point of fertility and cultivation. Buchanan, however, who knew Lothian well, is decided in his testimony. "The district of Lothian" he says, "far excels all the rest in the cultivation of the elegancies and in the abundance of the necessaries of life." 33 Buchanan's contemporary, Bishop Leslie, was of the same mind. Lothian, he writes, "by the plentifulness of the ground, decking and apparelling of its houses and the fairness of their building, may well be called the chief of the provinces of Scotland." 34 The prosperous appearance of Lothian appears to have struck every visitor, foreign as well as English. It was not only that its soil was richer and more widely cultivated than elsewhere; the number and importance of its towns, and (what is specially noted) the frequency of gentlemen's and noblemen's seats gave it an air of well-being which reminded these visitors of the best districts of their own country. Each surrounded, as we have seen, by its own plantation, these abodes presented a pleasant relief to the general monotony of the landscape-certain of them being of considerable pretensions, "beautified with fair orchards and gardens." Near the capital these country-seats were specially numerous, and we have it from a French visitor, as well as from native testimony, that at the close of the sixteenth century, as many as a hundred could be counted within two leagues' distance. 35 The most important towns of Lothian, as specified

by contemporaries, were Dunbar, Haddington, Dalkeith, Edinburgh, and Linlithgow. Of the capital something will be said in another place, but it may be noted that the other towns of Lothian were not without certain attractions. For example, a French chronicler, who saw Dunbar in 1549, writes of that town to the following effect. The town, he says, stands "in such an excellent tract of country and [is] accommodated with so many good things which profit the life of man that, if the town were enclosed with walls, we might reckon it among the most beautiful towns in the isles of the ocean." 36 To the amenities of Haddington we have equally definite testimony. From an English chronicler we learn that as early as the twelfth century the fame of its orchards had gone beyond the limits of Scotland; and the French writer just quoted tells us that it was "situated in a fruitful and pleasant country," " while an English traveller, Fynes Moryson, speaks of "the pleasant village of Haddington." 38

Continuing our survey, we come next to Tweeddale, which, according to Leslie, "should not be passed over in silence." 39 What excited Leslie's admiration in Tweeddale was the number of sheep on its hillsides and in its valleys-single sheepowners possessing as many as five hundred or even a thousand. But it was as one of the favourite royal hunting-grounds that Tweeddale was still best known in the sixteenth century. Thus we read in

40

Pitscottie that "the second day of June (1528) the King passed out of Edinburgh to the hunting and many of the nobles and gentlemen of Scotland with him, to the number of 12,000 men; and there passed to Meggetland, and hounded and hawked all the country and bounds." 41

The district of Nithsdale was another of those fertile tracts in the south of Scotland which presented a tempting spoil for the invader. To the abundance of its harvests we have the testimony of the English chronicler, John Hardyng, who was in Scotland between 1450 and 1460, and extended his travels beyond those of any other stranger. As the result of his observations he produced a rhymed Itinerary, the object of which, he tells us, was to note "the distances and miles of the towns in Scotland, and the way how to convey an army, as well by land as water, into the chiefest parts thereof."42 In the execution of this task, Hardyng gives us the completest description we possess of Scotland in the fifteenth century. As his special purpose was to indicate the best routes for an invading army to follow, he limits his description mainly to those parts of the country where such a host could find material for its subsistence. What surprises us in his general view of Scotland is the extent to which the country must have been under cultivation so early as the time when Hardyng visited it. It is to be remembered, also, that Hardyng from the very object he had in view is

likely to be a truth-telling chronicler : if an English army should one day pursue the routes he indicated, it would be a matter of life and death that his information should be accurate. Of Nithsdale, of which we were speaking, Hardyng says that it abounds in good victual; and its chief town, Dumfries, he calls a "pretty town "43-an opinion which is confirmed by the testimony of other authorities. According to Leslie, Dumfries was "a town, neither base nor of simple degree," " and we have the word of Hector Boece (which in this connection may perhaps be taken seriously) that its manufacture of "delicate white woollen cloth ' was held in great esteem by foreign merchants.45

44

Of the wide district of Galloway, which then included Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbright, and the western half of Dumfriesshire, Hardyng has nothing to say; it was not a country where an English army was likely to find itself comfortable. Yet Galloway filled its own place in the general economy of the country. From Galloway and the Highlands were mainly supplied both cattle and the small ambling horses, which were usually ridden in Scotland, and which from the nature of their pace were known in France as hobins.46 The wool of the Galloway sheep, also, was the most famous in the country, and, in the opinion of the far-travelled Lithgow was "nothing inferior" to that of the sheep of Biscay." Buchanan names another commodity which Galloway supplied in

abundance to the nation at large. Its rivers abounded in eels, which, being caught and salted, he says, were a considerable source of profit to the Gallovidians.4 The eel, it is to be remembered, was the fish most commonly eaten in Scotland, and in pre-Reformation times must have been consumed in enormous quantities. Since then our countrymen have come to have another opinion regarding the appetising quality of eels.

Passing north into Ayrshire, with its three ancient divisions of Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham, we enter a country which lent itself more readily to cultivation than Galloway. Along the sea-coast, at least, there was abundant proof of an energetic and thriving community. "Kyle, that country plentiful and faire," "9 is Hardyng's description of that district in the later half of the fifteenth century; and in the beginning of the seventeenth another English traveller has these remarks on what he saw. The town of Irvine he described as "daintily situate... and in a dainty, pleasant, level champaign country; excellent good corn there is near unto it, where the ground is enriched and made fruitful with sea-weeds or lime." The road from Irvine to Ayr was "a most dainty, pleasant way," and Ayr itself "a dainty, pleasant-seated town " with "much plain, rich corn land about it." 50

We have likewise interesting testimony that Clydesdale, which took in Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, was one of the most highly cultivated