases, although it is possible that the husband appeared in name only and was not physically present with his wife in court.^[554] Al­though women identified as wives are never recorded as appearing without their husbands, men known to be husbands (often because they have elsewhere ap­peared in a case with their wife, or their wife has been named in the explanation for the debt) did act in cases without their wives. This suggests that when wives are named in cases with their husbands there is more to their presence than simply identifying another debtor who can be pursued in the event of the death, disap­pearance or other defaulting of the husband.

When a wife appears with her husband in court, it is important to look closely at the explanation for the debt to determine who exactly it was that contracted the debt and whether the wife was active in the transaction, complicit with her husband, or if the husband was the active party and the wife merely present. Most commonly, both partners acted together to contract the debt, and thus both partners are named in the explanation for the debt. An example of this is a case concerning Thomas Scott, a beer brewer, and Marjorie White, his spouse, who on 20 July 1622 were ordered to pay to John Bourdone, a merchant, and Margaret Lowes, his spouse, £7 7s. 2d. in complete payment of merchandise bought by one couple from the other.^[555] There

Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe are also examples in the records where a husband and wife appear together in a debt case, and the next debt case following directly after features only the husband, obvi­ously acting without his wife. In the vast majority of cases where only one partner is named in the explanation for a debt that has been transacted by a married couple, it is the wife whose role as the principal actor in the debt is stated; only very rarely is the husband identified as the principal actor in a debt case that names both a hus­band and a wife. For example, when John Wilkie of Haddington was ordered to pay George Blackburn and Helen Johnston, spouses, £5 5s. on 21 July 1635, the reason for the debt was given as for clothing bought by him from her at the previous feast of Michaelmas.^[556] Thus, when the Scottish records explicitly state that it was the wife alone who acted as a creditor or debtor, or as a buyer or seller, it seems reasonable to assume that the wife was acting alone, but had (or was assumed to have had) the explicit or tacit permission of her husband.

Desbrisay and Sander Thomson have found that, in the Baillie Court of Aber­deen in the late seventeenth century, decreets involving a wife included not only the name of the husband, but also the phrase â€?for his interest', a stock phrase, â€?signaling both the nominality of the husband's role in the transaction and his legal responsibility for it’.^[557] They argue that readers of a debt case in which it ap­pears can infer that a husband, although named, was not actively a part of the deal. However, while the phrase â€?for his interest' was common in debt records for Aberdeen, this was not the case for debt records recorded in Edinburgh, Hadding­ton or Linlithgow earlier in the seventeenth century. In the debt cases analysed for this essay, very few used the phrase â€?for his interest', but neither was there any indication as to why some scribes chose to employ this phrase and others did not. Further, rather than being a phrase which was employed only by husbands ap­pearing in court with their wives, there are also instances in the Edinburgh debt records of a woman being named â€?for her interest' in a case. Isabel Drew, a widow, appeared in a case â€?for her interest', in which she was owed money by another widow. Helen Scarlett owed Isabel £36. However, Isabel, in turn, owed George Duncan, a merchant burgess, £170.^[558] In such cases, where a debt was owed by one person to another, and that creditor in turn owed a debt to a third party, â€?for his interest' or â€?for her interest' was often employed when identifying the first party to whom money was owed and who was also a debtor him- or herself, whether the two debts involved three men, three women, or a combination of men and women. â€?For his interest' or â€?for her interest' therefore denoted legal responsibility for a debt, but not solely between husbands and wives. Rather, this responsibility and burden of awareness also existed between other debtors and creditors.

This does not mean that cases which did not use the phrase �for his interest' involved wives who were engaging passively, rather than actively, in these debts. In many cases that did not use this phrase, wives had clearly initiated the debts for which they would later appear in court with their husbands. This is borne out in

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland numerous examples, such as a case from 1600 which featured Steven Bannatyne and Agnes Clavie, his spouse, as the debtors, and Elspeth Howson and Alexander Wardlaw, her spouse, as the creditors. The debtors were ordered to pay the credi­tors £19 10s. in remuneration for money paid by Elspeth for Steven (at his com­mand) to another man, Alexander Livingston, for four barrels of beer bought by Steven from Alexander at the feast of the previous Martinmas.^[559] The case does not explain why Steven requested Elspeth pay for his beer, nor why Elspeth complied, but it is clear by whom and to whom the money was owed. It is also clear that de­spite the fact that Elspeth's husband was named he was not part of the deal.

