Seven ill years

This became less true after 1660, with the number of rural towns authorised to hold markets increasing from 100 to over 300 by 1707, but surpluses were exported, the most significant being the lucrative cattle trade with England.

Labourers on fixed incomes, along with pensioners, were particularly vulnerable to the impact of famine, but it also affected those with land, who could not save enough seed for future planting and feed their families.

[14] The results of the climatic conditions were inflation, severe famine and depopulation, particularly in the north of the country, with eye-witness accounts indicating large numbers of people died from starvation.

[16] The same year, the price of oatmeal, the staple Scottish cereal crop, peaked at 166.7% of the average for 1690 to 1694 in Aberdeen,[17] an area particularly badly hit because of its reliance on the Baltic trade.

So many poor beggars arrived in Edinburgh in search of relief in December 1696 that the town council had to erect a "refugee camp" in Greyfriars kirkyard to house all of them.

[24] The impact of the famine may have been exacerbated in urban centres as the influx of new starving populations brought outbreaks of disease such as smallpox, which are evident from parish registers for the period.

[25] These problems were not confined to Scotland; the years 1695-97 saw catastrophic famine in present-day Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway and Sweden plus an estimated two million deaths in France and Northern Italy.

[29] In a continuation of earlier Scottish settlement to the Ulster Plantation, an estimated 20,000 migrated there from 1696 to 1698, due to the availability of land confiscated following the end of the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691.

[30] To tackle the desperate economic situation, in 1695 the Scottish Parliament passed Acts allowing the consolidation of run rigs and the division of common land which drove the agricultural improvements of the eighteenth century.

[32] The Company invested in the Darién scheme, an ambitious plan funded almost entirely by Scottish investors to build a colony on the Isthmus of Panama for trade with East Asia.

[33] The losses of £150,000 put a severe strain on the Scottish commercial system and were a key driver of the 1707 Acts of Union creating the Kingdom of Great Britain.