The Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Climate from Scottish Ecclesiastical Records, Environment...

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Environment and History 19 (2013): 487–509. © 2013 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096734013X13769033133747

The Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Climate from Scottish Ecclesiastical Records

AlAn R. MACdonAld

School of HumanitiesUniversity of DundeeNethergate, Dundee DD1 4HN, UKEmail: [email protected]

JoHn MCCAlluM

School of Arts and HumanitiesNottingham Trent UniversityClifton Lane, Nottingham NG1 8NS, UKEmail: [email protected]

AbSTRACT

This article argues that the records kept by Scottish church courts in the early modern period provide a rich and untapped source of information on histori-cal weather patterns. This is primarily because severe weather events caused disruption to court meetings, and the nature of the records means that fluctua-tions in weather can potentially be traced across a wide geographical range and for long periods of time. based on a sample of records from 1615–25, a period which included a known severe weather event, the flooding of Perth in 1621, the article provides quantitative and qualitative analysis of weather trends, drawing particular attention to an extended period of severe weather from 1619–22, of which the flooding of Perth was a part. It also identifies peri-ods that witnessed much less severe weather and identifies important regional variations in weather patterns which emerge from the study of church court records, in contrast to more traditional sources such as diaries and chronicles. The article thus demonstrates the value of this new methodology for climate history and points the way forward to future studies.

KEyWoRdS

Historical weather, church records, Scotland, climate impact

AlAn R. MAcdonAld and John MccAlluM488

Environment and History 19.4

IntroductIon

data on historical weather are notoriously difficult to obtain, the more so the further one goes back, and, before the eighteenth century, instrumental or delib-erate meteorological recordings are very limited, and often patchy or unreliable when they do exist.1 Even after this date, anecdotal evidence and material from historical sources not primarily concerned with weather are much valued by environmental historians and climate scientists as a supplement to, and check on, instrumental data even as late as the early twentieth century.2 For the period prior to the eighteenth century, there is a pressing need for documentary evi-dence on weather patterns. While some work has been done on early modern Scottish climate history using written evidence, the focus has been entirely on literary sources, especially diaries and journals, which are by their nature tied to one specific location, and to one individual’s lifetime (often much less). They are thus anecdotal and unhelpful for the long-run, spatially sensitive analysis required for climate history.3 This article argues that ecclesiastical re-cords can provide a solution to this problem.

The Protestant Reformation in Scotland created a system of church courts which, for reasons explained below, left records that provide our best chance for tracing weather conditions, and particularly severe weather events, which are often used as valuable markers of climate patterns, over large areas of Scotland from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. The data emerging from this project promise to give an unprecedented level of detail on early modern Scottish weather trends, evidence which should be of international importance given that such data are currently unavailable for most of seventeenth-century britain as well as Scotland and are very far from comprehensive for the rest of Europe. This should be of great interest to cli-mate scientists as well as environmental historians, since for all our detailed knowledge of very recent and current climate patterns and global warming, predictions about future patterns are very difficult and need to be based on information about past climate change, as noted by dr Peter Stott, Head of climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met office:

1. H.H. lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World (2nd edn, london: Routledge, 1995), pp. 74–77; rudolf Brázdil, christian Pfister, Heinz Wanner, Hans Von Storch and Jürg Luterbacher, ‘Historical climatology In Europe – the State of the Art’, Climatic Change 70 (2005): 363–430 at 372–73.

2. For an early twentieth-century project see www.oldweather.org (accessed 20 Feb. 2012). See also lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, pp. 80–9. Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’: 373.

3. These have most recently been utilised in a readable but non-specialist book: Alastair dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day: A History of Scotland’s Weather and Climate (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2009), but see also Graeme Whittington, ‘the Little Ice Age and Scotland’s Weather’, Scottish Geographical Journal 101 (1985): 174–78.

CLIMATE AND SCoTTISh ECCLESIASTICAL RECoRDS489


Historical weather data is vital because it allows us to test our models of the Earth’s climate … If we can correctly account for what the weather was doing in the past, then we can have more confidence in our predictions of the future.4

Equally, early modern historians – religious, social and economic – will ben-efit from information on the weather’s impact on churches, communities and, perhaps most importantly, on agriculture during a time when around ninety per cent of Scotland’s population lived in the countryside, and on human responses to that impact. Thus the evidence available in Scottish archives has potential value for a wide range of disciplines.

Historical climatologists have been aware of the value of a variety of un-published as well as published sources for tracing European weather patterns in the pre-industrial period. Recently this has included the use of administra-tive and bureaucratic records, as well as the more traditional chronicles and weather diaries.5 In the last twenty years, numerous studies have drawn on this evidence to produce valuable findings.6 these have refined our understanding of climatic shifts during a broad period all too easily and simplistically charac-terised as ‘the Little Ice Age’.7 However, imbalances in this body of research mean that the evidence presented here has the potential to contribute a unique and immensely valuable set of data to the field. the first and most obvious imbalance is geographical. Most published studies concentrate on mainland Europe, with particular emphases in Sweden and the baltic, central Europe and Spain.8 While comparably detailed research on Scotland is non-existent

4. http://www.universetoday.com/75640/new-galaxy-zoo-project-crowd-sources-old-climate-data/ (accessed 11 nov. 2011). See also P.d. Jones, T.J. osborn and K.R. briffa, ‘The Evolution of climate over the Last Millennium’, Science 292 (2001): 662–667; R. bradley, ‘Preface’ in c. Pfister, r. Brazdil and r. Glaser (eds.) Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and its Social Dimension (dordrecht: Springer, 1999), p. 1. documentary sources are referred to in the palaeoclimate section of the 2007 IPcc report on climate change: E. Jansen, J. overpeck et al. ‘Palaeoclimate’, in S. Solomon, d. Qin et al. (eds.) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge and new york: CuP, 2007).

5. For a survey of sixteenth-century evidence see c. Pfister, r. Brazdil, r. Glaser et al. ‘documentary Evidence on climate in Sixteenth-century Europe’, in Pfister, Brazdil and Glaser (eds.) Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe.

6. this is not the place for a review of such studies, but see Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’ for a very thorough and relatively up-to-date (2005) bibliography of European studies using all types of evidence. A more recent survey offers even more up-to-date coverage, although its emphasis is rather more on purely scientific studies using non-human evidence: P.d. Jones, K.R. briffa, T.J. osborn et al. ‘High-resolution Palaeoclimatology of the Last Millennium: a review of current Status and Future Prospects’, The Holocene 19 (2009): 3–49.

7. on this concept see lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, ch. 12; b.M. Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300–1850 (new york: basic, 2000).

8. L.Leijonhufvud, r.Wilson and A. Moberg, ‘documentary data as Proxy Variables for Stockholm Late Winter to Early Spring temperatures in the 18th and 19th centuries’, The Holocene 18 (2008): 333–43; l. leijonhufvud, R. Wilson et al. ‘Five Centuries of



for this period, it is also rare even for England, in spite of the very early sur-vival of instrumental temperature recordings, from 1659 onwards.9 In a recent substantial literature review, mentions of England or English studies mainly refer to that early instrumental temperature data, a few medieval studies and a late modern hydrological study.10 A major collection of papers on sixteenth-century European climate does not include any british studies, and mentions no british source material in its discussion of the available documentary and proxy runs.11 thus Scottish evidence could fill a substantial gap in our exist-ing knowledge for the period prior to the eighteenth century when richer data, including more widespread instrumental data, become available.

