The Scottish Early Modern Burgh

The urban history of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Scotland is in a sense a tale of two cities – Edinburgh and Glasgow. The merchant princes of Edinburgh – like William Birnie who died in the Netherlands' staple port of Veere in 1569 leaving over £29,000 Scots (about 66,500 sterling) or William MacMoran, the richest merchant of his generation, with shares in nine ships and a fortune of over 637,000 Scots (by then worth £3,000 sterling) when he was shot dead by an Edinburgh schoolboy in 1596 – have been described as the success story of sixteenth-century Scotland. Theirs was the platform for the more spectacular fortunes of Edinburgh merchants early in the following century – like the monopolist and manufacturer Patrick Wood, whose testament inventory of 1638 revealed investments worth £100,000 Scots in shipping, salt-panning, manufactories like rope works and trading ventures stretching from the Baltic to the Canaries but also debts to match; or like the doyen of the mercantile establishment, William Dick of Braid, who lent and lost over £130,000 Scots to the cause of the Covenant.