The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE OWNERS OF ARRAN 51
than to get cash. With the sixteenth century there is
indeed a change, and competitive or increased rents begin
to show themselves, but we have no knowledge of how things
went in Arran. Royal lands did not set the fashion in this
way. One change in these, however, does seem to have
affected the island. In Bute James iv., acting in the spirit
of an earlier Act of Parliament, turned his rentallers into
feuars, thus making them virtually landlords subject to the
payment of feu-duty. These came to be known locally
as ' barons,' not incorrectly in view of their status with
respect to the king, but unusual in the more limited sense,
since they had no baronial investment ; and the title, in the
wider meaning, is known also, even down to modern times, in
districts of Argyll.^ Though there is no specific record for
Arran, persistent tradition, and the use of the term in the
island within living memory, would suggest that a similar
step was taken in that island, where the form ' baron laird
is an effort to get nearer the particular sort of tenancy ; or,
at least, that the Arran ' rentaller ' regarded himself as on
the same footing as the Bute ' baron.' In Arran even the
feuar of a building site has been known as a baron. In
fact, ' baron ' in the west country seems to be the equivalent
of the term ' feuar,' in the honourable sense in which
that title is used on gravestones in such a district as East
Perthshire. It indicated a superior standing to that of
mere tenant. The later history of the Bute and Arran
' barons ' as feuars of their land cannot be followed out in
detail : the material is wanting.
Under the farmers of the land were the actual cultivators,
whose lot in Arran, as in the rest of Scotland, was probably
* See again on p. 117 ff. While this form was under investigation there appeared,
on a date in the early summer of 1912, a notice in the Deaths column of the Glasgow
Berald which stated that the lady in question was the daughter of a particular person,
'baron' of a place in the neighbourhood of Oban. 'Barons/ too, was the term
anciently applied to freemen of London, the Cinque Ports, and some other places, as
homagers of the king.
'