Equally importantly, existing studies tend to focus on one particular cli-matic variable, often only in one season. This is due to the nature of many of the types of evidence used: for example, records of Stockholm’s shipping provide evidence only on the extent of winter sea ice, while rogation records for Spain tell us primarily about rainfall (identified through floods and droughts).12 our sources provide information on a variety of weather types, including storms and high winds, precipitation (especially snow) and occasionally temperature, although they are admittedly weaker on milder weather conditions and slighter variations in weather patterns. This helps them to answer a recent call for a move away from a narrow focus on measurements of temperature and rainfall

Stockholm Winter/Spring Temperatures Reconstructed from documentary Evidence and Instrumental observations’, Climatic Change 101 (2010): 109–141; Pfister and Brazdil, ‘climatic Variability in Sixteenth-century Europe and its Social dimension: A Synthesis’ in Pfister, Brazdil and Glaser (eds.) Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe; F.S. Rodrigo, M.J. Esteban-Parra and y. Castro-diez, ‘on the use of the Jesuit order Private Correspondence Records in Climate Reconstructions: A Case Study from Castille (Spain) for 1634–1648 A.d.’, Climatic Change 40 (1998): 625–645; Martın-Vide and Barriendos, ‘the use of Rogation Ceremony Records in Climatic Reconstruction: a Case study from Catalonia (Spain)’, Climatic Change 30 (1995): 201–221, at 207. See also Barriendos’ subsequent study, ‘climatic Variations in the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Maunder Minimum (Ad 1675–1715): An Analysis of data from rogation ceremonies’, Holocene 7 (1997): 105–111; J. Mrgić, ‘Wine or raki: the Interplay of climate and Society in Early Modern Bosnia’, Environment and History, 17 (2011): 613–37.

9. The best Scottish study is dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day, although this is aimed at a gen-eral readership, spans from pre-history to the present day and relies on published sources for the early modern period.

10. Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’: 363, 368, 377, 384, 392, 430. For the temperature records, see G. Manley, ‘Central England Temperatures: Monthly Means 1659 to 1973’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 100 (1974): 389–405.

11. Pfister and Brazdil, ‘climatic Variability in Sixteenth-century Europe and its Social dimension: A Synthesis’ in Pfister, Brazdil and Glaser (eds.) Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe, pp. 9–10. one brief but fascinating 1966 study uses evidence of church collections for the victims of fires in order to supplement evidence from tree-rings to trace incidences of drought in seventeenth-century England: d.J. Schove, ‘Fire and drought, 1600–1700’, Weather 21 (September 1966): 311–314.

12. Leijonhufvud, Wilson et al. ‘Five centuries of Stockholm Winter/spring temperatures’; Martın-Vide and Barriendos, ‘the use of rogation ceremony records in climatic reconstruction’.



and towards more holistic and detailed reconstruction of atmospheric process-es.13 Church court records, crucially, cover the whole year, meaning that the focus is not, as is often the case elsewhere, solely on winter or summer. As a 2009 survey noted,

[d]ocumentary sources, by their very nature, will tend to emphasize extreme events, primarily in the winter and summer seasons and to a lesser extent spring, as these are the types of records that are more likely to have been recorded be-cause of their socio-economic relevance. Records indicating conditions in past autumns tend to be more rare.14

The often-neglected season of autumn is well represented in our evidence, which provides useful details on storminess in September–november.

As well as filling vital geographical, temporal and analytical gaps in our understanding of early modern climate, the evidence from church court records stands up reasonably well to the standards expected by historical climatolo-gists. this is vital since, as an influential 1978 article argued, written historical evidence has to be treated critically and very carefully in order to be taken seriously as climatological evidence.15 For example, a Spanish study cited le roy Ladurie’s requirements:

[d]ocumentary sources must satisfy four conditions before the information they contain can be used for the study of climatic effects. These four condi-tions are: that the series must be annual (with the information organised in a temporal sequence which can be easily dated), continuous (without gaps in the documentary records), homogeneous (having a similar content throughout) and quantifiable (containing information which can be processed statistically)16

Scottish church court records meet the first condition, since they are weekly, fortnightly or at worst monthly records. While there are some gaps in the records and variable start-dates, the coverage for the seventeenth century is relatively thorough by the standard of early modern archives and the sheer number of church courts across Scotland means that the impact of this problem can be lessened, although not entirely eliminated. Thirdly, the records are rela-tively homogeneous: although the interests and priorities of church courts in doctrine, ministerial oversight, moral discipline and other ecclesiastical regula-tion might change over time, it is not these matters, but disruption to the actual meetings, which provides the bulk of our evidence. From this perspective, the records are reasonably consistent. The records meet the fourth criterion less

13. Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’, pp. 386–87.14. Jones, Briffa, osborn et al. ‘High-resolution Palaeoclimatology of the Last Millennium’: 16.15. W.T. bell and A.E.J. ogilvie, ‘Weather Compilations as a Source of data for the Reconstruction

of European climate during the Medieval Period’, Climatic Change 1 (1978): 331–348.16. Barriendos and Martın-Vide, ‘Secular climate oscillations as Indicated by catastrophic

Floods in the Spanish Mediterranean coastal Area (14th–19th centuries)’, Climatic Change 38 (1998): 473–491 at 474, citing E. le Roy ladurie, Histoire du climat depuis l’an mil (Paris, 1967).



fully: quantification is difficult since the records do not contain a single or-dinal variable such as temperature or rainfall levels which can be precisely plotted over time or place. However, they do contain a variety of reasonably distinct data points (such as the numbers of severe weather events in a year), which are capable of some statistical analysis even if there must remain some imprecision.17 While all documentary sources present difficulties, and none provides an exact reconstitution of the weather as might be expected from a modern observation station, Scottish church court records offer a unique body of data from sources which compare well with the established requirements of the field.

ScotLAnd’S cHurcH courtS And tHE nAturE oF tHE EVIdEncE

Church court records might initially seem to be unlikely sources of data on weather and climate. But the unique combination of Scotland’s reformation and its geography means that its records are unusually rich in this area. From about 1580, Scotland’s presbyterian church polity18 was based around a hierar-chy of courts ranging from the kirk session at the level of the individual parish, through presbyteries and synods up to the General Assembly of the whole Church. The most important level for our study was the presbytery itself, which consisted of roughly ten to twenty parishes, covering an area smaller than most counties but incorporating numerous settlements and often covering large rural areas. These presbyteries would meet weekly or fortnightly, requiring minis-ters to travel from their parishes to the seat of the presbytery on a very regular basis. The distances ministers had to travel obviously varied according to prox-imity to the seat of the presbytery. nearby ministers might only have to travel a couple of miles, but journeys of between five and ten miles were very common and some ministers faced much longer journeys. Consequently, presbyteries were particularly prone to disruption by severe weather, and certainly more so than any urban institution. Equally, due to their nature as disciplinary and administrative bodies, presbyteries kept detailed records, which include refer-ences not only to disrupted meetings but also to the attendance or absence of individual ministers and sometimes their excuses for absence. The hierarchical church court structure and bureaucracy heightened the quality and consistency of record-keeping, since presbyteries were required to present their minutes

17. For other descriptions of requirements and standards of documentary data see Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’, p. 376; d. retso, ‘A contribution to the History of European Winters: Some Climatological Proxy data from Early-Sixteenth Century Swedish documentary Sources’, Climatic Change 52 (2002): 137–73 at 137–8.