In numerous cases, the explanation for the debt case specifically indicates that the debt referred to goods or services prepared and provided by the wife alone. In two cases that appeared before the court on 12 October 1613, couples were ordered separately to pay money to Janet Liberton, wife of a locksmith, for ale.^[560] Although Janet's husband was a locksmith, and therefore presumably had no part in the transaction, the phrase â€?for his interest' does not appear. Similarly, on 21 January 1613, David Granger was ordered to pay £5 16s. 8d. to Bessie Darling, wife to Alexander Borthwick, in complete payment of nine and a half quarters of green cloth which he had bought from her. In another case, entered in the Edinburgh Register of Decreets on 6 June 1622, Adam Rea, one of the Edinburgh town guard, was ordered to pay to Eupham Mark and John Kers, her spouse, £3 3s. â€?in complete payment of ale and lent money furnished and lent by her to him two years ago'.^[561] The wording of the explanation for both debts, as well as the fact that John, Eupham's husband, is identified in the case as an officer, makes it clear that it was Bessie who sold the cloth and Eupham who was engaged in the practice of making ale and lending money, both independently of their husbands. That so many wives appeared in transactions with their husbands indicates that it was routine practice for wives to contract debts on their own and then act with their husbands in debt litigation. The presence of these wives did not require a special explanation in the records.

Shennan Hutton demonstrates that it was quite common in fourteenth-cen­tury Ghent for husbands and wives to appear together in court swearing to pay debts, as does Matthew Stevens for early fourteenth-century London.^[562] Hutton suggests that creditors preferred to have both spouses perform the legal act and thus share the liability. The same may have been true in Scottish burgh courts, given the number of wives recorded. The naming of a wife must have sometimes been a form of insurance on the part of the creditor. If a debtor died while still owing a debt, the debt died with him or her, and the creditor could not pursue the debtor's executors through court if the deceased's debts outweighed their credits.^[563]

Conversely, by naming both a husband and wife in a debt as creditors, the credit­ing party was assured that either party could continue to pursue a debt in the event the other died. Otherwise, under customary law, a person could not appear in court on behalf of another. While a husband could make his wife his �cessioner and assignory', which allowed her to continue to pursue his debts after his death, this was a much more formal and all-encompassing arrangement.^[564] Day-to-day debt transactions did not use it.

One final indication as to which half of the marital partnership had contracted the debt can be found in the margins of the court book. There, the surnames of the principal actors in the case were recorded for ease of reference. Desbrisay and Sander Thomson found in their investigation of debts entered into the Aber­deen Baillie Court in the 1680s that such marginalia tended to only include the wife's name when the debt had been contracted by her alone.^[565] Evidence from the debt litigation consulted for this study indicates that, while the surnames of both spouses appeared in the marginalia, in cases where the wife was the principal ac­tor her name tended to appear first, above her husband's. Some examples of only the wife's surname appearing in the margins do exist, but these are infrequent.

The Scottish records are also careful to record when a debt was contracted by a widow or single woman prior to a subsequent marriage, as in the case of the debt for £6 owed by Marion Bannatyne, a widow who had remarried, to Henry Bannatyne, a lawyer. The case made clear that Marion was a widow at the time the debt had been contracted but that her new husband was aware of it and accepted responsibility for it. He appeared in the case â€?for his interest', as did another man, whom Marion had recruited as her â€?cautioner' for the debt.^[566] Similarly, Christian Furd and James Sinclair, â€?now her spouse', appeared in the court because Chris­tian owed £16 to a merchant for the maill (rent) of a house occupied by Janet Henryson. The explanation for the debt stated that Christian had, in June 1612 when she was still a widow, become surety for the debt of maill owed by Janet to the merchant. In these cases, wives were not acting without their husbands, but had committed these actions before they had married. While their husbands had taken on the legal responsibilities for the couples' finances, these wives still ap­peared in court to answer for their debts.^[567]

Wives' Economic Roles

Now that it has been established that a close reading of the debt records of Ed­inburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow can often indicate which debts were con­tracted by wives, it is possible to explore the economic roles these women played. Moreover, the number of cases that name wives provide an impressive sample size, despite the informality of small-scale lending and the veil of coverture. As

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

Table 9.2 illustrated, wives were named in over one-third of the more than 37,500 debt cases entered into the records for Edinburgh-based courts between 1590 and 1640, one-fifth of the cases entered into the records for Haddington between 1570 and 1640, and one-tenth of the cases entered into the records for Linlithgow be­tween 1580 and 1640. Many of these debt cases feature wives provisioning their households, but others saw them directly involved in large-scale enterprises.

