History of Glasgow, Volume 2: From the Reformation to the Revolution

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PREFACE

Within the last ninety years most important additions have been made to the documentary evidence readily available for a complete History of Glasgow. In 1843 the Maitland Club published the entire extant Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis containing the charters of the bishopric from the twelfth century till the middle of the sixteenth. Three years later the same club published the Liber Collegii Nostre Domine, documents dealing with the affairs of the Church of St. Mary and St. Anne, now the Tron Church, and Munimenta Fratrum Predicatorum de Glasgu, the documents of the monastery of the Dominicans or Friars Preachers in High Street. In 1854 it published the muniments of the University, and in 1875 the Grampian Club, under the name of Diocesan Registers, piiblished a series of Protocols of the Cathedral Chapter, of the years 1499 to 1513, and the Rental Book of the Archbishops from 1509 to 1570. These collections of documents furnished authentic and fairly complete material for a history of the bishopric and city of Glasgow down to the time of the Reformation. Twenty years later, in 1876, Sir James Marwick, then Town Clerk, began publishing the Burgh Records, or minutes of the Town Council, from the year 1573. Under the authority of the Council itself the publication was supplemented by a series of the protocols of the Town Clerks from 1530 till 1600. At the same time Sir James published, in three quarto volumes, Charters and Documents, the actual legal deeds upon which the material fortunes of the city had been built. The civic records which were thus

made readily accessible provide detailed data of unquestionable kind for a history of Glasgow from Reformation times downward.

On the rich store of facts contained in these publications Sir James Marwick set to work, and in several compilations—an elaborate introduction to Charters and Documents, The River Clyde and the Clyde Burghs, and Early Glasgow —threw parts of the information into narrative form. But Sir James died in 1908.

After that event the publication of the Burgh Records was continued by Mr. Robert Renwick, Town Clerk Depute and Keeper of the Register of Sasines, and completed down to the year 1833, when the provisions of the Reform Bill came into action, and the old Town Council of selected members gave place to a new popularly elected body. The publication of the records was finished in 1916. Shortly afterwards, in view of the highly interesting and valuable information embedded in these old minutes, Dr. Renwick was invited by the Town Council to compile a comprehensive History of Glasgow. This invitation, though he was then seventy-five years of age, he was persuaded to accept, and forthwith set about the task. The work was planned to occupy four volumes— from the earliest times till the Reformation, from the Reformation till the Revolution ; from the Revolution till the passing of the Reform Bill; from the passing of the Reform Bill till the present time.

Dr. Renwick had completed the first volume of the History, and passed it for the press, when he died, in 1920. The volume was published in that year under the direction of Sir John Lindsay, the Town Clerk. The present writer was then invited to continue the work. While warmly appreciating the compliment, he pointed out that the enterprise could only be undertaken in the intervals of a somewhat busy life. This fact must now be cited to crave the indulgence of the reader for ...
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HISTORY OF GLASGOW

CHAPTER I ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION

WHEN, on a winter day in 1559, the burgesses of Glasgow saw Archbishop Beaton ride away from the city with the French troops whom the Q