18. For background on this see The Second Book of Discipline, ed. J. Kirk (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1980); Alan R. Macdonald, The Jacobean Kirk, 1567–1625: Sovereignty, Polity and Liturgy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), esp. ch. 1.



for scrutiny to bi-annual synod meetings.19 This combination of detailed re-cord-keeping and regular travel over significant distances on foot or horseback (and occasionally by boat) in a dispersed and predominantly rural country, is probably unique in early modern Europe.20 Presbyteries were nationwide institutions, which existed right across Scotland (although no records survive from the early modern north-west highlands or Western Isles), meaning that we can draw on weather information from a wide variety of locations. This is especially important given the obvious variability of Scotland’s weather even across relatively short distances. And since they were perpetually-functioning institutions, apart from some brief, and normally politically-imposed, hiatuses, we are able to obtain the long runs of evidence which are vital to effective analysis of climatic data.

disrupted presbytery meetings and details of absent ministers provide us with the bulk of our information on weather, and this includes stormy or snowy conditions, heavy rain or rivers in spate and occasionally very cold or oth-erwise inclement weather. Further information is provided by the records of parochial kirk sessions, which met similarly frequently. unsurprisingly, given the smaller distances involved (especially in urban parishes where a large pro-portion of the eldership would have had to walk only a few hundred metres to meetings), most kirk session records provide much less consistent evidence on weather. But some, normally due to the parish’s geography (for example if it was very large, or divided by water-courses which were prone to flood-ing), provide very rich and consistent weather information – in some senses these parishes may act as ‘canaries’ since they are especially sensitive to small fluctuations in weather. Additionally, both kirk sessions and presbyteries often

19. normally this accountability is relatively invisible in the records, suggesting that most min-ute books were approved without need for comment, but in 1668 the Synod of Perth imposed stricter rules on record-keeping, including a demand for fuller details on reasons for absences or postponed meetings. The level of concern with bureaucratic process is demonstrated by their insistence that the appointed inspectors of the presbytery minute books ‘mark the faults of orthography’: these were to be amended before the books were given in ‘that the synod be not needlessly troubled with them’. national records of Scotland, Edinburgh (nrS here-after), Perth Presbytery Minutes, CH2/299/4, pp. 112–3. Evidence that this practice was in place much earlier, soon after the initial foundation of presbyteries, is found in the records of the Synod of Lothian and tweeddale, which (for example) inspected the ‘bookis’ of the Presbytery of dunbar in 1589. The Records of the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale, 1589–1596, 1640–1649, ed. James Kirk (Edinburgh: Stair Society, 1977), p. 11. For evidence from 1639 that the inspection of presbytery (and kirk session) minutes was a requirement see Minutes of the Synod of Argyll 1639–51, ed. d.C. Mactavish (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1943), p. 6.

20. other countries or regions with Reformed churches either entirely rejected a presbyterian pol-ity (England), were much more heavily urbanised than Scotland (netherlands, Switzerland), or were home to churches operating as minority voluntary churches (France), in contrast to Scotland’s nationally inclusive reformed church. this is not to say that their church records would not repay study, but a similar intensity and richness of weather information is unlikely. For a synoptic view of Europe’s reformed churches see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (new Haven: yale university Press, 2002).



held fasts: ministers saw divine providence in the natural world and we are thus sometimes alerted to weather events which were worrying enough to lead a community to seek deliverance through public humilation and prayer.21 Indeed, a recent study has stressed the importance of natural phenomena as a cause of fasts, national prayers and thanksgivings, in addition to the more well-known special occasions in response to war.22 There were various other, more miscellaneous reasons why weather events might be recorded. For ex-ample church courts had to summon moral offenders to appear before them, who might be delayed or absent due to adverse weather, such as beatrix Still in Fraserburgh who could not be summoned to the kirk session ‘be ressone of the evilnes off the weather’ on two separate occasions in February 1625.23 Also, dramatic weather or weather-related events might be used as chronologi-cal markers when the date of an event was unknown, as incidents such as the collapse of a bridge or a dreadful tempest would be burned on the collective memory of a community. In a disciplinary case before Perth Kirk Session, a man was accused of using ‘devillisch meineis’ to try to recover a stolen purse, and the crime was dated to ‘the tyme of the last tempestous windis quhilk [which] did great hurt to the fruictis of the earth’.24 This combination of factors explains the value of these ecclesiastical records for the study of weather and climate.

When references occur, what do they typically tell us about the weather? The information is not direct, inevitably, since the courts had no interest in re-cording the weather for its own sake, and precise measurements of temperature, rainfall or wind direction are, of course, not to be found. The most common type of weather event recorded is storminess, often an excellent proxy for wider trends. This is unsurprising, since high winds could be (and, as recent years have shown, still are) extremely disruptive to travel in Scotland, potentially affecting foot, horse and boat journeys. Thus a typical reference is the note in Haddington Presbytery’s records for 30 May 1616 that the absentees from the previous meeting on 22 May were ‘excused because of stormie wather’.25 Similarly, on 5 September 1622, Jedburgh Presbytery postponed their meeting because of ‘the tempestuousnes of the wedder and the imminent harvest’.26 there is also evidence that the word ‘storm’ was used by contemporaries to refer to snow, or indeed any form of precipitation as well as the high winds

21. For example, among the aims of the fast ordained by Perth Presbytery on 18 Jun. 1623 was ‘that it will pleas [God] to send temperance of the wether and bliss the fruictis of the grund’: CH2/299/1, pp. 87–8.

22. A. raffe, ‘nature’s Scourges: the natural World and Special Prayers, Fasts and thanksgivings, 1543–1866’, in Peter clarke and tony claydon (eds.) God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World, Studies in Church History, 46 (boydell: Woodbridge, 2010).