Debts were typically pursued by creditors identified as wives for six distinct reasons, which were, in order of prevalence, drink, food, house rent (maill), lent money, cloth and merchandise, or a combination of two or more of these. The first of these, drink, includes all types of alcoholic beverages (ale, beer, wine, and aqua vitae), non-alcoholic beverages (milk), and those items which were used in the preparation of alcoholic beverages (malt, which was necessary for brewing ale, and draff, which was a by-product of brewing ale). Food consists of all types of food stuffs, including bread products, grain products and animal products. Maill refers to all amounts of money due for the rentals of houses, shops, chambers or beds. Lent money includes all amounts of money identified as being borrowed or lent by one person to another. Cloth refers to all amounts and types of cloth bought by one person from another, whether that cloth was simply an amount of cloth, or had been turned into clothing. Finally, merchandise might have been en­tered into debt cases specifically as �merchandise’ or as a certain type of merchan­dise, including tobacco, tar, apothecary wares and cramery wares,^[568] which were bought less frequently than other items and due to their scarcity in the records can be dealt with under the catch-all term �merchandise’. Some of the smaller-value debts incurred by married women resulted from provisioning the household. In these debts, while the husband was named with his wife in the case, it was cer­tainly a form of clerical convention, rather than indicating that small amounts of food, drink and cloth were purchased jointly by husband and wife. The negotia­tion of these everyday debts seems to fall under something akin to the English �law of necessaries’, as previously discussed. Additionally, debts were contracted for unspecified �necessaries’ and �furnishings’, as well as for the provision of ser­vices, including work done by tailors, schoolmasters, washerwomen, and various people in the �burding [boarding] and entertainment’ of children.^[569] Some of these debts were for significant amounts of money, indicating the participation of wives across the socio-economic spectrum.

Whether wives were appearing in these cases as debtors or creditors in these transactions is an important factor in understanding their specific roles. As Table

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9.3 illustrates for Edinburgh, wives were slightly more likely to appear as creditors rather than debtors. However, this did not hold true for all women; widows were more likely to appear as debtors. This was perhaps because wives might be named as creditors in transactions both for items produced by themselves and for those produced by their husbands. Thus, while wives and widows incurred similar debts in provisioning their households, widows had fewer opportunities to act as credi­tors. At the least, the presence of wives in these records shows wives, regardless of their legal position, demonstrating a vested interest in their families' economic dealings and sufficient agency to warrant a place in the courts. However, many of these cases show wives actively participating in these transactions as the primary creditors or debtors. As creditors, they sold a variety of items, including cloth, wine and books. As debtors, they purchased materials for home consumption or to use in a variety of businesses.

A large number of these cases, like the case presented at the beginning of this essay, named one couple as owing another couple. However, the reasons for these debts often identify the wives as those who were active in the case. It is thus likely that Scottish wives played a more important role in these economic activities than these relatively reticent entries suggest. A case involving two married couples in Haddington on 26 November 1588 ordered Katherine White and George Bath­cat, her spouse, for his interest, to pay to Beatrix Mayne and George Ayton, her spouse, for his interest, £3 17s. of the rest of the cost of six firlottes of malt (used in ale production) bought by Katherine from Beatrix.^[570] This case thus shows one wife, Katherine, involved in procuring goods, while at the same time it shows that Beatrix was the one responsible for the actual sale of these goods. Both economic roles are clearly visible.

Table 9.3. Women's Roles as Creditors and Debtors in Edinburgh, 1589-92, 1598-1640

Source: ECA, SL234/1/2, 4-12, 14, 16; ECA, Register of Diets, 1606-22; NAS, B22/8/1-31.

