Greedy lairds. Religious schisms. Wars and clan battles. Biting winters, famine, disease, and hazardous mining conditions. These were the day-to-day realities that peasants living in the Newbattle parish experienced, and ones that the Russell and Moffat ancestors fought against.
Located in the shire of Edinburgh, now Midlothian, Newbattle parish looks like an irregular triangle on a map and sits about a mile south of Dalkeith, home of the Moffat family. Its soil is fertile and good for growing peas, beans, barley, hay, oats, potatoes, and cherries; and it boasts an abundance of coal and limestone. In the northeast quarter stands the church, the village of Newbattle—where the Russells lived—and the family seat of the Marquis of Lothian. This is where the Russell and Moffatt families would struggle to survive.
Originally formed after the foundation of a monastery by David I in 1140, the parish was now almost completely Presbyterian. Though the people had fought for and attained freedom from Catholic authorities, there were schisms—into Seceders, Covenanters, Cameronians, Glasites, Hebronites, Relifers, Old Licht Burgers, the New Licht Burghers, and the Anti-Burgers—and arguments between the Churches of Scotland and England remained, as did sporadic witch hunts. The church where families worshipped, a plain structure large enough to seat four hundred people, was erected in 1727, though parish records had been kept since 1616. Over the years the population had dwindled to fewer than two thousand people, and most peasants were either tenant farmers or coal miners.
The Lowlands were run by lairds, landowners who debased the population to line their own pockets, but they didn’t view themselves that way. A 1726 Edinburgh Law Professor wrote: “What more agreeable personage can one form for himself that that of a country gentleman living decently and frugally upon his fortune and composing all the differences within the sphere of his activity, giving the law to a whole neighborhood and they gratefully submitting to it?” Others viewed them differently. Ramsay of Ochtertyre continues, “no character in lower repute than that of a harsh and avaricious landlord…it could not be foreseen that the time would come when the raising of rents should occupy the attention of proprietors great and small.” Lairds charged tenant farmers rent, and tenants often provided their labor in lieu of money. It made life nearly unbearable. Peasants were forbidden from owning land, lived in dilapidated huts of wood, stone, and mud, and were frequently on the edge of starvation….
For Complete Details, go to “American Pioneer Biographies, European, African, Colonial & Republic Families Of America’s East Coast From 1500-2000, Volume 1, Edition 3” at https://arcifc.com/genealogy/books-and-blog
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