23. nRS, Fraserburgh Kirk Session Minutes, CH2/1142/ 2, ff. 12v-13v.24. nRS, Perth Kirk Session Minutes, CH2/521/7, p. 441.25. nRS, Haddington Presbytery Minutes, CH2/185/3, p. 54.26. nRS, Jedburgh Presbytery Minutes, CH2/198/2, f. 9r.



which we would consider to constitute a ‘storm’.27 There are also more explicit references to snow, which could be very disruptive to land travel, not only when it was lying, but also when thaws made ways impassable. Rainy weather might be recorded if it was severe enough to cause disruption and, more often, the high waters and spates which could follow from it made water courses im-possible to cross or ford, as well as making ground boggy and impassable. For example, on 24 July 1623 in dalkeith Presbytery, a minister called Archibald Simson had to step in and provide the exercise (the exposition of doctrine which took place at the beginning of presbytery meetings) because those due to provide it were unable to attend ‘through the grit spett and rysing of the wateris’.28 Sometimes evidence of rain was more direct, as when linlithgow Presbytery recorded very low attendance on 9 october 1620 ‘be reason of ex-traordinair rain’.29 It should be acknowledged that not all weather conditions are equally likely to be recorded: sunny and warm conditions did not disrupt meetings, and it is only occasionally that we have evidence of cold weather. Sometimes the weather is simply referred to as ‘foul’ or ‘evil’ or other words which fail to give us precise information, while making clear the unpleasant-ness of the weather.30 Very rare indeed, though not entirely non-existent, are references to very hot and dry weather, which again by its very nature did not disrupt church courts, but we can of course learn something from relative ab-sences of recorded bad weather during a given period.31

Making judgements about the severity of these weather events is necessar-ily subjective, meaning that close contextual reading of the records is essential. The approach has been to study the nature of the records, patterns of attend-ance, frequency of meeting, location of meeting and attendance or absence of ministers, rather than simply extracting quotations relating to weather. This means that we can make informed judgements about the severity of events. one key criterion for this is the level of disruption to meetings that was caused:

27. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (http://www.dsl.ac.uk) and Oxford English Dictionary are ambiguous on this meaning of storm, but clear evidence of this meaning, without the word ‘snow’ present, is provided in a slightly later period by castleton Kirk Session’s 1669 refer-ence to low turnout due to ‘the thaw after the storme’, which only makes sense if ‘storme’ means snow (nrS, cH2/64/1, f. 23v). It is also strongly implied in the cases where meetings are cancelled several days in advance due to the ‘continuing’ storm or ‘increasing’ storm (e.g. 24 nov. 1623, longside Kirk Session: nRS, longside Kirk Session Minutes, CH2/699/1, p. 55). It is certain, however, that ‘storm’ does not always imply snow, since we have references to harbours being damaged by storm (Kinghorn’s harbour, cH2/299/1, p. 131; dundee’s harbour, nRS, linlithgow Presbytery Minutes, CH2/242/5, p. 432).

28. nRS, dalkeith Presbytery Minutes, CH2/424/1, p. 518.29. CH2/242/2, p. 38.30. See for example nRS, Stirling Presbytery Minutes, CH2/722/4, p. 454 (cold weather, 10 Jan.

1616); cH2/242/2, p. 35 (‘foull’ weather, 29 Jul. 1620).31. For an example of recorded good weather in linlithgow Presbytery on 22 Jun. 1625 see

cH2/242/2, p. 124 (‘the wedder was verie fair’). See below, p.508, for a rare explicit refer-ence to the occurrence of drought, from 1625.



a stormy day might result in two ministers not being able to attend from their distant parishes, but a worse storm might lead to a whole meeting being can-celled due to almost complete non-attendance. Additionally, the references to bad weather in ecclesiastical records are characterised by formulaic language, with only a very small vocabulary of weather-terms employed.32 Thus, varia-tions in phraseology can be revealing: sometimes a scribe will insert the word ‘great’ or ‘excessive’ into an otherwise routine account of a ‘stormie’ day or ‘foul’ weather. the human impact of bad weather also enables judgements to be made about the importance of the weather events or conditions recorded: this can range from the destruction of bridges and the flooding of property, to more subtle but no less helpful information about the social and economic im-pact of poor harvests (normally primarily a result of weather conditions such as prolonged summer rainfall). This can be found in the records of kirk sessions, the principal institution responsible for poor relief in most of seventeenth-cen-tury Scotland.

METHodoloGy

this article presents the findings from an eleven-year sample of presbytery and kirk session records from 1615–1625. This period was chosen because it contains a known extreme parameteorological event as a reference point: the flooding of Perth in october 1621, and also a known period of severe grain shortages in the early 1620s.33 It also falls relatively early in the period for which church records might form useful sources of information on weather (initially from 1580 to the early eighteenth century). A sample of nine pres-byteries was chosen with the intention of covering as broad a spatial range as was permitted by record survival, and ensuring continuity of areas sampled between this period and other periods selected for analysis.34

Geographical range was particularly important due to the likelihood of significant variations in weather patterns across even small distances within Scotland.35 naturally, given variable start-dates and occasional gaps in man-uscript volumes, the coverage was not always even from year-to-year. our findings have therefore been tested against the number of ‘presbytery-months’ available in any given year to avoid the danger of varying record survival skew-

32. the terms normally used are ‘storm/stormy’, ‘tempest/tempestuous’, ‘foul’, ‘evil’, ‘rain/rainy’, ‘spates’ or ‘waters’, with ‘storm’ (and variants), ‘foul’ and ‘evil’ dominating.

33. M. Flinn et al. Scottish Population History from the 17th Century to the 1930s (Cambridge: CuP, 1977), pp. 117–20; A.J.S. Gibson and T.C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 1550–1780 (Cambridge: CuP, 1995), pp. 167–8.

34. These presbyteries were dalkeith, deer, Fordyce, Glasgow, Haddington, Jedburgh, linlithgow, Perth and Stirling. Further studies of the 1580s and 1660s are currently in progress.

35. dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day, pp. 28–9.



ing the findings. As it happens, this is very rarely the case and such variations are discussed at the relevant point in the Analysis section.

Another potential limitation of the source material is the human, subjec-tive nature of the documents. our records were not immune from error and inconsistency, although the keeping of records by many presbyteries across Scotland using many different scribes over the years helps to rule out many of the inconsistencies in the evidence provided by individual diarists and chroni-clers. The danger of distortion by a lax (or over-zealous) scribe, or the loss of a manuscript volume for a few years, should become correspondingly less as the coverage of records and areas becomes wider. Although absent ministers had something at stake when they claimed weather as the excuse for their fault, they had to explain this excuse to a group of sceptical colleagues who

FIGurE 1. Map of Scotland showing presbyteries and kirk sessions sampled.



would also have experienced the weather condition in question (and recorded their disapproval if the excuse were not believed), so there is little danger of intentional false recording of weather events. These records were also kept by humans whose primary interest was not in meteorological observation, and indeed for whom weather events, from terrifying storms and floods to droughts which might threaten harvests, were to be understood as acts of God. This fact, coincidentally, enhances the usefulness of the records for tracing the human impact of weather, but it means that we know far less about temperature (ex-cept when extremely cold), rainfall (apart from disruptively excessive rainfall) and wind direction. However, the records are at their most useful when record-ing the sort of severe or extreme weather events which have the potential to tell us so much about broader weather patterns over long periods of time.36 Severe weather events are more likely to leave unequivocal evidence, such as a cancelled meeting rather than a minister absent for an unspecified excuse, and they are more likely to be reflected in more than one manuscript volume (we sometimes have references to ‘stormie weather’ from several presbyteries across Scotland on the same day, while at other times we know the weather affected some areas while leaving others apparently untouched). While a per-fect and complete set of evidence for early modern weather in Scotland will never be achieved, the records of church courts and scrutiny of them in the way described offers the best available source of information on this important question.