The involvement of wives in the purchase and sale of cloth, wine and ale, as well as the practice of money-lending, is particularly evident from debt litigation.^[571] These activities go well beyond the law of necessaries. Instead, they are clearly indicative of fields of work in which these wives were engaged. We will address each of these economic endeavours in turn. The first of these creditor activities, the sale of cloth, could be a lucrative one. Katherine Culan and James Haliburton, her spouse, were found to owe £87 to Frances Irving on 25 May 1605 in complete

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

payment of £687 for English cloth bought in May 1603 and a further £127 worth of cloth bought in February 1604.^[572] Elizabeth Stevenson, who died in December 1569, was obviously quite extensively involved in the cloth industry with her hus­band, Alexander Park, who was himself one of Edinburgh’s leading merchants in the latter half of the sixteenth century.^[573] The inventory of Elizabeth’s testament contains a long list of various amounts and types of cloth, including serge, red and black velvet, black and purple satin, and red, green, yellow and purple taffeta. All together, the inventory of her goods was valued to the amount of £3,310 14s. 5d. This sum jumped to an impressive £12,263 16s. 6d. when the debts owing to her - which included a variety of debts owed by tailors who had likely purchased the cloth Elizabeth and her husband were bringing to Edinburgh - were factored in.^[574] Elizabeth’s inventory therefore indicates that she was very much involved in the import and export of cloth during this period, and, in general, the women who were most extensively involved in the import of cloth and imported the greatest volumes and varieties of luxury cloth into Scotland also tended to be those who were married to the richest and most prominent merchant burgesses in the burgh. That these women produced such detailed testaments and were able, in some cas­es, to bequeath the tools of their business (for example, the share of a ship) to their children indicates the active roles they played in the import and export of cloth, both in concert with their spouses and independently.^[575]

The import and sale of wine was another area in which wives were actively en­gaged. Andrew Lawson and Isabel Tailpheir, his spouse, were found to owe Isabel Cockburn and Alexander Bains, her husband, who was also a skipper in Leith, £50 in 1609 for a puncheon of wine.^[576] Bains’s position as a skipper may indicate that he was engaged in overseas trade. As his wife, Isabel may have controlled the sale of the items, including wine, he imported. In 1612, James Nisbet and Marion Arnot, his spouse, were owed £46 10s. by George Waldy, £280 10s. by William Fleabairn, a merchant, and £247 12s. by John Lamb, also a merchant, in complete payment of wine. That James and Marion sold large amounts of wine to other merchants indicates that they too were involved in the importation of wine and sold it whole­sale to others.^[577] On 3 April 1634 William Somervell, a merchant, was determined to owe Hector Purves, also a merchant, and Isabel Adair, his spouse, and Wil­liam Brown, their sub-factor, £215 for wine bought by William from Isabel half a year previously.^[578] The sale of the wine specifically by Isabel to William, as well as the mention of a factor, indicates that Hector was an overseas merchant who may not have been in Edinburgh when the wine was sold and may have trusted

its sale (and perhaps other sales also contracted during his absence) to his wife.^[579] Thus, while women may not have been active in the importation of wine as indi­viduals, they nevertheless participated in its control and sale with their merchant husbands once it arrived in port. These husbands and wives were responsible for, in turn, selling wine to a number of other married couples and widows. Many of those who purchased wine from these importers then sold or provided this wine to servants, who in turn sold it in smaller measures to customers in taverns and in the streets.^[580]

The role of wives in the sale of wine can also be examined through their roles as debtors. Isabel Talipher, with her husband appearing â€?for his interest, owed Alex­ander Pearson, a merchant, £130 for wine bought by her from him.^[581] George Ker, a tailor, and Marion Nemo, his wife, owed Archibald Tod, a merchant, £200 for a tun of wine.^[582] Large debts for large amounts of wine (barrels, casks, tuns, pipes, barykins, puncheons and butts) indicate that the individual or couple purchasing the wine intended to resell it.^[583] This resale was often done through servants, as the case concerning Janet Dickson illustrates. Janet was a servant to Andrew Naper and Katherine Henryson, his wife, in 1631. She owed the couple £210 17s. 4d. when the cost of the wine and beer they had provided to her to sell in their service was totted up.^[584]

When it came to the sale of ale and beer, which could be produced locally, wives often appeared as debtors in transactions concerned with the raw material, particularly malt or malted barley, and as creditors in transactions concerning the sale of the finished product. Wives were the group of women most likely to appear as debtors in a debt for malt, indicating that they were the women most likely to be involved in producing ale with that malt. Janet Trimble, who appeared in court with her husband on 10 December 1607 and was ordered to pay £9 10s. for a mask of malt bought by her from a Robert Brown, was likely the same Janet

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Trimble who later appeared acting alone (perhaps she was then a widow) and as a creditor in debts for ale.^[585]

The first step in making ale was to malt the grain (the beir) that would be brewed with the water. In late medieval and early modern England, the produc­tion and sale of malt was usually performed by men who would then use most of the malt in commercial brewing establishments and sell some to women who were brewing on a smaller scale.^[586] The same seems to have been true for Scotland in the medieval period, as the demands of time and space involved in malting required that it be pursued on a professional, rather than a piecemeal, basis.^[587] Edinburgh, for example, leased out common lands for large-scale malting opera­tions from 1508.^[588]4 The practice of professional maltmen selling malt to large- and small-scale ale producers was likely still in place in Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as the majority of debts for malt which were entered into the records feature a married couple owing money to a man identified in the debt records as a �maltman’.

Wives in all three communities were the most likely group of women to be engaged in the production of ale in the period under consideration. Again and again in the records, individual debt cases specifically identify the wife as the ac­tive creditor in cases concerning debts for ale and beer, even though her husband appears with her. Two cases entered into the Edinburgh Register of Decreets, one in 1599 and the other in 1606, help to illustrate this. In the first, Robert McClellan and Deborah Dalzell, his spouse, are discerned to owe Marion Porteous and John Hamilton, her spouse, forty-six merks for â€?ale furnished by Porteous to them at diverse times within these three years last’.^[589] In other words, Marion specifically furnished ale to Robert and Deborah not once but several times. In the second case, Agnes Lawson, the widow of Gilbert Skene, was discerned to owe Robert Thomson, a goldsmith, £60 for ale furnished by â€?Robert and Susanna Ferguson, his spouse, to the said [deceased] Gilbert and Agnes at diverse times since Martin­mas last’^[590] In this second case, Robert, the husband, is identified as a goldsmith.^[591] It is unlikely that he was also producing ale, and so it is logical to assume that Robert’s wife, Susanna, was the ale producer.

A number of factors contributed to this trend. Wives - and the wives of bur­gesses in particular - were considered by town authorities to be the most desirable type of women to engage in brewing. Married to members of the community of good standing, wives were perceived as less likely to engage in �unchaste’ behav­iours, or to tolerate in their employ women who engaged in such behaviours. This went hand-in-hand with similar desires and attempts to limit the employment op-

Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe tions open to widows, female servants, and other �masterless’ women who, if they were able to brew and sell ale, might be more likely to live independently, rather than in acceptable, male-headed households. Furthermore, wives - particularly those of elevated social standing - were in a better position to produce ale because they were able to hire servants to help them produce and disseminate it. A signifi­cant difference in the production of ale between Edinburgh and Haddington and Linlithgow, however, seems to have had little to do with marital status, and more to do with location. Wives were still the most active group of women engaged in the production of ale in Edinburgh, but it seems clear that women in Haddington and Linlithgow were more engaged with the production of ale for a longer period in time, thanks to evidence concerning not only the proportion of debts involving the sale of ale in these communities, but also the purchase of malt and beir, which were integral to the production, and the sale in these communities of draff, one of the by-products of the production of ale. Indeed, it seems clear that in Had­dington and Linlithgow women were more likely than women in Edinburgh to be involved in the production of ale in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but that women in Edinburgh were more involved in the sale of ale.

This involvement was not immune to change over time. As the commerciali­zation of ale progressed in the early seventeenth century, the role of wives in the sale of ale in Edinburgh changed. Whereas women had previously acted as the producers of ale for their families and communities, by producing ale for their families and selling the excess, with the introduction of hops into Scot­land ale could be produced on a larger, more commercial scale because it could be stored for longer. The majority of this large-scale production fell to men, and women were pushed out of ale production. In Edinburgh, in particular, the production of ale was controlled by the Society of Ale and Beer Brewers of the Burgh of Edinburgh, a public company established in 1596 for the purpose of making ale and beer on a large scale for the entirety of the burgh.^[592] Upon the establishment of this society, no other fellowship or society which brewed ale or beer was allowed to be established within the burgh, and no one except the members of the society were allowed to sell or buy the ale and beer produced by the society. Also, freemen and their wives were forbidden to sell ale or beer in quantities larger than a pint or a quart, under pain of a fine of £5.^[593] Given how completely women had dominated the brewing trades in the early part of the sixteenth century, the establishment of this society certainly had an impact on brewing carried out by women in Edinburgh. Michael Lynch has argued that â€?it probably did more than any single other act to undermine the economic status of women’.^[594] However, for a variety of reasons, the most pressing of which seems to have been the lack of profits for the sellers, the society was officially dissolved

Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland

in 1619 and its lands returned to the common good.^[595] The society's buildings were then leased to William Binny and Robert Livingston, maltmen, for seven years. In 1622, the lease was assigned to William Dick, who renewed the lease in 1632.^[596] Increasingly, throughout the late 1620s and into the 1630s, wives pur­chased large amounts of ale from William Dick and his factor, presumably for resale. One of these women was Helen Brown, who was evidently running an alehouse out of her home. On 16 July 1630, Helen, who was the wife of Robert Wilson, a wright, was, alone, determined to owe £257 15s. 8d. to John Monro (factor to William Dick) for the cost of certain barrels of ale and beer:

bought and received by me and my servants in my name at my com­mand furth of the said society [of Edinburgh] and laid in by their workmen within my cellar and publicly vented there by me and my servants in name of my said spouse and me at diverse sundry times preceding the date hereof [my italics].^[597]

Helen and her servants were explicitly identified as both the purchasers, and the resellers, of the ale and beer bought from the Society of Ale and Beer Brewers. Helen promised to pay the cost of the ale and beer by 11 November, together with 10 merks of annual rent for every 100 merks of the principal sum, along with the sum of 40 merks for expenses in case she failed to pay the said sum by the agreed day. Further, she presented herself as principal and David Brown, a saddler burgess, as her cautioner. It is clear that Helen's husband had no role in this deal beyond establishing that Helen was a married woman.

The records also show that money-lending was one of the most common en­deavours in which wives engaged.^[598] Debts categorized as â€?borrowed money', â€?lent money', â€?borrowed silver' and â€?lent silver' can be found throughout the records for this period. Sometimes these amounts were borrowed â€?on obligation' or â€?by bond', while others presented no such designation but did include a provision for the payment of a penalty if the repayment of the debt was late, or simply in addi­tion to the original sum. On 5 October 1630, for example, John Craig, a stabler, was identified as owing to Margaret Puill, the wife of Peter Watt, the sum of £30, with no further information entered with the case. John promised to repay the sum to Margaret by 1 May 1631, with 10 merks of â€?liquidate expenses', or penalty, indicating that this case did involve a loan of money.^[599] In 1639, Isabel Denholme,

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Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe the wife of Andrew Oswald, a merchant, was owed £26 13s. 4d. by one man for the annual rent on a loan of 1,000 merks, and £40 by another man for the annual rent on a loan of £1,000, indicating an interest rate on each loan of between 8 and 9 per cent and 4 per cent respectively.⁶⁶ Debts for money-lending made up approximately 30 per cent of all debts which wives in Edinburgh pursued or for which they themselves were pursued. Wives tended to act with their husbands when loaning out large amounts of money of £100 or more, and by themselves (although their husbands were named with them in the debt cases) when loaning out smaller amounts of money, as the explanations for many debts make clear.

Conclusion

Whether considering money-lending, brewing, the cloth trade, or the provision­ing of households, wives are clearly visible in the debt records of the burgh courts for Edinburgh, Linlithgow and Haddington between 1560 and 1640. As per the legal requirement, their husbands are always named alongside them. However, it is evident in the examples shown and in many other cases that wives appeared in court either as active partners with their husbands or because it was the wife who had actually incurred the debt. Additionally, the proportion of cases that name married women in these records is among the highest thus far noted for Britain or northern Europe in the pre-modern period. The simple clerical convention of naming wives in debt litigation allows us to see the economic visibility they enjoyed during this period. This is a visibility that is lost when consulting many similar records, but one that is evident for a broad range of economic activities in these three communities.

This notable presence of wives is reflective not only of their familial responsi­bilities, which required that they contract debts to purchase the necessities with which to provision their households, but also of their roles as producers and sell­ers of a variety of goods and services and perhaps as agents of their husbands. Within these roles, wives operated within court conventions to successfully nego­tiate their own economic endeavours. This implies a significant degree of agency in the lives of these women. Indeed, their economic activities extended far beyond the home, whether dealing with local markets or overseas merchants. While their status as women barred them from some lucrative economic roles in guilds and male-dominated industries, there were a number of economic spheres in which wives routinely operated, whether as individuals or in concert with their hus­bands. It is clear that, for the most part, marriage limited neither the actions nor the visibility of these women.

the bond and due, on the same date, with the original sum borrowed. It was not an annual rent or interest. See J. J. Brown, �The Social, Political, and Economic Influences of the Edinburgh Merchant Elite, 1600-1638', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1985, p. 238.

⁶⁶ NRS, CC8/8/59/266.

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