For the analysis of weather trends in this period, a combination of qualita-tive and quantitative methods has been used. this reflects the complexity of the data, which are more varied than a simple dataset of (for example) rainfall totals, and thus require more subtle interrogation. At the same time, the number of references amassed necessitates a more quantitative approach than the best existing account of early modern Scottish weather, Alastair dawson’s 2009 book So Foul and Fair a Day. dawson’s work, drawing on diaries and chroni-cles, offers a chronological narrative, which for the period 1615–25 refers to just a couple of specific weather events or conditions in contrast to our total of 119.37 The data are therefore approached in a variety of ways, in order to reap the benefits of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies while avoiding the danger of either a reliance on subjective reading and narrative-building, or of placing blind faith in statistical measures arising from an imperfect dataset. this approach takes into account the variety of methodologies in the field of historical climatology, ranging from essentially purely scientific studies pre-senting findings solely through indices or charts, to more descriptive studies

36. See Brázdil, Pfister et al. ‘Historical climatology In Europe’, pp. 397–8, 409, for the signifi-cance of extreme weather events.

37. dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day, p. 111. dawson’s examples were drawn from a somewhat larger corpus of material from printed sources, although even that constitutes a fraction of what has been found in the church courts.



which eschew statistical analysis due to the nature of their sources.38 It should also be noted that the following analyses represent preliminary conclusions from the data and that one of the principles underlying the construction and design of a projected online database of weather events is the importance of presenting data in such a way that it can be interrogated as flexibly as possible, particularly in consultation with climate scientists and geographers. This is, unquestionably, an area of research where no single discipline can claim to have all the answers.

AnALySIS

For the period 1615–1625, we have surveyed the records of nine presbyter-ies and their kirk sessions.39 This has amounted to 786 presbytery-months, which have in turn yielded 119 explicit references to weather events or condi-tions. Just three of these referred to good weather conditions. These references include only cases where the records explicitly and unambiguously refer to weather: meetings which were cancelled where we only suspect weather may have played a role are excluded, as are references which mention only ‘winter’ or the ‘season of the year’ without specifically citing the weather. the figure also includes, on occasion, multiple references to what is quite probably the same weather event on the same day but in different areas, so the total of 119 does not comprise the total number of discrete weather events and conditions identified. However, multiple references are relatively rare, not least since presbyteries did not all meet on the same days of the week. This is helpful in expanding the number of days for which we have potential evidence, while multiple references, when they do occur, also provide useful evidence on the geographical spread of individual weather events.

What do we already know about weather patterns during this period? dawson emphasises poor weather after a shift in conditions around 1600. He describes heavy and persistent rains during summer and autumn, with har-vests rotting in fields (no dates are given for this, but the 1610s are implied). the year 1620 was ‘one of the worst’: snow lay in the fields, and sheep died

38. For examples of both see P. dobrovolný, A. Moberg et al. ‘Monthly, Seasonal and Annual temperature reconstructions for Central Europe derived from documentary evidence and instrumental records since Ad 1500’, Climatic Change 101 (2009): 69–107; Retso, ‘A contribution to the History of European Winters’.

39. Kirk Session minutes have not been included in analysis of the volume and spread of presby-tery coverage since, in most cases, they do not provide the same sort of consistent and direct weather information. It would therefore be misleading to include them when taking into ac-count the concept of ‘presbytery-years’ to allow for imbalances in the source base. normally one parish’s session minutes have been used for each presbytery, but some presbyteries pro-vide no contemporary session minutes (e.g. Fordyce Presbytery 1615–25) and in some cases, more than one parish has been studied, normally because one parish’s minutes are incomplete for the full decade or are in some other way less useful.



of cold. In 1623 hurricane-force winds hit the Hebrides: some anecdotal de-tails are provided on this, but this short summary comprises all of dawson’s specific evidence on this decade.40 The only reference to a storm during these years in Hubert Lamb’s wide-ranging survey of north Sea storminess comes on 8 March 1625 and refers to a storm affecting the north Sea and German bight, no evidence being presented of English or Scottish impact.41 At best, then, existing published knowledge of this sample period is impressionistic and anecdotal.

The most basic method of analysis is to use the number of references to bad weather each year. table 1 reveals some significant patterns, at least where the major discrepancies occur. The tally of 25 in 1620 was so far above the norm as to be meaningful (and confirms dawson’s account of the year as a particularly harsh one) and the same is true for the exceptionally low number of references in 1617 and 1624: these were clearly the outstandingly bad and good years re-spectively. the other fluctuations are too small safely to read anything into by themselves, but when we take into account presbytery-month coverage, 1621 also emerges as a relatively bad year, since its fourteen references come from fewer presbytery-months than was typical.

Table 1. number of weather references per year, 1615–25.

Weather references Presbytery-months

1615 8 70

1616 11 78

1617 3 66

1618 10 69

1619 12 (1 of which was to good weather) 82

1620 25 82

1621 14 63

1622 12 67

1623 10 63

1624 3 74

1625 11 (2 of which were to fair weather)* 72

* In one of these, the reference was to drought, which of course is not ‘good weather’ in the sense of being welcome, but constitutes the equivalent of a good weather reference for our purposes since it suggests the opposite of rainy, windy or otherwise disruptive conditions.

40. dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day, p. 111.41. Hubert lamb, with Knud Frydendahl, Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles and

Northwest Europe (Cambridge: CuP, 1991), p. 46. See below, p. 507, for evidence of this storm in Scotland.



the number of references in a year, while revealing where large fluctua-tions occur, is a relatively blunt measure. Figure 2 presents the data by month, excluding references to fair weather. the graph aligns broadly with the figures above, but draws sharper focus on the worst passage of the decade: beginning in october 1619 and continuing to March 1622. This thirty-month period con-tained 55 references, almost half of the 116 poor weather references for the full eleven years. It also draws attention to seasonal fluctuations in levels of bad weather. The reliability of the data is supported by the concentration of weather references in winter months, although this does not tell us anything we would not already expect.

Since virtually all of our references concern severely bad weather, nor-mally in the forms of storms, snow or other precipitation, overall yearly and monthly frequency patterns reveal much about fluctuations in weather condi-tions. but, as our references to weather include events of varying type, severity and location, more qualitative readings of the evidence will help to place these findings in context, and to develop them further. the following chronological discussion, while not mentioning every weather event or condition, draws at-tention to the most significant patterns found and reveals the richness of the information available in these sources.

The year 1615 suffered from particular storminess in spring, with refer-ences from across Scotland in the first half of March, whereas February had

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Jan

1615

Apr

161

5

Jul 1

615

Oct

161

5

Jan

1616

Apr

161

6

Jul 1

616

Oct

161

6

Jan

1617

Apr

161

7

Jul 1

617

Oct

161

7

Jan

1618

Apr

161

8

Jul 1

618

Oct

161

8

Jan

1619

Apr

161

9

Jul 1

619

Oct

161

9

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1620

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162

0

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620

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162

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1621

Apr

162

1

Jul 1

621

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162

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1622

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162

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Jul 1

622

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162

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1623

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162

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623

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162

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1624

Apr

162

4

Jul 1

624

Oct

162

4

Jan

1625

Apr

162

5

Jul 1

625

Oct

162

5

FIGurE 2. number of references to bad weather per month, 1615–25.



seen an improvement on the tough conditions at the very start of the year.42 That these March storms were more severe than might have been expected for the time of year is suggested by the fast held by Glasgow Presbytery – one of the presbyteries normally least affected by bad weather because of its compact nature and focus on a major urban centre – on 15 March for causes including ‘the unseasonable and extraordinar weather’.43 this perhaps reflected concerns that the wintry weather might threaten the seed-time, although the concern may not have been universal, since Linlithgow Presbytery’s intimation of the same fast did not mention the weather.44 The summer and winter of 1615, how-ever, were comparatively unaffected by harsh weather, particularly in southern and central areas.

ostensibly, 1616 was a worse year than 1615, with eleven references to bad weather in contrast to eight in 1615. but, while January and February were typically stormy and wet,45 March improved, especially compared to the previous year.46 There were signs of a wet summer in central areas with some disruption to Haddington Presbytery on 22 May due to storminess, and ‘ane great shour of weit’ in Stirling Presbytery not long before 26 June.47 Spates of water again affected deer Presbytery in September, but the rest of the year was apparently less stormy, with just one reference to ‘the intemperancie of the wether’ on christmas day in Jedburgh Presbytery.48

There was a dramatic improvement in 1617, with only three weather refer-ences in the year. Apart from ‘foule wether’ postponing a planned meeting of Jedburgh Presbytery on new year’s day and stormy weather causing some ministerial absences from Haddington Presbytery on 27 May and 6 october, we have no evidence for bad weather in this year.49 There is no apparent ex-planation for this in the coverage of our sources, as the presbytery-month totals in Table 1 indicate. The respite from poor weather conditions was short-lived, however, and 1618 reverted to the previous pattern of stormy weather in January and February at the northern and southern extremes of deer and Jedburgh, and in Haddington as late as 25 March.50 like 1617, however, there are no signs of a wet summer or autumn, though november and december were stormier than previous years.51

42. CH2/722/4, pp. 414, 418; CH2/424/1, pp. 378, 379; nRS, deer Presbytery Minutes, CH2/89/1, ff. 174v-175r.

43. nRS, Glasgow Presbytery Minutes, CH2/171/2/2, f. 108v.44. CH2/242/1, f. 111r. 45. CH2/198/1, p. 266; CH2/722/4, p. 454; CH2/89/1, f. 190r; CH2/1142/1, f. 68r; CH2/185/3,

p. 49; CH2/242/1, ff.139r-140r.46. CH2/185/3, p. 49; CH2/242/1, ff.139r-140r.47. CH2/185/3, p. 54; CH2/722/4, p. 472.48. CH2/89/1, ff. 201r-v; CH2/198/1, p. 281.49. CH2/198/1, p. 282; CH2/185/3, pp. 75–6, 82.50. CH2/89/1, f. 218v; CH2/198/1, pp. 297–8; CH2/185/3, p. 91.51. CH2/89/1, f. 228r; CH2/242/2, p. 8; CH2/185/3, p. 102.



The year 1619 began rather better than most, with no signs of poor weather until some storminess around the middle of February in Jedburgh and linlithgow presbyteries.52 Even allowing for these, the early part of the year was not excessively affected by bad weather. Summer proved, once again, to be finer than 1615 and 1616, with the next weather disruption not coming until the autumn, suggesting that dawson’s account of very wet summers was far from universally applicable to the 1610s.53 The autumn, however, was unu-sually stormy and wet. It marked the beginning of a thirty-month period of unusual storminess which continued until March 1622 and contained almost half the references from the years 1615–25 in less than a quarter of the period. The weeks between 19 october and 17 november were the most intensely stormy part of the period, with eight separate references to storminess in the presbyteries of Jedburgh54, linlithgow55, Perth56, Glasgow57 and Haddington58, though not, perhaps surprisingly, in the north, where deer Presbytery met as usual on 28 october and 11 november.59 the signs are also that this first burst of the stormy years of 1619–22 brought not just more widespread and frequent disruption than normal wintry conditions, but also an increase in the severity of storminess.60 There was, however, some respite after 17 november, visible not only in a drop-off in explicit references to poor weather, but also in Jedburgh Presbytery’s decision on 1 december to return to meeting weekly once more, ‘becaus the wadder is become somquhat more seasonable’.61

But this improvement was fleeting. In keeping with dawson’s account of these years, 1620 was the worst year, with 25 references to poor weather, far more than in any other year even allowing for the survival of presbytery-months (the closest being 1621 with fourteen references). However, as we have just seen, 1620 should be viewed as the core of a particularly stormy spell, rather than an anomalous single year of terrible conditions. The most widespread storm disruption came during January, with storms on 12 January as far apart as deer, linlithgow, Haddington and Jedburgh.62 Poor weather continued into February, in Haddington at least,63 while on 19 January the

52. CH2/198/1, p. 311; CH2/242/2, p. 12.53. dawson, So Foul and Fair a Day, p. 111.54. CH2/198/1, pp. 323, 324.55. CH2/242/2, pp. 20, 21–22.56. nRS, Perth Presbytery Minutes, CH2/299/1, p. 26.57. CH2/171/2/2, f. 157v (reading assisted by a transcription taken when the volume was in

slightly better condition: CH2/171/36, p. 155).58. CH2/185/3, p. 116.59. CH2/89/1, ff. 240r-v.60. CH2/198/1, p. 324; CH2/171/2/2, f. 157v; CH2/242/2, p. 20–22.61. CH2/198/1, p. 325.62. CH2/89/1, f. 242r; CH2/242/2, p. 24; CH2/185/3, p. 119; CH2/198/1, p. 327.63. CH2/242/2, p. 25 (linlithgow, 19 Jan.); CH2/198/1, p. 326 (Jedburgh, 26 Jan.); CH2/185/3,

p. 123 (Haddington, 16 and 23 Feb.).



water of Earn was flooded sufficiently to prevent the minister of dunbarney from attending Perth Presbytery.64 The wet summers last seen in 1615 and 1616 returned in 1620, with stormy weather disrupting linlithgow Presbytery on 31 May, and foul weather disrupting the presbyteries of linlithgow in late July and Jedburgh at the end of August.65 The rain in longside on 25 June was ‘excessive’ enough to cancel the meeting of the session altogether.66 There may have been a small respite from the rains during the critical harvest month of September, as we have no references between 30 August and 9 october, when ‘extraordinair rain’ fell in Linlithgow Presbytery, which was serious enough to prevent many brethren from attending.67

The really tough winter month in 1620 was november, particularly from the 22nd to the 27th. the 22nd saw ‘evill wather’ in Jedburgh Presbytery and in Haddington the reference that day was to ‘great stormie wather’, in contrast to the simply ‘stormie wather’ of 8 november, a significant change in language in what are particularly formulaic minutes.68 The following day deer Presbytery referred to ‘ewill wather’ and on both 27 november and 4 december the kirk session of Longside cancelled meetings due to ‘the gryit storme’.69 december also saw widespread poor weather, with spates in longside and storms in Haddington and Jedburgh.70

Poor weather continued into February and March 162171 and, although it was not on quite the same scale as in 1620, as late as 21 March Haddington Presbytery, which was normally affected by storms but rarely by high wa-ters or rains, excused absentee ministers by reason of ‘g[r]eat rainie wather’.72 Summer 1621 was another poor one, with Glasgow Presbytery making a rare reference to the ‘unseasonable weather’ in its intimation of a national fast on 13 June (to be held in late June and early July) and Perth Presbytery referring to the ‘intemperancie of the wether’ when intimating the same fast a week later on 20 June.73 that presbyteries did not follow a fixed script in publicising fasts is demonstrated by Haddington’s intimation of the same fast, which neglected to mention the weather, perhaps reflecting better weather conditions on the

64. CH2/299/1, p. 30.65. CH2/242/2, p. 32, 35; CH2/198/1, p. 338.66. CH2/699/1, p. 1. longside subsequently proves to be a parish particularly prone to disruption

by heavy rain and flooding. that this was primarily for topographical reasons is suggested by the Statistical Accounts for the 1790s: http://stat-acc-scot.edina.ac.uk/link/1791–99/Aberdeen/longside/15/282/ (accessed 21 nov. 2011).

67. CH2/242/2, p. 38. 68. CH2/198/1, p. 343; CH2/185/3, pp. 135–6.69. CH2/89/1, f. 261r; CH2/699/1, p. 16.70. CH2/699/1, p. 16; CH2/185/3, p. 137; CH2/198/1, p. 342.71. CH2/89/1, f. 262v; CH2/242/2, p. 50.72. CH2/185/3, p. 140.73. CH2/171/2/2, f. 181r; CH2/299/1, p. 62.



east coast.74 This sense of relative security was not to last, however, and on 29 August Haddington proclaimed a fast ‘considering the great judgement of God upon the land by the long inseasonable wather’ as well as other causes.75 These fasts are our only negative weather references over the summer of 1621, which is unusual in itself, since disruption to church court meetings is normally by far the commonest source of information. This may suggest that conditions were not particularly stormy (always the weather condition most likely to disrupt presbyteries), but were persistently wet, meaning that presbyteries could meet without disruption, but posing a grave threat to the crops and thus eliciting the emergency response of a fast.

the final months of 1621 did not see as many references to poor weather as 1620, but there are indications of some severe conditions. our most de-tailed account of the impact of a severe weather event in the period comes from the comparatively well-known flooding of Perth and the destruction of the bridge over the Tay there in october.76 The kirk session recorded a lengthy account of this calamity, described as ‘ane rememberance of goddis visitation of Perth’, leaving us with a great deal of information on the course of events, the like of which apparently ‘wes never seine at Perth in na leif-ing mannis rememberance’.77 The rains began on the morning of Friday 12 october, although the severity of the inundation probably reflects the previous wet conditions and saturation of the water table. yet the rainfall was extreme, continuing all through Friday and into Saturday, and the ‘wind and weitt’ con-tinuing on Sunday morning. on Sunday afternoon (following the minister’s exhortations to prayer and penitence) ‘the watteris began sumquhat to deci-est’, but then that evening after dark ‘thair aruise ane greatter tempest of wind and rayne then at onye tyme of befoir’. However, against all expectations, the waters receded by Monday morning, despite this final tempest. As well as the flooding of the town itself, described in the session minutes at the level of individual streets and properties, there was considerable damage to crops and livestock. This account is, of course, exceptional in its detail, which is probably a reflection of the session’s desire to record the ultimately successful fasting and prayer which assured Perth’s deliverance. this was a storm with a moral and the detailed account does not prove that the weather itself was more severe than other events that were recorded more prosaically, even if the human im-pact was unusually calamitous. but the severity and persistence of the rainfall point to continued wet conditions in 1621, also reflected in ‘the impassiblenes

74. CH2/185/3, p. 146.75. CH2/185/3, p. 157.76. The Chronicle of Perth: A Register of Remarkable Occurrences Chiefly Connected with

that City from the year 1210 to 1668 (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1831), p. 22; lindsey J. McEwen, ‘Flood Seasonality and Generating Conditions in the Tay Catchment, Scotland from 1200 to Present’, Area 38 (2006): 47–64 at 52–3.

77. CH2/521/7, pp. 280–82.



of wateris and burnis’ in Longside in the second half of october and a further ‘tempest of woder’ in Perth Presbytery in mid-november, though in general the final two months of 1621 seem to have offered some respite.78 Thus, the qualitative evidence of particularly severe weather found in the many fasts held in 1621, the severity of the Perth flooding and the earlier consideration of the relatively low number of presbytery-months available from 1621, suggests that the year was a harsher one than its overall number of fourteen weather references would suggest.

Early 1622 saw the final few months of our thirty-month period of intense bad weather. The references to high waters in longside in late January and early March were relatively routine, but February was particularly stormy with disruption in linlithgow and Perth Presbyteries on 13 February and also the following day in dalkeith Presbytery (which was also disrupted more seriously than usual by the ‘extraordinare weather’ a fortnight later).79 on 6 March, Perth Presbytery planned what seems to have been its own fast for the first two Sundays in Lent for causes including the ‘tempest of the wodder’.80 However, this reference to poor weather conditions around Perth in the early spring of 1622 marks the end of the period of particularly bad weather which had begun in october 1619. We have no further references until a retrospective reference in September to some foul weather over the summer of 1622, claimed by some parishioners in Fraserburgh as one of their excuses for absence from church. The session accepted their excuse, suggesting its veracity, but ‘the far distance of ther dwallingis from the kirk’ should also be taken into account when con-sidering the likely severity of the weather.81 Further signs of a poor summer can be found in the fast intimated in mid-August in the presbyteries of Jedburgh and Perth for the ‘tempestuousnes of the present wedder’ and ‘for temperance of the wether to cuir the fruictis of the grund’.82 Jedburgh Presbytery referred again to tempestuous weather on 5 September but, unlike in the previous years, october and november seem to have been relatively benign, with no weather references at all.83 Indeed the only remaining reference during 1622 came on 5 december, apparently ‘an extraordinar foull day’ in dalkeith Presbytery.84

The year 1623 was better overall, as its total of ten weather references indicates. Indeed, there are no references to poor weather at all in the early months of the year, which points to one of the least severe winters of our period, although there are signs of some wet summer weather.85 September

78. CH2/699/1, p. 30; CH2/299/1, p. 65.79. CH2/699/1, pp. 32–33; CH2/242/2, p. 71; CH2/299/1, p. 69; CH2/424/1, p. 491.80. CH2/299/1, p. 70.81. CH2/1142/1, f. 141v.82. CH2/198/2, f. 8v; CH2/299/1, p. 76.83. CH2/198/2, f. 9r.84. CH2/424/1, p. 510.85. CH2/299/1, pp. 87–8; CH2/424/1, p. 518.



and october seem to have enjoyed calmer conditions, but november was par-ticularly unsettled, with high waters in longside and dalkeith Presbytery and stormy conditions in Perth Presbytery.86 december also experienced some stormy conditions in dalkeith, Perth and Haddington around the middle of the month, demonstrating that, although 1623 did not experience the persistent and intense storminess of 1619–1622, rough conditions were still not uncom-mon.87 However, 1624 was a much better year. like 1617, it provided only three references to bad weather. After the storms of late 1623, the early months of 1624 seem to have been much calmer and the year saw no explicit concerns about the weather’s impact on crops. At some point in August and September, ‘the inconstancie of the weather’ prevented Glasgow Presbytery’s visitation of Campsie.88 this was the only reference to poor weather in the first ten months of the year and, given that campsie was one of the presbytery’s most iso-lated and hilly parishes, this reference does not significantly undermine the impression of a much better summer.89 The remaining references are in Perth Presbytery, where meetings were cancelled on 10 november and 15 december due to stormy conditions: thus our references to bad weather in 1624 are not only few, they are also geographically specific.90 There seems to have been no widespread disruption at any point in the year, even in areas particularly prone to it like longside, which apparently suffered none of the problems with spates and storms it had experienced previously. As with 1617, there is no apparent explanation for this in the coverage of our sources.

the year 1625 was not as fine as 1624, though it did not see a return to the harsh conditions of the early 1620s. January was apparently relatively good, although February saw some stormy weather and flooding in Perth Presbytery and reference to the ‘evilnes’ of the weather in Fraserburgh, although this affected only the summoning of an offender rather than actual session meet-ings.91 March seems to have experienced worse storms, since on 30 March bad weather contributed to a cancelled meeting in Fraserburgh and at some point in the month there was a ‘great and ferefull storne [sic] and tempest’ which led to the harbour of ‘Pretticur’ [i.e. Pettycur, near Kinghorn in Fife] being ‘totallie overthrawin and brokin down’.92

86. CH2/699/1, p. 55; CH2/424/1, p. 521; CH2/299/1, p. 94.87. CH2/424/1, p. 522; CH2/299/1, p. 96; CH2/185/3, p. 201.88. CH2/171/2/2, f. 196v.89. http://stat-acc-scot.edina.ac.uk/link/1791–99/Stirling/Campsie/15/314–5/ (accessed 21 nov.

2011). This suggests that, with its pre-1649 boundaries, Campsie was bounded to the south by the river Kelvin, which ‘formed a swamp impassable in winter’.

90. CH2/299/1, pp. 115–6.91. CH2/299/1, p. 119; CH2/1142/2, ff. 12v-13v.92. CH2/1142/2, f. 15r; CH2/299/1, p. 131 (recorded in Perth Presbytery minutes on 25 Aug. due

to fundraising for relief of Kinghorn). This was presumably the north Sea storm of March 1625 identified by Lamb: see above, p. 500.



After this stormy spring, our evidence for the summer’s weather is par-ticularly varied. on 22 June, Linlithgow Presbytery was enjoying a fine early summer, as the many absentees from presbytery were to be particularly se-verely censured since ‘the wedder was verie fair’: here we have a rare reference to good weather conditions thanks to those present wishing to pre-empt any future claim of bad weather as an excuse by absent ministers.93 However, by 28 July, in the not-very-distant presbytery of dalkeith, a fast was proclaimed for pestilence in England, ‘ffor (sic) the grit tempest of weit now in the month of harvest’; and the success of the king’s armies by sea and land.94 This points to a reasonably persistent spell of stormy and wet weather rather than a short burst, which would be much less likely to provoke a fast. However, condi-tions in the north of Scotland must have been much better, since on 3 August Fordyce Presbytery received a letter from the bishop of Aberdeen, intimating that the fast should take place for causes including (as in dalkeith) the king’s navy, and pestilence in England, but also, strikingly, ‘extraordinary raine in england’, and for ‘drought in our awin kingdom’ as well as ‘dyvers ithers of godis just judgment upon the land’.95 Thus we have evidence of rainy condi-tions in England,96 wet and stormy weather in the central lowland presbytery of dalkeith, but drought conditions referred to by the bishop of Aberdeen in his communications with north-eastern presbyteries.

After this very varied summer, our period closes with a stormy and wet november in the north-east, with Fordyce Presbytery having to cancel meet-ings on 16 november due to stormy weather and on 30 november due to ‘extraordinarie rain and inundatione of water’, the floods no doubt occurring as a combination of storms earlier in the month combined with high rainfall around the 30th.97 not far away in longside there is further reference to ‘great stormes’ in november, but there is no evidence that the storms affected central or southern parts of Scotland, in an apparent reversal of the weather patterns of the summer.98

concLuSIon

This article cannot do full justice to the richness of the evidence on weather amassed for the period 1615–25, but it has hopefully given some indication of the potential value of Scottish church court records for climate history. longer-term study, ideally ranging from the foundation of presbyteries in the 1580s

93. CH2/242/2, p. 124.94. CH2/424/1, p. 537.95. nRS, Fordyce Presbytery Minutes, CH2/158/1, f. 32r.96. nRS, Ayr Kirk Session Minutes, CH2/751/2, f. 74r.97. CH2/158/1, f. 36v.98. CH2/699/1, p. 88.



through to the early eighteenth century would enable us to draw much more significant conclusions about long-term climatic fluctuations during a critical period spanning the onset of some of the worst conditions of the Little Ice Age, through to the late Maunder Minimum. Preliminary analysis of records from the further sample decades of the 1580s, 1660s and 1700s confirms that the evidence remains both reliable and homogeneous over the entire century. but even this focused case-study teaches us some valuable lessons about early modern climate. The year 1620 was an exceptionally bad one, but of course years are not the only possible unit of analysis and, in fact, 1620 was the cen-tre point of a longer period of increased severe and extreme weather lasting from Autumn 1619 to early 1622. This included one of the few well-known weather-related events in early modern Scotland, the Perth flooding of 1621. Even regarding this event, the church court records provide a more detailed account than is otherwise available, but more generally they indicate that ex-treme weather was a recurrent threat throughout this period, and could occur reasonably often in years which do not stand out as exceptional, such as 1615 or 1625. The other exceptional years were at the other end of the spectrum: the weather in 1617 and 1624 was clearly better, in the sense that the frequency of severe weather conditions was far lower. obviously, a longer period of analy-sis would throw up further interesting patterns and variations, but it is already obvious that there was a great deal of climatic variability even during a period we think of as at the heart of the ‘Little Ice Age’. While the ministers who kept the records surveyed in this study were not interested in understanding fluc-tuating weather patterns, and indeed attributed meteorological misfortune to divine intervention, the records they kept of the bureaucratic processes through which they sought to build a more godly Scotland provide an unrivalled oppor-tunity for a deeper understanding of climatic processes not just in their country, but in north-west Europe as a whole.

The Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Climate from Scottish Ecclesiastical Records, Environment...

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